Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Christine Rosen, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and media commentary columnist at Commentary, to discuss her new book, The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World. They chat about how digital technologies offer novelty and convenience, but also transform our sense of self and warp the boundaries between virtual and real, and what the costs of these technologies are. They also discuss whether face-to-face...

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Jonathan W. White, professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University, to discuss his new book, co-authored with William J. Griffing, A Great and Good Man: Rare, First-Hand Accounts and Observations of Abraham Lincoln. They chat about the excerpts of the more than 200 previously unpublished accounts written by men and women who lived during the Civil War featured in the book, what the writers thought about Lincoln, and how these letters and...

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Andrew Leigh, Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities, Treasury and Employment, and Federal Member for Fenner in the Australian Parliament, to discuss his book How Economics Explains the World: A Short History of Humanity. They chat about how ingenuity, greed, and desire for betterment have determined our past, present, and future. They also discuss why Europe colonized Africa instead of the other way around, what happened when countries erected trade...

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Cara Rogers Stevens, associate professor of history at Ashland University, to discuss her book Thomas Jefferson and the Fight against Slavery. They chat about the evolution of Jefferson’s views on race and slavery, his legislative attempts to put the practice on a pathway to extinction in Virginia beginning in the colonial period, the antislavery intentions of his lone book, Notes on the State of Virginia, and how he tried to persuade younger slaveholders...

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by renowned historian Richard Overy to discuss his new book, Why War? They chat about why has war been such a consistent presence throughout the human past, and indeed in the human present, and what are the major drivers and motivations for war, how each has contributed to organized conflict, and whether humanity will ever evolve away from organized conflict. They also discuss the impulses embedded in human biology and psychology, the incentives to conflict...

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Anthony Eames, director of scholarly initiatives at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, non-resident fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and professorial lecturer at the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University, to discuss his new book, A Voice in Their Own Destiny: Reagan, Thatcher, and Public Diplomacy in the Nuclear 1980s. They chat about how the administrations of Ronald Reagan and...

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Sergey Radchenko, Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, to discuss his new book, To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power. They chat about how the Soviet struggle with the United States and China reflected its irreconcilable ambitions as a self-proclaimed superpower and the leader of global revolution, and how this...

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Maurice Isserman, Publius Virgilius Rogers Professor of American History at Hamilton College, to discuss his new book, Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism. They chat about the deeply contradictory nature of the history of the Communist Party USA, the history of the American far left, and how the Bolshevik Revolution skewed the American far left. They also discuss CPUSA’s unwavering faith in the Soviet Union, how many American communists became involved...

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Sean McMeekin, Francis Flournoy Professor of European History and Culture at Bard College, to discuss his new book, To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism. They chat about the evolution of Communism from a seductive ideal of a classless society into the ruling doctrine of tyrannical regimes. They also discuss communism’s unpopularity as a political form, yet it’s endurance as an ideology. Get the book here: ...

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Spencer D. Bakich, Professor of International Studies and Director of the National Security Program at the Virginia Military Institute, and Senior Fellow at the University of Virginia's Miller Center, to discuss his new book, The Gulf War: George H. W. Bush and American Grand Strategy in the Post-Cold War Era. They chat about how Bush fashioned a grand strategy to bring about a New World Order designed to transform international politics by focusing on...

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Tevi Troy, Senior Fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center, Senior Scholar at Yeshiva University’s Straus Center, and a Visiting Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, to discuss his new book, The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry. They chat about how the vast reach of the federal government became a critical fact of life for every business, how companies find themselves navigating a...

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Nick Lloyd, Professor of Modern Warfare at King’s College London, to discuss his new book, The Eastern Front: A History of the Great War, 1914-1918. They chat about the scale of the conflict, how the most radical aspect of the struggle in the east was that the violence was not confined to combatants, and how the repercussions of the war in the east, including the fall of three great empires and the rise of Bolshevism, were much more profound than the war in...

