Discover
C-SPAN Bookshelf
C-SPAN Bookshelf
Author: C-SPAN
Subscribed: 106Played: 4,521Subscribe
Share
© Copyright NCSC 2023
Description
The C-SPAN Bookshelf podcast feed makes it easy for you to listen to all of the C-SPAN podcast episodes about nonfiction books. Each week we gather episodes from the different C-SPAN podcasts that feature authors talking about history, biography, current events, and culture to make it easier to discover the episodes and listen. If you like nonfiction books, follow this podcast feed so you never miss an episode!
463 Episodes
Reverse
On May 26, 2002, our guest on the Booknotes television program was Richard John Neuhaus . His book, "As I Lay Dying: Meditations Upon Returning." The Neuhaus interview received one of the biggest responses of any during the history of the 16-year program. Neuhaus was 66 at the time and told us that several years earlier, he had a ruptured tumor that almost killed him. During a series of complicated operations, weeks in critical condition, and months in slow recovery, he was brought face to face with his own mortality. As he lay dying, he found that despite his faith, he had been quite unprepared for the experience. In 1990, Richard John Neuhaus, a writer and Lutheran minister, became a Catholic priest. He died of cancer in 2009 at age 72.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Former U.S. Congressman Steve Israel (D-NY) discusses his book, "The Einstein Conspiracy," a novel based on an actual plot by the Nazis to silence physicist Albert Einstein during the 1930s. Einstein, a prominent critic of Hitler, moved to the United States with his wife in 1933 and became a citizen in 1940. This interview was recorded at Theodore's Book in Oyster Bay, New York, an independent bookstore opened by Mr. Israel in 2021.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson joins David M.
Rubenstein at the National Archives to discuss his trilogies examining the
Revolutionary War and World War II and view artifacts in the Archives' vault.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Biologist Beronda Montgomery explored the botanical knowledge developed by African Americans. Harvard Book Store hosted this event.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
David Sirota, who is based in Denver, Colorado, has some very strong views about money and politics. His book is called "Master Plan: The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America." There are 11 chapters which reflect the 11 episodes of his podcast, "Master Plan." In order to tell his story, he points his finger at the 1971 Powell secret memo. That's former US Supreme Court Associate Justice Lewis Powell, who served on the Supreme Court from 1972 to 1987. He died in 1998 at age 90. Author Sirota, who is 50, writes that the Powell memo laid out a comprehensive step-by-step strategy for corporate America to regain control, protect its interests, and reshape the political and legal system of the United States to favor business.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Former Washington Post correspondent Wil Haygood, author of "The War Within a War," discusses the experience of Black American soldiers in Vietnam and the struggle for racial equality, happening at the same time, back home in the United States. He also talks about growing up in Columbus, Ohio, during this period, where, as a child, he witnessed this dichotomy firsthand.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Former Reagan administration official Linda Chavez joins David M. Rubenstein to discuss her career in public service and her works of fiction and nonfiction.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Finance and Tech reporter David Morris reported on Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX. POWERHOUSE Arena in New York City hosted this event.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
For his book, "Five Bullets," attorney Elliot Williams wrote 95,720 words. On the back of the cover of the book, writer Garrett Graff sums up the story this way: "Never has a book about the 1980s felt more like current events than Elliot Williams's journey back to one of America's most notorious shootings, when Bernie Goetz opened fire in a crowded New York City subway…'Five Bullets' is a haunting examination of our nation's complicated fascination with vigilantes and the politics of crime…" A lot of the people who were instrumental to this story are deceased. However, the man at the center, Bernie Goetz, is still alive at 78 and still lives in New York City.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
White House Historical Association president Stewart McLaurin, author of "The People's House Miscellany," talks about the history of the White House and White House-related trivia. He also discusses the changes that presidents and first ladies have made to the White House's interior and exterior going back to President Thomas Jefferson.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Former FBI investigator Tim Carpenter recounted the true-life detective story spearheaded by the Bureau's Art Crime Team, which found itself on the trail of a thief who stole thousands of cultural artifacts -- and human remains -- from around the world. The Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee hosted this event
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Russian Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group, marched toward Moscow starting on June 23, 2023. His forces were advancing north on M4 Highway after seizing Rostov-on-Don. The rebellion against his longtime colleague Vladimir Putin was halted the next day. Literally two months later, at a little past 6pm, Prigozhin and nine others boarded his Embraer 600 jet in Moscow. Several minutes later, at 6:20pm, over Tver, Russia, 100-miles north of Moscow, the plane exploded. All 10 passengers perished, including two pilots and the flight attendant. Writer and intelligence expert, Candace Rondeaux, gives us the rest of the story in her book, "Putin's Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia's Collapse into Mercenary Chaos."
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum's Teasel Muir-Harmony discusses the history of the U.S. space program, from the creation of NASA in 1958 through the Gemini early flights to Neil Armstrong taking his historic first steps on the lunar surface in July 1969. She also talks about the missions that followed and NASA's current efforts to return astronauts to the moon.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, examined the relationship between civilian and military leadership in America going back to the country's founding. This event was hosted by AEI in Washington, D.C
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In the December 1, 2025, print edition of the Wall Street Journal, there was this headline on page R25: "These 10 books changed the way Americans thought about work." Carol Hymowitz, the author, wrote: "It began with Benjamin Franklin, who couldn't stop working or writing about work throughout his 84-year long life." Carol Hymowitz has been associated with the Wall Street Journal since she got her master's degree in journalism at Columbia University. Other books she featured in this article about work include Tocqueville, Frederick Douglass, Upton Sinclair, John Steinbeck, Dale Carnegie, and C. Wright Mills, plus others. We wanted to know how she chose these 10 books about work, so we had a chat.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nicholas Boggs discusses the personal life and activism of American writer James Baldwin (1924-1987). Mr. Boggs, who spent over 20 years working on "James Baldwin: A Love Story," also talks about Baldwin's many books, his life outside the United States, and his involvement in the civil rights movement.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham joined David M. Rubenstein to discuss his biographies of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and George H.W. Bush, and his upcoming book on Dwight Eisenhower.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Stefan Fatsis describes his experience as a lexicographer in training at Merriam-Webster to learn how words are added to the dictionary. Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, MA, hosted this event.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jonathan Horn's latest book is titled "The Fate of the Generals: MacArthur, Wainwright, and the Epic Battle for the Philippines." The publisher Scribner explains the premise of Horn's book: "For the doomed stand American forces made in the Philippines at the start of World War II, two generals received the country's highest military award, the Medal of Honor. One was the charismatic Douglas MacArthur whose orders forced him to leave his troops and go to Australia. The other was the gritty Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright who became a hero to the troops whose fate he insisted on sharing."
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl discusses his book, "Retribution," a behind-the-scenes look at Donald Trump's winning 2024 presidential campaign. Mr. Karl, who started covering Trump in the mid-1990s for the New York Post, also talks about his longtime relationship with the 47th president and the contrast between President Trump's public and private sides.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices



















