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  • Democracy vs. the Constitution

    Democracy vs. the Constitution

    · Think Back

    In this episode of THINK BACK, I speak with the political scientist Stephen Skowronek about his book, The Adaptability Paradox: Political Inclusion and Constitutional Resilience. The book traces large-scale patterns across American history to understand how political change actually happens. As American democracy has expanded to include more people, Skowronek contends, the constitutional system has been stretched to its limits.

    We now face a profound contradiction between democracy and the Constitution—a conflict present since the founding but increasingly acute. Skowronek outlines why partisan diagnoses fall short and why the country may be approaching a choice between abandoning constitutional forms to preserve democracy or risking the collapse of both.

    The episode looks beyond day-to-day headlines to consider the structural forces shaping American politics and the challenges ahead. As we all struggle to make sense of our unsettled moment, Skowronek’s work offers a compelling framework for understanding, even as he rejects many of the usual prescriptions for how the country’s perilous political situation might be successfully addressed.

    * Stephen Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton (1993)

    * Richard Kreitner, “What Time Is It? Here’s What the 2016 Election Tells Us About Obama, Trump, and What Comes Next,” The Nation (Nov. 22, 2016)

    * — , “What History Tells Us About Trump’s Implosion and Biden’s Opportunity,” The Nation (Oct. 12, 2020)

    Music by Akiko Sasaki (“The Union,” by Louis Moreau Gottschalk) and Zachary Solomon



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  • Is It Time to Give Up Mount Rushmore?

    Is It Time to Give Up Mount Rushmore?

    · Think Back

    In this episode, I speak with journalist Matthew Davis, author of the new book A Biography of a Mountain: The Making and Meaning of Mount Rushmore. Davis’s deeply reported narrative traces the contested history of the monument, from its carving into the sacred Black Hills to the political battles that have shaped its meaning ever since.

    Drawing connections between the monument’s origins, the dispossession of the Lakota, and Rushmore’s place in today’s culture wars, Davis explores how a democratic nation came to express itself through a mountain-sized tableau of presidential faces—and what that says about the ongoing debate over American ideals.

    The conversation delves into the symbols and rituals of America’s “civil religion,” and how Mount Rushmore fits into (and unsettles) that tradition. Davis recounts beginning the project during the early pandemic, spurred in part by President Trump’s 2020 speech at the site amid the George Floyd uprising. We talk about why the monument was built, whose stories it erases, and how its meaning continues to shift—especially in an age when national myths are being fiercely reconsidered.

    A Biography of a Mountain offers a fresh, accessible look at one of America’s most iconic and misunderstood symbols. Tune in for a lively discussion about the mountain, the monument, and what both reveal about the country today.

    Thank you so much to Abaye Steinmetz-Silber for playing the music for this episode. Check out his songs at Apple or Spotify or (my preferred streaming service) Qobuz.

    Matthew Davis, “The Empire Makers,” Slate, March 13, 2025.



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  • 'America Among, Not America Alone'

    'America Among, Not America Alone'

    · Think Back

    In this episode of Think Back, I talk with historian Richard Bell about his fascinating new book The American Revolution and the Fate of the World—a work that completely rethinks the Revolution as a global story, not just an American one.

    As the 250th anniversary of the Revolution heats up, Bell’s book stands out for how boldly it connects the struggle for independence to events unfolding in places like China, India, Ireland, and West Africa. We talk about the Hessian mercenaries who fought for the British and later settled in America, the Catholic monarchs who backed a generally Protestant rebellion, and why understanding the Revolution in this wider context changes how we think about what it really was and who it was for.

    Bell teaches history at the University of Maryland and is also the author of Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped Into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home. I learned something new on nearly every page of his book, and really enjoyed this conversation—I hope you enjoy it too.

    If you can think of someone who’d enjoy this episode—or who might be curious about the overlooked sides of the American Revolution as we enter this fraught anniversary year—please share it with them. Thanks so much for helping spread the word.

    See also “The Hidden Origins of the American Revolution” (with Andrew Lawler), Think Back, April 16, 2025



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  • The Civil War's Wrenching Final Year

    The Civil War's Wrenching Final Year

    · Think Back

    In this episode, Scott Ellsworth talks about Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America. We revisit one of the most dramatic and transformative periods in American history and consider its resonances in the present.

    Why, 160 years later, does studying the Civil War still yield new insights? How does Ellsworth’s framing challenge and change what we thought we knew about Lincoln’s presidency and his death. We discuss the tension and fear gripping Washington as Confederate forces threatened the capital in 1864 and Lincoln’s re-election that fall seemed unlikely, and we follow Booth’s path to the balcony at Ford’s Theatre.

    See also: “What Really Happened on Sherman’s March?” (with Bennett Parten), July 9, 2025



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  • The First Woman Who Ran for President

    The First Woman Who Ran for President

    · Think Back

    On this week’s episode of THINK BACK, I speak with author Eden Collinsworth about her new book The Improbable Victoria Woodhull, a lively and surprising biography of the first woman to run for president. Woodhull’s 1872 campaign may have been a long shot, but it set off a national sensation—especially when she accused famed preacher Henry Ward Beecher of adultery, sparking one of the Gilded Age’s biggest scandals and leading to her own imprisonment and exile.

    We explore what made Woodhull such a fascinating and contradictory figure: a radical reformer with a checkered past, a champion of women’s rights and free love who moved in elite social circles, and a political visionary who might feel right at home in today’s media-saturated, personality-driven politics. Even if Woodhull had no chance of winning in the 19th century, she might have a pretty good one in the 21st.

    If you enjoy this episode, please consider sharing it. Thanks for listening.



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  • The Dark Origins of Modern Women's Health

    The Dark Origins of Modern Women's Health

    · Think Back

    In this episode of THINK BACK, I talk with writer J.C. Hallman about his 2023 book Say Anarcha: A Young Woman, a Devious Surgeon, and the Harrowing Birth of Modern Women’s Health. The book tells the story of J. Marion Sims, the 19th-century doctor often hailed as the “father of modern gynecology,” who carried out cruel and nonconsensual experiments on enslaved women—most notably a young woman named Anarcha. Hallman’s research not only brings Anarcha’s story to the forefront but also played a role in the campaign to remove a statue of Sims that once stood near Central Park.

    We also get into his creative approach to history writing, the ethical questions of telling stories about suffering across racial and gender lines, and the need to move beyond overly rigid ways of narrating the past. I found our conversation to be eye-opening and deeply thought-provoking, and I hope you will too.

    If you enjoy this episode, please consider sharing it. Thanks for listening.



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  • Murder on the Colonial Frontier

    Murder on the Colonial Frontier

    · Think Back

    In this episode, I talk with historian Nicole Eustace, winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for History, about her book Covered With Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America. The book explores the aftermath of a violent clash on the Pennsylvania frontier in 1722, a moment that reveals the early formation of American political culture.

    Though set three centuries ago, Covered With Night sheds light on enduring questions of justice, diplomacy, and power—issues that still resonate in today’s debates over race, policing, and punishment. We also discuss Eustace’s creative choices in storytelling and historical writing.

    Thanks very much for listening.



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  • The Wild West, Re-Examined

    The Wild West, Re-Examined

    · Think Back

    This episode turns toward the Wild West—not the one of dime novels and Hollywood shootouts, but the murkier, more fascinating version uncovered by journalist and historian Bryan Burrough in his new book The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild. Burrough brings his sharp storytelling to a cast of gunslingers, gamblers, killers, and showmen, exploring how the mythology of the American frontier—especially in Texas—was forged and later packaged for mass consumption.

    We also delve into deeper questions about the craft of history writing itself. Come for the outlaws and six-shooters, stay for the serious reflection on how we tell the American story.



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  • What Really Happened on Sherman’s March?

    What Really Happened on Sherman’s March?

    · Think Back

    In the fall of 1864, General William Tecumseh Sherman led his infamous “March to the Sea,” a military campaign long mythologized—especially in Gone With the Wind—as a brutal assault on the white South. But over the past several decades, historians have chipped away at that Lost Cause narrative, revealing it as a distortion that casts Confederates as victims rather than instigators of wartime violence. Still, few have offered a full alternative account of what the March truly meant—until now.

