American History Tellers

Growing up in the Salinas Valley of Northern California, John Steinbeck dreamed of becoming a professional writer. In his youth he took on odd jobs and worked amongst ranch hands and migrant workers, who would inspire some of his greatest work, including The Grapes of Wrath. Published in 1939, the book captured the struggles of everyday Americans during the Great Depression, and Steinbeck became famous for his empathetic portrayal of the working class.
Steinbeck would go on to become one of the most decorated authors of the 20th Century, winning the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature, but he was plagued by marital struggles and chronic illness that threatened to cut short his writing career.

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In the late 1850s, a young man named Samuel Clemens started out piloting steamboats on the Mississippi River. Within a few years, he embarked on a writing career, adopting the pen name that became famous: Mark Twain. Armed with a wry sense of humor and a natural flair for storytelling, Twain gained wide acclaim for his short stories, travel sketches, and novels.
In 1885, he published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a story of two runaways on a quest for freedom. It would become one of the most celebrated, and controversial, books in American literature. But at the height of his popularity, his risky business ventures and his critiques of American policy abroad threatened to ruin his legacy.

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In 1840, eight-year-old Louisa May Alcott moved to the small town of Concord, Massachusetts with her family. There, she spent her days wandering through the woods, putting on plays with her sisters, and learning from famed writers and philosophers such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
For years, Alcott struggled to achieve success as a writer. Then in 1868, she drew inspiration from her youth to write her beloved coming-of-age novel Little Women. ​​By exploring the aspirations and challenges faced by young women, she defied 19th century norms that sought to confine women in both life and literature.

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In February 1826, 17-year-old Edgar Allan Poe was a promising student at the University of Virginia. But within a few months, gambling debts forced him to abandon his studies. It was just one of many setbacks Poe endured in a life marked by financial struggle, alcoholism, and personal tragedy.
But Poe launched a remarkable career in writing, helping to establish American literature with a bold, new voice. From short stories including “The Fall of the House of Usher,” to the poem that made him famous, “The Raven,” he transformed the horror genre by delving into the dark recesses of the human subconscious and pushing the boundaries of fiction and verse.

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In the aftermath of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, authorities faced mounting pressure to clean up Chicago and take down the violent mobsters who overran the city – most notoriously, Al Capone. The federal government took on the challenge, pursuing Capone relentlessly. In the end, Capone did go down – not for murder, but for tax evasion. And since Capone’s conviction in the 1930s, this unorthodox charge has been used repeatedly to bring down otherwise “ungettable” criminals.

To discuss how the feds finally closed in on Capone, Lindsay speaks with Jonathan Eig, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Get Capone: The Secret Plot That Captured America’s Most Wanted Gangster.
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