Today's special edition of the Civil Book Club will start with an interview on America's

First Civil War digging into the Revolutionary War, HW Brands, credible historian, also a

professor. This book is intense. It puts you in the room in some of these conversations.

It goes back and looks at all these correspondence to give you a real sense of the mindset, venture

Franklin and on kind of taking on a different angle of this. And honestly, as always, as you

always think you're in the worst times, the most divided times, which I know a lot of us

have felt the last few years in this country. Some very odd similarities to the news and

concerns from time now over 200 years ago. So enjoy.

Love talking history on the podcast, take it a break from sports. Our first Civil War

was just out last year, HW Brands, who's also a professor at the University of Texas,

joins us. And let's start with the timeline stuff here. There's so much research that

must have gone into this to get the actual papers and to read these discussions from the

actual characters involved was incredible. And it was, you know, it's just so much depth

to this. But if we look back at like maybe the 1750s and getting an understanding of the

timeline before the Revolutionary War, we've got loyalists. We'd have the group that would

call themselves the Patriots as they feel like they're not being supported by their

mother country. But then you also in their backyard have the English and French battling

over territories. So kind of give us a sense of the lead up probably about 15 to 20 years

before this became militant.

Okay. Being a historian, I probably have to back up farther than that. After the colonies

were settled after the English settled colonies on the West coast of the, the Western shore

of the Atlantic, the English went on out there. We're largely left to fend for themselves.

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