In the years right before World War II started in 1939, Winston Churchill had been out of government. However, even though he was far from power, his country home, Chartwell, became Churchill's headquarters of his campaign against Nazi Germany. Catherine Carter is a curator and historian who has managed the house and collections at Chartwell. Her new book is called "Churchill's Citadel: Chartwell and the Gatherings Before the Storm." Catherine Carter reveals how Churchill used Chartwell, which is 35 miles from London, as his base during the pre-war years to collect key intelligence about Germany's preparation for war.

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National Geographic explorer Tara Roberts travels the world documenting underwater wrecks of some of the 12,000 slave ships that operated during the Atlantic slave trade. In her memoir, "Written in the Waters," Roberts talks about the training and preparation required to undertake the diving missions and the work done by the nonprofit organization that she dives with, Diving with a Purpose, which is primarily composed of African American divers.      

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Journalist Kevin Fagan reports on the underlying issues of homelessness in America, tracing the experiences of two unhoused persons in San Francisco. He was interviewed by former Obama Administration HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan.

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80 years ago, in early 1945, 15-year-old Anne Frank died from a typhus epidemic in the Nazi German-based concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. As the 7500 square foot replica of the Otto Frank family secret annex in Amsterdam opens in New York City, writer Ruth Franklin is publishing her new biography called "The Many Lives of Anne Frank." According to Franklin, the title of the book refers to the multiplicity of ways in which Anne Frank has been understood and misunderstood. Anne Frank's diary is one of the best-selling non-fiction books of all time. Reportedly over 30 million copies have been sold.

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Former mafia associate Louis Ferrante talks about "Borgata: Clash of Titans," volume two of his history of the American mafia that covers the years 1960-1985. In part two of this two-part interview, Mr. Ferrante further details what he says was the mafia's involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy and discusses Robert Kennedy's battle with mobster Carlos Marcello (mar-CELL-oh), boss of the New Orleans Mafia from the late 1940s to the early 1980s.  

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Professor Eve Ewing argues that education systems in the United States have been designed to reinforce racial inequality at the expense of Black & Native children. She's interviewed by Associate Press editor Alia Wong.

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A little over 100 years ago was the beginning of what's often been called the Great War. World War I had military casualties of over nine million and millions more of civilians. Professor Sean McMeekin of Bard College, located in New York State, has written 9 books since 2003 on subjects that include German history, Russian history, the Ottoman Empire, communism, World War II, and one titled "July 1914." This last book is the focus of our conversation with Professor McMeekin. World War I was triggered in late June of 1914 by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo, Bosnia. They were gunned down by a Serbian 19-year-old by the name of Gavrilo Princip.

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Former mafia associate Louis Ferrante talks about "Borgata: Clash of Titans," volume two of his history of the American mafia that covers the years 1960-1985. In part one of a two-part interview, he gives a history of the mafia in America, discusses Attorney General Robert Kennedy's war against organized crime and the involvement that he says the mafia had in the 1960 election and 1963 assassination of President John Kennedy. Mr. Ferrante also shares stories about his time as a heist expert for the Gambino crime family, which led to his imprisonment in 1994.    

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Former president of Anheuser-Busch Sales & Distribution Company Anson Frericks offers his insight to the Bud Light controversy, declining sales & its future. He was interviewed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow Richard Morrison.

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David Levering Lewis is an American historian and retired professor from New York University. He's the author of 12 books and the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for his two volumes on the life of W.E.B. DuBois. At 88 years old, Prof. Lewis has written a memoir that, as he says, focuses on "a past I barely knew." He a native of St. Louis, MO, with degrees from Fisk, Columbia, and the London School of Economics. The title of Prof. Lewis' latest book is "The Stained Glass Window: A Family History as the American Story, 1790-1958." In his prologue, he writes: "Africans in America had been both unique victims and unimpeachable critics of a nation corrupted at its inception by a political economy anchored to slavery." 

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Reginald Dwayne Betts originally read Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail" – King's defense of the use of nonviolent civil disobedience in the fight for civil rights – while in solitary confinement in prison. Mr. Betts, who served over 8 years for a carjacking he committed when he was 16, went on to become an award-winning poet and graduate of Yale Law School. He has written the Afterword for a new commemorative edition of Dr. King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail." Mr Betts talks about the book and the work done by Freedom Reads, an organization he founded that builds libraries in prisons.          

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