From the Library of Congress website:

"The origins and legacy of the Federal Writers' Project are the focus of an excerpted film screening and panel discussion."

From the Library of Congress website:

"Alexander von Humboldt achieved cultural hero status in the United States in the second half of the 19th century. His travels, experiments and knowledge transformed Western science. A lecture at the Library of Congress examined the influence and legacy of the German naturalist and explorer."

From the "Littoral," blog of the Key West Literary seminar website:

"This recording from the 2009 Key West Literary Seminar consists of an hourlong conversation between Vidal and Jay Parini, his literary executor, a poet, biographer, and critic. Vidal discusses the influences on his work as a historical novelist, his views on the American educational system, and his admiration for figures including Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. George W. Bush, then serving his final week in office, is the target of particular scorn, as Vidal levels a litany of complaints accusing his administration of 'shredding' the Bill of Rights and striving 'to make lying the national pastime.' In a question-and-answer session, Vidal discusses efforts to bring Tennessee Williams's final play to the public, as well as his feelings on disgraced financier Bernard Madoff and former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin."

From the National Constitution Center website:

"Award-winning New York Times-bestselling author Mark Kurlansky takes us back to the food and eating habits of a younger America. In the 1930s, with the country gripped by the Great Depression and millions of Americans struggling to get by, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Federal Writers' Project under the New Deal as a make-work program for artists and authors. A number of writers, including Zora Neale Hurston and Eudora Welty were dispatched all across America to chronicle the eating habits, traditions, and struggles of local people. The project, called 'America Eats,' was abandoned in the early 1940s because of the World War and was never completed."

To listen to this lecture, scroll to "The Food of a Younger Land," which is the July 1, 2009 post.

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.

Donald L. Miller speaks with four fiction authors—Esmerelda Santiago, Arthur Golden, Charles Johnson, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.—about the challenge of finding narrative in history and the differences between an academic understanding of history and a novelist's understanding of history.

From the Lincoln Online Conference website:

"In this online session, Smithsonian historian Pamela M. Henson examines how the public first heard of President Abraham Lincoln's death and how Lincoln's death was portrayed in popular images. Participants . . . view and listen to the diary of Mary Henry, daughter of Smithsonian Secretary Joseph Henry, as she describes her own reactions and the stories she heard about Lincoln's last moments. Participants . . . compare her diary with news accounts of the assassination, and popular paintings and lithographs of the deathbed scene to uncover what Lincoln's death meant to the American public. Participants . . . also learn how to evaluate primary and secondary sources in a variety of media—a diary, newspapers and visual images, analyze the symbolic meanings attached to important events, and draw conclusions about Lincoln's role in 19th century American ideas. The session will be of interest to teachers and students of history at any level and will be of particular interest to those interested in popular responses to important historical events. The confusion, misinformation, and symbolism surrounding this national trauma can be used to teach students how to critically evaluate information in their own lives."

Free registration is required to access the webcast.

Donald L. Miller, with Pauline Maier; Waldo E. Martin, Jr.; and Stephen Ambrose, looks at the growing tensions, from 1846 to 1861, that finally led to the Civil War. The presentation examines the issue of slavery and its expansion; the Compromise of 1850; the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin; reactions to the Fugitive Slave Act and the U.S. Supreme Court Case Dred Scott vs. Sandford; John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry; and the election of Abraham Lincoln as leading to the South's secession.

Eric Langhorst, Missouri eighth-grade history teacher, reviews the National Archives book Our Documents, which collects 100 political documents chosen as the most important in U.S. history.

Richard Miller reads from the writings of Charles Warren Stoddard and Robert Louis Stevenson, on their meeting with each other in San Francisco and their impressions of the city's Rincon Hill.