Dr. Dolly Jørgensen is professor of history at the University of Stavanger in Norway. As you'll hear in this episode, Dolly is one very busy historian. She is the author of three books, including her newest, Ghosts Behind Glass: Encountering Extinction in Museums. She has also co-edited five books and written a truly impressive number of academic articles. She recently ended a term as the editor of the journal Environmental Humanities, and she co-directs the Greenhouse Center for Environmental Humanities, which is most known for its excellent series of online book talks.

As an environmental historian, I have been impressed not only by Dr. Dolly Jørgensen's work for years, but also by her warm and friendly presence at conferences and online. I was delighted when she said yes to coming on the show and talking with me about her writing process.

I was eager to hear from Dolly about how she juggles her projects, what draws her to a topic, and how working at a university in Scandinavia changes her approach to scholarship.

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Note: Links to bookshop.org are affiliate links. When you purchase books through these links, you support not only authors and indie bookstores but the podcast itself.

• Dolly Jørgensen, Ghosts Behind Glass: Encountering Extinction in Museums
• Dolly Jørgensen, The Medieval Pig
• Dolly Jørgensen, Recovering Lost Species in the Modern Age: Histories of Longing and Belonging
• Dolly Jørgensen's website
• Greenhouse Center for Environmental Humanities Book Talks Series
• Dolly Jørgensen on Bluesky
• Finn Arne Jørgensen
• Bathsheba Demuth, Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait(and check out my Episode 3 interview with Bathsheba Demuth)

In this episode, Kate welcomes Scott W. Stern and Dr. Charles O'Malley to the show.

Scott is a writer and lawyer who is the author of two previous books of narrative nonfiction and has written for many media outlets and scholarly journals. Charlie is a dramaturg and writer who has worked at theaters across the country.

Together, they teamed up to write a new book titled Shakespeare's Margaret: The Dramatic Life of a Warrior Queen. In it, they explore Shakespeare's character Margaret, a woman loosely based on a historical figure who is the only Shakespearean character, male or female, whose entire life appears on stage. They introduce readers to her historical model, her creation by Shakespeare, and her evolution across centuries of performances to show how the character of Margaret illuminates the world in which she is created and brought to life. As they put it, her story "shows how Shakespeare's plays have always been living collaborations among actors, directors, writers, critics, and history itself." It seems only fitting that the book itself was a close collaboration. Scott and Charlie are co-writers, but they also began working on the book together shortly after they got married. By the time they were in the final editing stages, their twin sons had been born. We talked about how they navigated intertwined domestic and writing lives, as well as the challenges of bringing different voices and backgrounds together on the page.

Note: Links to bookshop.org are affiliate links. When you purchase books through these links, you support not only authors and indie bookstores but the podcast itself.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Charles O'Malley and Scott Stern, Shakespeare's Margaret: The Dramatic Life of a Warrior Queen
• Scott Stern, The Trials of Nina McCall: Sex, Surveillance, and the Decades-Long Government Plan to Imprison 'Promiscuous' Women
• Scott Stern, There is a Deep Brooding in Arkansas: The Rape Trials That Sustained Jim Crow, and the People Who Fought It, from Thurgood Marshall to Maya Angelou
• Charles O'Malley, Toward a Just Pedagogy of Performance
• Scott and Charlie's LitHub piece on writing together: "What Co-Writing a Book on Shakespeare Taught Us About Marriage and Parenthood"
• The Internet Archive's blog posts about the Controlled Digital Lending Program
• Sam Quinones, The Perfect Tuba: Forging Fulfillment from the Bass Horn, Band, and Hard Work
• Daniel Hahn, If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation

In this episode, Kate Carpenter interviews Dr. Anna O. Law, a political science who retrained herself in historical methods to write her new book, Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship. Anna is a professor of political science and Herbert Kurz Chair in Constitutional Rights at CUNY Brooklyn College. In her new books, she takes a close look at which parts and levels of government in the United States have controlled people's ability to move around and across borders throughout the country's history. It's a history that is especially pertinent now, as we await the Supreme Court's forthcoming decision about the Trump administration's attempt to end the right to birthright citizenship protected under the 14th amendment of the constitution.

Anna and Kate talked about what it meant to think like a historian as well as a political scientist. She also divulged her decidedly analog research tools, the feedback she asks colleagues to give on her drafts, and her advice for any writer deciding on a press for publishing a book.

Sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more.

Note: Links to bookshop.org are affiliate links. If you purchase books through these links, not only will you be supporting the author, but you will also help to keep Drafting the Past going. Thank you!

• Anna O. Law's website
• Anna Law, Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship
• Anna Law, The Immigration Battle in American Courts
• Metal page darts
• Sarasa gel pens
• Anna's favorite Clairefontaine notebooks
• Anna Law on BlueSky
• Anna's blog post about writing the second book
• Episode 102: Gautham Rao
• Megan Kate Nelson, The Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier and The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West (and my first and second interviews with her)
• Lucy Salyer, Laws Harsh As Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law and Under the Starry Flag: How a Band of Irish Americans Joined the Fenian Revolt and Sparked a Crisis Over Citizenship

It's not every day that I find myself so invested in the characters of a history book that I stay up way past my bed time to find out what happens next, but that's exactly what happened when I read the new book by today's guest, Dr. Charlotte Brooks.

Charlotte is a professor of history at Baruch College, which is part of the City University of New York, or CUNY, system. She is a scholar of race, immigration, and urban history, and is especially known for her work on Chinese American history. She is the author of four books. Her first three books were more aimed at an academic audience, but for her fourth book she wanted to try something a little different. The book that resulted is The Moys of New York and Shanghai: One Family's Extraordinary Journey Through War and Revolution. It's a group biography that tells the stories of six siblings, born to Chinese immigrant parents, and how they challenged the limitations and racism they faced in the United States, how many of them sought opportunities in China, and the ways they navigated the tumultuous world in which they lived in both countries in the first half of the 20th century.

They are fascinating characters, but Charlotte uses them to give us a window into the history of an entire generation of Chinese American families that many Americans know little about. I talked with Charlotte about what finally motivated her to write the book that she had been dreaming about, as well as what it was like to work with the Moy descendants, how her narrative makes the siblings so compelling, and why it was still a tough sell as a trade book.

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Note: Bookshop.org links are affiliate links. When you buy books through these links, Drafting the Past receives a small percentage of the purchase price. Thanks for helping to support the show!

