Paul Bew, "Ancestral Voices in Irish Politics: Judging Dillon and Parnell" (Oxford UP, 2023)
The story of Charles Stewart Parnell, one of the greatest Irish leaders of the nineteenth century and also one of the most renowned figures of the 1880s on the international stage, and John Dillon, th...
22 Mar 20241h 7min
Amy Absher, "Fritzie: The Invented Life and Violent Murder of a Flapper" (U Oklahoma Press, 2023)
One January day in 1923, a young boy came across the dead body of a twenty-year-old woman on a San Diego beach. When the police arrived on the scene, they found the woman’s calling card, which read si...
21 Mar 202431min
The Pioneering Life of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
Manu Bhagavan and Ellen Chesler discuss Bhagavan’s latest book on Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (Penguin, 2023), admired sister of India’s founding Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and a pioneering public se...
18 Mar 202446min
Ashok Gopal, "A Part Apart: The Life and Thought of B.R. Ambedkar" (Navayana Press, 2023)
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) is perhaps the most iconised historical figure in India. Born into a caste deemed ‘unfit for human association’, he came to define what it means to be human. How and...
18 Mar 20242h 3min
Elizabeth B. White and Joanna Sliwa, "The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles During the Holocaust" (Simon & Schuster, 2024)
World War II and the Holocaust have been the subject of many remarkable stories of resistance and rescue, but The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles during the Holoc...
17 Mar 20241h 14min
Rebecca Rego Barry, "The Vanishing of Carolyn Wells" (Post Hill Press, 2024)
The Vanishing of Carolyn Wells: Investigations into a Forgotten Mystery Author (PostHill Press, 2024) by Rebecca Rego Barry is the first biography of one of the “lost ladies” of detective fiction who ...
12 Mar 202444min
Ilyon Woo, "Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom" (Simon and Schuster, 2023)
Ilyon Woo's Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom (Simon and Schuster, 2023) tells the remarkable true story of Ellen and William Craft, who escaped slavery through daring...
9 Mar 202452min
Patrick Olivelle, "Ashoka: Portrait of a Philosopher King" (Yale UP, 2024)
There are few historical figures more integral to South Asian history than Emperor Ashoka, a third-century BCE king who ruled over a larger area of the Indian subcontinent than anyone else before Brit...
8 Mar 20241h 3min
