‘MTSU On the Record’ welcomes Albert Gore Sr.’s biographer

The biographer of one of Tennessee’s most prominent politicians was the guest on a recent “MTSU On the Record” radio program.

Dr. Anthony “Tony” Badger, historian and author, professor of history at Northumbria University at Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K.

Dr. Tony Badger

Host Gina Logue’s interview with Dr. Anthony J. Badger, author of “Albert Gore Sr.: A Political Life,” first aired Sept. 24 on WMOT-FM Roots Radio 89.5 and www.wmot.org. You can listen to their conversation above.

Badger, whose Sept. 16 appearance with former Vice President Al Gore at MTSU’s Tucker Theatre drew a capacity crowd, began researching Gore’s father at the Albert Gore Research Center on campus in 2001.

The book is a comprehensive examination of the elder Gore, a Carthage, Tennessee, native who graduated from MTSU with a bachelor’s degree in 1932.

He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1939 to 1953 and in the U.S. Senate from 1953 to 1971. Gore Sr. died in 1998 at age 90.

cover of Dr. Tony Badger’s biography “Albert Gore Sr.: A Political Life”

Badger said Gore Sr. was one of an amazing generation of Southern politicians who grew up in the “horse-and-buggy era” and helped shape unprecedented progress in the United States.

“They presided over a country that became an international superpower, became the leading economy in the world, became a center of space travel and engineering and became a nuclear power,” Badger said. “All of these things Albert Gore was involved with.”

Badger, a specialist in post-World War II Southern U.S. history, is a professor of American history at Northumbria University at Newcastle upon Tyne in the United Kingdom. He was the Paul Mellon Professor of American History at the University of Cambridge from 1992 until his retirement in 2014.

To hear previous “MTSU On the Record” programs, visit the searchable “Audio Clips” archives at www.mtsunews.com.

For more information about the radio program, contact Logue at 615-898-5081 or WMOT-FM at 615-898-2800.

The Gore Center also has provided a complete, closed-captioned video of Badger’s Sept. 16 campus talk, “Albert Gore Sr. and the Emergence of the Modern South,” followed by the panel discussion, below. Badger’s lecture is about 25 minutes long, and the complete video is about 90 minutes.