Notre Dame, a central location in David McCullough's latest book (© iStockphoto.com/contour99)

Listeners love a good history book recommendation, but it’s not every day we devote a whole podcast to one work — and interview the author while we’re at it! Last week, Deblina and I spoke with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough about his latest book, “The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris.”

The featured expats aren’t exactly your expected crowd: Mr. McCullough’s work starts long after the enlightened Franklin/Jefferson era and ends long before the post-war literary scene of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein. It covers the middle years, 1830 to 1900, and focuses on men and women, who, as Mr. McCullough describes them, “were ambitious to excel in their chosen careers […] to be the best they could possibly be.”

Those ambitious travelers also happen to pop up in our podcast a lot. A few chapters in, I started a running list of everyone who had appeared in an old episode: the Americans included P.T. Barnum, Sen. Charles Sumner, John Singer Sargent, Mark Twain, Stanford White and Louisa May Alcott. The resident Frenchmen included Louis-Philippe and Louis-Napoleon (thanks Bourbon series!). There were even familiar fictional characters like Robinson Crusoe, and podcast-featured paintings like Géricault’s “The Raft of the Medusa.”

Our talk continues into a second episode, but I figured we should kick off our promised book-club-type discussion now. Start sharing, and we’ll certainly follow-up with our thoughts on both the book and the interview.

You can also join in by posting on the official Stuff You Missed in History Class Facebook page or on Twitter.

Stanley, Livingstone and crocodiles all feature prominently in this recent episode!

Since January, I’ve been brooding over a whole stable of Royal Geographic Society explorers — the result of reading David Grann’s “The Lost City of Z” over the Christmas holiday. Percy Fawcett, John Hanning Speke, Richard Francis Burton … all podcast-worthy adventurers with strange stories and interesting lives.

But I thought Stanley and Livingstone, arguably two of the most famous names in Victorian exploration, ought to come first. After Dr. David Livingstone, longtime missionary and celebrity explorer, dropped off the map in search the Nile’s source, journalist Henry Morton Stanley went looking. Their unlikely meeting made international news and stocked Stanley’s home paper the New York Herald with headlines for a year.

But interestingly, the whole story — the journey, the crocodile attacks, the malarial fevers — boils down to one line: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” It’s so iconic that even if you don’t know the story, or you’re not even totally sure who Dr. Livingstone is, you still know the line. So while covering the trek and the Ujiji meeting of the two men, Deblina and I also spent some time talking about Stanley’s famous greeting. (Actually, we reenacted it!)

But it got me thinking about other famous lines in history. I asked listeners which ones they thought were on a similar scale. We got a few movie lines of course, but also some of the real deal:

• “I shall return.” — Gen. Douglas MacArthur
• “NUTS” — Gen. Anthony Clement McAuliffe
• “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” – Sir Winston Churchill
• “Just hold the phone and I’ll let you talk to one of the b******s” — Maj. Audie Murphy
• “Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.” — Friedrich Schiller
• “From where the sun now stands I shall fight no more forever.” — Nez Perce chief Joseph
• “The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.” — Michelangelo
• ‎”Veni, Vidi, Vici.” — Julius Caesar
• ‎”I have nothing to declare but my genius.” — Oscar Wilde
• “I have a dream.” — Martin Luther King Jr. (to which listener Jennifer added “his voice alone is inspiring!”)

‎Have any others?

You can keep up with me through the official Stuff You Missed in History Class Facebook page and on Twitter.

Caravaggio's "Bacchus" during the 2010 show at the Scuderie Del Quirinale (Franco Origlia/Getty Images)

While researching our episode on Caravaggio, I couldn’t help but think of Lady Caroline Lamb’s assessment of another tortured artist, Lord Byron, famously called “mad, bad and dangerous to know.”

Caravaggio was dangerous to know; in fact, his rap sheet was long enough for us to toss the offenses back and forth like a ball on a pallacorda court. Ultimately, of course, it all caught up with him when the series of brawls, infractions and artichoke assaults culminated in murder and flight.

But Caravaggio was also an immensely talented artist, and it surprised me to learn that immediately following his mysterious death, he was pretty much forgotten. Clearly his style had a robust life (an entire school of imitators became known as the Caravaggisti), but the man himself became obscure enough that we forgot where his grave was and lost his bones. The resurgence didn’t start until the early 20th century, likely in part because modern eyes appreciated the photolike quality of his paintings. Since then, he’s reached a type of apotheosis: two major exhibits in the past year, plus a spat of art world controversies.

