First broadcast (with link to transcript / video) | Author | Book | Subject matter |
January 5, 2003 | Hugh Price | Achievement Matters: Getting Your Child the Best Education Possible | Education in the United States |
January 12, 2003 | Andrew Roberts | Napoleon & Wellington: The Battle of Waterloo and the Great Commanders Who Fought It | Napoleon Bonaparte; The Duke of Wellington; The Battle of Waterloo |
January 19, 2003 | Warren Zimmermann | First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power | John Hay; Henry Cabot Lodge; Alfred Thayer Mahan; Theodore Roosevelt; Elihu Root |
January 26, 2003 | Robert Coram | Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War | John Boyd |
February 2, 2003 | Stephen Schwartz | The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa’ud from Tradition to Terror | Wahhabism |
February 9, 2003 | Amy Chua | World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability | Globalization; Democratization; Middleman minorities |
February 16, 2003 | Robert Kagan | Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order | Foreign policy of the United States; Politics of Europe |
February 23, 2003 | Joy Hakim | Freedom: A History of US | A History of US |
March 2, 2003 | John McWhorter | Authentically Black: Essays for the Black Silent Majority | African Americans |
March 9, 2003 | Dana Priest | The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America’s Military | United States Armed Forces |
March 16, 2003 | Michael Howard | The First World War | World War I |
March 23, 2003 | Bernard Bailyn | To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders | Founding Fathers of the United States |
March 30, 2003 | Mona Charen | Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First | American Left; The Cold War |
April 6, 2003 | Roy Morris, Jr. | Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876 | Rutherford B. Hayes; Samuel Tilden; 1876 United States presidential election |
April 13, 2003 | Philip Taubman | Secret Empire: Eisenhower, The CIA, and The Hidden Story of America’s Space Espionage | Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower; The Central Intelligence Agency; Spy satellites |
April 20, 2003 and April 27, 2003 | William Taubman | Khrushchev: The Man and His Era | Nikita Khrushchev |
May 4, 2003 | Dorothy Rabinowitz | No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times | Day care sex abuse hysteria; Fells Acres day care sexual abuse trial; Gerald Amirault; McMartin preschool trial |
May 11, 2003 | Monica Langley | Tearing Down the Walls: How Sandy Weill Fought His Way to the Top of the Financial World And Then Nearly Lost it All | Sandy Weill |
May 18, 2003 | Paul Theroux | Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town | Travel literature; Africa |
May 25, 2003 | Anne Applebaum | Gulag: A History | Gulag |
June 1, 2003 | Raymond Strother | Falling Up: How a Redneck Helped Invent Political Consulting | Memoir/Autobiography; Political consulting |
June 8, 2003 | Azar Nafisi | Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books | Memoir/Autobiography; Women's rights in Iran; Politics of Iran; Higher education in Iran |
June 15, 2003 | Eric Schlosser | Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market | Underground economy; Cannabis in the United States; Pornography in the United States; Economic impact of illegal immigrants in the United States |
June 22, 2003 | Paul Berman | Terror and Liberalism | War on Terror; Islamic terrorism |
June 29, 2003 | Vartan Gregorian | The Road to Home: My Life and Times | Memoir/Autobiography; Iranian Armenians; The Carnegie Corporation |
July 6, 2003 | Jon Kukla | A Wilderness So Immense: The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of America | The Louisiana Purchase |
July 13, 2003 | Willard Scott | The Older the Fiddle, the Better the Tune: The Joys of Reaching a Certain Age | Memoir/Autobiography; Aging |
July 20, 2003 | Connie Bruck | When Hollywood Had a King: The Reign of Lew Wasserman, Who Leveraged Talent into Power and Influence | Lew Wasserman |
July 27, 2003 | Kenneth Ackerman | Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of President James A. Garfield | James Garfield |
August 3, 2003 | Dorothy Height | Open Wide the Freedom Gates: A Memoir | Memoir/Autobiography; National Council of Negro Women |
August 10, 2003 | Gretchen Rubin | Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill: A Brief Account of a Long Life | Winston Churchill |
August 17, 2003 | David Lipsky | Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point | The United States Military Academy |
August 24, 2003 | Adam Bellow | In Praise of Nepotism: A Natural History | Nepotism |
August 31, 2003 | Robert Darnton | George Washington's False Teeth: An Unconventional Guide to the Eighteenth Century | The Enlightenment; The French Revolution; the 18th century |
September 7, 2003 | Michael Parenti | The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome | Julius Caesar; Assassination of Julius Caesar; Ancient Rome |
September 14, 2003 | Erik Larson | The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America | The World's Columbian Exposition; Daniel Burnham; H.H. Holmes |
September 21, 2003 | Eric Rauchway | Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt’s America | Leon Czolgosz; Assassination of William McKinley; Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt |
September 28, 2003 | Victor Davis Hanson | Mexifornia: A State of Becoming | Mexifornia |
October 5, 2003 | David Von Drehle | Triangle: The Fire That Changed America | Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire |
October 12, 2003 | Jessica Stern | Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill | Religious terrorism; Christian terrorism; Islamic terrorism; Jewish terrorism |
October 19, 2003 | Lance Morrow | Evil: An Investigation | Evil |
October 26, 2003 | Jill Jonnes | Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World | Thomas Edison; Nicola Tesla; George Westinghouse; History of electromagnetism |
November 2, 2003 | James Bovard | Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil | Criticism of the War on Terror; Civil liberties in the United States |
November 9, 2003 | Rich Lowry | Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years | Presidency of Bill Clinton |
November 16, 2003 | Michael Moore | Dude, Where's My Country? | Criticism of the Iraq War; Enron scandal |
November 23, 2003 | Tom Coburn | Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders | United States House of Representatives; The Republican Revolution |
November 30, 2003 | Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) | Like No Other Time: The 107th Congress and the Two Years That Changed America | 107th United States Congress |
December 7, 2003 | Richard Pipes | Vixi: Memoirs of a Non-Belonger | Memoir/Autobiography; Harvard University; Soviet Union–United States relations |
December 14, 2003 | Gail Collins | America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines | History of women in the United States |
December 21, 2003 | Matthew Pinsker | Lincoln's Sanctuary: Abraham Lincoln and the Soldiers' Home | President Lincoln's Cottage at the Soldiers' Home |
December 28, 2003 | Carl Cannon | The Pursuit of Happiness in Times of War | Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; Home front |