| America's Best-Selling Authors: T.J. Stiles and Fergus Bordevich | | Print | |
| America's Best Selling Authors | ||||||||||
 America's #1 TalkRadio Show Presents"America's Best Selling Authors Series"
Guest:T.J. Stiles T. J. Stiles is the author of The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, winner of the 2009 National Book Award in Nonfiction and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Biography, and Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War, which won the Ambassador Book Award and the Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship. A member of the Society of American Historians, he wrote his latest book, Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America, with the assistance of a Guggenheim fellowship. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and two children. THE BOOK: “Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America” From the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner, a brilliant new biography of Gen. George Armstrong Custer that radically changes our view of the man and his turbulent times. In this magisterial biography, T. J. Stiles paints a portrait of Custer both deeply personal and sweeping in scope, proving how much of Custer’s legacy has been ignored. He demolishes Custer’s historical caricature, revealing a volatile, contradictory, intense person—capable yet insecure, intelligent yet bigoted, passionate yet self-destructive, a romantic individualist at odds with the institution of the military (he was court-martialed twice in six years). The key to understanding Custer, Stiles writes, is keeping in mind that he lived on a frontier in time. In the Civil War, the West, and many areas overlooked in previous biographies, Custer helped to create modern America, but he could never adapt to it. He freed countless slaves yet rejected new civil rights laws. He proved his heroism but missed the dark reality of war for so many others. A talented combat leader, he struggled as a manager in the West. He tried to make a fortune on Wall Street yet never connected with the new corporate economy. Native Americans fascinated him, but he could not see them as fully human. A popular writer, he remained apart from Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, and other rising intellectuals. During Custer’s lifetime, Americans saw their world remade. His admirers saw him as the embodiment of the nation’s gallant youth, of all that they were losing; his detractors despised him for resisting a more complex and promising future. Intimate, dramatic, and provocative, this biography captures the larger story of the changing nation in Custer’s tumultuous marriage to his highly educated wife, Libbie; their complicated relationship with Eliza Brown, the forceful black woman who ran their household; as well as his battles and expeditions. It casts surprising new light on a near-mythic American figure, a man both widely known and little understood.
Guest: Fergus Bordevich GROWING UP in northwest Yonkers, Fergus M. Bordewich, an author and journalist, was intrigued by stories that fugitive slaves had founded the nearby neighborhood of Runyon Heights, where many residents were African-American. ''My mother, LaVerne Madigan, was a national figure involved in civil rights, and she often cited the supposed fugitives as models who defied injustice in pursuit of freedom,'' he said. But while researching his fourth book, Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America, Mr. Bordewich, 57, learned that the Runyon Heights story was a myth, ''one of the classic Underground Railroad legends,'' he said. Still, the plight of fugitive slaves had formed ''the warp and woof of my own childhood,'' said the author, who lives in Barrytown in Dutchess County. After visiting a community founded by former slaves in Canada in 1998, Mr. Bordewich said, he became determined to find out ''who these people were and what they had endured.'' What he learned while writing Bound for Canaan,published in April by HarperCollins, was that the Underground Railroad was far more than a picturesque story. ''It was the first interracial political movement in American history,'' he said. ''It was the first mass movement of civil disobedience after the American Revolution. It was the first political movement born from evangelical religion—evangelical Protestantism—and also the seedbed of the American women's movement.'' And although the tales about Runyon Heights turned out not to be true, he said, Westchester and its environs are dotted with historical sites along the Underground Railroad. These include the John Jay Homestead in Katonah; a Quaker meeting house in Purchase; the Oblong Meeting House near Pawling; and the Nine Partners Meeting House outside Millbrook. THE BOOK: “AThe First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government” The little known story of perhaps the most productive Congress in US history, the First Federal Congress of 1789–1791. The First Congress was the most important in US history, says prizewinning author and historian Fergus Bordewich, because it established how our government would actually function. Had it failed—as many at the time feared it would—it’s possible that the United States as we know it would not exist today. The Constitution was a broad set of principles. It was left to the members of the First Congress and President George Washington to create the machinery that would make the government work. Fortunately, James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and others less well known today, rose to the occasion. During two years of often fierce political struggle, they passed the first ten amendments to the Constitution; they resolved bitter regional rivalries to choose the site of the new national capital; they set in place the procedure for admitting new states to the union; and much more. But the First Congress also confronted some issues that remain to this day: the conflict between states’ rights and the powers of national government; the proper balance between legislative and executive power; the respective roles of the federal and state judiciaries; and funding the central government. Other issues, such as slavery, would fester for decades before being resolved. The First Congress tells the dramatic story of the two remarkable years when Washington, Madison, and their dedicated colleagues struggled to successfully create our government, an achievement that has lasted to the present day. Jack Girardi, Partner at Girardi Keese, is one of America's Finest Trial Lawyers and our Co-Host, as always, brings out the most important key elements to the success of today's guests. He and his firm have been dedicated to working hard and getting the best possible recovery for its clients. Girardi Keese's mission is to provide aggressive representation of individuals and businesses who have been injured in sous way, whether by physical harm, property damage, damage to business, or damage to economic interests. Girardi & Keese has two offices in California: Downtown Los Angeles and San Bernardino. www.girardikeese.com Hosted by Steve Murphy
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Guest: T.J. Stiles
Guest:Fergus Bordevich
Jack Girardi Steve Murphy |
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| Last Updated on Monday, 09 May 2016 23:04 |
