For the last four months or so I have been co-hosting a weekly Livestream called #HistoryHappyHour with my friend, and fellow Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours historian/guide, Chris Anderson. When we started out, we just thought we’d chat a bit about history and see if anyone wanted to join us. It has blossomed into a weekly show featuring  an amazing array of insightful history authors. It has been so rewarding to hear from them and to be able to give our audience a chance to chime in with questions.
The show is broadcast live Sundays at 4 PM Eastern on the Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours Facebook and Youtube Page.  An easy way to find the links is to go to the History Happy Hour web page. 
We are currently booked well into November.  Here’s a sneak peek at just a few of our upcoming guests:
·      July 26, Author and journalist A.J. Baime, talks about his new book Dewey Defeats Truman: The 1948 Election and the Battle for America's Soul. 
·      August 23, Hampton Sides  plunges us into the most dramatic days of the Korean War as he recounts the U.S. Marines’ legendary Chosin Reservoir Breakout from his newest book, On Desperate Ground. 
·      September 20, Susan Eisenhower, the granddaughter President Dwight D. Eisenhower, discusses her grandfather’s flair for taking command and her new book How Ike Led. ·       October 18 we’ll talk to Chris Wallace about his new bestseller, Countdown 1945: The Extraordinary Story of the Atomic Bomb and the 116 Days That Changed the World 
We’ve learned some fascinating stuff from previous guests.  A small sampling:
We talked to Andrew Roberts about his book Churchill: Walking With Destiny.  Andrew told us he writes up to 5000 words a day , and dsiscussedabout the importance of doing on-site research.  “I think it's essential. I think as a military historian, unless one goes to the battlefields, it's like a detective not bothering to go to the scene of the crime. You absolutely have to be there.” (As tour historians, we couldn't agree more!) He also gave us a guided tour of his study, with some amazing items. 
Joe Balkoski talked to us about the 29th Division, which landed on D-Day and fought all the way across France, suffering terrible casualties. He told us a moving story about the day the division lined up to receive the presidential unit citation in March 1945.  The commander of the division wanted the flag of every company to be carried by a D-Day veteran for the ceremony.  “Lo and behold, every single rifle company in the  115th Regiment (one of three regiments in the division) did not have a single D-Day veteran left. And it's a very poignant story because it was a different division by 1945.”
When we spoke to Lynne Olson about her book The Secret War of Madame Fourcade, we asked her about how this young French woman was able to lead a resistance network of thousands during wartime in a very conservative country,  “I’ve wrestled with that ever since I started the book,” she said. “Its a question that I asked everybody that I interviewed. People said she was just an extraordinary person, that she had an aura of authority about her that made men, military men, agree to her as their leader.”  One person she interviewed, who knew Fourcade growing up, said he was scared of her, in awe of her.  “He said she didn't operate according to society's rules. He operated according to her own rules. Basically, she acted like a man.”
Dan King shared his insight on Japanese fighter pilots, Don Farrell joined us from Tinian about war in the Pacific, James Stejskal gave us inside details on Lawrence of Arabia . And so many more.
All of these interviews are archived on the History happy Hour web page, so viewers can dip in and out at will.  And we have a comprehensive reading list on all the subjects.
Not sure how long we are going to keep doing this, but its great fun for the moment, and we are glad to provide some programming that is informative and hopefully entertaining at the same time!