• Charlotte Brooks, The Moys of New York and Shanghai: One Family's Extraordinary Journey Through War and Revolution
• Charlotte Brooks, American Exodus: Second-Generation Chinese Americans in China, 1901-1949
• Charlotte Brooks, Between Mao and McCarthy: Chinese American Politics in the Cold War Years
• Charlotte Brooks, Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, and the Transformation of Urban California
• Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA)
• Ellen Wu
• Mae Ngai
• Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency
• Virtual Shanghai Project
• Historical Photographs of China
• Gwulo: Old Hong Kong

Gautham is a historian of American law and politics and is an associate professor of history at American University in Washington. He's the author of two books: National Duties: Custom Houses and the Making of the American State, and his new book, White Power: Policing American Slavery. White Power is a history of the laws that enslavers used to police enslaved people from 1619 until the Civil War, and how the violent legacies of those laws and practices have reverberated throughout American history and life. In addition to his books and journal articles, Gautham has also written op-eds, contributions to Supreme Court cases, and a Substack newsletter called "The State of the State." I was especially interested to hear how Gautham grappled with organizing and using the evidence he collected from many locations over more than two decades. You'll also learn how he writes and rewrites to make himself clear, and how an offhanded remark from a well-known colleague set him on a new publishing path.

If you love the show and want to support it, but maybe don't have any spare cash to become a Patreon supporter, leave a review in your favorite podcast app.

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Links to bookshop.org are affiliate links. If you purchase books through these links, the show gets a small percentage of the price (at no extra cost to you). Thank you for supporting the podcast and our guest authors!

Mentioned in this episode:

• White Power: Policing American Slavery
• National Duties: Custom Houses and the Making of the American State
• Gautham's Substack
• reMarkable tablet
• Ibram X. Kendi
• Kate Masur, Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction
• Jessica Pishko, The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy
• Omohundro Institute book series in early American history
• Samantha Seeley, Race, Removal and the Right to Remain: Migration and the Making of the United States
• Sarah Gronningsater, The Rising Generation: Gradual Abolition, Black Legal Culture, and the Making of National Freedom
• Emily Conroy-Krutz, Missionary Diplomacy: Religion and Nineteenth-Century American Foreign Relations
• Rebecca Brenner Graham, Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins's Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany (check out my interview with Rebecca in Episode 60: Rebecca Brenner Graham Gives Us the Publicity Behind-the-Scenes)
• Dani Segelbaum, Gautham's agent
• Margot Canaday, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America and Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America
• Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America and The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes, Chinese Migration, and Global Politics
• Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception
• Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, which includes his essay "Theses on the Philosophy of History
• Sally Hadden, Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas
• Michael Willrich, American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle Between Immigrant Radicals and the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century

These days, Tara is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, although she did not get that position until after her book was nearly published. She's a specialist in medicine, sex, and gender in antiquity, and her book is called A Womb of One's Own: Lost Histories of Childbirth in Ancient Rome. In it, she brings the experiences of pregnancy and childbirth of Roman women brilliantly to life, turning scraps of archival materials into richly detailed narratives. In addition to her teaching, Tara also previously worked as a managing editor of Eidolon, an online classics journal that brought classics scholarship to the public in a playful, easy to read voice. You'll hear more in our conversation about how that experience shaped Tara's writing. We also talked about how her lived experiences, especially as the daughter of a homebirth midwife, helped her read the archive, and how keeping her writing going means trusting in her future self.

Heads up: Links to bookshop.org are affiliate links. If you buy books from these links, the podcast gets a small percentage—it's an awesome way to support our guests and the show at the same time.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Tara Mulder, A Womb of One's Own: Lost Histories of Childbirth in Ancient Rome
• Eidolon archives
• Scrivener
• Anna Bonnell Friedin, Birthing Romans: Childbearing and Its Risks in Imperial Rome
• Anna Tatarkiewicz, The 'Cursus Laborum' of Roman Women: Social and Medical Aspects of the Transition from Puberty to Motherhood
• Saidiya Hartman, "Venus in Two Acts"
• Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812

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Episode 100! I'm thrilled to welcome historian of science Dr. Jessica Riskin.

Jessica is the Frances and Charles Field Professor of History at Stanford University. She's the author of three books and has edited two additional collections. She has also written extensively for academic journals and has published some highly entertaining book reviews and essays for the New York Review of Books and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Her newest book, and her first with a trade press, is The Power of Life: The Invention of Biology and the Revolutionary Science of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. It's a biography of French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, whose early theories of evolution have been discredited and ignored. But in this book, Jessica traces his life, restores his thinking, and shows not only that we have Lamarck all wrong, but also what we lose when we turn away from his expansive approach to science. It's an interesting subject, but in Jessica's hands it transforms into a deeply engaging, witty, surprising, and fascinating read. I loved learning more about how her love of novels helps her bring the past to life, how transformative it has been to work with great editors, and how she manages to write a book that is both a delightful read and a persuasive argument.

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Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Jessica Riskin's faculty website
• Jessica Riskin, The Power of Life: The Invention of Biology and the Revolutionary Science of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
• Jessica Riskin, The Restless Clock: A History of the Centuries-Long Argument over What Makes Living Things Tick
• Jessica Riskin, Science in the Age of Sensibility: The Sentimental Empiricists of the French Enlightenment
• Riskin at the The New York Review of Books
• Riskin at Los Angeles Review of Books
• FriXion Erasable Markers
• Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre
• Peter Elbow, Writing with Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process
• Ken Alder, The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World
• Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms

Craig is a journalist and historian who lives in Indiana, where he focuses on writing and occasional adjunct teaching at Indiana University. His first book was Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote. He has published articles and reviews in venues like Deadspin, the New York Times Book Review, and Boston Globe.

In his new book, This Vast Enterprise, Craig retells the story of the Lewis and Clark expedition through the rotating perspectives of several members of the expedition, as well as some of the people they encountered along the way. The result is a nuanced, fresh version of this history that decenters the expedition leaders and introduces some new sources and interpretations! In the interview, We get into how Craig came upon those sources and how what he found allowed him to reinterpret other sources, like Lewis and Clark's expedition diaries. We also talked about his interviews with contemporary Native sources, how a creative constraint actually led to new insights, his approach to writing history as a page-turner, and much more.

Sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more.

Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Craig's website
• Craig Fehrman, This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis & Clark
• Craig Fehrman, Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote
• Craig Fehrman, editor, The Best Presidential Writing: From 1789 to the Present
• Stephen E. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West
• Ken Burns documentary Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery
• Ned Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History and Violence Over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West
• Elizabeth Fenn, Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People and Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82
• We Proceeded On journal from the Lewis & Clark Trail Alliance
• Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Sons: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
• Megan Kate Nelson, The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West (Listen to Megan in DTP episode 1 and episode 94)
• Claire Keegan
• Carys Davies
• Rachel Aviv
• Lillian Ross
• Jill Lepore
• Louis Menand

When David first joined me on Drafting the Past during the show's first season in 2022, we talked about The Bright Ages: A New History of Europe that he had just published with co-writer Matthew Gabriele. I highly recommend that you go back and listen to that episode, Episode 10. It's especially inspiring for anyone interested in co-writing or who does not find writing to come to them naturally. Since that conversation, David and Matthew have co-authored a second book called Oathbreakers: The War of Brothers That Shattered an Empire and Made Medieval Europe. And David has continued to write prolifically for the public. He has also been enthusiastic about giving other scholars the tools to do the same, and he started offering a workshop on public writing for university faculty and graduate students. Now, he's bringing that advice to all of us in a short, essential book called The Public Scholar: A Practical Handbook.

Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links.

Sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more.

Mentioned in this episode:

• David's website
• David M. Perry, The Public Scholar: A Practical Handbook
• Matthew Gabriele and David M. Perry, Oathbreakers: The War of Brothers That Shattered an Empire and Made Medieval Europe
• Matthew Gabriele and David M. Perry, The Bright Ages: A New History of Europe
• Matthew and David's newsletter, Modern Medieval
• Drafting the Past Episode 10: David M. Perry Writes Out Loud
• David's Star Tribune column about Irish music: "This St. Patrick's Day, don't forget Irish music's anti-fascist roots"
• The Instagram reel promoting his column that we talked about at the start of the episode
• Tressie McMillan Cottom
• Irina Dumitrescu

Host Kate Carpenter is joined by drug historian Dr. Emily Dufton to talk about researching and writing Emily's newest book, Addiction, Inc.: Medication-Assisted Treatment and America's Forgotten War on Drugs.

Emily holds a PhD in American studies and works full-time as a writer. Her first book was Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America. Thanks to her expertise in drug history, she regularly serves as a commentator on cannabis history and news, and she also writes essays and op eds for public outlets.

Addiction, Inc. tells the history of medication-assisted treatment for illicit drug addiction, beginning with its emergence during President Richard Nixon's war on drugs in the 1970s as a radical approach to public health. From there she traces the controversies, missed opportunities, and privatization that have scrambled access to what is considered the gold standard of addiction treatment, even as America wrestles with an opioid overdose epidemic. Emily is the recipient of multiple awards that supported the book's creation, including a J. Anthony Lukas Works-in-Progress Award, a Robert B. Silvers Grant, and a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant.

We spoke about the process of applying for those awards and why writers should try for grants, the home disaster that derailed the beginnings of this project, and how she balances feedback with her own vision for her book—even when there is A LOT of feedback. You'll also hear about whether she finds it lonely to write outside of an institution, and why she suggests that more historians pick up the phone and call their sources.

Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links.

Sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more.

• Emily Dufton's website
• Emily Dufton, Addiction, Inc: Medication-Assisted Treatment and America's Forgotten War on Drugs
• Emily Dufton, Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America
• J. Anthony Lukas Prize
• Robert B. Silvers Foundation Works-in-Progress grants
• Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant Pauline Kael's work at the New Yorker

Daniel is a non-resident fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University and is currently senior editor at the Arab Center Washington DC, a think tank focused on the relationship between the Arab world and the US. Previously, he has worked as a faculty member, researcher, and leader at universities, NGOs, and research centers as he seeks to bridge academic work and institution building. He is the author of a previous book on Syria, as well as many articles and analyses in a wide variety of venues. His new book tells the history of Syria from the 1800s through the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, focusing on how the Syrian people themselves have understood and advocated for their country's politics, economic relationships and social structures.

Kate and Daniel talked about how his many years steeped in research about the Arab world and Syria went into this book, and how he thought about its structure and purpose. We also talked about some of the quirks of publishing a book in both the US and the UK, including how this one book has two slightly different titles, and about what it's like to be writing and revising a book when the ending is changing in real time.

Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links.

Sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Daniel Neep's website
• Daniel Neep, Syria: A Modern History (US version)
• Daniel Neep, A Modern History of Syria (UK version)
• Daniel Neep, Occupying Syria Under the French Mandate
• Arab Center Washington D.C.
• Timothy Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt
• Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity
• Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Vol. 1

In this episode, Kate is joined by Dr. John Garrison Marks, whose new book is Thy Will Be Done: George Washington's Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory. This is a fantastic book that takes a careful, and often surprising look, at how generations of Americans have remembered and forgotten George Washington's relationship to slavery and used that memory to bolster their own arguments.

John Garrison Marks is the vice president of research and engagement at the American Association for State and Local History, so he is steeped in the role of public history across the country. He is the author of a previous book, Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery, and co-editor of an anthology. John has written essays and op-eds for outlets including TIME and Smithsonian Magazine. Recently, his expertise on the memory of Washington's relationship to slavery became particularly relevant when the National Park Service removed an exhibit about the history of slavery at the President's House in Philadelphia, and John was ready to jump into the fray and offer vital historical context. I asked John about the relationship between his work with public historians and how he thinks about writing history, as well as how he manages to write while having a busy day job and a young family.

Note: Links to bookshop.org are affiliate links. If you purchase books through these links, Drafting the Past gets a small percentage at no additional cost to you. Thanks for supporting our guests and the podcast!

Mentioned in this episode:

• John Garrison Marks, Thy Will Be Done: George Washington's Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory
• John Garrison Marks, Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery: Race, Status, and Identity in the Urban Americas
• John's website
• American Association for State and Local History (AASLH)
• John Garrison Marks, "We've Never Agreed About George Washington and Slavery," TIME
• Write Now with Scrivener Episode 60: John Garrison Marks, Historian
• Mary V. Thompson, The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret: George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon
• Bill Hader's excellent writing advice
• John Vaillant, Fire Weather: On the Front Lines of a Burning World
• David Grann, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
• Megan Greenwell, Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream Amanda Mull, "Do You Want a Boring Floor Lamp or an Ugly Floor Lamp?,"The Atlantic

Sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more.

Sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more.

Note: Links to bookshop.org are affiliate links. When you buy books through these links, you not only support the authors, you also help to keep Drafting the Past going. Thank you!

Mentioned in this episode:

• Megan Kate Nelson, The Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier

• Megan Kate Nelson, Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America

• Megan Kate Nelson, The Three Cornered-War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West

• Megan Kate Nelson, Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War

• Megan Kate Nelson, Trembling Earth: A Cultural History of the Okefenokee Swamp

• Drafting the Past Episode 1: Megan Kate Nelson Experiments with Structure

• Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

In this episode, I'm happy to welcome historian of religion Dr. Matthew Avery Sutton. Matt's newest book is called Chosen Land: How Christianity Made America and Americans Remade Christianity, following the relationship between Christianity and the nation from the arrival of the first Europeans up to Donald Trump's second term in office. Matt is the author of three previous books, along with an edited collection and a documentary history, and he regularly writes about the history of Christianity in America for a general audience. We talked about how he thinks about all those different audiences and how he keeps writing so much despite many personal and professional responsibilities—including seven years as department chair.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Matthew Avery Sutton, Chosen Land: How Christianity Made America and Americans Remade Christianity
• Matthew Avery Sutton, Double Crossed: The Missionaries Who Spied for the United States During the Second World War
• Matthew Avery Sutton, American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism
• Matthew Avery Sutton, Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America
• American Experience: Sister Aimee
• Jane Sherron De Hart, Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Life
• Grant Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture
• David Hollinger
• Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
• John le Carré
• Jill Lepore, These Truths: A History of the United States
• Matthew Avery Sutton, "The antichrist has long haunted American politics. Now it's rearing its head again," The Guardian

Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links.