We’ve also heard from lots of his devoted fans. Listener Emmy wrote in to say that while she had to drag her brother “kicking and screaming” to one of the shows last summer, “once he was there and saw the exhibit, he was hooked”! Paige on Facebook wrote that “Caravaggio is my [second] love, after Botticelli. I changed all of my computer desktops (at work and at home) to Caravaggio paintings yesterday after your podcast.” Paige, as long as it’s not Holofernes’ decapitated head, I’m down with that.

We see that sword, Caravaggio. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

You can keep up with me through the official Stuff You Missed in History Class Facebook page and on Twitter.

Making wine the old-fashioned way. (Tim Boyle/Newsmakers/Getty Images)

Remember the really, really old shoe Deblina and I discussed on our year-end discoveries podcast? The one that made doctoral student Diana Zardaryan, the woman who found it, utter what was also perhaps the best quote of 2010: “To find a shoe has always been my dream”?

Well now, from the same Armenian cave that contained the 5,500-year-old lace-up moccasin (the world’s oldest leather shoe) comes a new discovery: evidence of the world’s oldest winery. According to a study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science in January, researchers have found preserved grape vines, skins and seeds, plus some of the tools of winemaking, like fermentation and storage vessels and a press for stomping grapes. Shards of cups have also tested positive for malvidin, a chemical calling card of red wine.

All together, it’s the “earliest, most reliable evidence of wine production,” according to archeologist Gregory Areshian of the University of California, Los Angeles, and “for the first time, we have a complete archaeological picture of wine production dating back 6,100 years.” (That intervening 600 years between press and shoe ruled out my initial assumption that some poor grape-stomper lost his shoe in the muck!)

One strange point, though: The grapes and equipment were all found near a burial site, so it’s possible that the winemaking had ritualistic significance. So far, 20 burials have been located nearby, some even containing drinking cups for one last symbolic toast.

(There’s loads more interesting information on the discovery and the history of winemaking in James Owen’s article for National Geographic News.)

You can keep up with me through the official Stuff You Missed in History Class Facebook page and on Twitter.

Slave uprisings continued long after the Stono Rebellion. This engraving shows Nat Turner's 1831 revolt in Virginia. (MPI/Getty Images)

This week, Deblina and I continued our coverage of Black History Month with a story of rebellion, one that historian Junius P. Rodriguez called the “single most important African slave revolt in the history of what would become the United States.”

I’d heard of the Stono Rebellion in school, but I don’t think I ever learned what a dramatic part it played in shaping the future of slavery — changing not only the slave code but the way white South Carolinians saw their slaves. It’s a sad story, especially considering it takes place in 1739, with more than a century of slavery to come.

But it’s also interesting to discuss a rebellion that, while clearly so influential, has only one eyewitness account attached to it, plus a couple contemporary secondhand reports. That leaves a lot of open space for debate, most of it centered on what seems like an obvious question: Why did the slaves revolt in the first place?

There are reasons enough if you consider the life of a South Carolina slave. The work (mostly growing rice) was hard, the climate was bad, and the treatment was especially harsh, partly because of the colony’s racial imbalance. But some historians like William Thornton have also traced causes back to Africa, specifically to the Angolan coast, where things like religion and language could have been the basis for an unlikely alliance across the ocean. Listen and let us know what you think.

You can keep up with me through the official Stuff You Missed in History Class Facebook page and on Twitter.

Ellen Craft in her disguise (minus the poultices): "I had much rather starve in England, a free woman, than be a slave for the best man that ever breathed upon the American continent." (Illustrated London News/Getty Images)

The story of Ellen and William Craft had me hooked from the start. Daring, ingenuity and a 1,000-mile escape — compelling stuff indeed, especially when you throw in a top hat and green-colored glasses.

Tired of slavery in Macon, Ga., and unwilling to face the prospect of bringing children into a family that could be torn apart at any time, William Craft hatched a plan: his light-complexioned wife would disguise herself as a young, sickly, but well-off white man, and travel by train and steamer to freedom in Philadelphia. William would tag along as her solicitous slave, securing her medicine, making her comfortable and steaming the poultices that hid Ellen’s smooth cheeks.

You’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out more about the hair-raising journey and the couple’s post-slavery life as Abolitionists, but once you do, I’d definitely recommend also reading William’s narrative. It’s available online through the University of Virginia library. Deblina and I enjoyed looking not only at the story William told (and the research that’s been done since then), but getting to talk about the way in which he told it.

