David Ward, historian at the National Portrait Gallery, gives an overview of the life of Albert Einstein, in relation to a portrait of the scientist by Max Westfield.

From the Kansas State Historical Society website:

"The United States didn't immediately send soldiers to fight in World War I, but that didn't stop Americans from volunteering. In this episode we hear the story behind a nurse's uniform worn by Ethelyn Myers, whose career took her from small-town Kansas to the battlefields of Europe."

From the National Constitution Center website:

"The National Constitution Center welcomes Visiting Scholar A.E. Dick Howard, White Burkett Miller Professor of Law and Public Affairs at the University of Virginia School of Law, for a discussion about the founding periods in France and America, including how the U.S. constitutional experience influenced the debates on the first French Constitution and the divergence in French and American constitutionalism after those early years."

To listen to this lecture, scroll to the August 3rd, 2009, program.

From the Library of Congress website:

"The John W. Kluge Center held a panel discussion on 'Building the Bomb, Fearing Its Use: Nuclear Scientists, Social Responsibility and Arms Control, 1946-1996.' Speakers were Mary Palevsky, Black Mountain Institute fellow at the Kluge Center, along with Hugh Gusterson, William Lanouette and Martin J. Sherwin. After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, statesmen and scientists confronted the unprecedented destructive power of nuclear weapons, according to Palevsky. Early postwar efforts for international control of atomic energy failed, and by the mid-1950s both American and Soviet scientists had invented the hydrogen bomb, a weapon of greater destructive potential than the atomic bomb. Yet arms-control efforts were ongoing even during the Cold War's darkest days. Within a year of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, prohibiting nuclear tests in the atmosphere, underwater and in outer space.

International treaty negotiations directly affected the daily lives of thousands of American scientists, engineers and support personnel who designed, built and conducted the tests of new weapon designs. Some of the questions that these scientists and statesmen encountered still exist today, and those questions are the basis for the panel discussion."

The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery's Laura Simo discusses a life portrait of George Washington by English artist Robert Edge Pine (1730-1788). Simo focuses on Pine's life, looking at his sympathy for Americans and their cause that brought him to the newborn U.S. in 1784 and the events that brought him to paint Washington's portrait.

Kansas Museum of History curators look at a story cloth, brought to Kansas by Hmong refugees from Laos. The cloth depicts the escape of Hmong from Laos across the Mekong River, fleeing attacks by the communist group Pathet Lao, after the U.S. military pulled out of Laos in 1974. The cloth, designed to appeal to a Western audience, represents a piece of Vietnam War history and a reminder of global contact and the impact of international relations on the lives of individuals.

University of Iowa professor of history Marshall T. Poe interviews historian and author Giles MacDonogh on his book After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation, which examines Allied atrocities in Germany following the end of World War II, including atrocities committed by Russians, Americans, British, and French.

From the Maine Humanities Council website:

"Donna Cassidy is Professor of American & New England Studies and Art History at the University of Southern Maine. Her most recent book, Marsden Hartley: Race, Region, and Nation, led to her current research on U.S. artists in Quebec and Atlantic Canada from 1890 to 1940. In this talk, co-sponsored by the Yarmouth and North Yarmouth historical societies, Cassidy describes the travels of those artists in the region, and discusses the influence of the landscape and people on their work."

Donald L. Miller, along with a range of other historians and presenters, overviews contemporary U.S. history, from 1972 to 2000, briefly touching on the Cold War and its end, economic ups and downs, and the rise of AIDS and of personal computers. The presentation ends with a discussion on interpreting events as they happen, and on the difficulties of remembering history and engaging with the present in a media age.

Donald L. Miller, with Waldo E. Martin, Jr., and Virginia Scharff, looks at the 1960s in the U.S., including the taking-off of the Civil Rights Movement, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson's views of the movement, the Vietnam War and protest that arose against it, and the Watergate scandal and Richard Nixon's resignation.