Book Breaks

Book Breaks is a weekly interview series with historians held every Sunday at 2 pm ET (11 am 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, 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, and college students.

K-12 students, simply log in or create an account.
College students, professors and K12 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

June

June 11, 2023 - Fierce and Fearless: Patsy Takemoto Mink, First Woman of Color in Congress

Fierce and Fearless is a biography of Patsy Takemoto Mink, the first woman of color and the first Asian American woman elected to Congress. Serving from 1965 to 1977, and again from 1990 until her death in 2002, Mink advocated race, gender, and class equality and spearheaded legislation embracing antiwar politics and environmental protection. She was the foremost advocate for Title IX, which transformed girls’ and women’s educational rights.

Fierce and Fearless pairs Judy Tzu-Chun Wu’s archival research with vignettes crafted by Gwendolyn Mink, a political scientist who is Patsy Takemoto Mink’s daughter. Wu is a historian and Asian American studies professor at the University of California, Irvine. Gwendolyn Mink was a professor of politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz and professor of women and gender studies at Smith College.

Coming Soon

June 18 - Chole Melas on Luck of the Draw My Story of the Air War in Europe

June 26 - R. J. M. Blackett on Samuel Ringgold Ward: A Life of Struggle

July 2 - Craig L. Symonds on Nimitz at War: Command Leadership from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay

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 two years of past programs from historians such as David Blight, Eric Foner, Annette Gordon-Reed, Peniel Joseph, 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.