Researching and writing Darkology took a stunning amount of research, as well as a mental toll, and I'm grateful to Rhae Lynn for talking about how she grappled with all of it, the unusual challenges she faced when thinking about visuals for the book, and much more. Plus, she shares some excellent wisdom for how to keep going even when it seems too hard, or when you don't feel like you belong.

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Mentioned in this episode:

• Rhae Lynn Barnes, Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment
• Rhae Lynn Barnes, Keri Leigh Merritt, and Yohuru Williams, eds., After Life: A Collective History of Loss and Redemption in Pandemic America
• Rhae Lynn Barnes and Catherine Clinton, eds., Roe v. Wade: Fifty Years After
• Rhae Lynn Barnes and Glenda Goodman, eds., American Contact: Objects of Intercultural Encounters and the Boundaries of Book History
• Rhae Lynn Barnes, "Yes, politicians wore blackface. It used to be all-American 'fun.'" The Washington Post
• Maya Angelou's 1992 commencement address at Spelman College, in which she tells her audience "bring your people with you"
• Sandra Cisneros, "I Hate the Iowa Writers Workshop"

Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links.

Her first book came out in 2025 after many years of research, writing and revision. It's called Road to Nowhere: How a Highway Map Wrecked Baltimore, and it tells the story of a plan to build an expressway through Black, middle-class community in Baltimore, and how even though the road was never built, the plan paved the way for the destruction of a vibrant neighborhood. It's a history that echoes similar ones in cities across the United States, and Emily uses it to tell a fascinating but frustrating, deeply human story about racial inequality and the resistance of determined residents. Emily had a clear vision of how she wanted to tell this history, right down to the kind of book it should be, and you'll learn a lot in this interview from how she got there and her frank approach to writing and editing.

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Mentioned in this episode:

Emily Lieb, Road to Nowhere: How a Highway Map Wrecked Baltimore

Derfner & Sons

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird, the origin of the phrase "shitty first drafts"

Andrew Hartman also praised editor Tim Mennel in episode 69

Calvin Trillin, "Thoughts Brought On By Prolonged Exposure to Exposed Brick"

Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links.

In this episode, Kate is joined by Dr. Matthew Delmont. Matt is a professor and associate dean at Dartmouth University, and he is the author of six books. His two most recent books are Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad, which came out in 2022, and Until the Last Gun is Silent: A Story of Patriotism, the Vietnam War, and the Fight to Save America's Soul, which just came out this year. Matt has also worked on numerous digital history projects, and he is the winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship and National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar award.

In Until the Last Gun is Silent, Matt pairs the story of Coretta Scott King's antiwar activism during the Vietnam War with that of Dwight "Skip" Johnson, who received the Medal of Honor for his service in Vietnam before his life ended tragically after his return to Detroit. It's a combination that illuminates the meaning of the Vietnam War for Black Americans. We talked about how Matt has worked on his voice and narrative style to reach new audiences, as well as how the intriguing historical narrative pairing in this book came to be.

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Mentioned in this episode:

• Matthew F. Delmont, Until the Last Gun is Silent: A Story of Patriotism, the Vietnam War, and the Fight to Save America's Soul
• Matthew F. Delmont, Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad
• Matthew F. Delmont, Black Quotidian: Everyday History in African American Newspapers
• Matthew F. Delmont, Making Roots: A Nation Captivated
• Matthew F. Delmont, Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation
• Matthew F. Delmont, The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock 'n' Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia
• Tiya Miles
• Annette Gordon Reed
• Jeanne Theoharis, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks and King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Life of Struggle Outside the South
• Peggy Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America

Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links.

Rick Bell is a professor of history at the University of Maryland and is the author of three books, as well as an edited collection. His first book was We Shall Be No More: Suicide and Self-Government in the Newly United States, which came out in 2012. He followed that up with Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped Into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home, an award-winning book that was published in 2019. The American Revolution and the Fate of the World came out at the end of last year. He has also created two streaming courses through the Great Courses series online, with a third on the way.

I have to tell you, I was a little surprised at how I absolutely devoured this book, and I was even more surprised to learn how it came together. I think you'll love learning about Rick's approach to writing, his thinking about structure and character, and his habit of wandering the halls of his department, talking to himself. Here's my interview with Dr. Rick Bell.

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Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Richard Bell, The American Revolution and the Fate of the World
• Richard Bell, Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped Into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home
• Richard Bell, We Shall Be No More: Suicide and Self-Government in the Newly United States
• Richard Bell on Great Courses Plus: "America's Long Struggle Against Slavery"
• Richard Bell on Great Courses Plus: "Ordinary Americans in the Revolution"
• Zotero
• Octet musical
• Alan Taylor
• Jill Lepore
• Eric Foner
• Ira Berlin
• Ilyon Woo, Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
• Edward P. Jones, The Known World

In most episodes, I interview an author of nonfiction history about their research and writing process, but in today's episode we get to do something a little different. We're taking a closer look at how authors and presses get the word out about new books. And we're going to do that with an insider's perspective. I'm very excited to be joined in this episode by Sonya Bonczek, the director of publicity and communications for University of North Carolina Press.

I have exchanged many emails with Sonya over the past few years whenever I've had podcast guests who publish with UNC Press, and I've been impressed at the great publicity work that Sonya and her team are doing. So when I thought about who might be able to bring us a publicist's perspective, she was first on my list. I was eager to hear from Sonya about how book publicity has changed throughout her career, what works and what doesn't, what she wishes more authors know, and how she's feeling about the state of the book industry today, especially when it comes to nonfiction history.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Support Drafting the Past on Patreon
• Amanda Ice, Harvard University Press publicist, on Your Words Unleashed
• UNC Press on Instagram
• UNC Press on TikTok
• New York Magazine's 2008 article on whether book publishing would end
• The New York Times, "'Luddite' Teens Don't Want Your Likes", December 2022

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In case you haven't been paying attention—or maybe you don't live in the United States--you should know that this year marks 250 years since the Declaration of Independence. If you prefer funny words, you can call it America's semiquincentennial. Anyway, what this means for us is that there are a shocking number of books about the American Revolution, the early United States, and related subjects coming out this year. You're going to hear some of them on this show, starting with today's episode. One of the fascinating things that these books will show us is just how many ways you can approach history. So first up, in this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Andrew Edwards to talk about his new book, Money and the Making of the American Revolution. Andrew is a lecturer at the University of St. Andrew in Scotland, and a historian of capitalism, money, and early America. In Money and the Making of the American Revolution he takes a deep dive into the role of money—and the meaning of money—as one of the key causes of the American Revolution. Andrew tells the story of money in the American colonies and in Great Britain to explain that it was a fight over money and who got to define it, rather than taxes, that kicked off the colonists' rebellion. If that sounds dry and maybe a little confusing to you, I'm happy to report that Andrew does a remarkable job of telling this history in a way that is interesting even to those of us who don't love making sense of obscure fiscal policies. In our conversation, we talked about just how he did that and why he wrote an avid defense of narrative history in the book's introduction. But first, he tells us about the very winding road he took to becoming a historian in the first place.

