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 Jon Meacham, Ken Burns, David Blight, Eric Foner, Annette Gordon-Reed, Clint Smith, Peniel Joseph, 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

December

December 3 - Stacy Schiff on The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams

A singular figure at a singular moment, Samuel Adams amplified the Boston Massacre and helped mastermind the Boston Tea Party. He employed every tool available to rally a town, a colony, and eventually a band of colonies behind him, creating the cause that created a country. In The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, Pulitzer Prize–winner Stacy Schiff illuminates Samuel Adams’s transformation from aimless son of a well-off family to tireless, beguiling radical.

Stacy Schiff has written six books, including Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov): Portrait of a Marriage, winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Saint-Exupéry: A Biography, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, winner of the George Washington Prize.

Coming Soon

December 10 - Theresa Runstedtler on Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the NBA

December 17 - Mark Whitaker on Saying It Loud: 1966—The Year Black Power Challenged the Civil Rights Movement

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, Eric Foner, Annette Gordon-Reed, H. W. Brands, Peniel Joseph, Jon Meacham, Elizabeth Varon, Ken Burns, and more. Still deciding whether to subscribe? You can watch Ada Ferrer’s talk on Cuba: An American History (winner of the Pulitzer 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.

Programs & Events