Listeners have apparently enjoyed the tale as much as we did. Tim on Facebook commented it was “One of my all time favorite Missed in History podcasts,” and Valanie from Virginia wrote in to say the story would make an “awesome movie.” I was especially interested to hear from Beth in New Hampshire who looked up the Crafts’ U.K. Census records from 1851 on Ancestry.com. William is listed as a “Cabinet Maker,” Ellen as “Wife of William Craft.” Both entries, however, have the significant added notation “Fugitive Slave,” though there was no column for ethnicity.

You can keep up with me through the official Stuff You Missed in History Class Facebook page and on Twitter.

FRENCH REVOLUTION: 1789-1799
Storming of the Bastille July 14, 1789
Louis XVI deposed Sept. 21, 1792, executed Jan. 21, 1793
Reign of Terror Sept. 5, 1793 to July 27, 1794
Executive Directory Nov. 2, 1795 to Nov. 10, 1799

Marie Antoinette with her children before the Revolution (Apic/Getty Images)

THE CONSULATE: 1799 to 1804
Napoleon is First Consul

FIRST FRENCH EMPIRE: 1804 to 1814 (Then again from March 20 to July 7 1815, during Hundred Days)
Napoleon I is Emperor

BOURBON RESTORATION: 1814/15 (second time’s the charm) to 1830
First Bourbon Restoration: 1814. LOUIS XVIII King of France
Interrupted by Napoleon’s 1815 return from Elba: THE HUNDRED DAYS
Second Bourbon Restoration: 1815. Louis XVIII restored to throne.
Succeeded by younger brother CHARLES X in 1824

Louis XVIII (©iStockphoto.com/HultonArchive)

JULY REVOLUTION: July 1830
Charles X, dauphin abdicate, flee, as does last Bourbon heir, the COMTE DE CHAMBORD
Bourbon constitutional monarchy replaced by Orléans constitutional monarchy

Charles X (Kean Collection/Getty Images)

JULY MONARCHY: 1830-48
LOUIS-PHILIPPE, duc d’Orléans becomes “King of the French”

REVOLUTION of 1848: Louis-Philippe abdicates 1848
Chance No. 1 for the Comte de Chambord!

Being a pretender makes it less likely your photo will be on Getty. Here's the Comte's home, the Château de Chambord (Nacivet/Photographer's Choice/Getty Images)

SECOND REPUBLIC: 1848-52
Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte is president of the republic

FRENCH COUP OF 1851
Louis-Napoleon stages coup

SECOND EMPIRE 1852–1870
Louis-Napoleon rules as NAPOLEON III, until ousted in 1870
Chance No. 2 for the Comte de Chambord!

A caricature of Napoleon III fishing for a (Third) Republic! (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

THIRD REPUBLIC 1875-1940
Republic formally adopted by National Assembly
Chambord dies in 1883. No longer interest in an Orléans monarchy. Ends spring 1940 with VICHY REGIME

As we mentioned in the episode, that’s it for the French side of things, though we’ll have a bit more on the Spanish Bourbons coming soon.

You can keep up with me through the official Stuff You Missed in History Class Facebook page and on Twitter.

Charlayne Hunter studies in her dorm at the University of Georgia. (Dozier Mobley/Getty Images)

Part three in a three-part series on the 50th anniversary of the University of Georgia’s desegregation. Part one covered early attempts to integrate the university. Part two covered the students’ first days on campus.

After hearing of Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes’ suspension, faculty members at the University of Georgia fired back: 300 of them petitioned for the students’ return. A second order from federal judge William Bootle revoked the suspension, and by Jan. 16, Holmes and Hunter were back to class, this time better protected by the volunteers of the Faculty Night Patrol. (You can see a copy of their route, complete with checkpoints and public phone access here.)

In the meantime, the university had come perilously close to losing funding due to a 1956 state law that forbade educational integration. Gov. Ernest Vandiver Jr. initially followed the law and ordered the school closed, but he was stymied by a temporary injunction from Judge Bootle that kept UGA open. At that point, Gov. Vandiver, who had won on a platform of segregation and a slogan “No, not one,” faced a dilemma. His advisers wanted him to resist the court order and fight integration at the risk of the state’s schools. But Gov. Vandiver decided the risk wasn’t worth it and the University of Georgia would stay open for its white — and its black — students. Soon after, he successfully urged the Georgia legislature to repeal anti-desegregation laws. According to the Washington Post, Gov. Vandiver later said that it was “my political suicide.”

