U.S. History

Writer David Reynolds is the author of the new biography John Brown: Abolitionist: The Man who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights. Reynold's book is considered to be a sympathetic look at the man who he says framed the issue of slavery in stark, uncompromising terms.

Edward Berkowitz is a professor of history and public administration and at George Washington University, where he also directs the Program in History and Public Policy. He is an expert on the history of Social Security.

Journalist Larry Tye examines the social history of the porter in Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class. Tye says that the job was one of the best for African Americans at the time, and that it was a foothold in the American workplace. Tye reports for The Boston Globe.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Americanization of Ben Franklin by Gordon S. Wood.

Critic John Powers reflects upon recent media attention on former presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan.

Witte is Jonas Robitscher professor of law and ethics, and director of the law and religion program at Emory University in Atlanta. He is the author of From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition.

The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet traces the relationships between Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz and Condoleeza Rice. The group calls itself "The Vulcans." Some of its members have known each other 30 years. Mann is a former correspondent for The Los Angeles Times.

He wrote the introduction and commentary for the new book The Most Fearful Ordeal: Original Coverage of The Civil War by Writers and Reporters of The New York Times. McPherson is a professor of history at Princeton University. He is the author of many books on the Civil War era including Battle Cry of Freedom.

Clayborne Carson of the Founding Director of the King Papers Project, a long-term project to edit and publish the papers of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

As a child, she had a crush on the 19-year-old preacher in her church. He was known as M-L, but later he became Martin Luther King, Jr.

His new book is An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America. It explores Washington's moral struggle with the issue of slavery. Wiencek won the National Book Critics Circle Award for biography for his book The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White.

In the 1990s he covered Ethiopia, Somalia, Rwanda and the Congo for Reuters. Three of his colleagues were killed by a mob in Somolia during a rebellion against the presence of U.S. forces, and he witnessed the atrocities in Rwanda. Hartley grew up in Africa, the son of a British colonial officer. After the death of his father, Hartley found in a chest his father had given him the diaries of his father's best friend who had died mysteriously 50 years earlier. Hartley set out to find out what happened.

Writer Neil Baldwin is the author of the new book, Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass roduction of Hate (PublicAffairs books). Baldwin details Ford early obsession with moralistic writings condemning Jews for not accepting Christ. Shortly before World War I and continuing into the 1930s he wrote a series of venomous anti-semitic essays in the newspaper, The Dearborn Independent (which Ford owned). In 1928 he collected many of the essays published in 1920 under the title, The International Jew: The World Foremost Problem. He also published The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.

Constitutional lawyer Douglas Kmiec supports the new security measures instituted since the September 11th attacks. He is Dean and St. Thomas More professor, at the Catholic University of America. He also was head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Reagan administration. He can often be seen on PBS's News Hour with Jim Lehrer. His most recent book is "Individual Rights and the American Constitution."

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss. His new book is The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945 (Simon & Schuster). In the book he reveals new information on how the Allies won World War II and the efforts behind the scenes of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin to ensure that post-war Germany would never produce another Hitler. Beschloss researched newly opened American, British and Soviet archives for the book.

We remember historian Stephen Ambrose who died Sunday at the age of 66. A college professor, Ambrose became a best-selling author late in life with his book D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II. He wrote several military history volumes including Citizen Soldiers. He was consultant for the film Saving Private Ryan and his book Band of Brothers was the basis of the 2001 HBO mini-series. Ambrose also wrote Undaunted Courage about the Lewis and Clark exploration to the West. This interview first aired Aug. 15, 2001.

While working at a blueprint shop in Charleston, South Carolina, a customer brought in some Confederate money to order a blowup. The imagery shocked Jones. The money showed slaves. Jones began to collect the brown and gray money with slaves picking cotton, corn and tobacco and loading barrels cheerfully. He then created large scale full color paintings based on the images. The art is now on display at America's Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The Rev. Roy Hawthorne is one of the original windtalkers. They were a group of Navajo men who developed a secret code for American World War II fighters. The Japanese were able to break every other code the military developed. The Navajo code was the only one never solved by the Japanese and is considered the key tool in winning that war. The code was declassified in 2001, and the code talkers received Medals of Honor from President Bush. The new film Windtalkers is based on the story of the codemakers. Hawthorne gives talks about the codemaking process to schoolchildren nationwide.

Last year, Gates uncovered a manuscript of a novel purportedly written in the 1850s by an African American woman who had been a slave. It is the first known work of its kind and has great historical and literary significance. The Bondwomans Narrative by Hannah Crafts, edited by Henry Louis Gates, has just been published (Warner Books). Well talk with Gates about the process of finding, authenticating and publishing the novel. Gates is the W.E.B. DuBois Professor of Humanities and chair of the Department of African-American Studies at Harvard University.

His book Reaching for Glory: The Secret Lyndon Johnson Tapes, 1964-1965 (Simon & Schuster) is now out in paperback. It is Beschloss’s second volume on the LBJ tapes. Beschloss will talk about the tapes, and we will hear excerpts, including some recordings of conversations about Vietnam, Civil Rights, and with Jackie Kennedy. Beschloss has written 5 previous books on American presidents. He is also a regular contributor to The News Hour with Jim Lehrer.