17 Books to Better Understand America, with Sharon McMahon

Zero to Well-Read

In this episode of Zero to Well-Read, hosts Rebecca Shinsky and Jeff O'Neill welcome history and civics educator Sharon McMahon to discuss essential books—both fiction and

Key takeaways

• Unsung figures often had as much influence on American history as well-known leaders.

Main topics

• American history beyond famous figures

Notable quotes

"We're also interested in underdogs. We're also interested in the people without money, without fame and fortune."

Conclusion

The episode underscores that understanding America requires embracing both celebrated

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) This episode of Zero to Well-Read is sponsored by ThriftBooks.com. On today's episode, we have Sharon McMahon with us to talk about her book, Small and Mighty, but also a bunch of books to help you understand America just a little bit better. And you know what I checked? You can find them all on thriftbooks.com in their original hardcover form for those of them that had hardcovers and in paperbacks. In some cases, you can find a large print. In some cases, you can find a library binding if you like an old library book. You can find all the kinds of print formats at thriftbooks.com plus movies, games, and more. Thanks to thriftbooks.com for sponsoring Zero to Well Read. Speaker 3 (0:38) We've been waiting for the moment to announce our next Zero to Well-Read guided read-along, and friends, the time has come. I'm so excited to share with you that we're going to be reading John Steinbeck's magisterial novel, East of Eden, in anticipation of the Netflix miniseries that's coming out on October 1st. Guided read-alongs are available exclusively to members of our Office Hours Patreon, and they include a pre-reading guide, an exclusive bonus episode to help you get into the reading, and a private chat space for talking with participants and us. as you move through the novel. Head over to patreon.com slash zero to well read to join and you'll get two months free with an annual membership. That's patreon.com slash zero to well read. You can also find the link in the show notes. We are so excited to read this one with you. Thanks as always for listening and rocking with Zero to Well Read. Speaker 1 (1:30) Welcome to Zero to Well-Read, a podcast about everything you need to know about the books you wish you'd read. I am Jeff O'Neill. Speaker 3 (1:36) And I'm Rebecca Shinsky. Today, we're exploring must-read books about American history and politics, and we are thrilled to have America's government teacher, Sharon McMahon, joining us. Sharon is the author of two number one New York Times bestsellers. The Small and the Mighty is a book about 12 unsung Americans who changed the course of history. There's a new paperback edition hitting shelves this week and a children's adaptation called We Are Mighty. A history and civics educator, Sharon explains how government works and her daily newsletter, The Preamble, reaches hundreds of thousands of readers. along with her online community, Governerd's Insider, which ranks among the largest book clubs in the country. So obvious to our listeners already why we're excited to speak with you today, Sharon. Thanks so much for joining us. Speaker 4 (2:20) I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for inviting Speaker 3 (2:22) me. Speaker 1 (2:23) Before we get started, click the link in the show notes to become a member for access to guided read-alongs, early ad-free episodes, and other bookish bonus content. Patreon.com slash Zero to Well-Read and rate and review the show wherever you're listening. And shoot us an email, Zero to Well-Read at bookrat.com. If you've got additional recommendations for us, there's so many books we could have recommended. This was a very difficult process for me. I was really making changes up until, oh, 45 seconds ago. for what books I wanted to shout out. And I know our listeners will have a lot of good picks as well, Rebecca. Speaker 2 (3:00) Today's episode is brought to you by Sora. Now, if you love Libby and you are a parent and or a teacher of a pre-K through 12 student, Sora needs to be a part of your life. It's a reading platform built exclusively for pre-K through 12 schools with the... privacy, security, and compliance protections classrooms actually need. For teachers, you can assign and monitor reading with confidence. It has built-in tools like pronunciations, vocabulary support, and annotation that supports comprehension, not just access within text. So kids can read, but they can also learn. more intentionally from what they're reading. For parents, it means a safe school approved way to encourage reading at home because all eBooks and audio books in Sora are selected by your school. So you can trust that they are age and grade appropriate. So like I said, if you love Libby, you're going to love Sora. Make sure to check out Sora. And thanks again to Sora for sponsoring this episode. Speaker 2 (4:07) Today's episode is brought to you by Seth Ring and Aethon Vault, the best lit RPG, fantasy, sci-fi, and horror publisher of Battlemage Farmer Book One Domestication. Retired from a decade of brutal war, powerful mage John Sutton wants nothing more than a quiet pastoral life while he does his best to stem the start of the apocalypse. He's been given a small farm on the outskirts of the Empire, thanks for his service, but no matter how far he travels, it seems to be impossible to escape the war's devastating effects on the world. Bandits, suspicious town folk, a mysterious pair of siblings, and a secret that lurks in the mountains all threaten John's peace. The end is drawing closer. If the world won't let him farm in peace, well, he'll just have to burn the threats away. So domestication is your entry into the wildly popular Battlemage Farmer series, where slice of life meets high stakes magical action with a protagonist you can't help but to root for. Get into it. Pick up Battlemage Farmer book one, Domestication by Seth Ring. And thanks again to Aeth and Vault for sponsoring this episode. Speaker 3 (5:18) This episode is sponsored by Vinted. I am very much a seasonal closet cleaner. If it's not sparking joy, I am getting rid of it. And this time of year, I always discover clothes that I genuinely like and I was excited about when I bought them, but that I never actually wear. There's a certain point where I've got to accept reality and admit that having them take up space in my closet isn't doing anybody any good. And that's where Vinted comes in. Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app that makes it really simple to sell clothes you're ready to part with and make some extra money in the process. Listing on Vinted is quick and easy, and once something sells, Vinted creates the prepaid shipping label for you. Here's the part that really motivates me to actually get those clothes out of the closet and list them. Vinted has no seller fees, so you keep everything you earn. The Vinted app is also free to download. I love the idea of turning things I'm not wearing into a little extra money, you know, to buy some stuff I actually will wear and making some room in my closet while I'm at it. If your closet could use a late summer, early fall reset, give Vinted a try. See what's hiding in there and be surprised by how much you can earn. Download the Vinted app for free to start listing with no seller fees. And for a limited time, there's free shipping in the U.S. That's Vinted, V-I-N-T-E-D. Speaker 3 (6:37) Yes. So let's just go ahead and jump in, Sharon. Jeff and I both had the pleasure of seeing the new paperback edition of The Small and the Mighty, as the title indicates. Portraits of 12 unsung Americans, like ordinary people doing extraordinary things, woven into a fascinating narrative about American history. Will you talk to us a little bit about the impetus for the book? Also, hell yeah, to that Ken Burns intro. Speaker 4 (7:04) You got to see it first. I know. Isn't that exciting? It's so fun to see. That's brand new to the paperback. So it's fun to see. It's Speaker 3 (7:12) very cool. And it comes with an afterword and a study guide as well now. Are those new pieces? Speaker 4 (7:16) Yes. Also both new. Yeah. I mean, I started writing this. First of all, thanks for looking at it. And I started writing this in part because these are the kinds of stories that... I have always loved to read. I've always been. And I think, honestly, a lot of people love to know behind the scenes tea. Like we love to know how something happened, you know, like the just like they were all very attracted to like the podcast and the TV shows that are like the hidden history of the typewriter. You know, like we we don't want to know just about typewriters in general. We need to know the hidden history. So I think that there's this sense of just human curiosity that makes untold stories interesting. We're also interested in underdogs. We're also interested in the people without money, without fame and fortune. Those are just inherently topics that many of us are curious about, myself included. So these are the kinds of stories that I've always been attracted to. But throughout my career as an educator, throughout my career as a student, There's only so much time in the curriculum. We only have so much time to learn about history and a lot of ground to cover. And so the people that get highlighted in history curriculum are the big names. Of course, you're not going to stop learning about George Washington because we want to learn about this woman nobody's heard of. I want us to learn about both. I want us to learn about George Washington and the people who and Phyllis Wheatley. I want us to, you know, I want us to learn about Sybil Luddington and Paul Revere. In my mind, this is not an either or scenario. It's additive rather than replacing something that already exists. But, you know, I just I wanted to write a book of I wanted to write a book that I wanted to read. Speaker 3 (9:10) I certainly found it to be additive. I live in Virginia, in Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, very rich with history. I've been here 20 years. And when I was reading the book over the weekend, I hit a chapter about a woman named Virginia Randolph who helped found a school that is... three miles from my house. Really? Speaker 4 (9:30) You can just drive past this Speaker 3 (9:32) afternoon? I did it already. Actually, what I did was switch to the audiobook version and I like gave myself a whole little moment and I just drove by the campus. That's so cool. They only do tours on certain days, so I couldn't go in. But I've lived here for 20 years and I picked up a lot of history. But that chapter and learning about the life of this woman who did incredible work so close to where I live that I... probably would never have heard of, really drove home to me how many of these stories there are and Speaker 4 (10:02) how many gaps all of us have in our education that this is an unending project. That's right. One of the things I love about history is that one never comes to the end of it, right? Not only are there stories yet to be uncovered from the past, we're making new history every single day. So there's no end to when, you know, you have fully mastered this topic. There's no like, she knows everything there is to know about, you know, American history. Nope, there's new stuff I didn't