Summer Of Fire And Blood by Lyndal Roper – The GREAT LAKES EXPERIENCE w/ Dr. James Palmitessa

s1.e1. GREAT LAKES EXPERIENCE- SUMMER OF FIRE AND BLOOD

Summer of Fire and Blood transports us to the year 1524—Reformation’s dawn and a feudal Germany fractured by a church entwined with noble power, leaving its peasantry seething against deepening social inequities.

Lyndal Anne Roper is an Australian historian and academic. She works on German history of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and has written a biography of Martin Luther. Her research centres on gender and the Reformation, witchcraft, and visual culture. In 2011, she was appointed to the Regius Chair of History at the University of Oxford, the first woman and first Australian to hold this position.

Summer of Fire and Blood is the first English-language study of the German Peasants’ War in a generation. It is the Winner of McGill University’s 2025 Cundill History Prize.

Dr. James Palmitessa is Associate Professor of History, Western Michigan University. He conducts research and regularly presents at conferences in Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic. He directs graduate students in his main areas of research and also serves on graduate committees of students in medieval and modern European history and medieval studies. He is affiliated with the Global and International Studies Program and a member of the Graduate Faculty of the Medieval Institute.

Visit: amazon.ca/Summer-Fire-Blood-German-Peasants

Visit: www.linkedin.com/in/tom-leonard

Tom Leonard is Presenter of the Great Lakes Experience. Great Lakes Odyssey Radio Hour/Odyssey Radio Partners LLC, Executive Producer, Special Educator M.ED, and a reader of history with an eye to the future.

Theme Title – Out To Sea
Artist / Composer – Rusty McCarthy

This program produced by GLOW Radio Partners in venture with The Borderline Events Co.

The Great Lakes Odyssey Radio Hour is broadcast on NPR (National Public Radio)

Great Lakes Odyssey World

Inspired by the 50th anniversary of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, the Great Lakes Odyssey World is a multi-national effort to strengthen and explore our relationship with the natural wonders known as the Great Lakes.

In this part of the project, we have created a multi-part audio series looking at the way the Great Lakes shape our lives, our livelihoods, our health and our culture.

50 years ago, folks in the media and elsewhere were ready to declare the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie “dead.”

The thought so appalled citizens in Canada and the United States, they forced their national governments to act.

Because, of course, the Great Lakes shape the life of both Canada and the United States. And, of course, the Great Lakes are a single system stretching from Duluth to Ottawa and down the St. Lawrence seaway. What happens to any of the Lakes will soon happen to the others.

So, the politicians of 50 years ago negotiated the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, “for the purpose of restoring, protecting and enhancing the Great Lakes and the Great Lakes basin.”

50 years later, we can see the agreement worked. We see more fish, cleaner water, and less pollution. Unlike the early settlers and colonials, who mostly saw the Lakes as a resource to tap, we now recognize, like the First Nations, the Lakes are part of our identity. They shape our relationships, our songs and celebrations of place, the way we eat, how we play, and what we make, or sell, or harvest.

50 years since the wake-up call of a burning river, Great Lakes Odyssey wants to learn how we live and love, hurt and restore the incredible gift which is the Great Lakes.

We will explore Great Lakes art and artistic expression, and meet the artists, writers, musicians who make it. We will also dip into Great Lakes history and lore – and learn from the people who have been here the longest and know it the best: The People of the Three Fires, the Anishinaabek.

On our Odyssey around the Great Lakes, we will also hear from people working to prevent poisonous algal blooms or stop the spread of invasive species. We will meet visionaries undoing decades of development that hardened shorelines, emptied marshes and wetlands, and destroyed critical spawning grounds. We will talk to people working to ensure all beings have access to pure drinking water.

Because none of us can live without pure drinking water.

In this wondrous place we call the Great Lakes, we know we are blessed by these Sweet Water Seas. We claim them as our H.O.M.E.S. as the emotionally accurate mnemonic says. They are Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior, and they are our HOMES.

As long as humans have lived in, and of and through the Lakes, people have told stories about them, sung about them, and gloried in this great gift of the long departed Ice Age. Left by glaciers thousands of years ago, they are the World’s storehouse of fresh water. If they are drained… or ruined… or damaged, they can never be replaced.

So, as we travel around the Great Lakes basin, we want to see how we are doing – what we are doing – how we’re feeling and what we’re learning as we try to live as lovers and restorers – and children and family – of the being whom the Anishinaabek call Nayaano-nibiimaang Gichigamiin, the five freshwater seas.

We hope to galvanize, inspire, and motivate you to strengthen, support and steward the Great Lakes to a beautiful and healthy future.

So please join us on this magical, dare we say “magical mystery tour” of the Great Lakes basin and Great Lakes culture.