History

Politics & Government

Some In Congress Have Behaved Badly From The Start

9:59am October 15, 2013

The shutdown of the U.S. government has sparked lots of finger-pointing and name-calling in Congress. But A.J. Jacobs, editor at large at Esquire Magazine, tells host Scott Simon that this is hardly the nastiest dispute in the history of our democracy.

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Arts

Bob Mondello Remembers Columbus Day 1963, And A Visit To Camelot

9:24am October 15, 2013

by Bob Mondello

Bob Mondello remembers a Columbus Day 50 years ago made special by what seemed to him a visit to a real-life Camelot — and an unexpected encounter with John F. Kennedy. The president was atoning for some injudicious remarks about Italian Americans by hosting a special Rose Garden ceremony for government workers with Italian heritage.

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Birds Of A Feather Spy Together

6:12pm October 13, 2013

by NPR Staff

Journalist Tom Vanderbilt discusses the nonhuman operatives — from pigeons to house cats — deployed by the United States government during the Cold War. He wrote about the program recently for the Smithsonian magazine.

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In 1965, Muhammad Ali and Lincoln Perry (Stepin Fetchit) teamed up in pursuit of a legendary boxing technique: the anchor punch.

Sports
Arts

'Fetch Clay, Make Man': Ali, Fetchit And The 'Anchor Punch'

6:38pm October 11, 2013

by Mike Pesca

The play Fetch Clay, Make Man explores the sense of identity through the eyes of two significant figures in black history — Stepin Fetchit (Lincoln Perry) and Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali).

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A marriage made in New York, though both partners came with plenty of baggage.

Arts

No Schmear Job: A Brief History Of Bagels And Lox

5:35pm September 23, 2013

by NPR Staff

The origin of the bagel "is somewhat mysterious," says a writer who recently explored the topic. What is unquestionable is that bagel met and married lox in New York. But as in so many modern unions, both partners came to the marriage with plenty of baggage.

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Jeff Guinn's previous books include The Last Gunfight and Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde.

Books
Arts

Bio Credits Manson's Terrible Rise To Right Place And Time

4:10pm September 18, 2013

California parolee Charles Manson arrived in San Francisco in 1967, when the city was full of young waifs looking for a guru. In Manson, Jeff Guinn argues that if the cult leader had instead been paroled in a place like Nebraska, he likely would not have been so successful.

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Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking cover

Kitchen Time Machine: A Culinary Romp Through Soviet History

9:38am September 17, 2013

Author Anya Von Bremzen's new memoir, Mastering The Art of Soviet Cooking, is a tragic-comic history of a family and a nation as seen through the kitchen window. Everything we ate in the Soviet Union was grown ... by the party state," she says. "So, with the food, inevitably, you ingested the ideology."

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Billie Jean King, seen here in 1977, learned to play tennis on the public courts near her Long Beach, Calif., home.

Sports

Pioneer Billie Jean King Moved The Baseline For Women's Tennis

5:03pm September 12, 2013

A new PBS documentary looks at King's legacy as both a tennis champion — she has a record 20 Wimbledon titles — and the leader of a female player uprising that demanded fairer treatment and pay. She tells Fresh Air about the challenges of being a female player before there was a women's league.

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Books
Arts

Woodrow Wilson Brought New Executive Style To The White House

4:41pm September 10, 2013

No. 28 was the first president to team up with America's legislative branch, and he used a groundbreaking moral argument to get the U.S. involved in World War I. A. Scott Berg's new book, Wilson, fills in missing pieces of the president's life.

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Until the FBI re-opened the bombing case in the 1990s, much of the evidence surrounding the bombings was misplaced or withheld. Critical evidence in the 2001 conviction of Thomas Blanton was found in a discarded box.

National

Congress Honors Victims Of Infamous Alabama Church Bombing

10:32am September 10, 2013

by Debbie Elliott

The Congressional Gold Medals for Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley come 50 years after the black girls were killed by a Ku Klux Klan bomb. Just as the federal recognition is long in coming, so was justice.

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