History

Journalist Beth Macy talks about George and Willie Muse, black albino brothers who were born in the Jim Crow South and were forced to become circus freaks. Her new book, Truevine, retells their story.

Tower is an animated documentary that tells the story of a massacre that happened 50 years ago and was a historic first: A man with no record of violence shot at people at random for no logical reason. It was Aug. 1, 1966, in the middle of a 100-degree day at the University of Texas at Austin.

The New Zealand band began releasing records on the Flying Nun label in the 1980s. Four decades later, they are still at it. Rock historian Ed Ward tells story of The Chills.

The new movie, which tells the story of Nat Turner's 1831 slave revolt, is a righteous-vigilante tale — and an answer to D.W. Griffith's 1915 film of the same name.

Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews a new documentary, Ballets Russes, just out on DVD. It tells the story of ballet after the death of Sergei Diaghilev, who founded and ran the company until 1929.

Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen discusses the Soviet effort, in 1929, to create an autonomous Jewish state in the country's far eastern region. Gessen is the author of Where The Jews Aren't.

A new drama series on Netflix chronicles the rise of early hip-hop music in the late '70s. Rock critic Ken Tucker says the show's soundtrack is dense, complex and delightful.

As one of the very first bebop tenor saxophonists, Teddy Edwards mixed awesome technique with irresistibly slinky phrases. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews two reissues, Inimitable and Feelin's.

E. T. Mensah, who died 20 years ago, played highlife, an offshoot of jazz that for years was the most popular style of music in southern Africa. Milo Miles reviews a new anthology of Mensah's music.

In her new book, The Grid, Gretchen Bakke argues that the under-funded power grid is incapable of taking the U.S. into a new energy future. She explains the challenges to Fresh Air's Dave Davies.

The Great Depression, and a time when cheap, bland and filling foods altered the American diet.

Historian Mary Beard says many of our popular notions about the empire are based on culture rather than fact. Her new book is called SPQR. Originally broadcast Nov. 30, 2015.

The National Book Award winner's new novel is based in part on her memories of growing up in Brooklyn in the 1970s. Woodson describes the teen years as an "amazing and urgent moment" in life.

In his new novel, The Underground Railroad, Whitehead returns to his childhood vision of the Underground Railroad as an actual locomotive that carries escaped slaves through tunnels.

"The '70s were a toxic, dangerous, scary time in America" says Jeffrey Toobin. His new book puts the kidnapping, crimes and trial of Patty Heart in the context of those times.

Rock historian Ed Ward says that musicians in Düsseldorf, Germany, including Klaus Dinger of the band Neu!, helped start a new German pop movement in the 1970s and '80s.

A conversation with novelist Jay McInerney about finding fame as a young man, writing, New York City, and his new novel Bright, Precious Days about marriage, fidelity and middle age.

As New Orleans' levees buckled, Kimberly Rivers Roberts turned her video camera on marooned friends, relatives and neighbors. Roberts' footage has been adapted into a powerful documentary that is as much about America as it is about the deadly storm.

The energetic lead singer for The Dap-Kings spoke to Fresh Air in '07 and again in '16, after she'd been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. "I want to perform," she said in July. Jones died on Nov. 18.

Patrick Ryan has written a very funny and touching collection of nine short stories that take place in the 1960s and '70s around Cape Canaveral, Fla.