This is a free public event, but registration is required. Please click here for registration.

Bombs Bursting in Air, edited by Mat Callahan, gathers contributions from historians and musicologists to explore the role of music in the history of the United States. The essayists exhume music that has been forgotten or deliberately buried while drawing comparison with what has been promoted as “American music” by the academy, the music industry, and journalism, as well as by the US State Department.

Join the Gillespie Forum and the FDR Library and Museum for an enlightening book discussion led by author and musician Mat Callahan with contributing writer Steve Garabedian, Associate Professor of History at Marist College.

Bombs Bursting in Air: Music and the State, a book and music tour will be held at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, November 2, 2025 in the Henry A. Wallace Center at the FDR Presidential Library.