The John Batchelor Show

Saturday 22 September 2012

Air Date: 
September 22, 2012

(Photo: It was an almost even match, as it was a force of some 400 Indians opposing an equal number of His Majesty's troops. Bouquet decided upon trickery for day two. He feigned a retreat, lured the Indians in, then hit them on the flanks with his light infantry companies. The maneuver carried the day. Though Indian casualties were lighter than those of the British, the Battle of Bushy Run, August 5 & 6, 1763, was over, and broke the back of Indian resistance in these parts. Fort Pitt was relieved. The settlements came. A great city would one day stand at this fork in a wilderness river.)

Saturday 905P Eastern Time: THOMAS S. KIDD, PATRICK HENRY: First Among Patriots.  Library Journal  “Kidd convincingly explains that the popular but controversial Henry was passionate about both liberty and virtue and believed that for America to succeed its laws must be grounded in Christianity, with strong local and state (rather than strong federal) government. . . . Kidd’s investigation into the role of religion in Henry’s politics and the contradictions between what he publicly espoused and personally practiced gives readers fresh, illuminating insight into a leader whose orations inspired revolution and turned a minor lawyer into a political giant.”

Saturday 920P Eastern Time: THOMAS S. KIDD, PATRICK HENRY

Saturday 935P Eastern Time: JAMES BROOKHISER, JAMES MADISONKarl Rove  “Richard Brookhiser has written a lively, deeply informed, and penetrating look at the small man who played such a big role in America’s founding.  Father of the Constitution, prime mover behind approval of the Bill of Rights, trusted advisor and confidant to the young nation’s first president, and its fourth chief executive himself, James Madison is also our country’s first practical politician.  He founded not just the first American political party, but also the American system of party politics itself.  For James Madison had come—after long study and extended practical experience—to believe deeply in majority rule, public opinion, and a government of, by and for the people.”

Saturday 950P Eastern Time: JAMES BROOKHISER, JAMES MADISON.  Wall Street Journal

“Madison is remembered today as one of the key framers of the Constitution and the drafter of the Bill of Rights; as the husband of the vivacious Dolley Madison; and as the president who barely escaped capture by the British punitive expedition that raided Washington during the War of 1812. But he deserves to be remembered for a great deal more. Richard Brookhiser, in the latest in his series of concise and highly readable books about the Founding Fathers, conveys the man in full and files a strong paternity suit pointing to Madison as the father of American politics.”

Saturday 1005P (705P Pacific Time):  . SCOTT WEIDENSAUL, THE FIRST FRONTIER: The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, and Endurance in Early America.  “With a novelist's flair, he conveys the experiences of ordinary people pitted against powerful and unpredictable nature. . . Mr. Weidensaul invites readers to imagine the bloody ground beneath modern America's apparently tame landscape.”—The Wall Street Journal

Saturday 1020P (720P Pacific Time):  SCOTT WEIDENSAUL, THE FIRST FRONTIER, 2 of 4

Braddock’s defeat also served to catapult Washington into the first rank of colonial personages even though he was only 23 years old. He had achieved fame throughout the colonies for his expedition with Christopher Gist to carry a demand that the French evacuate the Ohio Valley. He achieved international notoriety for his conduct at Jumonville Glen and Fort Necessity. The French labeled him a cold blooded killer after the Iroquois chieftain Tanacharison tomahawked Ensign Joseph Coulon de Jumonville and washed his hands in his brains over an insult he had received from the French commander at Fort Duquense.

Saturday 1035P (735P Pacific Time):   SCOTT WEIDENSAUL, THE FIRST FRONTIER, 3 of 4. Author and naturalist Scott Weidensaul, who grew up in the heart of the old Eastern frontier, has written more than two dozen books, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist, Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds

The attack on Fort Duquesne was part of a large-scale British expedition with 6,000 troops led by General John Forbes to drive the French out of the contested Ohio Country (the upper Ohio River Valley) and clear the way for an invasion of Canada. Forbes ordered Major James Grant of the 1st Highland Regiment to reconnoiter the area with 850 men. When Grant proceeded to attack the French position, his force was outmanouevred, surrounded, and largely destroyed by the French and their native allies led by François-Marie Le Marchand de Lignery. Major Grant was taken prisoner and the British survivors retreated fitfully to Fort Ligonier.

Saturday 1050P (750P Pacific Time):  SCOTT WEIDENSAUL, THE FIRST FRONTIER, 4 of 4

Saturday 1105P (805P Pacific Time):  LAURENCE BERGEN, COLUMBUS: The Four Voyages 1 of 2. Laurence Bergreen is the author of several award-winning biographies, including those of Louis Armstrong, Al Capone, Irving Berlin, and James Agee. He has written for many national publications including Esquire and Newsweek, taught at the New School for Social Research, and served as Assistant to the President of the Museum of Television and Radio in New York. Bergreen has also served as a nonfiction judge for the National Book Awards and as a judge for the PEN/Albrand Nonfiction Award.Voyage to Mars is soon to be an NBC-TV television movie that will premier in spring 2002, and a weekly series that will debut in fall 2002. Bergreen lives in New York City.

Saturday 1120P (820P Pacific Time):   LAURENCE BERGEN, COLUMBUS 2 of 2

Saturday 1135P (835P Pacific Time):  EMMA CHRISTOPHER A MERCILESS PLACE: The Fate of Britain's Convicts After the American Revolution.  1 OF 2. "It is a rare pleasure to review a book that will appeal not only to the specialist in the field, but also to the general reader. A Merciless Place is such a book, a work of original scholarship that clearly indicates years of hard labor in the archives, and also a beautifully crafted literary endeavor, one that should attract anyone who appreciates excellent writing . . . Thoroughly researched, brilliantly written, deeply humane, A Merciless Place is a model of modern legal scholarship." --H-Net

Saturday 1150P (850P Pacific Time):  EMMA CHRISTOPHER A MERCILESS PLACE 1 OF 2. Emma Christopher is an Australian Research Council Fellow at the University of Sydney. She is the author of Slave Trade Sailors and their Captive Cargoes, 1730-1807 and co-editor of Many Middle Passages. She has been a Mellon Fellow at the Huntington Library and a Gilder Lehrman Fellow at Yale University

Saturday /Sun 1205A (905 Pacific Time): THOMAS S. KIDD, PATRICK HENRY: First Among Patriots. An Associate Professor of History at Baylor University, winner of a 2006–2007 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, and author of numerous books on American religious history, Thomas S. Kidd lives in Waco, Texas. 

Saturday /Sun  1220A (920 Pacific Time):  THOMAS S. KIDD, PATRICK HENRY.

Saturday /Sun  1235A (935P Pacific Time):  DAVID S. REYNOLDS, MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Battle for America. “Consistently enlightening. . . . Mightier than the Sword deftly explores the social-intellectual context and personal experience out of which Stowe’s novel evolved into a grand entertainment and a titanic engine of change.” (Dan Cryer - Boston Globe )

Saturday /Sun  1250A  (950P Pacific Time):  DAVID S. REYNOLDS, MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD. David S. Reynolds, a Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, is the author or editor of 15 books, including "Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Battle for America," "Walt Whitman's America," "John Brown, Abolitionist," "Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson," "George Lippard," "Faith in Fiction," and "Beneath the American Renaissance." He is the winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Christian Gauss Award, the Ambassador Book Award, the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has been interviewed some 80 times on radio and TV, on shows including NPR's "Fresh Air," "Weekend Edition," and "The Diane Rehm Show," ABC's "The John Batchelor Show," and C-SPAN's "After Words," Brian Lamb's "Book Notes," and "Book TV." He is a regular contributor to "The New York Times Book Review" and is included in "Who's Who in America," "Who's Who in American Education," and "Who's Who in the World." David Reynolds was born in Providence, Rhode Island. For much of his childhood he lived in West Barrington, Rhode Island in a home attached to the Nayatt Point Lighthouse (built in 1828). His father, Paul Reynolds, sold life insurance and later became an artist. His mother, Adelaide Koch Reynolds, was an artist, art teacher, and sometime illustrator who designed newspapers ads and Hallmark greeting cards. David Reynolds attended the Providence Country Day School, where he later taught for a year after his graduation from college. He received the B.A. magna cum laude from Amherst College and the Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught American literature and American Studies at Northwestern University, Barnard College, New York University, Rutgers University, Baruch College, and the Sorbonne-Paris III. Since 2006, he has been at the CUNY Graduate Center. Besides writing and teaching, he enjoys songwriting and tennis as hobbies.

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