    In this episode, I speak with historian Bennett Parten about his powerful first book, Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman’s March and the Story of America’s Largest Emancipation. In just over 200 pages, Parten reframes the March as a defining moment in the history of slavery and freedom, focusing on the experiences of enslaved people who risked everything to follow Sherman’s army in search of liberation. It’s a gripping, deeply thoughtful work—and a much-needed corrective to long-standing myths.

    If you enjoy this episode, please consider sharing it. Thanks for listening.



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  • Why We Need a New Constitution

    Why We Need a New Constitution

    · Think Back

    This episode is the second half of my conversation with George William Van Cleve. Last week, we explored the chaos of the 1780s following the American Revolution, as told in Van Cleve’s 2017 book We Have Not a Government, and how the U.S. Constitution emerged as a last-ditch attempt to hold the country together. We then began discussing his follow-up, Making a New American Constitution (2020), which proposes not only that a new Constitution is necessary today but outlines how a modern constitutional convention might actually work.

    Here we go deeper into the practical and political obstacles to such a convention—and why, in Van Cleve’s view, nothing else is equal to the scale of America's dysfunction. As he argues, the country’s most pressing problems didn’t begin with Trump and won’t end with him; they’re much older, and deeply embedded in the constitutional order itself.

    If you’re new here, welcome; and if you’ve been listening a while, thanks—and please consider rating and reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts to help others find it.

    George William Van Cleve, A Slaveholders’ Union:  Slavery, Politics, and the Constitution in the Early American Republic (2010)

    — We Have Not a Government: The Articles of Confederation and the Road to the Constitution (2017)

    — Making a New American Constitution (2020)

    *** NOTE: I erroneously stated in the introduction to this episode that George William Van Cleve has taught at Georgetown University. In fact, he was a Dean’s Visiting Scholar from 2020-2025, but as a researcher, not a teacher.



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  • When America Had No Government (with George William Van Cleve)

    When America Had No Government (with George William Van Cleve)

    · Think Back

    Historian and legal scholar George William Van Cleve has written some of the most provocative and underappreciated works on the American constitutional tradition. His 2010 book A Slaveholders’ Union examined slavery’s central role in the framing of the Constitution, but it was his follow-up, We Have Not a Government, that made a lasting impression on me. That book explores the collapse of the American political system under the Articles of Confederation in the 1780s—a period of economic crisis, popular rebellion, and eventual constitutional overhaul.

    Van Cleve followed that book in 2020 with Making a New American Constitution, a sweeping call to rewrite the U.S. Constitution for the present day. Unlike others who have floated the idea, Van Cleve outlines exactly how such a convention could work, where it would draw its legitimacy, and why it is urgently needed to address systemic dysfunction in American governance.

    In this first of a two-part episode, we discuss the lessons of the 1780s and how that crisis spurred the drafting of an entirely new constitution. Next week, we’ll turn to the present—and what it would take to do the same today.

    George William Van Cleve, A Slaveholders’ Union:  Slavery, Politics, and the Constitution in the Early American Republic (2010)

    — We Have Not a Government: The Articles of Confederation and the Road to the Constitution (2017)

    — Making a New American Constitution (2020)



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  • The Unfinished Revolution of 1963 (with Peniel Joseph)

    The Unfinished Revolution of 1963 (with Peniel Joseph)

    · Think Back

    I’ve always had a soft spot for what you might call “year books”—not the high school kind, but those immersive histories that zoom in on a single calendar year to show how change unfolds in real time. Some years lend themselves especially well to this treatment, and 1963 is one of them: the year of Birmingham and the March on Washington, of Dr. King’s “Dream” and JFK’s assassination. In his new book, Freedom Season: How 1963 Transformed America’s Civil Rights Revolution, historian Peniel Joseph captures the urgency and upheaval of that pivotal year, tracing how a movement long in the making finally broke through to reshape American law and society.

    We spoke about how the momentum of 1963 led to the landmark Civil Rights Act—and how, disturbingly, the very gains of that era are now under renewed threat. In a moment when civil rights laws are being weakened or cynically repurposed, Joseph’s book offers both a reminder of what was achieved and a call to reckon with how much remains unfinished. It’s a timely and necessary look back at a year that still echoes loudly today.

