Covering every hamlet and precinct in America, big and small, the stories span arts and sports, business and history, innovation and adventure, generosity and courage, resilience and redemption, faith and love, past and present. In short, Our American Stories tells the story of America to Americans.
About Lee Habeeb
Lee Habeeb co-founded Laura Ingraham’s national radio show in 2001, moved to Salem Media Group in 2008 as Vice President of Content overseeing their nationally syndicated lineup, and launched Our American Stories in 2016. He is a University of Virginia School of Law graduate, and writes a weekly column for Newsweek.
For more information, please visit ouramericanstories.com.
Paralyzed and Broke, John Clay Wolfe Reinvented the Used Car Business
What Happened When a City Girl Moved to a Mississippi Farm
On this episode of Our American Stories, when Jake Keiser left city life behind and moved to a farm outside Oxford, Mississippi, she was not quite prepared for what came next. One neighbor arrived on a tractor to explain the property lines. Another pulled up on a four-wheeler with a dog and a pie from Piggly Wiggly. Then a third insisted on taking her to dinner because leaving a new neighbor alone on her first night simply would not be neighborly.
Keiser, author of Daffodil Hill: Uprooting My Life, Buying a Farm, and Learning to Bloom, shares the funny culture shock story of learning what country life is really all about.
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Red Cloud’s War: How One Native Leader Defeated the U.S. Army
On this episode of Our American Stories, Red Cloud was born fatherless on the Great Plains in 1821 and rose through courage, intelligence, and skill to become one of the most powerful Oglala leaders of the 19th century. As settlers, miners, and soldiers pushed farther west, he brought together warriors from different Sioux bands and allied tribes to resist the growing American presence in their territory.
Authors Bob Drury and Tom Clavin, authors of the New York Times bestseller The Heart of Everything That Is, tell how Red Cloud waged a relentless guerrilla war against the U.S. Army, destroyed Captain William Fetterman’s command, and eventually forced the government to negotiate the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868.
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Killing Sparrows for Shoes? One Family’s Story from the Great Depression
On this episode of Our American Stories, during the Great Depression, millions of Americans faced hunger, unemployment, and poverty. Families across the United States found inventive ways to survive when jobs disappeared and banks failed. In Iowa, one family turned to canning corn, repairing old shoes, and biking from farm to farm to kill sparrows, a job that paid just enough to get by.
Our regular contributor Joy Neal Kidney shares a Depression-era story passed down through her family, offering a glimpse into what life was like in the 1930s. Be sure to check out Joy's great bookLeora's Dexter Stories: The Scarcity Years of the Great Depressionfor more stories like this one.
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Brownie Wise: The Woman Who Made Tupperware a Household Name
On this episode of Our American Stories, Brownie Wise didn't invent Tupperware, but she turned it into an American institution. A single mother with little formal education, Wise discovered a talent for direct sales and eventually convinced inventor Earl Tupper to take his plastic containers out of department stores and sell them through parties held in American homes: Tupperware parties.
Mary Lisa Gavenas tells how Wise rose to become Tupperware's vice president of sales, built a nationwide army of mostly female sellers, and transformed the Tupperware party into a cultural phenomenon of 1950s America. But after landing on the cover of Business Week and becoming increasingly identified with the company's success, Wise was abruptly fired in 1958 and largely erased from the history of the business she had helped build.
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One of the First Vietnam POWs: Larry Spencer’s Hanoi Hilton Story
On this episode of Our American Stories, when Navy pilot Larry Spencer was captured in North Vietnam, he entered a world that few Americans would ever see. He spent years as a prisoner of war, first in a camp called “The Zoo” and later in the infamous Hanoi Hilton. Survival meant finding strength in small moments and holding on to hope that freedom would come again.
Spencer tells his story in his own words, offering a rare and personal account of what it meant to live and survive inside North Vietnam’s most notorious prison.
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Dan Sickles: The Civil War General Who Donated His Own Leg to a Museum
On this episode of Our American Stories, Dan Sickles lived the kind of life that sounds almost invented. The New York politician murdered his wife’s lover, Philip Barton Key, just blocks from the White House and then became the first defendant in American history to successfully use a temporary-insanity defense. A few years later, the Civil War gave the disgraced congressman an unlikely second act.
Gettysburg National Military Park Ranger Matt Atkinson tells how Sickles raised a brigade for the Union, rose to major general, lost his right leg at Gettysburg, and donated the amputated limb to the Army Medical Museum.
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An Iowa Waitress, a Pilot, and a Family at War
On this episode of Our American Stories, Doris Wilson was working as a waitress in Perry, Iowa, when news of the attack on Pearl Harbor interrupted the music playing in the restaurant. Before long, all five of her brothers were serving in the military, and the young Iowa woman found herself headed to Texas after marrying Warren Neal, a farmer turned Army Air Forces pilot and flight instructor.
Their new life at the Marfa Army Air Base brought crowded wartime housing, officers’ luncheons, long hours, and one aqua formal gown that made Doris feel like Cinderella at the opening of the Officers Club. But behind the dances and letters home was a family paying an enormous price for the war. Our regular contributor Joy Neal Kidney shares her mother’s story. Joy is the author of Leora’s Letters: The Story of Love and Loss for an Iowa Family During World War II.
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The First Man to Die in a Plane Crash
On this episode of Our American Stories, before air travel became routine, flight was a dangerous experiment. In 1908, Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge climbed into a fragile biplane beside Orville Wright, ready to test the limits of a new invention that had barely left the ground. When a propeller snapped midair, the airplane crashed near Fort Myer, Virginia. Wright survived with severe injuries; Selfridge did not, becoming the first man to die in a plane crash and marking the beginning of a new chapter in the history of aviation. His sacrifice helped shape the safety standards that would guide every flight thereafter.
Craig Du Mez of the Grateful Nation Project shares the story that defined the earliest days of the sky.
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The German Immigrant Who Became New York’s Queen of Thieves
On this episode of Our American Stories, Frederica Mandelbaum arrived in New York from Germany in 1850 with her husband, infant daughter, and very little money. She began by selling lace door-to-door on the Lower East Side, but poverty and limited opportunities soon pushed the ambitious immigrant toward a very different kind of business: buying stolen goods and reselling them for a profit.
Marguerite Fox, former New York Times obituary writer and author of The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum, shares how Frederica built one of the most powerful criminal networks of Gilded Age New York before one tiny strip of stolen silk finally brought her empire crashing down.
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