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Mentioned in this episode:

• Andrew David Edwards, Money and the Making of the American Revolution
• Zotero
• Eelco Runia, "Presence," History and Theory 45, no. 1 (2006), 1-29
• Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings
• Martha Sandweiss, The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West and Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line (Isabela Morales also mentioned Martha Sandweiss' history writing course in her episode of Drafting the Past)
• Karl Jacoby, Shadows at Dawn: An Apache Massacre and the Violence of History
• R. F. Kuang, Katabasis

Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links.

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Hi everybody! I'm taking this week off to work on some things behind the scenes, so I wanted to talk this chance to replay an episode from early in the podcast that I love. I know many of you are devoted listeners who have listened to every episode of the show, but in case you're newer to the podcast, here's a chance to revisit an earlier interview.

Back in August 2022, I first released my interview with Dr. Isabela Morales. She had recently published her first book, Happy Dreams of Liberty, and she was working multiple jobs in public history. I particularly love this episode because Isabela speaks so poignantly about her commitment to narrative history and holding on to that writerly spirit in graduate school.

I'm very pleased to report that after we spoke, Happy Dreams of Liberty went on to win multiple well-deserved book awards, including the prestigious Frederick Douglass Book Prize in 2023. I reached out to Isabela for an update on what she's working on these days. At the end of 2025, she wrapped up her time at the Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum, and is now working full-time on her second book. She hinted at that book at the end of this interview, and it's now under contract with Liveright for W. W. Norton and tentatively titled The Black Widow of Hazel Green. Here's what Isabela told me about that book: It is a biography of Elizabeth Dale, a wealthy white plantation mistress and enslaver in antebellum Alabama, who was married six times and to this day is rumored to have murdered some or all of her husbands. While I think six dead husbands is enough to pique most people's interest, I also find Elizabeth Dale interesting historically as an embodiment of white women's deep but often-overlooked complicity in the institution of slavery.

Having read Happy Dream of Liberty, I am eagerly awaiting Isabela's new book. In the meantime, though, it's inspiring to revisit this conversation with her. Even if you're heard this one before, I think you'll be rejuvenated by another listen. And if it's your first time, you're in for a treat.

I'll be back next week with another fantastic new episode. Until then, please enjoy this marvelous interview from the archive, with Dr. Isabela Morales.

Original show notes:

For this episode of Drafting the Past, I interviewed Dr. Isabela Morales, writer and public historian. She is the editor and project manager of The Princeton & Slavery Project and the digital projects manager at the Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum, central New Jersey's first Black history museum.

​Dr. Morales received her Ph.D. in history from Princeton University in 2019, specializing in the 19th-century United States, slavery, and emancipation. Her first book, Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom, was published earlier this year by Oxford University Press. We talked about how work as a public historian influences her writing, why guinea pigs are essential to her process, and the fiction she reads to learn how to evoke a place and time.

MENTIONED IN THE SHOW:

• Find Isabela Morales on Twitter, @IsabelaWrites
• Evernote, the software Isabela uses for organizing her research
• Tiya Miles, Ties that Bind
• Martha Sandweiss, Passing Strange
• Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City
• Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall and A Place of Greater Safety
• Martha Hodes, The Sea Captain's Wife
• Daniel Sharfstein, The Invisible Line
• Suzanne Lebsock, A Murder in Virginia

Heather is the author of three books. The first was Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City, which was first published in 2002. Her second book, published in 2016, was the astonishing Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy. Blood in the Water won far more honors than I can list, most notably the Pulitzer Prize in History. And her newest book, which came out last week, is Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage. It's already drawing lots of well-deserved praise, and in this episode we'll talk more about how Heather learned to bring gripping accounts of historical events to life. In case that wasn't enough, Heather is a professor at the University of Michigan, the co-editor of two books series, and regularly writes for public outlets. She served as the consultant for the Academy Award-nominated documentary ATTICA, and is a co-founder of History Studio, a consulting firm that aims to connect historians and the entertainment industry. Honestly, if I kept telling you all the cool things she has done we would never get to the interview, but you can see why I've been eager to learn more about her work. You're going to love hearing about it too.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Heather Ann Thompson, Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage
• Heather Ann Thompson, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy
• Heather Ann Thompson, Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City
• Evernote
• The Fear and Fury audiobook, narrated by Erin Bennett
• Heather Ann Thompson, "How the Bernie Goetz Shootings Explain the Trump Era," The Atlantic, January 26, 2026
• Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
• Elliot Williams, Five Bullets: The Story of Bernie Goetz, New York's Explosive '80s, and the Subway Vigilante Trial That Divided the Nation
• Isabelle Allende
• Arundhati Roy
• W. E. B. DuBois
• Kimberlé Crenshaw
• Elizabeth Hinton
• LaShawn Harris, Tell Her Story: Eleanor Bumpurs & the Police Killing That Galvanized New York City
• Bench Ansfield, Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City
• Jonathan Mahler, The Gods of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City: 1986-1990

Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links.

For a complete transcript, visit draftingthepast.com. Sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more.

In this episode of Drafting the Past, host Kate Carpenter is joined by Dr. Fahad Bishara.

Fahad is an associate professor at the University of Virginia, but he is currently on leave and teaching at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. His first book, A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780-1950, won multiple awards. His second book, which came out in 2025, is Monsoon Voyagers: An Indian Ocean History. In it, he follows one year of the voyages of a single dhow, a type of sailing ship, and its captain and crew as it travels around the Persian Gulf and Western Indian Ocean. Working at multiple scales, from the details of daily ship life to the circulation of goods and ideas across the Gulf, Fahad gives us a new, ocean-based perspective on Middle Eastern history. It's also a beautifully written book, and I was eager to talk with Fahad about his inventive structure, how he organized his materials, and more. You're going to get a lot out of this conversation with Dr. Fahad Bishara.

Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links.

Sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more.

Mentioned in this episode:

• A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780-1950
• Monsoon Voyagers: An Indian Ocean History
• OneNote
• DevonThink
• Jack Hart, Storycraft: The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction
• Robert Harms, The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade
• Greeking Out podcast
• Nicholas Thomas, Discoveries: The Voyages of Captain Cook
• In Episode 18 of Drafting the Past, Adam Sowards talked about trying to get three senses into a description Whichever episode someone talks about senses
• Greg Dening, Islands and Beaches: Discourses on a Silent Land: Marquesas, 1774-1880
• Laila Lalami, The Moor's Account
• Brinkley Messick
• Engseng Ho
• This American Life
• Planet Money and the episode with their formula for storytelling, Episode 1000
• The Indicator

Shaun is a program director at SUNY Empire State College, and he recently completed his PhD in American Studies. But before that, he spent more than a decade as a union organizer and representative. That experience inspires much of his writing, including two books, magazine articles, and op-eds in numerous outlets. His first book was Tell the Bosses We're Coming: A New Action Plan for Workers in the Twenty-First Century. His second book, which came out in 2025, is We Always Had a Union: The New York Hotel Workers' Union, 1912-1953. In addition to being an enthusiastic labor historian, Shaun has a personal connection to this history, as a onetime member of one of the union's featured in the narrative. We talked about how that perspective shapes his work, how he found his way to writing history after years as a labor organizer, and why he's determined to write books that other labor organizers will want to read.

Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links.

For links to the books we talked about and a complete transcript, visit draftingthepast.com. Sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more.

Mentioned in this episode:

· Shaun's website: https://shaunrichman.com/

· Shaun Richman, Tell the Bosses We're Coming: A New Action Plan for Workers in the Twenty-First Century

· Shaun Richman, We Always Had a Union: The New York Hotel Workers' Union, 1912-1953

· Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist

· Ray Ginger, The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene V. Debs

· George Orwell, A Collection of Essays

· Michael Harrington

· Ahmed White, The Last Great Strike: Little Steel, the CIO, and the Struggle for Labor Rights in New Deal America and Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers

In this episode, host Kate Carpenter is joined by historian Dr. Renata Keller.

Dr. Keller is a professor at the University of Nevada and a historian of Modern Latin America. She is the author of two books, Mexico's Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican Revolution, and The Fate of the Americas: The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Hemispheric Cold War. I was eager to talk with Renata about how she grappled with the wide-ranging source material for The Fate of the Americas, but I also wanted to talk with her about another challenge: writing a book while dealing with the isolation of new parenthood, the struggle of postpartum depression and anxiety, and the exhaustion of balancing parenthood and research. In this conversation, you'll hear how she made space for herself and her writing, both physically and mentally, while working on her book.

Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links.

Sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Renata Keller, Mexico's Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican Revolution
• Renata Keller, The Fate of the Americas: The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Hemispheric Cold War
• Zotero
• Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Velvet Was the Night
• Anne Rice, The Witching Hour
• Historias podcast, which includes the special series on the Cuban Missile Crisis that Renata co-produced
• Drafting the Past Episode 16: Abby Mullen Finds Focus

First up, in this episode I'm talking with Dr. Jeff Roche, author of the new book The Conservative Frontier: Texas and the Origins of the New Right.

Jeff is a professor of history at the College of Wooster in Ohio. Along with his new book, he is the author of Restructured Resistance: The Sibley Commission and the Politics of Desegregation in Georgia and the editor of two additional books. I'll confess to you that I wasn't entirely sure about this book when the press first reached out to tell me about it, but it blew me away. The history is fascinating, but even more, Jeff's writing is lively, smart, and often funny. I was excited to get to ask Jeff about how the book came together and how he has developed such an engaging writing voice. You'll even learn why he considered '90s hip-hop and Texas country music to be essential to his writing process.

Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links.

For links to the books we talked about and a complete transcript, visit draftingthepast.com. Sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more.

For links to the books we talked about and a complete transcript, visit draftingthepast.com. Sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more.

A little extra note for this episode: Amy followed up after we spoke to tell me that she forgot to add an additional important note about her organization and research process. Here's what she had to say: "The key for me is: my paper notebook! For both Fat Shame and Intrepid Girls I have always carried a paper notebook (turned out to be two for Intrepid Girls) in which I would take notes along the way, jotting down the date, where I was doing research, and perhaps more detailed notes depending upon the archive and the context. It was really fundamental to my process. I carried it everywhere. I referred to it constantly in doing my writing, revising, thinking, confirming footnotes, following leads. It's so important I can't believe I didn't mention it." An excellent idea for research--a project notebook!

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For links to the books we talked about and a complete transcript, visit draftingthepast.com. Sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more.

I've been a fan of Alex since at least his first book, Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States, which came out in 2021. But I was first introduced to Alex's work, like many people are, through his NUKEMAP project, which is a web-based nuclear weapons effects simulator. It's a great—and terrifying—teaching tool, and just one of many projects that Alex has worked on as not only a historian but also a computer programmer. Alex is an associate professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology, and he's currently also a visiting researcher at the Nuclear Knowledges program at the Center for International Studies in Paris. You can also find Alex's writing on his blog and his Substack newsletter, both of which I'll link in the show notes. He has also written extensively for popular publications. Today, we're talking about his brand-new book, The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age. This was a fascinating and wide-reaching conversation into how Alex researches and writes and how he sees his work. You'll hear about everything from why he does not recommend programming your own research database to why he has to talk himself out of italicizing every other word when he writes.

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For links to the books we talked about and a complete transcript, visit draftingthepast.com. Sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more.

Ed is a professor of history at the University of California San Diego. He is the author of seven books, including Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell Into Tyranny, and The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome: The History of a Dangerous Idea. He has published extensively in academic journals and his work is regularly featured in the popular press. You can also check out his YouTube channel, Rome's Eternal Decline, where he shares bite-size facts about Roman history. Ed's newest book is The Romans: A 2,000-Year History, which came out earlier this year with Basic.

I was excited to talk with Ed about how he tackled such a vast subject. I was also eager to hear how he gets so much writing done. But above all, I really wanted to dig into his style and talk about what goes in to making such a huge history so enjoyable to read. Let me tell you, he did not disappoint. Even if you focus on history far removed from the Roman Empire, you're going to get a lot out of this one. Enjoy my conversation with Dr. Edward Watts.

P.S. This one was so much for that I even asked Ed a bonus question! You can hear that one (truffle hunter or parachutist, IYKYK) as an exclusive audio bonus for Patreon subscribers here. For as little as $2 month, you can help to keep the show going and get access to ad-free episodes, too.

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For links to the books we talked about and a complete transcript, visit draftingthepast.com. Sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more.

