Book Breaks

Book Breaks is a weekly interview series with historians held every Sunday at 2 p.m. ET (11 a.m. PT) on Zoom. Scroll down to see our upcoming programs!

Each week our hosts interview renowned scholars and discuss their acclaimed and frequently award-winning works, followed by a Q&A with the at-home audience. Our guests have included David Blight, Ken Burns, Eric Foner, Annette Gordon-Reed, Peniel Joseph, Jon Meacham, Clint Smith, and Elizabeth Varon.

How do I attend Book Breaks?

Book Breaks is completely free for Affiliate School K–12 teachers and students, college students, and college professors.

K-12 students, simply log in or create an account.
College students, professors, and K–12 educators, log in, return to this page, and click the button to subscribe for access to all future programming and the Book Breaks archive.

Members of the general public can purchase a one-year subscription for $25. The subscription includes

Full access to one year of weekly live programs
Unlimited access to our ever-expanding Book Breaks archive, featuring more than ninety sessions with the nation’s leading historians. View the full archive of past sessions.
Log in and make your purchase.

Can I watch a program before deciding to subscribe?

Yes! First-time viewers can watch a Book Breaks program for free. Simply log in or create an account and you will see a link at the top of this page to access the week’s historian lecture and Q&A.

Questions?

Email us at bookbreaks@gilderlehrman.org.

Every Sunday at 2 p.m. ET (11 a.m. PT)

Upcoming Book Breaks

April

April 21 - Matthew J. Davenport on The Longest Minute: The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906

At 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck San Francisco, catching most of the city asleep. For approximately one minute, shockwaves buckled streets, shattered water mains, collapsed buildings, crushed hundreds of residents to death, and trapped many alive. Fires ignited and blazed through dry wooden ruins and grew into a firestorm. The largest city in the American West was reduced to a large pile of rubble. What came next would inform urban planning, public health, and municipal governance for the rest of the century.

Matthew Davenport’s previous book, First Over There: The Attack on Cantigny, America’s First Battle of World War I, was a finalist for the 2015 Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History.

April 28 - James G. Basker on Black Writers of the Founding Era

May 5 - Anastasia C. Curwood on Shirley Chisholm: Champion of Black Feminist Power Politics

History Scholar of the Week

Middle and high school students (age 13 and up), submit your questions for one of the historians being featured on Book Breaks! If your question is chosen, you will be named History Scholar of the Week, and it will be announced live on the program! In addition, both you and your teacher will win a $50 gift certificate to the Gilder Lehrman Gift Shop. Your question can be about the book or the topic in general. Please submit only one question per program.

Submit your question here.

The deadline to submit a question for the upcoming Book Breaks is Thursday.

Book Breaks Archive

The Book Breaks archive contains more than three years of past programs featuring historians such as David Blight, H. W. Brands, Ken Burns, Eric Foner, Annette Gordon-Reed, Peniel Joseph, Jon Meacham, Elizabeth Varon, and more. Still deciding whether to subscribe? You can watch Harold Holzer’s talk on Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration (winner of the Lincoln Prize) below to help you make up your mind.

View the full archive of past sessions

The Institute thanks Citizen Travelers, the nonpartisan civic engagement initiative of The Travelers Companies, Inc., for its support of Book Breaks.