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C-SPAN Bookshelf

C-SPAN

The C-SPAN Bookshelf podcast feed makes it easy for you to listen to all of the C-SPAN podcast episodes about nonfiction books. Each week we gather episodes from the different C-SPAN podcasts that feature authors talking about history, biography, current events, and culture to make it easier to discover the episodes and listen. If you like nonfiction books, follow this podcast feed so you never miss an episode!

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  • 36 episodes
  • Avg 1 hr 4 min
  • English

Episodes 36

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  • September 20 · 1 hr 9 min

    AW: The American Way of Welfare 

    Chris Pope argued for policies that he believes would improve the current welfare system in the United States. The Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., hosted this event. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • September 15 · 1 hr 12 min

    BN+: Jonathan Jordan, "Ike and Winston

    Jonathan Jordan devotes 544 pages and 57 chapters of his book "Ike and Winston" to telling the story of the friendship between Dwight David Eisenhower and Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill. President Eisenhower lived to be 78 and died in 1969. Sir Winston died four years before that, in 1965, at age 90. Author Jonathan Jordan says: "Churchill could have had his pick of friendship, but he wanted Ike's. In the beginning, he courted Ike for what Ike could do for Britain. The Kansan held the trust of men like Franklin Roosevelt and George C. Marshall. This influence gave Ike the power to destroy or create, and Ike had the gambler's nerve to use that power. London needed a friend like that." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • September 14 · 1 hr 5 min

    Q&A: Kenneth Feinberg, "What Is Life Worth?"

    Eleven days after the attacks on September 11, 2001, Congress passed a law establishing the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund to compensate families who lost loved ones on 9/11. Attorney Kenneth Feinberg, author of "What Is Life Worth?," was chosen to head up the taxpayer-funded effort and was solely responsible for determining how much each family would get paid. In all, 5,500 people received a combined total of $7.1 billion, with the average payout being $2 million. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • September 13 · 1 hr

    ABC: Susan Page on Queen Elizabeth’s Relationships With 13 U.S. Presidents

    Best-selling author and USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page joins David M. Rubenstein to discuss her book about Queen Elizabeth's relationships with 13 U.S. presidents and her biographies of Barbara Bush, Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Walters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • September 13 · 1 hr 10 min

    AW: Stories of Patriotism and Purpose with Martha Raddatz 

    Longtime ABC News war correspondent Martha Raddatz profiled American military service members and their families who have served in the 25 years since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. She was interviewed by San Francisco ABC7 News Anchor, Dan Ashley, at the Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California in May of 2026. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • September 8 · 1 hr 4 min

    BN+: Scott Greenberger, "The Forsaken Founder"

    In the beginning of Scott Greenberger's new book, "The Forsaken Founder," Dawn Davis, publisher of the Simon & Schuster imprint 37 Ink, introduces us to this new history of a mostly unfamiliar name. Davis writes: "Hamilton, Franklin, Washington, Madison. These are names we know." However, she writes that "there was another man in the room at the founding, a prodigy whose contributions were just as essential, whose name has largely been forgotten: Gouverneur Morris. Morris, as the penman of the Constitution, wrote the words "We the people," which are his and his alone. The subtitle to Scott Greenberger's book is "Gouverneur Morris, the Unsung Patriot Who Wrote the Constitution, Stood Up to Slavery, and Survived the Reign of Terror." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • September 7 · 1 hr 5 min

    Q&A: 9/11 Oral Histories

    To mark the 25th anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2001, we present first-hand accounts of that day from first responders, journalists, political figures, and others. You'll hear from New York City firefighter Tim Brown, World Trade Center owner Larry Silverstein, photographer Doug Mills, reporters Ann Compton and Andrea Mitchell, President Bush assistant Anita McBride, Rear Admiral David Thomas, Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD), and F-16 pilot Major Heather Penny. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • September 6 · 1 hr

    ABC: Kai Bird on Roy Cohn, American Scoundrel & American Prometheus

    Pulitzer Prize winner Kai Bird joins David M. Rubenstein to discuss his biography of Roy Cohn, American Scoundrel, and his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus, which inspired the film Oppenheimer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • September 6 · 1 hr 6 min

    AW: Amazon Labor Union Co-Founder, Chris Smalls 

    Chris Smalls told his story of becoming the co-founder of the Amazon Labor Union. He was interviewed by Journalist & Author Karen Attiah at the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • September 1 · 1 hr 4 min

    BN+: Joby Warrick, "The Jackal"

    Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, has been in prison for 32 years in France. He was captured in Sudan on August 14, 1994. In his book titled "The Jackal," Washington Post correspondent Joby Warrick reports on his 2025 meeting with the jailed terrorist in Paris. Carlos told him: "I killed 83 people with my own hand." Reporter Warrick writes that: "Carlos mattered. He was the human face of a dangerous new form of international terrorism that emerged in the 1970s and the 1980s, which became the template for later groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State." The Jackal will be 77 years old on October 12th. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • August 31 · 1 hr 3 min

    New York Times Photographer Doug Mills on Covering the White House

    New York Times staff photographer Doug Mills has won 3 Pulitzer Prizes for his work covering the White House & Washington, Super Bowls, Olympics, and many other major events. He tells us that he's taken over one million photographs of President Trump alone. In our conversation, he talks about some of the events he's covered going back to the Reagan administration. He talks about being in the Oval Office and on Air Force One, photographing the Clinton/Gore campaign in 1992, accompanying President George W. Bush on September 11, 2001, and taking the photograph of the attempted assassination of President Trump in 2024, which won him his third Pulitzer Prize. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • August 30 · 1 hr 5 min

    AW: Joanna Stern's Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything

    Technology reporter Joanna Stern describes the year she spent using artificial intelligence and robots in all aspects of her life. The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, provided this event. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • August 25 · 1 hr 6 min

    BN+: Paul Taylor, "This Is Getting Old"

    Paul Taylor tells his readers: "For the first 25 years, I was a newspaper reporter. For the next 25, a political reformer, a demographer, a pollster, an author, and a public speaker." He's now 77 and has written a memoir titled "This Is Getting Old: Two Boomers and Their Generation at Dusk." Besides Paul Taylor, the other boomer in his book refers to his wife of 57 years, Stefanie. He asked his friend and agent Peter Bernstein (BERN-steen) to find a traditional publisher. His only reward, according to Taylor, "was a collection of lovely rejection notes." Not to be stopped, he would move on to Plan B, self-publishing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • August 24 · 50 min

    Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch Discusses Heroes of 1776

    From the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Neil Gorsuch discusses his children's book, "Heroes of 1776," about the signers of the Declaration of Independence and other, lesser known, revolutionaries who put their life, liberty, and property on the line to gain independence from the British. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • August 23 · 50 min

    After Words: A Woman's-Eye View of the Revolutionary Era

    Historian Molly Beer took a woman's-eye view of the revolutionary era through the life of Angelica Schuyler Church, Alexander Hamilton's sister-in-law. Thomas Jefferson's Monticello hosted this event. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Showing 21–36 of 36 episodes