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Michel Paradis, fellow at the Center on National Security and the National Institute for Military Justice and lecture in law at Columbia Law School, to discuss his new book, The Light of Battle: Eisenhower, D-Day, and the Birth of the American Superpower. They chat about how Eisenhower’s rise both reflected and was integral to America’s rise as a global superpower, his unique facility as a teambuilder, and just what exactly was on the line with Operation...

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Michael Kimmage, Professor of History at the Catholic University of America and non-resident Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, to discuss his new book, Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability. They chat about the origins of the war, how it has transformed multiple centers of power and has shifted the direction of major macro-trends in world politics, contributing to the fragmentation...

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Frank W. Garmon Jr., assistant professor of American studies at Christopher Newport University, to discuss his new book, A Wonderful Career in Crime: Charles Cowlam’s Masquerades in the Civil War Era and Gilded Age. They chat Cowlam’s career as convict, spy, detective, congressional candidate, adventurer, con artist, and serial bigamist and how his life managed to intersect with Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, and Ulysses S. Grant. They also discuss the...

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by James Davison Hunter, LaBrosse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture and Social Theory and Executive Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, to discuss his new book, Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America's Political Crisis. They discuss how our historic sources of national solidarity have now largely dissolved, why a deepening political polarization is the most obvious...

In Episode 154 of Ill Literacy, Tim Benson talks with Sam Rosenfeld, co-author of The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics. Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Sam Rosenfeld, Associate Professor of Political Science and Director, Public Affairs and Policy Research Initiative at Colgate University, to discuss his new book, co-authored with Daniel Schlozman, The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics. They...

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Sean A. Mirski, Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, to discuss his new book, We May Dominate the World: Ambition, Anxiety, and the Rise of the American Colossus. They discuss how the United States became a regional hegemon in the century following the Civil War, which no other great power in the modern era has managed to achieve. They also chat about what America’s rise to hegemon status can teach us about the United States...

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Robert K.D. Colby, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Mississippi, to discuss his new book, An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South. They discuss how Southerners made the internal slave trade a cornerstone of Confederate society, a bulwark of the Rebel economy, and a central part of the experience of the Civil War. They also chat about how slave trading helped Southerners survive and fight the war by using this commerce to...

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by award-winning novelist, critic, and biographer D.J. Taylor to discuss his new book, Who Is Big Brother? A Reader’s Guide to George Orwell. They discuss Orwell’s books, life and thought, including his conflicted relationship with religion to his competing anti-imperialism and fascination with empire. They also discuss Taylor’s recently released, completely overhauled biography, Orwell: The New Life. Get the books here:...

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Kurt Weyland, Mike Hogg Professor in Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin, to discuss his new book, Democracy's Resilience to Populism's Threat: Countering Global Alarmism. They discuss how populist leaders can only destroy democracy under special, restrictive conditions, which many never face. They also chat about how left-wing populists typically suffocate democracy only when benefitting from huge revenue windfalls, whereas right-wing...

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by David Blackbourn, Cornelius Vanderbilt Distinguished Chair of History Emeritus at Vanderbilt University, to discuss his new book, Germany in the World: A Global History, 1500-2000. They discuss the existence of a distinctly German presence in the world centuries before its unification. They also chat about Germany’s leading role in creating modern universities and its sinister involvement in slave-trade economies, as well as how Germany has maintained its...

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by David Stahel, senior lecturer in history at the University of New South Wales, to discuss his new book, Hitler's Panzer Generals: Guderian, Hoepner, Reinhardt and Schmidt Unguarded. They discuss the significance of the unpublished wartime correspondence of these generals and what it reveals about their personalities, their private fears, and the public pressures they were under. They also chat about their response to the criminal dimension of the Nazi way...

In Episode 147 of Ill Literacy, Tim Benson talks with Nigel Biggar, author ofColonialism: A Moral Reckoning. Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Nigel Biggar, Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford, to discuss his new book, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning. They discuss whether the British Empire was driven primarily by greed and the lust to dominate, whether we should speak of “colonialism and slavery” in the same breath, and whether the Empire was...