Journalist Jeffrey Frank explores the relationship between Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon and tells the history of two powerful and compelling figures in U.S. politics. His book Ike and Dick: A Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage traces the path of their relationship in a dangerous world and shows why Eisenhower, mortally ill and despite his doubts, supported Nixon’s final attempt to win the White House in 1968—a change influenced by the courtship of Nixon’s daughter by Eisenhower's grandson.

A few months ago British archeologists announced that they'd found what they believed to be the bones of King Richard III beneath a parking lot in Leicester, England. Based on new DNA testing, lead archaeologist Richard Buckley says that they are certain "beyond a reasonable doubt" that the bones belong to Richard III.

Andrea Stuart, British journalist and author of  Sugar in the Blood: A Family's Story of Slavery and Empire (Knopf, 2013), talks about her family's history of slavery in Barbados.

National Book Award-winning author Edward Ball tells the true life/true crime story of the partnership between the murderer who invented the movies and the robber baron who built the railroads. The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded Age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures tells how Eadweard Muybridge, who invented stop-motion photography and his patron Leland Stanford created the modern media age.

"All that I have told in this story is true, down to the last butterfly or flower," claims Marguerite Young in this talk at a 1966 Books and Authors Luncheon. 

When Grand Central Terminal opened in 1913, it immediately became one of the most beautiful and recognizable Manhattan landmarks, and to celebrate its centennial, Sam Roberts of The New York Times looks back at Grand Central's conception, history, and the cultural effects the station has had on busy commuters and tourists. His book Grand Central: How a Train Station Transformed America looks at the way the station spurred suburban expansion and fostered the nation's westward movement via the railroad.

Sarah Colt, director of the documentary “Henry Ford,” and Greg Grandin, professor of history at NYU and author of Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City, discuss the life of Henry Ford, a farm boy who became the most influential American innovator of the 20th century. Ford created the Model T, the most successful car in history, and introduced the groundbreaking five-dollar-a-day wage, ushering in the modern world as we know it. One of the nation’s richest men, he was a hero to many ordinary Americans, although he battled his workers and bullied his own son, despised the wealthy, and blamed Jews for what he deemed society’s degeneration. “Henry Ford” will premiere on American Experience on January 29, 9:00-11:00 p.m. on PBS, in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of Ford’s birth.

Stanely Karnow was not only a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, but a foreign correspondent and television documentarian.  His books include Vietnam: A History, Mao and China: From Revolution to Revolution, and the memoir, Paris in the Fifties -- which prompted his friend, Bernard Kalb, the former CBS reporter, to recall, "Stanley has a great line about how being a journalist is like being an adolescent all your life."  You can hear him speak with Leonard as part of a panel discussion about the accuracy of historical movies from November 1995.

New Yorker writer Margaret Talbot uses the life and career of her father, Lyle Talbot, an early Hollywood star, to tell the story of the rise of popular culture. The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father’s Twentieth Century is a combination of Hollywood history, social history, and family memoir, conjures nostalgia for those earlier eras of 1910s and 1920s small-town America, and the 1930s and 1940s in Hollywood.

Today, as the president takes the oath of office once more, the palpable hope and excitement of Obama's first inauguration has waned. How will President Obama's second inaugural compare to his first, and how does it fit the history of second inaugurals, from Lincoln on forward? Historian and author Kenneth C. Davis explores the history of second inaugurals, and discusses the expectations for President Obama.

As we think about the formality of the upcoming inaugeration on Monday we remember a time in American history, fifty years ago, when a momentous transfer of power occurred without any forethought, without ritual, and without inauguration at all. Lyndon B. Johnson library director Mark UpdeGrove has the story.

John Matteson talks about the writer and a fiery social critic, Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), who was perhaps the most famous American woman of her generation. She was the leading female figure in the transcendentalist movement, wrote a celebrated column of literary and social commentary, served as the first foreign correspondent for an American newspaper, and she authored the first great work of American feminism: Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Matteson tells her story and examines her legacy in his biography of her, The Lives of Margaret Fuller.

Journalist and historian Nick Turse talks about the American war on Vietnamese civilians. His book Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam is based on more than a decade of research in secret Pentagon files and extensive interviews, and reveals that official policies resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded.

Massimo Montanari talks about the phenomenon of food culture, food lore, cooking methods, and eating habits throughout history. In Let the Meatballs Rest, he talks about how humans have cooked over time, the gastronomy of famine, the science of flavors, the customs of the table, and the ever-evolving identity of food.

Jared Diamond, professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, discusses his latest book, The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?, and talks about how we can learn from the differences between modern life and traditional societies that still exist today.

→ EVENT: An Evening with Jared Diamond. Monday, January 07, 2013 6:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. at the New School Tishman Auditorium, Alvin Johnson/J. M. Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th Street. (Sold Out, but information about no-show seating here.)

Charles R. Morris tells the history of the Industrial Revolution in America and explains how, after the Civil War, the United States blew by Great Britain to become the greatest economic power in the world. In The Dawn of Innovation: The First American Industrial Revolution, Morris paints a portrait of a new nation buzzing with the work of creation.

It's been 150 years since the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Historian and novelist A.J. Verdelle talks about what this meant for the millions who were freed.