Listen to Owen Bennett-Jones discuss the future of opinion polls with Mark Pack

New Books Network

About Albert Zambone

Al Zambone is the host of the excellent podcast "Historically Thinking."

NBN Episodes hosted by Albert:

General History May 16, 2022

High Minds

The Victorians and the Birth of Modern Britain

Simon Heffer

Hosted by Albert Zambone
Britain in the 1840s should have been, observes Simon Heffer, a time of great social improvement. Instead it was a country that was beset by poverty, unrest, assassination attempts on …
General History May 9, 2022

Athens

City of Wisdom

Bruce Clark

Hosted by Albert Zambone
In 510 BC, an obscure Greek city located literally on a backwater revolted against its tyrant. This was not extraordinary; such things happened regularly in the many Greek city-states. What …
General History May 2, 2022

The Greeks

A Global History

Roderick Beaton

Hosted by Albert Zambone
For nearly 3,000 years, the question of what it means to be Greek has been one of perennial interest—and, incredibly enough, not only to the Greeks. How a collection of …
General History February 1, 2022

Generations of Reason

A Family's Search for Meaning in Post-Newtonian England

Joan L. Richards

Hosted by Albert Zambone
In February, 1853, Augustus De Morgan, Professor of Mathematics at University College London, drew the last of a series of diagrams illustrating logical syllogisms. A the center roof this one …
General History November 21, 2019

Blood Letters

The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, a Martyr in Mao's China

Lian Xi

Hosted by Albert Zambone
In 1960, a poet and journalist named Lin Zhao was arrested by the Communist Party of China and sent to prison for re-education. Years before, she had –at approximately the …
General History November 14, 2019

Before the Refrigerator

How We Used to Get Ice

Jonathan Rees

Hosted by Albert Zambone
Frederic Tudor was the “Ice King” of early nineteenth-century America. It was Tudor who realized that ice, harvested from New England ponds and rivers could be shipped to the Caribbean …
General History November 7, 2019

Dixie Bohemia

A French Quarter Circle in the 1920s

John Shelton Reed

Hosted by Albert Zambone
John Shelton Reed, William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor of sociology (emeritus) at the University of North Carolina, has been observing the South for decades. This week he and Al Zambone …
General History October 31, 2019

Up the Trail

How Texas Cowboys Herded Longhorns and Became an American Icon

Timothy Lehman

Hosted by Albert Zambone
In 1866, a sixteen year old cowboy—the name was literal in his case—named J.M. Daugherty bought 1,000 cattle, hired five cowboys, and headed north for Missouri. In Indian Territory, he …
General History October 24, 2019

Cuisine and Empire

Cooking in World History

Rachel Laudan

Hosted by Albert Zambone
With Al Zambone this week is Rachel Laudan, author of the fascinating Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History (University of California Press, 2015). Once a historian of science and …
General History October 17, 2019

The Lost Region

Toward a Revival of Midwestern History

Jon K. Lauck

Hosted by Albert Zambone
The guest this week on Historically Thinking is Jon Lauck. He’s the author of The Lost Region: Toward a Revival of Midwestern History (University of Iowa Press, 2013), which is …
General History October 10, 2019

Wanamaker’s Temple

The Business of Religion in an Iconic Department Store

Nicole C. Kirk

Hosted by Albert Zambone
"On Christmas Eve, 1911, John Wanamaker stood in the middle of his elaborately decorated department store building in Philadelphia as shoppers milled around him picking up last minute Christmas presents …
General History July 24, 2019

From Main Street to Mall

The Rise and Fall of the American Department Store

Vicki Howard

Hosted by Albert Zambone
This week we take a break from fun and games to talk about business and consumerism–which, to be sure, is for some people also fun and games. As Vicki Howard …
General History July 17, 2019

Bourbon Justice

How Whiskey Law Shaped America

Brian Haara

Hosted by Albert Zambone
Bourbon whiskey has been around since nearly the beginning of the United States. Given that longevity, it has been part of the corporate law of the United States since the …
General History July 10, 2019

Object Lessons

How Nineteenth-Century Americans Learned to Make Sense of the Material World

Sarah Anne Carter

Hosted by Albert Zambone
The metaphor “object lesson” is a familiar one, still in everyday use. But what exactly does the metaphor refer to? In her book Object Lessons: How Nineteenth-Century Americans Learned to …
General History July 3, 2019

Petrarch's War

Florence and the Black Death in Context

William Caferro

Hosted by Albert Zambone
In 1349 the City-Republic of Florence had just endured a horrific epidemic of bubonic plague, that contagion that became known as the Black Death. Nevertheless, despite the effects upon both …
General History June 26, 2019

Treasures Afoot

Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era

Kimberly Alexander

Hosted by Albert Zambone
“Fashion is universal,” writes my guest Kimberly Alexander in her book Treasures Afoot: Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), “enabling historians across time, place, and …
General History June 19, 2019

The Hundred Years War

A People’s History

David Green

Hosted by Albert Zambone
The year 1453 marked the end of an intermittent yet seemingly endless series of wars between the Kingdom of France and the Kingdom of England that, some four hundred years …
General History June 12, 2019

An African in Imperial London

The Indomitable Life of A.B.C. Merriman-Labor

Danell Jones

Hosted by Albert Zambone
In 1919 a man named Ohlohr Maigi died of tuberculosis in London, in deep poverty. He had arrived over a decade before in the imperial capital bearing different name, seeking …
General History June 5, 2019

The Captive Sea

Slavery, Communication, and Commerce in Early Modern Spain and the Mediterranean

Daniel Hershenzon

Hosted by Albert Zambone
For hundreds of years, people living on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea enslaved one another. Moslems from North Africa captured Italians, French, and Spaniards; and North African Moslems were …
General History May 31, 2019

The Webster-Hayne Debate

Defining Nationhood in the Early American Republic

Christopher Childers

Hosted by Albert Zambone
No, not the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Perhaps even more important than that Illinois contest of 1858 was the Webster-Hayne debate of 1830. Confused? Drawing a blank? Not really your fault. Would …
General History May 24, 2019

Hadrian's Wall

Adrian Goldsworthy

Hosted by Albert Zambone
Stretching across the north of England, from coast to coast, are the 73-mile long remnants of a fortification built by the Roman Army during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian …