U.S. History

Former Soviet Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Dobrynin. Dobrynin has written his autobiography In Confidence: Moscow's Ambassador to America's Six Cold War Presidents published by Times Books 1995. Dobrynin was Ambassador from 1962 (Kennedy) through 1986 (Reagan). He was a key diplomat in many U.S./Soviet conflicts including The Cuban Missile Crisis. Dobrynin, now 76 years old, is still active in Russian diplomacy as senior advisor to the Foreign Ministry. He lives in Moscow.

Commentator Gerald Early reflects on the legacy of Booker T. Washington, who among other things, founded the Tuskegee Institute. Today is the 100th anniversary of a speech given by Washington at the Atlanta Exposition, which celebrated a "new" industrialized, post-reconstruction South.

Former Tuskegee Airman Robert Williams. He was with the Army Air Corps "Fighting 99th" the first squadron of Black fighter pilots in World War II. Now, after 45 years of trying he's gotten a studio interested in making a movie about the squadron. The new HBO movie, "The Tuskegee Airmen," stars Laurence Fishburne; Williams is the co-executive producer. The film debuts August 26th.

Author and Historian Richard Rhodes discusses the Cold War battle for the Hydrogen Bomb. His latest book is Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (Simon & Shuster August 1995) Using recently declassified files in the United States and the Soviet Union he details the escalation of the Superpower arms race. He won a Pulitzer Prize for chronicling the Manhattan Project in The Making of the Atomic Bomb. He is the author of several other books including Nuclear Renewal: Common Sense about Energy, A Hole in the World, Sons of Earth, and Looking for America.

This Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb. We talk with James Yamazaki, the Japanese-American pediatrician who was sent to Nagasaki four years later to study the impact of radiation on children. Yamazaki has written a memoir about his life and work in Nagasaki called Children of the Atomic Bomb. He is currently clinical professor of Pediatrics in the School of Medicine at the University of California. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Psychologist Robert Jay Lifton. His new book Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial (Grosset Putnam), which he co-wrote with Greg Mitchell, assesses the political, ethical and psychological impact on our nation of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. August 6 marks the fiftieth anniversary of this event. Lifton is the author of many other important books including the Nazi Doctors and The Protean Self.

Writer Shelby Foote has created a niche for himself as a civil war historian. He is best known for his three volume history of the Civil War, called "The Civil War: A Narrative." He has just written a new book, "Stars in Their Courses," which re-creates the three-day Gettysburg Campaign. He was also the narrator of the eleven-hour PBS series "The Civil War," which aired in 1990.

Author/Attorney Stephen Goddard. His new book is "Getting There: The Epic Struggle between Road and Rail in the American Century" (Basic Books). Goddard's interest in trains began as a boy in the 1940s. At that time the regulated railroads were fighting back against the subsidized highways by creating luxurious trains with fancy dining cars that boasted elegant crystal on the tables.

Author Melba Beals. Forty years ago today the United States Supreme Court ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional in "Brown v. Board of Education." Three years later, Beals and eight other black teenagers chose to attend the all white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. In the process Beals suffered a school year marked by unremitting violence and hatred. Danny, the soldier assigned to protect her, warned her that she too would have to become a soldier.

History professor and author R. Laurence Moore. His new book is "Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture." (Oxford) Moore explores the relationship between spiritualism and consumerism in this country over a two-century span. He develops his theses with examples from the lives as such American personalities as P. T. Barnum, Cecil B. DeMille and Sylvester Graham, inventor of the Graham cracker.

Holding immigrants responsible for various health epidemics has been an American pastime for two centuries argues Alan Kraut, Professor of History at American University. Just as the Irish were wrongly blamed for the cholera epidemic in the 1830's so too were Haitians in Miami branded as AIDS carriers in the 1980's. His new book "Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, & the "Immigrant Menace"" (Basic Books) traces how immigration policy and health care have been affected by xenophobia and public fears of contamination. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Commentator Gayle Pemberton comments on Black History Month.

David Garrow is a Pulitzer Prize winning author for his biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., "Bearing the Cross." His newest book is a history of the struggle for birth control rights during the 1920s and 30s and how that paved the way for the abortion rights struggle. Along the way, Garrow examines how these rights are tied in with issues of privacy and sexuality. Garrow found that the arguments used in the birth control rights struggle were the same ones used in the struggle for abortion rights.

Commentator Maureen Corrigan on two new books of non-fiction: "Theirs Was The Kingdom" by John Heidenry (Norton) a history of Readers Digest, and "Land Of Desire" by William Leach (Pantheon) about rise of the department store in the nineteenth century.

Commentator Gayle Pemberton remembers the "Birmingham Bombing", which killed four young girls and galvanized support for the Civil Rights Movement.

Professor of History at Princeton, Sean Wilentz. His new article in the August 9th, 1993 issue of The New Republic compares the Ross Perot phenomenon to past populist movements in American History. He argues that Perot represents populism as "a surly mood of defeat and powerlessness;" that he perhaps signals a realignment to come of the two major parties. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Halberstam has a new book -- a social, political, economic, and cultural history of what he considers the most pivotal decade of the century -- called "The Fifties." His other books include, "The Best and the Brightest" and "The Powers That Be."

Writer Allan Berube wrote the book, "Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women In World War II." He spent ten years interviewing gay and lesbian veterans, searching out wartime letters, and consulting newly declassified government documents. He found that hundreds of thousands of gays entered the military despite a procedure for screening out homosexuals. Terry will talk with him about the ban on gays in the military and the hearings going on now, and whether it should be repealed.

Former Black Panther Elaine Brown. Her new book, A Taste of Power, tells the story of her rise to the head of the Black Panther Party in the mid-70s and her later break with the Party.

Writer Jack Beatty has written a biography of four-time Boston Mayor James Michael Curley, called "The Rascal King." Curley, an Irish-Catholic, is a Massachusetts legend, having run in 32 elections, serving as governor, congressman, and mayor. While Curley could be dismissed as an old-fashioned machine politician, Beatty portrays him as a forerunner of the modern entrepreneurial politician.