### Max Boot **Book:** *Reagan: His Life and Legend* * **Part One** (*Hour One*) explores **Ronald Reagan's early life**, from a nomadic childhood shaped by an alcoholic father and an optimistic mother, to his success as a lifeguard, sports broadcaster
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Max Boot
Book: Reagan: His Life and Legend
- Part One (Hour One) explores Ronald Reagan's early life, from a nomadic childhood shaped by an alcoholic father and an optimistic mother, to his success as a lifeguard, sports broadcaster, and Hollywood B-movie actor. It details his marriage to Jane Wyman and his leadership of the Screen Actors Guild during the anti-communist red hunts.
- Part Two (Hour Two) traces Reagan's presidency, beginning with his campaigns and the 1981 assassination attempt. It analyzes his supply-side domestic economics, foreign relations ending the Cold War with Mikhail Gorbachev, and the damaging Iran-Contra scandal.
Alan Taylor
Book: American Civil Wars: A Continental History, 1850 to 1873
- Part One (Hour One) examines the ideological and geopolitical conflicts of mid-19th-century North America. It profiles figures like expansionist Jane McManis Cazneau, abolitionist Jane Swisshelm, and Black leaders Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany. It details the pre-war political struggles over slavery's expansion, including the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
- Part Two (Hour Two) covers post-1865 developments across the continent, focusing on Canadian confederation under John A. Macdonald, the French imperial intervention in Mexico against Benito Juárez, and the violent realities of Reconstruction under Andrew Johnson. It also outlines the brutal assimilation and subjugation of Native Americans in both the U.S. and Canada.
Dennis Sewell
Book: Cromwell's Spy: From the American Colonies to the English Civil War
- Part One (Hour One) introduces George Downing, a brilliant Harvard graduate who rose to become Oliver Cromwell’s scoutmaster general during the English Civil Wars. It explores his ideological training, his ruthless perspective on slavery, his intelligence victories in Scotland, and his facilitation of selling Scottish prisoners of war into colonial servitude.
- Part Two (Hour Two) details Downing’s secret diplomacy with Cardinal Mazarin, followed by his opportunistic defection to Charles II upon Cromwell's death. To secure his position under the restored monarchy, Downing orchestrated the capture and rendition of his former regicide allies.
David Shedd
Book: The Great Heist: China's Epic Campaign to Steal America's Secrets
Shedd analyzes China’s multi-decade campaign of intellectual property and data theft against the United States, costing up to $600 billion annually. He explains how admitting China to the WTO in 2001 failed to foster democratization and details the massive scale of the Ministry of State Security. Using corporate examples like Apple and Google to illustrate this threat, he warns of America's vulnerabilities and advocates for defensive reforms, including a partial economic decoupling, modernized legal deterrence, and the establishment of a National Economic Security Council to better protect critical domestic industries and safeguard the nation's technological crown jewels.
David K. Randall
Book: The Monsters Bones: The Discovery of T-Rex and How It Shook Our World
Randall recounts the historic discovery of the Tyrannosaurus Rex by pioneering paleontologist Barnum Brown. The narrative traces Brown’s journey from a Kansas farm to his recruitment by Henry Fairfield Osborn for the American Museum of Natural History. Driven by Gilded Age competition funded by wealthy industrialists, Brown used geological expertise and dynamite in 1902 to unearth the first T-Rex fossils in Hell Creek, Montana. Despite facing devastating personal tragedy, Brown's efforts culminated in the legendary 1915 public mounting of the apex predator in New York, forever transforming the public's understanding of prehistoric life.
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