Marc is an associate professor at the University of Jamestown in North Dakota. His first book, out with Yale University Press, is The War on Illahee: Genocide, Complicity, and Cover-Ups in the Pioneer Northwest. I was delighted to have him on the show to talk more about how he dealt with layers of deceptive source material, the research loops he employed to work through those sources, and how a dash of humor is a vital ingredient in this and other dark histories. Here's my conversation with Dr. Marc James Carpenter.

Want to give me a little holiday gift this year? Consider taking a minute to leave a review for the show on your favorite podcast app. It helps new people find the show, and it makes me do a little happy dance in my office.

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For links to the books we talked about and a complete transcript, visit draftingthepast.com. Sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more.

Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links.

For links to the books we talked about and a complete transcript, visit draftingthepast.com. Sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more.

Jess is an associate professor of history at the University of New Hampshire. Her first prize-winning book was The Many Panics of 1837: People, Politics, and the Creations of a Transatlantic Financial Crisis. Her second book came out this year. It's called Canal Dreamers: The Epic Quest to Connect the Atlantic and Pacific in the Age of Revolutions. It's a history of the ultimately failed effort to build the world's first interoceanic canal in the 1820s. Even though it was published a decade after her first book, I was surprised to learn that she actual started working on it alongside her dissertation and first book. We talk more about that research process in our interview. You'll also hear more about starting a second-book workshop, and why some of her best ideas come in the swimming pool.

For links to the books we talked about and a complete transcript, visit draftingthepast.com. Sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more.

Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links.

Mary is an associate professor of African American studies at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign and considers herself a historian and scholar-activist. Black Panther Woman is the first biography of Black Panther Party member Ericka Huggins, emphasizing Huggins' use of spiritual wellness practices to care for herself and her community during her unjust incarceration and following her release. Mary and I talked about what it was like to write a book about a subject she had gotten to know so well. And while Black Panther Woman shared a subject with Mary's dissertation, in many ways it was an entirely different project. We talked about that change, how she keeps a sense of joy and play in her writing even when the subject is difficult, and I pushed for details on her accountability system, because I know many of us could use ideas for keeping our writing projects on track.

For links to the books we talked about and a complete transcript, visit draftingthepast.com. Sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more.

Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links.

On this episode of Drafting the Past, Kate spoke with Dr. Tyler Anbinder. Tyler is an emeritus professor history at George Washington University. He is the award-winning author of four books, including Five Points: The Nineteenth-Century New York City Neighborhood that Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum, and City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York. His most recent book, which came out last year, is Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York. You'll hear Tyler talk about how each of his research projects led to the next, how he works to blend remarkable detail with compelling writing, and how he tries to teach writing skills to his students—including one featured on a previous episode of Drafting the Past. We also talked about the humbling process of having his book reviewed by a fact checker.

For show notes and a transcript of this episode, visit DraftingthePast.com.

Note: Bookshop.org links are affiliate links. If you purchase books through these links, Drafting the Past gets a small percentage that helps to keep the show going.

For links to the books and other subjects mentioned in this episode and a complete transcript, visit draftingthepast.com.

This is Drafting the Past, a podcast about the craft of writing history. I'm Kate Carpenter, and in today's episode I'm joined by Dr. Raphael Cormack. Raph is an editor, writer, and translator, as well as an assistant professor of modern languages and cultures at Durham University in the United Kingdom. He is the author of two books. The first, Holy Men of the Electromagnetic Age: A Forgotten History of the Occult in 2021 and is now available in paperback. And his newest book, out earlier this year, is Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt's Roaring '20s. In it, he follows two charismatic and mysterious faith leaders who emerged in the uncertain interwar period in both Europe and the Middle East. We talked about how he dealt with those deeply unreliable sources, why the narrative structure that came so easily to one book didn't work for the second one, and, well, his mother. You'll see what I mean.

For complete show notes, visit draftingthepast.com. For updates on the show and more on writing history, sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter.

I talk to a lot of history professors on this show, of course, but I'm always excited when I get a chance to talk to someone who is writing great history but working outside of a university setting. And my guest today didn't even start out as a historian, she found her way to narrative history after writing in other genres and venues first. Dr. Tracy Slater joins me in this episode to talk about her path as a writer and the challenges and freedoms of writing outside the academy while also balancing the work of a caregiver. Tracy has a PhD in English and American literature. You'll hear more about her career path shortly, which includes some adjunct teaching, a freelance writing career, and founding a literary series called Four Stories that took place in both Boston and Japan, where Tracy is now based with her family, although she was temporarily living in Toronto when I spoke with her this summer. Her first book was a memoir about her marriage, her struggle to start a family, and establishing a life in Japan called The Good Shufu: Finding Love, Self, and Home on the Far Side of the World. Her newest book is a work of narrative history called Together in Manzanar: The True Story of a Japanese Jewish Family in an American Concentration Camp. It's a history that is both intimate and expansive and, unfortunately, continues to have increasingly relevant connections to our present-day experiences.

For complete show notes, visit DraftingthePast.com.

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Dr. Andrew Hartman is a professor of history at Illinois State University. Before that, as you'll learn in this episode, he was a high school social studies teacher, and he specializes in teaching future social studies teachers. He is the author of three books: Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School; A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars; and his newest book, Karl Marx in America. He has also written extensively in publications like the Washington Post, Slate, Jacobin, Bookforum, and more. You'll hear how Andrew tackled such a huge project, a decade in the making, how he became a subject in his own history, and why being an endurance athlete might help if you're a writer.

Find show notes and a transcript here.

When I first started thinking about this interview more than a year ago, I read Ruby's book Vagabond Princess: The Great Adventures of Gulbadan. I was swept away by the book, which is a history biography of Princess Gulbadan in the early decades of the Mughal Empire. Ruby is also the author of Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan, another remarkable narrative about a remarkable woman in the Mughal Empire. But before I had a chance to interview her, Ruby came out with another project: Tiger Slayer, which she describes as an illustrated remix of Empress for a young adult audience. I can't tell you how excited I was to talk about all of these projects, and how Ruby brings these narratives from hundreds of years ago to life in such vibrant, enchanting books.

Dr. Ruby Lal is a professor of South Asian History at Emory University. In addition to the books I've already mentioned, she is also the author of two academic books, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World, and Coming of Age in Nineteenth Century India: The Girl-Child and the Art of Playfulness. And as you'll hear in the episode, she thinks deeply and beautifully about crafting historical narrative and the stakes of bringing these stories to readers of all ages.

