From a recent review in the Wall Street Journal, quote,

the acclaimed biographer Walter Star has given us definitive biographies of William H. Seward and Edwin Stanton

to of the ableist and most influential members of President Abraham Lincoln's cabinet.

Now, Mr. Star has followed his earlier works with an eloquently written, impeccably researched,

and immensely moving biography of the third cabinet stand out, Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase.

On his new biography, historian Walter Star, Uncommon Knowledge Now.

Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge, I'm Peter Robinson.

Historian Walter Star graduated from Stanford University in 1979 and from Harvard Law School in 1982.

He practiced law in Washington and Hong Kong, returned to Washington from Hong Kong to take up a position

at the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is where Walter and I became friends, full disclosure,

and then returned to Hong Kong to practice securities law with fidelity investments.

In other words, he had a remunerative, prestigious, international legal career,

and then Walter Star gave it all up to write history.

Walter has now written the definitive biographies of John Jay, published in 2005, William Seward,

published in 2012, Edwin Stanton published in 2017, and Salmon P. Chase, published this very spring.

Walter, welcome back to Dartmouth College, the library of which you have used many times.

It is great to be back in this library, I will confess I've never been in this wonderful room before,

but it's great to be in this room.

Let's start with the man's name.

You note in the book that he himself called his name Fishy, Salmon P. Chase.

Salmon of course is an Old Testament name, it's in the genealogy leading to the birth of Jesus in Matthew,

but how did he get stuck with it?

...