Could the United States have eliminated slavery without a civil war?  In her 2023 book Defeating Slavery: Hamilton's American System Showed the Way, Nancy Spannaus argues that the hope for doing so lay in adopting Alexander Hamilton's principles for industrialization. As she documents, the American Revolution had created the strongest anti-slavery movement in the world. But without breaking with British imperial economics, that movement was doomed to failure. Hamilton's American System offered the alternative, but was tragically sabotaged with the triumph of Jefferson, and then President Jackson. Join Nancy to discuss this crucial background to the political turmoil we are still experiencing today.

Discover the neighborhood where Alexander Hamilton built his country home, George Gershwin wrote his first hit, a young Norman Rockwell discovered he liked to draw, and Ralph Ellison wrote Invisible Man. By telling the history of its vibrant people and the beautiful architecture of this lovely, well-maintained historic landmark district, Davida Siwisa James dispels the misconception that Harlem was primarily a ghetto wasteland. The book touches upon The Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance artists and luminaries who called it home, such as Thurgood Marshall, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Mary Lou Williams, Paul Robeson, and W.E.B. Du Bois.