Air Date: 041406
Subject: Joshua Wolf Shenk: What Everybody Knows
Book: Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness
Guest: Joshua Wolf Shenk
Summary: Everybody knows that Lincoln suffered from depression, right? Joshua Wolf Shenk, author of Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness, takes closer look at what we really know about Lincoln’s temperament.
Brett’s Summary: Gerry and Joshua discuss Lincoln’s two breakdowns as a 20 and 30 something in the 1830s and 1840s. It is interesting to note that Shenk is not so much concerned with WHAT caused Lincoln’s breakdowns in those situations as with Lincoln’s behavior during the breakdowns. As the subtitle indicates, Shenk believes Lincoln managed to control and channel his melancholy and partially shaped his great accomplishments later in life. Examples of Lincoln’s extraordinary ability to put himself in others’ shoes and feel what they were feeling were given.
Civil War Talk Radio airs most Fridays at 12 PM Pacific on World Talk Radio Studio A. Host Gerry Prokopowicz, the History Chair at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, interviews a guest each week and discusses their interest in the Civil War. Most interviews center around a book or books if the guest is an author. Other guests over the years have included public Historians such as park rangers and museum curators,wargamers, bloggers, and even a member of an American Civil War Round Table located in London, England.
In this series of blog entries, I will be posting air dates, subjects, and guests, and if I have time, I’ll provide a brief summary of the program. You can find all of the past episodes I’ve entered into the blog by clicking on the Civil War Talk Radio category. Each program should appear either on or near the date it was first broadcast.
Check out Beyond the Crater: The Petersburg Campaign Online for the latest on the Siege of Petersburg!
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