top of page

The History of Ideas Podcast
with David Runciman

Find us wherever you get your podcasts

  • Spotify
  • Apple Music
  • Amazon

Follow us

  • Threads
  • X
  • Bluesky

The Great Political Fictions: American Wife

The penultimate episode in our fictions series is about Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife (2008), which re-imagines the life of First Lady Laura Bush. One of the great novels about the intimacy of power and the accidents of politics, it sticks to the historical record while radically retelling it. What does the standard version leave out about the Bush presidency? How does an ordinary life become an extraordinary one? And where is the line between fact and fiction?


Sign up now to PPF+ to get all our bonus episodes along with ad-free listening: coming soon for PPF+ subscribers Robert Saunders on his favourite political novel plus a special episode on Evita: www.ppfideas.com


Next time: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton



Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

00:00 / 01:04

14 July 2024

bottom of page