While the Gilded Age led to the rise of robber barons and railroad tycoons, it also led to the proliferation of another type of character, the con artist. Frank Garmon Jr. joins us to discuss the life Charles Cowlam, a confidence man and charlatan who spent decades making his money by swindling everyone from prime ministers and presidents to working men and wealthy women.

Essential Reading:

Frank Garmon, Jr., A Wonderful Career in Crime: Charles Cowlam’s Masquerades in the Civil War Era and Gilded Age (2024).

Recommended Reading:

Timothy J. Gilfoyle, A Pickpocket’s Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York (2006).

Brian P Luskey, Men Is Cheap: Exposing the Frauds of Free Labor in Civil War America (2020).

Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830-1870 (1982).

Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (1987).

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In early March 1906, the United States Army and the Filipino Constabulary attacked a insurgent outpost of Moros on the island of Jolo. Over 1,000 men, women, and children were killed in the battle, and less than two dozen Americans lost their lives. It was deemed an atrocity by all observers, even the soldiers that took part. Professor Kim Wagner recalls this violent episode in his latest book.

Essential Reading:

Kim Wagner, Massacre in the Clouds: An American Atrocity and the Erasure of History (2024).

Recommended Reading:

Paul A. Kramer, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines (2006).

Stuart Creighton Miller, Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903 (1982).

Matthew Frye Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917 (2000).

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During the nineteenth century, the Zouave was everywhere. The uniform characterized by an open, collarless jacket, baggy trousers, and a fez, originated in French Algeria, but became common amongst military men in France, the United States, and the Papal States, taking on a life of its own. Historians Carol E. Harrison and Thomas J. Brown join us to explain the often-misunderstood outfit and its connection to colonialism, race, gender, fashion, and military tactics, and dress.

Essential Reading:

Carol E. Harrison and Thomas J. Brown, Zouave Theaters: Transnational Military Fashion and Performance (2024).

Recommended Reading:

Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (2006).

John Bierman, Napoleon III and His Carnival Empire (1988).

Lorien Foote, The Gentlemen and the Roughs: Violence, Honor, and Manhood in the Union Army (2010).

Charles A. Coulombe, The Pope’s Legion: The Multinational Fighting Force that Defended the Vatican (2008).

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