This audio interview took place on January 24th, 2018 on KBOO public radio in Portland, Oregon. This 62 minute audio can be downloaded and listened to HERE.
Drawing on oral histories and in-depth research, historian Ray Raphael of Humboldt County, CA, has written over 20 books based on real people telling their own stories. His early books dealt with topical and regional matters, including local history, the timber wars, and marijuana cultivation. In the early 1990’s, while preparing his United States history courses, he became fascinated by the history of common people during the American Revolution, and since then his focus has been on the Revolution and the nation’s founding. His books expose the messy realities behind the creation of our national documents, and they reveal an alternative narrative to stories of heroic individualism that we’re taught in school, and that were fostered by an emerging nationalism in the 19th century. MORE…