Curated playlist

20th-century American Episcopalians

George H. W. BushAfter being shot down in 1944, George H. W. Bush asked why he alone had been spared. Both of his crewmates died.
John SteinbeckJohn Steinbeck once stole bacon from a produce market to survive. He later won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Judy GarlandMGM fired Judy Garland in 1950, and Bing Crosby invited her onto his radio show. The audience gave her an ovation.
Bette DavisBette Davis's tombstone reads, "She did it the hard way." A director suggested the epitaph after All About Eve.
Philip K. DickPhilip K. Dick died four months before Blade Runner opened. He never saw the film that made his name famous.
Lady Bird JohnsonLady Bird Johnson was born Claudia Alta Taylor, and almost nobody ever called her that. While she was still an infant, her nursemaid, Alice Tittle, remarked that the baby was as pretty as a ladybird. The comment became a lifelong name. Her…
Henry FordHenry Ford's Model T came in black because black paint dried quickest. Earlier Model Ts also came in red.
Walter CronkiteWalter Cronkite took off his glasses and told America President Kennedy had died.
J. P. MorganA visit from J. P. Morgan, one man said, left him feeling "as if a gale had blown through the house." The American financier had that effect on people. He was physically large, with massive shoulders and piercing eyes. His nose was swollen…
George S. PattonA reporter once heard George S. Patton say that winning in combat took "blood and brains." The reporter began calling him "blood and guts," and the nickname followed Patton for the rest of his life. Soldiers under his command sometimes…
Wilbur Kitchener JordanWilbur Kitchener Jordan, who published as W. K. Jordan, lived from 1902 to 1980 and became one of the leading American historians of Britain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His career turned on a question that still feels…
Thurgood MarshallThurgood Marshall won 29 of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court. He later became a justice there.
Shelby FooteShelby Foote wrote every page by hand with a nib pen, then typed up a clean copy. He thought of himself first as a novelist. Yet he is remembered for a three-volume history of the American Civil War. He expected that history to take nine…