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In this episode, I'm happy to welcome historian of religion Dr. Matthew Avery Sutton. Matt's newest book is called Chosen Land: How Christianity Made America and Americans Remade Christianity, following the relationship between Christianity and the nation from the arrival of the first Europeans up to Donald Trump's second term in office. Matt is the author of three previous books, along with an edited collection and a documentary history, and he regularly writes about the history of Christianity in America for a general audience. We talked about how he thinks about all those different audiences and how he keeps writing so much despite many personal and professional responsibilities—including seven years as department chair.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Matthew Avery Sutton, Chosen Land: How Christianity Made America and Americans Remade Christianity
• Matthew Avery Sutton, Double Crossed: The Missionaries Who Spied for the United States During the Second World War
• Matthew Avery Sutton, American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism
• Matthew Avery Sutton, Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America
• American Experience: Sister Aimee
• Jane Sherron De Hart, Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Life
• Grant Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture
• David Hollinger
• Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
• John le Carré
• Jill Lepore, These Truths: A History of the United States
• Matthew Avery Sutton, "The antichrist has long haunted American politics. Now it's rearing its head again," The Guardian

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In this episode, host Kate Carpenter is joined by Dr. Rhae Lynn Barnes to talk about book Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment. Rhae Lynn is an assistant professor of history at Princeton University. With meticulous research and piles of evidence, Darkology reveals the widespread and persistent use of amateur blackface minstrelsy across the United States from the Civil War through the early 2000s. Rhae Lynn is also the co-editor of three books, the founder of open-access teaching resource U.S. History Scene, and was featured in and served as an executive advisor for the PBS documentary series Reconstruction.

Researching and writing Darkology took a stunning amount of research, as well as a mental toll, and I'm grateful to Rhae Lynn for talking about how she grappled with all of it, the unusual challenges she faced when thinking about visuals for the book, and much more. Plus, she shares some excellent wisdom for how to keep going even when it seems too hard, or when you don't feel like you belong.

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Mentioned in this episode:

• Rhae Lynn Barnes, Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment
• Rhae Lynn Barnes, Keri Leigh Merritt, and Yohuru Williams, eds., After Life: A Collective History of Loss and Redemption in Pandemic America
• Rhae Lynn Barnes and Catherine Clinton, eds., Roe v. Wade: Fifty Years After
• Rhae Lynn Barnes and Glenda Goodman, eds., American Contact: Objects of Intercultural Encounters and the Boundaries of Book History
• Rhae Lynn Barnes, "Yes, politicians wore blackface. It used to be all-American 'fun.'" The Washington Post
• Maya Angelou's 1992 commencement address at Spelman College, in which she tells her audience "bring your people with you"
• Sandra Cisneros, "I Hate the Iowa Writers Workshop"

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Historian and writer Emily Lieb's professional history is a fascinating one, from crafting textbooks for kids to leaving a job as a professor to become a full-time writer. She taught history and urban studies at Seattle University for more than a decade. Now, in addition to her work as a historian, she also works for the Derfner & Sons writing agency.

Her first book came out in 2025 after many years of research, writing and revision. It's called Road to Nowhere: How a Highway Map Wrecked Baltimore, and it tells the story of a plan to build an expressway through Black, middle-class community in Baltimore, and how even though the road was never built, the plan paved the way for the destruction of a vibrant neighborhood. It's a history that echoes similar ones in cities across the United States, and Emily uses it to tell a fascinating but frustrating, deeply human story about racial inequality and the resistance of determined residents. Emily had a clear vision of how she wanted to tell this history, right down to the kind of book it should be, and you'll learn a lot in this interview from how she got there and her frank approach to writing and editing.

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Mentioned in this episode:

Emily Lieb, Road to Nowhere: How a Highway Map Wrecked Baltimore

Derfner & Sons

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird, the origin of the phrase "shitty first drafts"

Andrew Hartman also praised editor Tim Mennel in episode 69

Calvin Trillin, "Thoughts Brought On By Prolonged Exposure to Exposed Brick"

Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links.