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C-SPAN Bookshelf

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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!

473 Episodes
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As a follow up to the most recent Booknotes+ featuring Seth Harp on his book "The Fort Bragg Cartel," we are replaying an interview from June 12, 2012. The guest on Q&A, the television program, was 31-year-old Michael Hastings, author of the book "The Operators," which he said is what the special forces call themselves. It is based on a Rolling Stone article that allegedly led to the dismissal of General Stanley McChrystal, who was commander of the Joint Special Operations Command from 2003 to 2008. One year almost to the day after our interview with Michael Hastings, he was killed in an automobile accident in Los Angeles at 4:25 in the morning. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
New York Times staff photographer Doug Mills has won 3 Pulitzer Prizes for his work covering the White House & Washington, Super Bowls, Olympics, and many other major events. He tells us that he's taken over one million photographs of President Trump alone. In our conversation, he talks about some of the events he's covered going back to the Reagan administration. He talks about being in the Oval Office and on Air Force One, photographing the Clinton/Gore campaign in 1992, accompanying President George W. Bush on September 11, 2001, and taking the photograph of the attempted assassination of President Trump in 2024, which won him his third Pulitzer Prize. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chuck Collins discussed his book Burned by Billionaires where he examines the impact of wealth concentration on society and politics. The event was hosted by Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Seth Harp is a lawyer and an Iraq war veteran and an investigative writer and journalist. His first book, "The Fort Bragg Cartel," is about drug trafficking and murder in the Special Forces. Near the end of his book, Harp writes: "Between January 2017 and September 2022, a total of 15,293 active duty service members suffered drug overdoses, and 322 of those were fatal. The Defense Department data showed that Fort Bragg had far more overdoses than any other military base in both absolute and per capita terms." Fort Bragg is located in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and is the largest populated army base with close to 50,000 soldiers. It is the headquarters of the secret Delta Force. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Former longtime Columbia University president Lee Bollinger discusses his book "University: A Reckoning," about the purpose and future of universities in the United States. He also talks about protests and free speech on college campuses and the targeting of Columbia, Harvard, and other institutions of higher learning by the Trump administration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed discussed his 2019 arrest and imprisonment in Russia and his decision to volunteer in war against the Russians in Ukraine after his release. This event was hosted by Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
London-based writer Josh Ireland is the author of three books and ghostwriter of five others. His latest is titled "The Death of Trotsky: The True Story of the Plot to Kill Stalin's Greatest Enemy." According to Josh Ireland, Trotsky led two revolutions and a civil war in Russia in the first half of the 20th century. Leon Trotsky died on August the 21, 1940. The day before, in Trotsky's house near Mexico City, a man named Ramon Mercator sunk an ice axe into Trotsky's skull. He lived for 26 hours. Mercator, who had several names, was a Soviet agent and had befriended Trotsky. This was all the work of Stalin, Trotsky's archenemy. Josh Ireland's first sentence of chapter one asked this question: "When did Joseph Stalin decide to crush or destroy or kill Leon Trotsky?" His book tells the complicated story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
California governor Gavin Newsom (D) discusses his memoir, "Young Man in a Hurry," in which he chronicles moments in his life that influenced his political career. He was mayor of San Francisco from 2004 to 2011 and then served as lieutenant governor before becoming governor in 2019. Gov. Newsom also talks about his personal life, including living with dyslexia, and his relationship with billionaire Gordon Getty, a longtime political benefactor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Married journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glasser join David M. Rubenstein to discuss collaborating to write books profiling key newsmakers including Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dr. Robert Wachter examined the future of artificial intelligence being used in health care. The Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco hosted this event. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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
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