Fresh Air Interview: How Ronald Reagan Used An 'Invisible Bridge' To Win Over Americans

Between 1973 and 1976, Americans saw a president resign in disgrace, a calamitous end to the Vietnam War, gas lines at service stations, the financial collapse of New York City, two presidential assassination attempts, and the kidnapping of a publishing heiress by the Symbionese Liberation Army.

Perlstein says Reagan spoke to Americans’ anxieties with a simple message about America’s inherent greatness — and became the leader of a potent political movement.

“[Reagan’s] ability to preach this liturgy of absolution in the midst of moral chaos … was the soul of his political appeal,” Perlstein tells Fresh Air’s Dave Davies.

How Thousands Of Nazis Were 'Rewarded' With Life In The U.S.

In his new book, The Nazis Next Door, Lichtblau reports that thousands of Nazis managed to settle in the United States after World War II, often with the direct assistance of American intelligence officials who saw them as potential spies and informants in the Cold War against the Soviet Union.

Lichtblau says there were whole networks of spy groups around the world made up of Nazis — and they entered the U.S., one by one.

Fresh Air Interview: 'Pope And Mussolini' Tells The 'Secret History' Of Fascism And The Church

It’s commonly thought that the Catholic Church fought heroically against the fascists in Italy. But historian David Kertzer says the church actually lent organizational strength and moral legitimacy to Mussolini’s regime. Kertzer recently won a Pulitzer Prize for his book The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe.

How JFK made NASA his secret weapon in the fight for civil rights in America

Most Americans know the name of the first black player in professional baseball — Jackie Robinson. But how about the first black professional in the US space program? 

That was Julius Montgomery. He was part of a small cadre of African American mathematicians, engineers and technicians who helped power the space race — at a time when laws kept them from using the same toilet as their coworkers. (Later, he also integrated the Florida Institute of Technology.) These men were the vanguard of what became a government strategy to integrate the South.

How Warner Bros. Animators Responded to the Cold War (1948-1980)

Warner Bros. animators, under the leadership of Charles M. “Chuck” Jones, launched their own, albeit mild, counter attack when they introduced Marvin the Martian in 1948, several years before The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Fail Safe (1964), Seven Days in May (1964), Dr. Strangelove (1964), or Boris and Natasha, the Russian spies in the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons of the late 1950s and early 1960s.