The History of Literature

United States President Abraham Lincoln and his assassin John Wilkes Booth were both deeply immersed in Shakespeare's works. And yet, the conclusions they reached about how best to end tyranny--a feature of both Macbeth and Julius Caesar--could not have been more different. As James Shapiro (

Henry David Thoreau was not a traditional Christian, and yet he was a deeply, profoundly religious man. In this episode, Jacke talks to Lydia Willsky-Ciollo about her book Wildness: Henry David Thoreau and the Making of an American Theology, which describes how T...

The kiss! What could be more romantic? And yet, as historian Katie Barclay discovered when writing her book The Kiss: A History of Passion and Power, she found non-romantic kisses to be even more fascinating. In this episode, Jacke kicks ...

After reading an email from a listener in Ghana, Jacke talks to Sonja Tiernan about her book Eva Gore-Booth: Irish Radical Poet, Rebel, and Reformer, which tells the story of a young woman who cast aside her aristocratic origins to champi...

After discussing a news article detailing the rise of "hot literati," Jacke talks to biographer Glenda Norquay (Robert Louis Stevenson: A Critical Life) about the amazing life of Robert Louis Stevenson, the Scottish author of classic work...