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Fashion matters. Clothes both tell a story about power, prestige, and privilege, and can serve as important means of critiquing and subverting these very same things. Richard Thompson Ford joins host Richard Aldous to discuss all this, along with his new book, Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History.

Why is it that some small countries do so well at tackling large, difficult problems that trip up their larger competitors? R. James Breiding joins host Richard Aldous to discuss his new book Too Small To Fail: Why Some Small Nations Outperform Larger Ones and How They Are Reshaping the World.

"History from below” is usually an effort at social history seen through statistics and figures. Our guest this week, Emma Rothschild, takes a different approach in her new book, An Infinite History: The Story of a Family in France Over Three Centuries, by recounting a vast narrative at times resembling a period novel. What does this story tell us about the events that transpired, about the nature of time and history, and about what should matter to us today in an increasingly atomized world?

An unassuming high-school dropout, the son of Holocaust survivors, Bob Gersony became the U.S. government’s most intrepid researcher and reporter, a humanitarian icon who never lost sight of the importance of reconciling values with national interests. Bestselling author Robert D. Kaplan joins Richard Aldous to discuss human rights, activism, realism, and his new book, The Good American: The Epic Life of Bob Gersony, the U.S. Government’s Greatest Humanitarian.

Congress is in a bad way. Why is this the case, when all the instruments for its revival are literally within its grasp? What can we do to encourage change? And will the Biden era move the needle? The American Enterprise Institute’s Kevin Kosar joins host Richard Aldous to discuss all this, as well as a new volume he has edited, Congress Overwhelmed: The Decline of Congressional Capacity and Prospects for Reform.

With the transfer of power to President Joe Biden complete, American Purpose Editorial Board member Larry Diamond joins host Richard Aldous to take the temperature of American democracy. While there was plenty to lose sleep over, is there cause for optimism about American democracy? What kind of reforms are still necessary? And how is the next generation of young Americans thinking about the challenges? Tune in for the discussion, and read Larry Diamond’s Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, now in paperback.

How does writing history influence the future? How did Enlightenment thinkers help prepare the ground for Empire? And how can we rescue the Enlightenment project to build a better future? This week, Priya Satia of Stanford University joins our host Richard Aldous to discuss all this, as well as her new book Time’s Monster: How History Makes History.

Is liberal democracy the foundation of a lasting world order, or should we be constructing a world order to help fragile democracies thrive? And after a rough few years for liberal democracy around the globe, what are the chances that such an order can be built? G. John Ikenberry joins host Richard Aldous to discuss all this, as well as his new book, A World Safe for Democracy on the first episode of 2021.

Project Apollo captured the world’s imagination, and as a feat of “soft power” public diplomacy, it has few peers in the history of mankind, and has not been matched since. With hopes expressed that President Biden’s election can start to bring the world together after several years of polarization, Smithsonian curator Teasel Muir-Harmony joins Richard Aldous to discuss her new book, Operation Moonglow: A Political History of Project Apollo.

Is the America we have today, the America that elected Donald Trump and is still struggling to move on from his term in office, the country our Founding Fathers envisioned? And just what is it that this illustrious group really thought they were building? Pulitzer Prize winning author Thomas E. Ricks joins host Richard Aldous to discuss his new book, First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country.

To paraphrase Henry Kissinger, "Who the heck is James Baker?” For a quarter-century, from the end of Watergate to the aftermath of the Cold War, no Republican won the presidency without his help or ran the White House without his advice. Susan Glasser and Peter Baker join our host Richard Aldous to discuss their new book, The Man Who Ran Washington, a biography of George H. W. Bush's legendary White House chief of staff and Secretary of State, and a rumination about a Washington that perhaps no longer exists.

What’s so special about the special relationship? Was it built on anything more than Winston Churchill’s charisma and cunning? What can we learn about the history of the European project by studying its contours? And is it doomed after Brexit? Ian Buruma, author, historian, and a professor at Bard College, joins our host Richard Aldous to discuss all this, as well as his new book, The Churchill Complex: The Curse of Being Special, from Winston and FDR to Trump and Brexit.

Conservatism. It arose out of the ashes of the French Revolution. Margaret Thatcher famously denied she was an adherent. And today, it is taking yet another new shape as the world changes at a breathtaking pace. Edmund Fawcett, a correspondent for The Economist for more than three decades, joins host Richard Aldous to discuss his new book, Conservatism: The Fight for a Tradition, a companion volume to his earlier volume on liberalism.

Codes of honor. Ethics. Values. The rough-and-tumble of American electoral politics. And the fateful choice of Sarah Palin as VP pick. Mark Salter, the late Senator John McCain’s speechwriter, aide, and close confidant, joins host Richard Aldous to discuss his new book, The Luckiest Man: Life With John McCain.

Francis Fukuyama, chairman of the board of American Purpose and the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, has published a new UK edition of his famous book, The End of History and the Last Man, accompanied with a new foreword. He joined host Richard Aldous to discuss how his seminal work has aged, the challenges liberalism is facing today from both the left and the right, and why now is the perfect time to start a new magazine.

In her book The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution, published this year by Harvard University Press, historian Lindsay M. Chervinsky explains why George Washington came to convene his cabinet, how he used it, and how later presidents adapted the institution. Chervinsky formerly worked as a historian at the White House Historical Association, and has been a scholar-in-residence at the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies at Iona College, a senior fellow at the International Center for Jefferson Studies, and a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. In this episode, she discusses her book with Bookstack host Richard Aldous.

Charles A. Kupchan is a professor in the School of Foreign Service and the Government Department at Georgetown University. He joins Bookstack host Richard Aldous to discuss his book Isolationism: A History of America's Efforts to Shield Itself from the World, published by Oxford University Press in October 2020.