know yesterday. So that's an endlessly fascinating process to me. But, you know, I taught for many years in a neighboring state in Maryland. And there's just even talking about somebody like Francis Scott Key, who I, you know, I mentioned briefly in the book. And his connection to the D.C. metro area, his connection to different places in Maryland. Of course, if you've been to D.C., you know about the Francis Scott Key Bridge, right? You know his name because of the Star Spangled Banner. But what do you really know about him? There's, you know, the story of Francis Scott Key, for example, is not one that I highlight in depth, but I wanted to. I did a bunch of research on him. And so now I have a lot of stories that can just be in the director's cut. How's that? That didn't actually get into the book. Yeah. And Speaker 1 (11:29) one thing that comes out in the book, I think, we see this for Zero to Well Read, where we cover books people think they know or think they know they know about. And when you get into the author, you get into the story. These people are stranger, more specific, more compelling than... Kind of the mental index card we have of them. Is that something you found as you were looking at some of these people? Like, Americans are weird and these stories are weird and they come from very specific locations. What were some of your discoveries and how did you feel about these people you got to know in their little and big ways? Speaker 4 (12:00) Yes, people are quirky. You know, like all humans have quirks. And when you know somebody really well, you're married to them, they're your best friend, they're your mom, you can easily be like, my mom always did this thing where she'd come into the kitchen in the morning. And, you know, like we all have these, you know, idiosyncratic aspects of our personalities that are just absorbed and beloved by the people that know us. But when we're learning about these like bold names of history that occupy a few pages in a textbook or even if we read a biography of them, they are. the things that are less well documented. It's more difficult to know all the idiosyncratic preferences and beliefs of different people. And so that's one of the reasons history seems two-dimensional to us. Whereas if I tell you a story about my mom, I can fill in all of the color. I can be like, and then this one time she bought a stuffed goose. You know, like I can add in. Mom sounds like a great time. Yeah, exactly. Can add in all of these fun things that like make you make her come alive in your mind. Whereas when we're learning history from a textbook or a very paced course, we're not going to get into why George Washington preferred Madeira wine, for example. How did he develop a taste for Spanish wine? Where did he even get the money to buy all this stuff? You know, like those kinds of facts are very, very interesting to me. And they do help that person. seem alive in my mind. It's a little frustrating as somebody who writes about history. It's frustrating when you can't find any of that preserved color about somebody. And this is one of the biggest challenges when we're writing about particularly women and people of color whose stories have been intentionally excluded from the narrative, who were intentionally excluded from full participation in American history for hundreds of years. When we are talking about people who had very little agency to write their own stories, to shape. what future generations would know about them, many of those things are not preserved. And the handful of people that we do have a large written record of, people like Frederick Douglass, for example, where we know more about them, we tend to elevate their stories to a very, very prominent place. Understandably so. They're the people who... You know, the Booker T. Washingtons, for example, who I write about in the book as well. We know more about them because they had more control over shaping their own story. But I find many of the weird quirks of people part of what is most interesting to me about them. I'm less interested about like, what was the year? You know, like whatever's on the plaque Speaker 1 (14:53) is less interesting. Exactly. Speaker 4 (14:55) Exactly. I would much rather know about Gouverneur Morris's, you know, carriage accident about how did he get this? He had his leg amputated. But then a late later, a doctor told him, oh, I don't think you actually needed to have your leg amputated. Speaker 3 (15:10) Well, it's too late now. Yeah. And it didn't stop him from being a Speaker 4 (15:12) ladies man. No, no, sure didn't. Women did not view it as a deterrent. You know why? Because he was tall and rich. OK, and that takes you a long way, even today. Even today, being tall and rich makes up for a lot. You're halfway there, Speaker 3 (15:29) Jeff. Speaker 1 (15:30) I'm working on the rich. And so when people get when you yourself see people in three dimension, they see the people in three dimensions and they, you know, by extension, they see the history in three dimension. How do you think that changes people's understanding of America, what it is, what it isn't, how it came to be, and maybe especially current events and how they feel about what's going on in the country at any particular moment? Speaker 4 (15:52) I think this is true, that when somebody is humanized in your mind, whether it's a person who's walking the earth today, when I can sit and have dinner with them and look them in the eyeballs, my feelings about who they are, what they represent, how they view the world, are significantly altered versus if I just read an article about, you know, XYZ group thinks the following terrible things. Well, it's very easy for me to be like,