Steve Campbell is a California guy. A native of the Bay Area, he got his Ph.D. in history at UC-Santa Barbara and now teaches at Cal Poly in Pomona. He has a book coming out in January, The Bank War and the Partisan Press, published through University Press of Kansas. Was Andrew Jackson like Trump, as many people have said? Well, yes and no.

Steve and Colin talk about the perils and pleasures of being a historian, from the tenuous and lackluster (at best) job market and maintaining scholarly objectivity, to the ongoing battles between academics and popular historians, to the challenges of getting scholarship done with a heavy teaching load.

Should students become historians? Listen and find out, as Steve and Colin talk about everything from Steve Bannon and Shelby Foote to the Byrds’s ill-fated shows in Nashville in the late 60s.

Listen here: http://americanrambler.libsyn.com/podcast/episode-111-steve-campbell