    If you have any suggestions for topics or guests please send them my way at [email protected]. If you’d like to support this podcast, you can do so for just $6/month by clicking the button below. Thank you for listening.

    Music by Akiko Sasaki (“The Union,” by Louis Moreau Gottschalk) and Zachary Solomon



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  • The Chinese in America (with Michael Luo)

    The Chinese in America (with Michael Luo)

    · Think Back

    What do most of us really know about the history of Chinese Americans? For many, it begins and ends with the railroads or the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. That’s what makes Michael Luo’s new book, Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America, such an essential work. It tells the sweeping, often harrowing story of a community that faced violence, discrimination, and expulsion—but nonetheless built a life here. It’s a deeply American story, both in its dreams and its brutal realities. Luo, executive editor of The New Yorker, traces not just how Chinese immigrants were excluded, but also how they insisted on belonging, even as they became targets of one of the most sustained racial backlashes in U.S. history.

    In this episode of Think Back, Michael and I talk about the little-known lynchings that terrorized Chinese communities in the 19th century, the role of Chinese exclusion in shaping America’s racial and political order after the Civil War, and the eerie echoes of that past in our own moment—from the spike in anti-Asian hate during the Covid pandemic to debates over citizenship and immigration in the Trump era.

    Please consider supporting THINK BACK for just $6/month.

    Music by Akiko Sasaki (“The Union,” by Louis Moreau Gottschalk) and Zachary Solomon



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  • Constitutional Renewal in the Age of Trump (with Aziz Rana)

    Constitutional Renewal in the Age of Trump (with Aziz Rana)

    · Think Back

    Donald Trump recently said he wasn’t sure if a president is obligated to uphold the Constitution—a striking admission from someone who’s twice sworn an oath to do just that. Trump’s indifference to the Constitution continues to pose a serious threat to American democracy. At the same time, this moment invites deeper reflection on the document itself: What exactly are we defending, and does the Constitution deserve the near-sacred status it's acquired in American political life?

    In this episode of THINK BACK, I talk with Aziz Rana, professor of law and government at Boston College and author of The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them. We explore how the Constitution has historically limited democracy, from its roots in elite counterrevolution to its Cold War-era transformation into a quasi-religious symbol of American exceptionalism. Rana’s work urges us to revisit older debates—once common in American life—about the Constitution’s flaws and the urgent need for reform or reinvention in the face of democratic backsliding.

    Aziz Rana, The Two Faces of American Freedom (2010) and The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document that Fails Them (2024)

    www.thinkbackpod.com



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  • The Hidden Origins of the American Revolution (with Andrew Lawler)

    The Hidden Origins of the American Revolution (with Andrew Lawler)

    · Think Back

    The 250th anniversary celebration of the American Revolution is about to get underway in Lexington and Concord, the towns just outside Boston where British redcoats first clashed with colonial rebels. But just a day later and hundreds of miles south, a more complicated and perhaps more consequential clash occurred between the royal governor of Virginia and leading revolutionaries like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry. Those, though less well known, led to a British emancipation proclamation, which, like Abraham Lincoln’s later edict, though fourscore and eight years earlier, promised to arm enslaved people in exchange for their liberty.

    Even if you think you know the American Revolution, you likely do not know this angle to the story, and definitely not in the kind of rich detail offered in a new book by Andrew Lawler called A Perfect Frenzy: A Royal Governor, His Black Allies, and the Crisis That Spurred the American Revolution. For this episode of Think Back, I spoke with Andrew about Dunmore, a figure either missing or badly mischaracterized in most books about the American Revolution, as well as larger questions about the meaning of the Revolution.



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  • How the First Gilded Age Ended (with Jon Grinspan)

    How the First Gilded Age Ended (with Jon Grinspan)

    · Think Back

    We seem to be living in a reenactment of the Gilded Age: tariffs, territorial expansion, oligarchic control of politics, assassination attempts, a democracy that is straining at the seams. Overlooked and misunderstood, it’s an important period to reconsider. What did it take to leave that tumultuous, surprisingly violent period behind—and what were the costs of the reforms adopted to end it?

