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Yep, it's happening. I'm getting the band back together, and reviving the Power Line Classic Podcast format, featuring me in conversation with individual guests of note, though from time to time we may get the Power Line Gang itself to appear on some special legacy episodes. This has been a while in the making, partly by popular demand from listeners who liked our interviews.
Among other things, I want to do a series of episodes between now and July 4, and perhaps after July 4, with some of the authors of the flood of new books appearing right now coinciding with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. I've written about a few of these for the New York Post, and will have more installments to come.
My first guest for the revived show is one of my favorite current historians who appeared once before: David T. Beito, who is emeritus professor of history at the University of Alabama. His latest book, which I mentioned in one of my New York Post features late last year, is FDR: A New Political Life. This book is a sequel to a previous book that reviewed the massive violations of civil liberties that occurred during the New Deal—transgressions that have been largely airbrushed out of the sympathetic liberal histories of FDR and the New Deal.
David's new book takes a broader look at the whole FDR story, and concludes with a blunt assessment: "Franklin D. Roosevelt was not a great president nor even a good one. The reasons for making this assessment is long"
