Andrew Burstein, "Being Thomas Jefferson"

Andrew Burstein recently retired as a professor of history at Louisiana State University. "Being Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History" is his 16th book about the early years of the United States. In the introduction, Prof. Burstein writes: "This book is about extraordinary drama that punctuated the life of a famous man who had an unusual need to control his environment." Andrew Burstein continues, noting that "as much as his creative imagination led to memorable achievements, the capaciousness of his intellect exacted a price. When enticed by nature's mysteries, his eyes were wide open to new possibilities. And when it came to the clash of egos in public venues, he was acutely sensitive to slights." Professor Burstein says Jefferson "was driven for public celebrity." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jonathan Jordan devotes 544 pages and 57 chapters of his book "Ike and Winston" to telling the story of the friendship between Dwight David Eisenhower and Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill. President Eisenhower lived to be 78 and died in 1969. Sir Winston died four years before that, in 1965, at age 90. Author Jonathan Jordan says: "Churchill could have had his pick of friendship, but he wanted Ike's. In the beginning, he courted Ike for what Ike could do for Britain. The Kansan held the trust of men like Franklin Roosevelt and George C. Marshall. This influence gave Ike the power to destroy or create, and Ike had the gambler's nerve to use that power. London needed a friend like that." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the beginning of Scott Greenberger's new book, "The Forsaken Founder," Dawn Davis, publisher of the Simon & Schuster imprint 37 Ink, introduces us to this new history of a mostly unfamiliar name. Davis writes: "Hamilton, Franklin, Washington, Madison. These are names we know." However, she writes that "there was another man in the room at the founding, a prodigy whose contributions were just as essential, whose name has largely been forgotten: Gouverneur Morris. Morris, as the penman of the Constitution, wrote the words "We the people," which are his and his alone. The subtitle to Scott Greenberger's book is "Gouverneur Morris, the Unsung Patriot Who Wrote the Constitution, Stood Up to Slavery, and Survived the Reign of Terror." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, has been in prison for 32 years in France. He was captured in Sudan on August 14, 1994. In his book titled "The Jackal," Washington Post correspondent Joby Warrick reports on his 2025 meeting with the jailed terrorist in Paris. Carlos told him: "I killed 83 people with my own hand." Reporter Warrick writes that: "Carlos mattered. He was the human face of a dangerous new form of international terrorism that emerged in the 1970s and the 1980s, which became the template for later groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State." The Jackal will be 77 years old on October 12th. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paul Taylor tells his readers: "For the first 25 years, I was a newspaper reporter. For the next 25, a political reformer, a demographer, a pollster, an author, and a public speaker." He's now 77 and has written a memoir titled "This Is Getting Old: Two Boomers and Their Generation at Dusk." Besides Paul Taylor, the other boomer in his book refers to his wife of 57 years, Stefanie. He asked his friend and agent Peter Bernstein (BERN-steen) to find a traditional publisher. His only reward, according to Taylor, "was a collection of lovely rejection notes." Not to be stopped, he would move on to Plan B, self-publishing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the political history of the United States, books have had a big impact on who the public follows in elections. In 1956, John F. Kennedy published "Profiles in Courage," which sold 2.8 million copies by his death in 1963. Jimmy Carter released his title "Why Not the Best?" in 1975, the year before he was elected president. When Barack Obama first released his life story in 1995, he only sold approximately 9,000 copies. When it was re-released in 2004, he sold 4.7 million copies. President Trump's "Art of the Deal," published in 1987, sold at least 1.5 million. JD Vance was unknown in 2016 when he appeared on C-SPAN's Q&A. His book "Hillbilly Elegy" has sold over 3 million copies. Ten years later he's 42 and has been a U.S. Senator for two years and Vice President of the United States since January of 2025. Here he is from 2016. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the second of a two-part interview with journalist John A. Jenkins. His book is "Summer of '71: Five Months That Changed America." Jenkins writes in the introduction: "[I]t is hard to overstate the importance of the events that defined the American experience during the fateful five months of May through September 1971." A good portion of the first part of the interview with John Jenkins focused on Daniel Ellsberg and the publishing of the Pentagon Papers. This discussion opens with the history of Angela Davis and the Soledad Brothers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John A. Jenkins has been a journalist most of his life in the city of his birth, Washington, DC. He says he's never known another summer like the one 55 years ago. His book, "Summer of '71: Five Months That Changed America," focuses on well-known names from that era: Daniel Ellsberg, Neil Sheehan, Henry Kissinger, Sarah Weddington, and Angela Davis. John Jenkins writes that "each main character has an important back story that sets them up for the summer of '71 to come." He also writes: "My purpose here is to show the drama, the pain, and the hope of a summer when America faced some of its greatest challenges at home and abroad." This is part one of a two-part interview with Mr. Jenkins. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The author's name is Christine Kuehn. The book is titled "Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor." Christine Kuehn worked on her family's story for over 30 years. According to the publisher's note, it began with a letter from a screenwriter asking about a story. It was the first time she had ever heard about the secrets of the Kuehn family. Her father had never spoken about his mother Friedel (FREE-duhl) and his father Otto's work for the Nazis while based in Hawaii, or the spying they did for the Japanese government prior to the Pearl Harbor attack. Christine was born in the U.S., but her father and the rest of the Kuehn family came from Germany. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence has now gone beyond the Fourth of July. Many books have been published about the Declaration in the first half of 2026. The question for Americans is: "Have you read the Declaration in full?" A recent study says that only 3 in 10 U.S. citizens have read the Declaration in its entirety. Author Ted Widmer has published, through the Library of America, a detailed history of how the Declaration came about. The book is called "The Living Declaration: A Biography of America's Founding Text." This is Ted Widmer's twelfth book, which includes an introduction by the well-known historian Gordon S. Wood. Professor Wood died at age 92, just days before the publication of this book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices