1 rich Libsyn https://www.libsyn.com 90 600 Welcome back to THE HISTORIANS — the series here on History Shorts where I sit down with two leading historians for an unscripted conversation about the questions that have shaped how we understand our past. We love turning history into a one-man show. One name on the cover. One figure on the horse. One genius who saw it all and did it alone. But look two inches to the left and there is almost always a crowd. In this episode of The Historians, H.W. Brands and Hampton Sides take up that tension. Brands has written the biographies we reach for when we want the man himself — Roosevelt, Grant, Franklin, Reagan. Sides has put us inside the moments that get remembered as one person’s story — Kit Carson, Captain Cook, the Marines at Chosin. Both of them know how a cover gets made, and both of them know what the cover leaves out. The conversation asks whether the lone-hero story still mostly holds, or whether we keep giving one person credit for a sergeant, a translator, a wife, a ship’s crew, a supply line, a Native nation, a political machine. They talk about what is already waiting in the sources when you sit down to write, what you have to embrace or resist to make the story move, and why readers still buy the one-man version. No script. No debate. No panel. Just two writers who have lived with these figures, talking about the myth and the crowd. H.W. Brands is the author of biographies of Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan, among many other books on American history. Hampton Sides is the author of Blood and Thunder, Ghost Soldiers, Hellhound on His Trail, In the Kingdom of Ice, On Desperate Ground, and The Wide Wide Sea. 🎙️ History Shorts is a daily history podcast hosted by historian and author of Eight Days in August, Peter Zablocki. New episodes every day. ⭐ Leave a review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/history-shorts/id1717345209?action=write-review 🎵 Follow on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4CnKo8pKZNR63aMyNuRz4D ☕ Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/HistoryShortsPodcast ▶️ Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@HistoryShortsPodcast 🔗 Website: https://www.historyshortspodcast.com History Shorts https://www.historyshortspodcast.com <iframe title="Libsyn Player" style="border: none" src="//html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/43435539/height/90/theme/custom/thumbnail/yes/direction/forward/render-playlist/no/custom-color/88AA3C/" height="90" width="600" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen></iframe> https://assets.libsyn.com/secure/content/208022749