History with David Rubenstein

David Rubenstein’s skillful questioning of acclaimed writers like Robert A. Caro, Ron Chernow, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and many others effectively takes us behind the scenes, enabling a rare insight into the American story and a real sense of how history gets made.

Jeffrey Frank

26m 40s

After serving for three months as vice president, Harry S. Truman, at age 60, suddenly inherited the White House. How did Truman, a seemingly unprepared provincial, become the steadfast leader who, in the rush of events, helped shape the postwar world?

Episodes

  • Jeffrey Frank: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Jeffrey Frank

    S5 E10 - 26m 40s

    After serving for three months as vice president, Harry S. Truman, at age 60, suddenly inherited the White House. How did Truman, a seemingly unprepared provincial, become the steadfast leader who, in the rush of events, helped shape the postwar world?

  • Fredrik Logevall: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Fredrik Logevall

    S5 E9 - 26m 40s

    John F. Kennedy was one of the most iconic political figures of the 20th century, a man known universally by his initials. From his college days to the end in Dallas, he was fascinated by the nature of political courage and its relationship to democratic governance. How should we understand JFK and his role in US and world politics?

  • Moving soon to WETA Passport

    Candice Millard: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Candice Millard

    S5 E8 - 26m 40s

    Candice Millard, in conversation with David M. Rubenstein, offers an extraordinary account of President Garfield’s momentous, if brief, presidential career, and the legacy left not only by his work but by his death.

  • Marie Arana: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Marie Arana

    S5 E7 - 26m 40s

    In 1960, one out of every 25 people in the United States was of Latino heritage. In 2023, it is one out of five. In 2050, it will be one in three. Latinos are our largest, oldest, most undercounted, fastest growing, and least understood community. Prizewinning author Marie Arana explains who they are and what they have meant to America.

  • Jonathan Darman: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Jonathan Darman

    S5 E6 - 26m 40s

    In popular memory, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the quintessential political “natural.” Yet for all his gifts, as a young man Roosevelt nonetheless lacked depth, empathy, and an ability to think strategically. Those qualities, so essential to his eventual success as president, were skills he acquired during his seven-year journey through illness and recovery.

  • Leslie M. Harris: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Leslie M. Harris

    S5 E5 - 26m 40s

    Many Americans’ knowledge of slavery is largely limited to the antebellum South, but prior to 1827, New York City actually had the largest enslaved population of any city outside of the South. In lower Manhattan, the African Burial Ground alone holds the remains of as many as 20,000 enslaved Blacks.

  • Siddhartha Mukherjee: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Siddhartha Mukherjee

    S5 E4 - 26m 40s

    In the late 1600s, separated by the North Sea, English polymath Robert Hooke and Dutch cloth-merchant Antonie van Leeuwenhoek looked through their handmade microscopes. What they saw introduced a radical concept that swept through biology and medicine: complex living organisms are made up of tiny, self-contained, self-regulating units. Hooke christened them “cells.”

  • Craig L. Symonds: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Craig L. Symonds

    S5 E3 - 26m 40s

    Craig L. Symonds is professor of history emeritus at the United States Naval Academy and the author of Nimitz at War: Command Leadership from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay.

  • Richard Haass: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Richard Haass

    S5 E2 - 26m 40s

    Richard Haass, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens.

  • Beverly Gage: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Beverly Gage

    S5 E1 - 26m 40s

    Beverly Gage is professor of 20th-century American history at Yale University and the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century.

Extras + Features

  • Season 5 Preview: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Season 5 Preview

    S5 - 30s

    Produced by the New York Historical Society, "History with David Rubenstein" explores American history in half-hour conversations with distinguished authors and scholars who tell the country’s diverse stories, and explain why the past matters, how it informs the present, and what it portends for the future.

Schedule

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    History with David Rubenstein

    Jeffrey Frank

    Sunday
    Mar 24

    30 Minutes

    Journalist Jeffrey Frank.
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    History with David Rubenstein

    Ian W. Toll

    Sunday
    Mar 24

    30 Minutes

    Historian and author Ian W. Toll.
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    History with David Rubenstein

    Simon Winchester

    Sunday
    Mar 24

    30 Minutes

    Author Simon Winchester.
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    History with David Rubenstein

    Lien-Hang Nguyen

    Sunday
    Mar 24

    30 Minutes

    Historian and former war refugee Lien-Hang Nguyen.
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    History with David Rubenstein

    Simon Winchester

    Monday
    Mar 25

    30 Minutes

    Author Simon Winchester.
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    History with David Rubenstein

    Lien-Hang Nguyen

    Monday
    Mar 25

    30 Minutes

    Historian and former war refugee Lien-Hang Nguyen.
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    History with David Rubenstein

    Jeffrey Frank

    Friday
    Mar 29

    30 Minutes

    Journalist Jeffrey Frank.
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    History with David Rubenstein

    Jeffrey Frank

    Saturday
    Mar 30

    30 Minutes

    Journalist Jeffrey Frank.
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    History with David Rubenstein

    Ada Ferrer

    Sunday
    Mar 31

    30 Minutes

    Author and historian Ada Ferrer.
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    History with David Rubenstein

    Simon Winchester

    Sunday
    Mar 31

    30 Minutes

    Author Simon Winchester.
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    History with David Rubenstein

    H.W. Brands

    Sunday
    Mar 31

    30 Minutes

    Historian H.W. Brands.
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    History with David Rubenstein

    Manisha Sinha

    Sunday
    Mar 31

    30 Minutes

    Historian Manisha Sinha.
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    History with David Rubenstein

    H.W. Brands

    Monday
    Apr 1

    30 Minutes

    Historian H.W. Brands.
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    History with David Rubenstein

    Manisha Sinha

    Monday
    Apr 1

    30 Minutes

    Historian Manisha Sinha.

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