This week on Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson, my conversation with our regular

guest Professor Lindsey Chervinsky about 10 historical counterfactuals. Historians are

warned never to indulge in what if history. We just can't help it. It's such fun. What

if the British had won the Revolutionary War? What if Alexander Hamilton had become the

President of the United States? What if Jefferson had never owned an enslaved person? What if

the South had won the Civil War? What if John F. Kennedy had not been assassinated on November

22, 1963? What if Adolf Hitler had beaten the United States to the punch and gotten an

atomic bomb for use at Moscow or Stalingrad? If some of the pivotal moments in world history

had gone the other way, how might things have been different? Join us for all that and more

on this week's Listening to America.

Hello everyone and welcome to this special edition of Listening to America. Across from me is

my dear friend Dr. Lindsey Chervinsky about to finish your second book going to the

publisher soon. Welcome Lindsey. Thank you. Yes, it's an exciting day. I have a title.

I have a due date. I am almost there. Are you allowed to tell us the title? Yes, it

is Making the Presidency. John Adams and the Presidents that forged the Republic. Oh, you

know, that's a new kind of title in the last 15 years. Somebody, somebody and something

something that saved America. Somebody, somebody in the Scottish Enlightenment, but that's

become a kind of a well-employed title formula and a good one. Yeah, it does a number of

things in that it actually tells you what the book is about, but it's also good for things

like search engine optimization and like our other books titled that, you know, there's

so many different factors that one has to consider. So I've written a couple of books and

I know that at this point I live in my pajamas. There are 200 books around my kitchen. If

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