    The person to ask about this is Jon Grinspan, the political curator of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. Jon is the author of three books, mostly recently Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force That Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War (2024), as well as The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy, 1865-1915 (2019), which we mostly focus on in this conversation.

    Thank you to everyone who has become a paid subscriber to this podcast; I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the support. If you have not yet, you can do so at www.thinkbackpod.com—and please remember to rate the show, review, etc. I hope you enjoy the episode.

    Music: "The Union," by Louis Moreau Gottschalk, played by Akiko Sasaki; segue music by Zachary Solomon



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  • My new book, 'Fear No Pharaoh: American Jews, the Civil War, and the Fight to End Slavery'

    My new book, 'Fear No Pharaoh: American Jews, the Civil War, and the Fight to End Slavery'

    · Think Back

    I am wildly excited that publication day is finally here for my new book, Fear No Pharaoh: American Jews, the Civil War, and the Fight to End Slavery.

    It’s a very strange feeling to have worked on something, largely in solitude, for so long, and now for it to finally be made available to the world.

    In this episode I share some thoughts about the book’s origins and the six main characters whose lives in the period I follow against the background of a much larger story about the Jewish encounter with American slavery, the political debate over its future, and the four-year armed struggle that finally ended it. Many of the same debates we’re having today—about race, religion, morality, politics, justice—were had back then, in remarkably similar terms if in a completely different historical context.

    There’s a lot more to the book than I could possibly get into here, so I do hope you’ll check it out. Publisher’s Weekly calls it “riveting
. Readers will be engrossed.”

    I’ll be back next week with a proper Think Back episode, another interview with a historian who has some really insightful things to say about an often misunderstood era in American history. In the meantime, I’d be grateful if you’d follow, like, rate, and review the podcast—and above all share with friends. And please pick up a copy of the book!



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  • Trump, Masculinity, and the New Manifest Destiny (with Amy Greenberg)

    Trump, Masculinity, and the New Manifest Destiny (with Amy Greenberg)

    · Think Back

    Amy Greenberg, a historian at Penn State University, talks about the role of masculinity in the idea of Manifest Destiny, both today and in the era when that phrase originally became popular, the 1840s, a time of falling economic mobility for men and new opportunities for women. Greenberg is the author of several books about American history, including Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire (2005); A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln and the 1846 U. S. Invasion of Mexico (2012); and Lady First: The World of First Lady Sarah Polk (2019).

    If you enjoy this episode of Think Back, I’d be most grateful if you would hit follow, subscribe, like, and leave a review. Please share with friends, and if so moved you can help support this podcast by going to www.thinkbackpod.com.



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  • Two Meanings of 'America' (with Greg Grandin)

    Two Meanings of 'America' (with Greg Grandin)

    · Think Back

    One of Donald Trump’s first acts in office in his second term was signing an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. What does this focus on names obscure, what does it reveal? What is the real meaning of “America,” and how has its meaning varied across both time and space?

    For this, the first episode of Think Back, I spoke with Greg Grandin, a professor of history at Yale and the author of several books, including The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America and America, América: A New History of the New World, which comes out next month. We spoke about how the different colonial experiences of North and South America have shaped both regions up to the present day, as well as what he thinks Latin America can teach us in the United States about how to resist authoritarianism.

    Seeing as Think Back is a brand new podcast, I’d be deeply grateful if you would subscribe, hit like, comment, review,and share it with anyone you know who likes history. If you’d like to support the podcast, you can hit the button below and subscribe for $6/month, which will help me give this podcast the time and attention it deserves. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoy the show.

    Intro/outro: Louis Moreau Gottschalk, “The Union,” played by Akiko Sasaki; segue by Zachary Solomon



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  • 'A Source in AMERICA'

    'A Source in AMERICA'

    · Think Back

    Music: "The Union," composed by Louis Moreau Gottschalk, performed by Akiko Sasaki

    Logo by Lily Piyathaisere, based on John Frederick Kensett, "Hudson River Scene" (1857)

    "You didn't kill Liberty Valance!"

    William Carlos Williams, In the American Grain (1925)



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