Read Beat (...and repeat)
If you're like me, you like to know things but how much time to invest? That's the question. Here's the answer: Read Beat--Interviews with authors of new releases. These aren't book reviews but short (about 25-30 minutes on the average) chats with folks that usually have taken a lot of time to research a topic, enough to write a book about it. Hopefully, there's a topic or two that interests you. I try to come up with subjects that fascinate me or I need to know more about. Hopefully, listeners will agree. I'm Steve Tarter, former reporter for the Peoria Journal Star and a contributor to WCBU-FM, the Peoria public radio outlet, from 20202 to 2024. I post regularly on stevetarter.substack.com.
Episodes
230 episodes
"Launching Liberty" by Doug Most
When it comes to World War II, you often hear about "the arsenal of democracy," a characterization of U.S. factories that produced all the food, medical supplies, tanks, planes, and tractors that helped win the war.In Launching Liber...
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Season 5
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Episode 17
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28:10
"Wisdom of the Marsh" by Clare Howard (Photographs by David Zalaznik)
If draining the swamp strikes you as a good idea, you're not listening to Clare Howard and David Zalaznik.The pair, former journalists with the Peoria Journal Star, have just written their second book extolling the benefits of w...
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Season 5
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Episode 16
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27:24
"Hollywood and Hitler: 1933-1939" by Thomas Doherty
Hollywood came under scrutiny after World War II as the fear of Communism gripped the country.The Cold War came to Hollywood in 1947 when the House Un-American Activities Committee held a notorious round of hearings over possible Communi...
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Season 5
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Episode 15
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34:10
"Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life"
Tiffany Jenkins takes a look at privacy in her new book, Strangers and Intimates. As Jenkins points out, the whole concept of privacy is a relatively recent development. She points to an article published in 1890 by Louis Brandeis and ...
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Season 5
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Episode 14
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29:24
"Eating Up Route 66" by T. Lindsay Baker
T. Lindsay Baker’s Eating Up Route 66 is not your typical Mother Road guidebook. It’s a history—with business notes, photographs, and recipes.Baker, a retired history professor from Texas has written plenty about the American We...
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Season 5
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Episode 13
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28:48
"The Devil Reached Toward the Sky" by Garrett Graff
If you haven’t read an oral history before, it’s like flashing through comments that sometimes follow an online article. Only with a difference: you don’t see those back-and-forth arguments that always seem to break out among those commenting.<...
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Season 5
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Episode 12
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30:39
"America America" by Greg Grandin
When you get through reading America America by Greg Grandin, a Yale University history professor, you have to wonder what might have been when it comes to U.S. policies regarding Latin America over the years.Grandin figures tha...
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Season 5
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Episode 11
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34:44
"The World's Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant" by Liza Tully
Liza Tully’s previous literary effort was a grim thriller set in Siberia. “It was a suspense novel, but I realized it was very dark,” she said.The author, who wrote Finding Katarina M under the pseudonym Elisabeth Elo, decided t...
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Season 5
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Episode 10
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27:01
"Nightmare in the Pacific" by Michael Doyle
Michael Doyle's Nightmare in the Pacific is a book about an aspect of World War II you probably haven’t heard before: the saga of Artie Shaw, the big-band leader who took his group on a whirlwind tour of the Pacific in 1942-1943.
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Season 5
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Episode 9
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27:22
"The Age of Choice" by Sophia Rosenfeld
A new book looks at the short history of the freedom of choice.Some of us have more choices than we’ve ever had—from what to buy and where to live and whom to love, even what to believe--but how did that come about? That’s the basis of t...
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Season 5
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Episode 8
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26:19
"Fallen Tigers" by Daniel Jackson
China is sometimes described as the forgotten theater of war during World War II. But it’s unlikely that the Chinese people have forgotten their eight-year war with Japan, a ferocious engagement that began four years before the bombing of Pearl...
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Season 5
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Episode 7
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31:10
"Play This Book Loud" by Joe Bonomo
Play This Book Loud is the literary equivalent of a trip to the record store, that enchanting experience of searching for something new from something old. Joe Bonomo (pronounced Bo-know-mo, not the Turkish Taffy), an Engli...
