140 Nathaniel Bowditch: 19th-Century Man of Business, Science, and the Sea

How do historians and biographers reconstruct the lives of people from the past? Good biographies rely on telling the lives of people using practiced historical methods of thorough archival research ...

13 Nov 20181h 10min

As part of the Omohundro Institute's Doing History series on biography, Episode 212 offers us a new conversation with Erica Dunbar, the author of Never Caught: The Washington’s Relentless Pursuit of T...

9 Nov 201854min

Can a biography help us explore big historical questions? Can knowing about the life of John Marshall, the fourth Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, help us better understand the Supre...

6 Nov 20181h 12min

For 34 years, John Marshall presided as the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. During his service, Marshal transformed the nation’s top court and its judicial branch into the powerful b...

30 Okt 20181h 17min

Biography. Since the earliest days of the United States, and even before the thirteen colonies came together to forge a nation, Americans have been interested in biography. But why? What is it about ...

23 Okt 20181h 37min

2018 marks the 241st anniversary of the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga and the 240th anniversary of the Franco-American Alliance. But was the victory that prompted the French to join the A...

16 Okt 201856min

What in the first 40 years of his life made Benjamin Franklin the genius he became? Benjamin Franklin serves as a great window on to the early American past because as a man of “variety” he pursued m...

9 Okt 20181h 4min

Between 1500 and the 1860s, Europeans and Americans forcibly removed approximately 12 million African people from the African continent, transported them to the Americas, and enslaved them. Why did E...

2 Okt 201858min