• Buy Emily's book
• Find links and show notes at draftingthepast.com
• Support the show on Patreon
• Sign up for the free show newsletter

Thanks for listening to this episode of Drafting the Past. I also want to give a special shout out to some of the newest supporters of the show on Patreon at the third draft tier. Huge thank you to Lauren S., Megan N., Kate D., Katie B., and Jenny S., as well as all of the supporters at the first and second draft tier. Drafting the Past is a one-woman show, and your financial support makes it possible to keep going. If you would like to join these amazing supporters, you can visit patreon.com/draftingthepast to learn more. And of course, you can visit draftingthepast.com to find notes from this and every episode of the show. Until next time, remember that friends don't let friends write boring history.

Find show notes, subscribe to the newsletter, and more at draftingthepast.com. You can also support the show at patreon.com/draftingthepast

Drafting the Past is created, hosted, and produced by Kate Carpenter. The podcast is free for everyone, but you can help keep it going by making a contribution at patreon.com/draftingthepast.

Welcome back to Drafting the Past, a podcast about the craft of writing history. In this episode, host Kate Carpenter welcomes someone a little bit different to the podcast: writer and writing coach Helen Betya Rubinstein.

Helen is neither a historian nor a writer or history herself, but she has been working as a writing coach for the past six years, often with historians and other academics. If you remember my conversation with Anna Zeide in episode 29 last year, Helen was the writing coach that Anna and her co-editors brought in to a workshop to help book contributors work on writing essays aimed at wider audiences. I'm delighted to have the chance to talk more with Helen about what exactly a writing coach does and the kinds of conversations she finds herself having with historians. In addition to her work as a coach and teacher, Helen is a writer with MFA degrees from Brooklyn College and the University of Iowa, and her essays and fiction have appeared in publications including The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review Daily, and Literary Hub. She is the author of a book of lyric fictions and also has a forthcoming book about writing, teaching, and publishing.

Historians At The Movies features historians from around the world talking about your favorite movies and the history behind them. This isn't rivet-counting; this is fun. Eventually, we'll steal the Declaration of Independence.

This week Kate Carpenter drops in to talk about the new film Twisters along with her research on the history of modern-day storm chasing. We get into what they got right, what liberties they took, the role of climate change in the spread of tornado alley, and exactly how crazy are tornado chasers anyway. If you feel it, ride it. About our guest: Kate Carpenter is a doctoral candidate in the History of Science at Princeton University. Before that, she earned a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia and a Master of Arts in History (with an emphasis in public history) from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. In between, she has been a writer, copy editor, designer, screenprinter, farmers' market volunteer and communications officer, and occasional history consultant. When she's not hosting and producing Drafting the Past, she is working on a dissertation about the history of tornado science and storm chasing in the second half of the twentieth century.

My guest in this episode is Dr. Tore Olsson, associate professor of history at the University of Tennessee.

Dr. Olsson's first book, Agrarian Crossings: Reformers and the Remaking of the US and Mexican Countryside, is an award-winning scholarly book. But his new book does something quite different. Titled Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and American's Violent Past, the book opens a window on American history through the lens of Red Dead Redemption, the wildly popular video game franchise. I talked with Tore about how his pandemic video game habit changed the direction of his career, how teaching an undergraduate class on this topic shaped the book, and how working with his agent and editor made for a completely different publishing experience this time around.

Kate has been following Jason's work and career path for some time now and was so excited to talk with him about his new book, Silicon Valley and the Environmental Inequalities of High-Tech Urbanism, which came out earlier this year. Jason is a developer-scholar at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. He has worked on a whole bunch of cool digital projects, which you can explore more on his website, as well as the co-editor of the book Digital Community Engagement: Partnering Communities with the Academy. We talked about the evolution of his work alongside his career, the digital tools he uses in his own projects, the relationship between coding and writing, and much more.

Dr. Carter Jackson's first book was the award-winning Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence. Her newest book is We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance. It's out now, it's incredible, and it's going to have a lot of people talking.

In this episode, I interviewed Dr. Sarah McNamara, assistant professor of history at Texas A&M University, about her new book, Ybor City: Crucible of the Latina South (UNC Press, 2023). From her website:

"McNamara is dedicated to sharing her scholarship with broad audiences through public history and community engagement. She developed the project, "Nuestra Historia," an historical memory and preservation project that unites public art with historical markers within the City of Tampa. The first site of this project commemorated the 1937 Antifascist Women's March of Ybor City and unveiled in Tampa during Women's History Month of 2023. McNamara regularly collaborates with community groups to coordinate history programs that range from historical photography exhibits to educational events for adults and works on K-12 curriculum development and teacher training through organizations such as the National Humanities Center.

McNamara's work has received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association for University Women, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, the American Historical Association, and the Tulane Center for the Gulf South. In recognition of McNamara's commitment to teaching and student mentorship at Texas A&M University, she has received the Montague-Center for Teaching Excellence Award, the Early Career Teaching Award from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement Award for Teaching. Sarah McNamara is a native of Tampa, Florida and her family is from Ybor City."

In our interview we talk about the process of writing and rewriting that book. We also talk about the marvels and challenges of doing oral histories—especially with family members—and the ways that Sarah has worked to make sure that the history she writes in her book is also alive in the community of Ybor City.

Carly is a historian, a senior editor for the Made by History section at the Washington Post, and the Communications Coordinator for Nationalities Service Center, an immigration agency. Her first book, Dreamland: America's Immigration Lottery in an Age of Restriction, came out in May from the University of North Carolina Press. I was so excited to talk with Carly earlier this spring about her research and writing, how her work as an editor has impacted her own writing, and the excellent craft advice she has to offer other historians.

For a transcript and links to everything we mentioned in the show, visit draftingthepast.com.

For this episode of Drafting the Past, Kate Carpenter interviewed historian and writer Dr. Einav Rabinovitch-Fox. In addition to teaching history at Case Western Reserve University, Dr. Rabinovitch-Fox has also worked as a public historian and curator, and regularly writes for public audiences in outlets like the Washington Post, Zocalo Public Square, and Nursing Clio. Her first book, Dressed for Freedom: The Fashionable Politics of American Feminism, came out in 2021 from the University of Illinois Press.

In this episode, we talk about both the challenges and advantages of writing in a language other than your first language, what it's like to publish a book when you're not on the tenure track, and why she spends a lot of time crawling on the floor when she's editing.

For this episode of Drafting the Past, I interviewed Dr. Isabela Morales, writer and public historian. She is the editor and project manager of The Princeton & Slavery Project and the digital projects manager at the Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum, central New Jersey's first Black history museum.

​Dr. Morales received her Ph.D. in history from Princeton University in 2019, specializing in the 19th-century United States, slavery, and emancipation. Her first book, Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom, was published earlier this year by Oxford University Press. We talked about how work as a public historian influences her writing, why guinea pigs are essential to her process, and the fiction she reads to learn how to evoke a place and time.

Listen to hear more about how Schrag organizes his notes, how he uses a working document, and his (and my!) love for Scrivener.