David Garrow on Martin Luther King, Jr. & Barack Obama

Richard Brookhiser is an American journalist, biographer, historian, and senior editor at National Review. He has appeared on C-SPAN for many years as the author of biographies of America's founders. His latest book features a Frenchman and is titled "The Hero Returns." His focus is on Lafayette (LAH-fee-et) and the legacy of revolution. Mr. Brookhiser's particular attention is on 1824, the year the former Revolutionary War hero returned to the United States for a tour of all 24 states at the invitation of President James Monroe. The retired general was celebrated in each of those states during his visit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In July of this year, 2026, the new, multi-million-dollar Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library opens to the public in Medora, North Dakota, population 121. The senior historian for the T.R. Library is a man named Michael Patrick Cullinane, a professor of history at Dickinson State University in North Dakota, 36 miles from Medora. To coincide with the opening of T.R.'s Library, Professor Cullinane has written a book titled "Theodore Roosevelt and the Tennis Cabinet." He credits Mrs. Roosevelt with building a tennis court right outside the president's West Wing office. Cullinane says: "The convenient location robbed Roosevelt of any excuse to skip his daily exercise." In the book, Cullinane introduces readers to over 30 of T.R.'s tennis partners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David J. Garrow is a prize-winning historian. Since graduating from Wesleyan University in 1975 and completing his law degree at Duke in 1981, he has spent most of his time writing about civil rights. His best selling and most praised book is titled "Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference," published in 1986. We last talked to David Garrow in May of 2017 about his book "Rising Star" – 1,472 pages about President Barack Obama. The book was limited to President Obama's life before his presidency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Lerone Bennett Jr. was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, on October 17, 1928. He spent over 50 years with Johnson Publishing, ultimately became executive editor of its Ebony magazine. Bennett died at age 89 on February 14, 2018, in Chicago, his home base of many years. Dr. Bennett's mother worked as a maid, his father a chauffeur. Their son graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta. His Booknotes television appearance was on July 21, 2000. The book is titled "Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream." Bennett provided a different view of what is normally written about Mr. Lincoln. Lerone Bennett Jr. claimed that Lincoln was a racist at heart and had little interest in abolition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lois Romano, formerly of the Washington Post, re-examines the legacy of Mary Todd Lincoln. In the promotion of the book, Simon & Schuster, the publisher, claims that Mrs. Lincoln "was failed at nearly every turn in her widowhood by her family, by her government, by medical professionals ill-equipped to diagnose her mental illness, and finally failed by history." In her prologue, Lois Romano writes: "After Lincoln died in 1865, there was no one to protect Mary. Since leaving the White House, she had been adrift and virtually homeless, restlessly moving from hotel to hotel, from city to city." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Danny Funt is the author of the book "Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling." In May 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in a 6-3 decision that legalized sports betting nationally by declaring the federal prohibition unconstitutional. According to Danny Funt, sports leagues oversight went from the position that "gambling carries a serious risk of addiction and a long history of corrupting athletes and referees, to gambling is a relatively harmless wholesale form of entertainment." Mr. Funt points out that in eight short years, sports gambling is now legal in close to 40 states. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Theo Baker will graduate from Stanford University on June 14th, 2026. About one month prior, his first book, "How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University," is being published by Penguin Press. Praise for his book, gathered by Penguin Press, is plentiful. Author William D. Cohen writes: "[Theo Baker's] astounding reporting as a Stanford freshman led to the downfall of the university's president." Mr. Baker's parents are Susan Glasser of the New Yorker Magazine and Peter Baker of the New York Times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Harvey Mansfield arrived as an undergrad at Harvard in 1949, 77 years ago. He hardly left the university until he retired as research professor in 2023. Professor Mansfield, at age 94, is still writing. Encounter Books has just published a 136-page book by him titled "Where Harvard Went Wrong." Prof. Mansfield says he's one of the conservative faculty members of his university, one of three. His book contains speeches and essays, covering over 50 years, aimed at his students and colleagues. Mansfield's plea has always been that Harvard abandon, in his words, its "partisanship with the left and adopt instead a bipartisanship that welcomes conservatives as well as liberals." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During his almost 40-year career in publishing, Bruce Nichols served as publisher of both Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Little Brown & Company. His book is titled "The Emerson Circle: The Concord Radicals Who Reinvented the World." The focus of the book is on famous names, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Louisa May Alcott and Henry David Thoreau. Author Nichols says "The Emerson Circle" is the story of this small group and the movements it inspired. He says it's not a comprehensive group biography. He suggests there are wonderful books about each member that go into far more detail. Bruce Nichols suggests their collective work represents a crucial cultural moment in American history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Author Craig Fehrman has written a new history of the expedition of Lewis and Clark. It's called "This Vast Enterprise." In the prologue to his 515-page book, Fehrman writes: "After departing from near St. Louis on May 14, 1804, the Corps of Discovery traveled 8,000 miles to find 'the most direct and practicable water communication across the continent for the purpose of commerce.'" The Corps was Jefferson's idea. Craig Fairman continues: "When Lewis and Clark returned more than two years later, they did not have a Northwest Passage, but they did have an incredible tale…" This is Mr. Fehrman's third book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices