U.S. History

Politico's Philip Shenon says Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK led to a law stating all documents about the Kennedy assassination must be released by October 2017. Three hundred new pages just came out.

The story of John and Will Kellogg who co-created ready to eat breakfast cereals, like cornflakes. John was a 7th Day Adventist and physician who ran a sanitarium that pioneered the wellness movement. Will Kellogg, the younger brother was the industrial and marketing brains behind Kellogg cereal.

Tales from the American West are marked by heroism, romance and plenty of cruelty. Among those stories, the saga of the Donner Party stands alone — a band of pioneers set out in covered wagons for California, and eventually, stranded, snowbound and starving, resorted to cannibalism.

In 1933, faced with a housing shortage, the federal government began a program explicitly designed to increase — and segregate — America's housing stock. Author Richard Rothstein says the housing programs begun under the New Deal were tantamount to a "state-sponsored system of segregation."

In 1978 cult leader Jim Jones led about 900 of his followers to commit mass suicide in the colony he set up in Guyana. Investigative journalist Jeff Guinn has written a new book about how Jim Jones became a cult leader and demagogue.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, as anti-communist sentiment gained ground in the United States, paranoia and persecution swept through Hollywood. The House Un-American Activities (HUAC) began interrogating some of the country's most talented filmmakers and actors, accusing them of being communists or communist sympathizers.

Historian Bernard Weissberger. He’s the author of “America Afire,” (William Morrow 2000). The book chronicles the political tumult surrounding the Presidential Election of 1800 between Adams and Jefferson. As in this election, a voting glitch caused confusion. Neither candidate was willing to concede. Weissberger compares the events then, at the birth of the Constitution, to the Gore v. Bush controversy now. He has written more than a dozen books and works on documentaries with Bill Moyers and Ken Burns.

Journalist Stephen Kinzer's book, True Flag, explains how the Spanish-American War launched an ongoing debate about America's role in the world. Kinzer has also been writing about President Trump.

In the '60s, the CIA began a secret program that aimed to curb Communism by arming and training local fighters in Laos. Author Joshua Kurlantzick calls it "the largest covert operation in US history."

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich says that for Mormon women living in 19th century Utah, "plural marriages" were empowering in complicated ways.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the third and final volume of renowned feminist historian Blanche Weisen Cook's biography of Eleanor Roosevelt.

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.

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.

"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.

Burger served as chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1969 until 1986. Linda Greenhouse, author of The Burger Court, says those years helped establish the court's conservative legal foundation.

American slavery predates the founding of the United States. Wendy Warren, author of New England Bound, says the early colonists imported African slaves and enslaved and exported Native Americans.

One hundred years ago, Brandeis became the first Jewish justice on the Supreme Court. Author Jeffrey Rosen says that Brandeis was also the most far-seeing progressive justice of the 20th century.

Author Bronwen Dickey says the idea of pit bulls as predators is based on myth and misinformation. In the early Hollywood era, Dickey says, the dogs were often chosen to appear in comedies.

According to Adam Hochschild, about 2,800 Americans fought in the Spanish Civil War, and some were bombed by Nazis years before the U.S. entered World War II. His new book is Spain in Our Hearts.

Journalist Adam Hochschild tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that "it was by far the largest number of Americans before or since who've ever joined somebody else's civil war."