Episode 167: Ken Burns' The American Revolution (Historians' Commentary)

It's a special podcast here at Reckoning. Early American historians Dr. Liz Covart, Dr. Michael Hattem, and Dr. Craig Bruce Smith joined me to live stream Ken Burns' new series The American Revolution and answer questions from people around the world. It's kind of like a Director's Commentary, only if the director was actually four people with degrees in history. This was a blast.

About our guest:

Dr. Liz Covart is a historian of the American Revolution, and the creator and host of the award-winning podcast Ben Franklin’s World.  In 2022, she co-founded Clio Digital Media, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that uses digital media to foster better, more robust understandings of history. And in 2026, she will launch Scholar.DIY, a public benefit company that empowers scholars to transform their expertise into compelling digital stories— building trust, promoting media literacy, and strengthening democracy along the way.

Dr. Michael Hattem is an American historian, with interests in early America, the American Revolution, and historical memory. He received his PhD in History at Yale University and has taught at The New School and Knox College. He is the author of The Memory of ’76: The Revolution in American History (Yale University Press, 2024), which was a finalist for the 2025 George Washington Prize, and Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution (Yale University Press, 2020). He is currently the Associate Director of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute.

Hattem’s work has been featured or mentioned in The New York Times, TIME magazine, The Smithsonian Magazine, the Washington Post, as well as many other mainstream media publications and outlets. He has served as a historical consultant or contributor for a number of projects and organizations, curated historical exhibitions, appeared in television documentaries, and authenticated and written catalogue essays for historical document auctions.

Dr. Craig Bruce Smith  is a professor of history at National Defense University in the Joint Advanced Warfighting School (JAWS) in Norfolk, VA. He authored American Honor: The Creation of the Nation’s Ideals during the Revolutionary Era, Securing Victory 1781-1783 (out soon), and co-authored George Washington’s Lessons in Ethical Leadership. Smith earned his PhD in American history from Brandeis University. Previously, he was an associate professor of military history at the U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS), an assistant professor of history, and the director of the history program at William Woods University, and he has taught at additional colleges, including Tufts University.

He specializes in American Revolutionary and early American and military history, specifically focusing on George Washington, honor, ethics, war, the founders, transnational ideas, and national identity. In addition, he has broader interests in colonial America, the early republic, leadership, and early American cultural, intellectual, and political history. Smith was named a Jack Miller Center Scholar in 2025 and also serves as a member of their History Advisory Council. He is also the co-host of National Defense University's JAWbone podcast.