University of Michigan transfer Mary Frances Early was the first African-American to graduate from the university. She finished her master’s in music education in 1962. A year after that, Holmes graduated Phi Beta Kappa, attended Emory Medical School and became an orthopedic surgeon in Atlanta. He died in his 50s in 1995. Hunter also graduated in 1963; she’s worked as a journalist and correspondent for NPR, PBS, CNN and the New York Times, and is now known as Charlayne Hunter-Gault. In a recent interview with NPR, she said that the bizarre “double existence” of being the subject of the news while also watching journalists watch her taught her that “you can care about something and do it in a totally acceptable, journalistic way without violating any kind of principles.”

Today, the registrar’s building — the first building you see as you pass the Arch and enter North Campus — is named after the students. And if you’re in Athens this month, there’s also a full plate of lectures, exhibits and banquets planned to mark the 50th anniversary of desegregation.

You can keep up with me through the official Stuff You Missed in History Class Facebook page and on Twitter.

Charlayne Hunter at her first journalism class at UGA. (Dozier Mobley/Getty Images)

Part two in a three-part series on the 50th anniversary of the University of Georgia’s desegregation. Part one covered early attempts to integrate the university.

The University of Georgia had stalled for nearly one and a half years before admitting its first African-American students, Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes. By the time federal judge William Bootle’s ruling allowing their admission arrived on Jan. 6, 1961, they were halfway through their sophomore years at other colleges. But after that, things moved quickly.

On Jan. 9, the two made their way to the registrar’s office, escorted by their parents and a member of their defense — the fresh-out-of-law-school Vernon Jordan. Reporters mobbed the party and jeering students shouted, “Two-four-six-eight! We don’t want to integrate!” But Jan. 11, the first day of class, went relatively well. According to the Hargrett Library, Hunter’s father said that the scene reflected well on the state, and NBC personality Chet Huntley commented that “there are places in the North now which might note and emulate the example of adult behavior set by the University of Georgia.”

But the violence started that night when students and outsiders, agitated over a basketball loss to Georgia Tech, started a riot outside of Myers Hall, Hunter’s dorm. A brick came through her window, firecrackers went off and the crowd grew to 1,000 people. Dean Joe Williams stalled on calling in help, and when he did, Georgia state troopers refused to come unless ordered directly by the governor. The overwhelmed Athens police eventually got help from reinforcements with tear gas and the Dean of Men William Tate, who took up student IDs.

Hunter and Holmes were sent back to Atlanta, and Dean Williams, who had decided that the situation had become too dangerous, drafted letters, suspending them “until […] I determine that it is safe and practical for you to return to school and further that your attendance at the University would not adversely affect the educational program of the institution.”

You can keep up with me through the official Stuff You Missed in History Class Facebook page and on Twitter.

Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes arrive at the Arch on Jan. 9, 1961.

Part one in a three-part series on the 50th anniversary of the University of Georgia’s desegregation.

Fifty years ago, Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter walked onto North Campus in Athens, Ga., to register for classes. After a lengthy legal battle, federal judge William Bootle had ruled on Jan. 6, 1961 that Holmes and Hunter were “fully qualified for immediate admission” to the University of Georgia, and “would already have been admitted had it not been for their race and color.”

The two teenagers were impressively qualified: Holmes was valedictorian at Turner High School in Atlanta, senior class president and co-captain of the football team; Hunter was No. 3 in the same class, paper editor and Miss Turner. To civil rights leaders looking for a couple of bright kids willing to attempt integration, they made the perfect applicants. But they also had their own ambitions. When their legal defense team suggested applying to Georgia State in Atlanta, they one-upped and chose the University of Georgia — chartered in 1785 and far outside of the capital.

African-Americans had been attempting to integrate the state’s flagship school for nearly a century. During Reconstruction, a group of black parents confronted the school’s chancellor about admitting their sons; he replied, according to the Hargrett Library, “this is a white man’s college and you are perfectly powerless to help yourselves.” In 1950, Atlanta University-graduate Horace Ward applied to the university’s law school. He spent seven years battling officials, before having his case dismissed and attending Northwestern University’s Law School.

By 1960, though, Ward was back in Atlanta working for the African-American lawyer Donald Hollowell, whose firm represented Holmes and Hunter. As their admission process also stretched on for years, the two students started college at Morehouse and Wayne State University in Detroit. Then, halfway through their sophomore year, Judge Bootle’s ruling arrived: The University of Georgia was finally about to be integrated.

You can keep up with me through the official Stuff You Missed in History Class Facebook page and on Twitter.