First broadcast (with link to transcript / video) | Author | Book | Subject matter |
January 6, 2002 | Bill Press | Spin This! All The Ways We Don’t Tell the Truth | Spin (public relations) |
January 13, 2002 | Jeffrey Hart | Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Toward the Revival of Higher Education | Western canon; Higher education in the United States |
January 20, 2002 | John Laurence | The Cat From Hue: A Vietnam War Story | The Vietnam War |
January 27, 2002 | Sandra Day O’Connor | Lazy B: Growing Up On a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest | Memoir/Autobiography; Duncan, Arizona; Ranching |
February 3, 2002 | Ralph Nader | Crashing the Party: How to Tell the Truth and Still Run for President | Memoir/Autobiography; United States presidential election, 2000; Ralph Nader presidential campaign, 2000 |
February 10, 2002 | Steve Neal | Harry & Ike: The Partnership That Remade the Postwar World | Harry Truman; Dwight Eisenhower |
February 17, 2002 | Edward Steers Jr. | Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln | The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln |
February 24, 2002 | R. Kent Newmyer | John Marshall and the Heroic Age of the Supreme Court | John Marshall |
March 3, 2002 | Randall Kennedy | Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word | Use of the word "Nigger" |
March 10, 2002 | Richard Lingeman | Sinclair Lewis: Rebel From Mainstreet | Sinclair Lewis |
March 17, 2002 | Michael Novak | On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding | History of religion in the United States; Founding Fathers of the United States |
March 24, 2002 | Jon Ronson | Them: Adventures with Extremists | Conspiracy Theories; Extremism |
March 31, 2002 | Frank Wu | Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White | Asian Americans |
April 7, 2002 | Leonard Downie Jr., Co-Author | The News About the News: American Journalism in Peril | Journalism |
April 14, 2002 | Ellen Joan Pollock | The Pretender: How Martin Frankel Fooled the Financial World and Led the Feds on One of the Most Publicized Manhunts in History | Martin Frankel |
April 21, 2002 | Gordon Wood | The American Revolution: A History | The American Revolution |
April 28, 2002 | Robert Skidelsky | John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Freedom, 1937-1946 | John Maynard Keynes |
May 5, 2002 | Sarah Brady | A Good Fight | James Brady; Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act; Gun politics in the United States |
May 12, 2002 | Jennifer Toth | What Happened to Johnnie Jordan? The Story of A Child Turning Violent | Causes and correlates of crime; Foster care |
May 19, 2002 | James Srodes | Franklin: The Essential Founding Father | Benjamin Franklin |
May 26, 2002 | Richard John Neuhaus | As I Lay Dying: Meditations Upon Returning | Death |
June 2, 2002 | Richard Posner | Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline | Public intellectuals |
June 9, 2002 | Jennet Conant | Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science that Changed the Course of World War II | Alfred Lee Loomis |
June 16, 2002 | Samantha Power | A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide | Genocide; United States non-interventionism |
June 23, 2002 | Diana Preston | Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy | The RMS Lusitania |
June 30, 2002 | John Leonard | Lonesome Rangers: Homeless Minds, Promised Lands, Fugitive Cultures | Essays; Intellectuals; Exile; Expatriates |
July 7, 2002 | Sandra Mackey | The Reckoning: Iraq and the Legacy of Saddam Hussein | Iraq; Saddam Hussein |
July 14, 2002 | Nguyen Cao Ky | Buddha’s Child: My Fight to Save Vietnam | Vietnam |
July 21, 2002 | Daniel Stashower | The Boy Genius and the Mogul: The Untold Story of Television | Philo T. Farnsworth; David Sarnoff; History of Television |
July 28, 2002 | Beppe Severgnini | Ciao America! An Italian Discovers the U.S. | Culture of the United States |
August 4, 2002 | Glenn Loury | The Anatomy of Racial Inequality | Race in the United States |
August 11, 2002 | Ann Coulter | Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right | Media bias in the United States; American Left; Conservatism in the United States |
August 18, 2002 | Simon Worrall | The Poet and the Murderer | Mark Hofmann |
August 25, 2002 | Michael Oren | Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East | The Six-Day War |
September 1, 2002 | Winston Groom | A Storm in Flanders: The Ypres Salient, 1914-1918—Tragedy and Triumph on the Western Front | Ypres Salient; First Battle of Ypres; Second Battle of Ypres; Battle of Passchendaele; Battle of the Lys (1918); Fifth Battle of Ypres |
September 8, 2002 | Dennis Hutchinson | The Forgotten Memoir of John Knox: A Year in the Life of a Supreme Court Clerk in FDR's Washington | John Frush Knox |
September 15, 2002 | Arnold Ludwig | King of the Mountain: The Nature of Political Leadership | Leadership; Politics; Heads of state; Heads of government |
September 22, 2002 | Eliot Cohen | Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime | Civilian control of the military; Abraham Lincoln; Georges Clemenceau; Winston Churchill; David Ben-Gurion |
September 29, 2002 | Pete Davies | American Road: The Story of An Epic Transcontinental Journey at the Dawn of the Motor Age | Transcontinental Motor Convoy |
October 6, 2002 | Zig Ziglar | Zig: The Autobiography of Zig Ziglar | Memoir/Autobiography; Sales; Motivational speaking |
October 13, 2002 | Linda Greenlaw | The Lobster Chronicles: Life On a Very Small Island | Lobstering; Maine |
October 20, 2002 | Michael Mandelbaum | The Ideas That Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy, and Free Markets in the Twenty-first Century | Globalization; Peace; Democracy; Free market economics |
October 27, 2002 | Charles Slack | Noble Obsession: Charles Goodyear, Thomas Hancock, and the Race to Unlock the Greatest Industrial Secret of the Nineteenth Century | Charles Goodyear; Thomas Hancock; Vulcanization |
November 3, 2002 | Caryle Murphy | Passion for Islam: Shaping the Modern Middle East—The Egyptian Experience | Islam in Egypt |
November 10, 2002 | Frank Williams | Judging Lincoln | Abraham Lincoln |
November 17, 2002 | Rick Atkinson | An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 | North African Campaign; Operation Torch |
November 24, 2002 | Peter Krass | Carnegie | Andrew Carnegie |
December 1, 2002 | Bruce Feiler | Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths | Abraham; Abrahamic religions |
December 8, 2002 | Michelle Malkin | Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores | Immigration to the United States; Illegal immigration to the United States |
December 15, 2002 | John Taliaferro | Great White Fathers: The Story of the Obsessive Quest to Create Mt. Rushmore | Gutzon Borglum; Mount Rushmore; Construction of Mount Rushmore |
December 22, 2002 | Diana Walker | Public & Private: Twenty Years of Photographing the Presidency | Photojournalism |
December 29, 2002 | Margaret MacMillan | Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World | Paris Peace Conference, 1919 |