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Season 5
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Episode 6
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25:13
"Death of the Daily News" by Andrew Conte
McKeesport, Pa. has been through a lot in recent decades. Andrew Conte tells the story in his book, Death of the Daily News. The town, located 20 miles from Pittsburgh, once manufactured about 70 percent of all steel tubing used in the...
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Season 5
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Episode 5
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28:25
"The Portable Ingersoll" by Tom Malone
Robert Ingersoll lived in Peoria from 1857 to 1877. He was hailed as the greatest orator of his time, the latter half of the 19th century. While Ingersoll attracted huge crowds, he had plenty of critics who called him “the Great Inf...
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Season 5
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Episode 4
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28:23
"Red Scare" by Clay Risen
Anti-Communist feelings reached a fever pitch in the United States following World War II. The big war was won, but the Cold War was on.Clay Risen, a New York Times reporter, addresses this point in his fourth book, Red Scar...
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Season 5
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Episode 3
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27:34
“Building Bridges” by Douglas Bristol Jr.
World War II is a never-ending source of history. Decades after the conflict’s conclusion, research and examination continue as we seek to understand how we got to where we are today.In Building Bridges, Douglas Bristol examines...
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Season 5
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Episode 2
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28:46
"To Die With Such Men" by Shannon Monaghan
Shannon Monaghan is a military historian whose last book, A Quiet Company of Dangerous Men, offered an account of select British special operations unit members who were so important during World War II.This time around, Monagha...
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Season 5
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Episode 1
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29:55
"Pacific Atrocities Education" by Jenny Chan
World War II may have ended 80 years ago, but it’s still happening for Jenny Chan, a 2012 University of Illinois graduate.Chan is president and founder of Pacific Atrocities Education, a non-profit based in San Francisco that churns out ...
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Season 4
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Episode 51
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22:11
"Welcome to Florida" by Craig Pittman
Craig Pittman is one writer who doesn’t have to spend a lot of time digging up story ideas. As a 30-year veteran of the Tampa Bay Times and now a reporter for the Florida Phoenix, Pittman gets tips online or by phone as well a...
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Season 4
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Episode 50
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27:46
"Southern News, Southern Politics" by Rob Christensen
Rob Christensen’s new book, Southern News, Southern Politics (University of North Carolina Press), is more than the history of the newspaper, the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., described at one point by a politician as ...
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Season 4
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Episode 49
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29:50
"Baseball's First Superstar" by Alan Gaff
When Christy Mathewson burst upon the scene with the New York Giants in 1900, baseball had a less-than-perfect image. It was a rowdy game played by roughnecks known for their consumption of alcohol and chewing tobacco, said Alan Gaff, author of...
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Season 4
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Episode 48
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29:58
"Mrs. Cook & the Klan" by Tom Chorneau
True crime accounts are all the rage these days. But Tom Chorneau didn’t want to just add another cold case to the national docket.Instead, the unsolved murder of Myrtle Cook in 1925 is related to political forces flowing through the sta...
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Season 4
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Episode 47
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27:57
"Rebranding the Western: A History of Comics and the Mythic West" by William Grady
How did you learn about the American West? Books came first. Reading material included notorious dime novels that made legends of Buffalo Bill and Jesse James. Newspapers and magazines, meanwhile, focused on the American West in the 19th centur...
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Season 4
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Episode 46
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32:51
Pink Cars & Pocketbooks: How American Women Bought Their Way into the Driver's Seat" by Jessica Brockmole
Chrysler released a special edition of the Dodge Royal Lancer that Chrysler in 1955 called LaFemme. Marketed as “a car for the modern woman,” the model offered a pink-and-white color scheme along with matching accessories. There was only one pr...
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Season 4
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Episode 45
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31:52
"Maya Wisdom and the Survival of Our Planet" by Lisa Lucero
Much is made of the temples and striking artwork of the ancient Maya. Justifiably. Ever since U.S. travel writer John Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood explored the ruins of Copan in Honduras, publishing Incidents of Travel i...
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Season 4
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Episode 44
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27:59
