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Columbus did it most famously in 1492, and ever since people from all over have been coming to America.

Every group had it challenges.

Arab-Americans have a story of their own. A story that’s gotten hotter with time.

In mosque and church and town hall, Arab-Americans have put down deep roots. But events have not made it easy. Arab-Israeli war. Iraq wars. Oil tensions. 9.11.

This hour, On Point: We’ll talk with civil rights lawyer and writer Alia Malek about her new look at the history, and reality now, of Arab America.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Alia Malek, author of “A Country Called Amreeka: Arab Roots, American Stories.”

Guest:

Joining us from Mobile, Alabama is Winston Groom, author of the new Civil War history “Vicksburg 1863.” He’s the author of other history books such as “Patriotic Fire,” Shrouds of Glory,” and “Conversations with the Enemy,” as well as the bestselling novel “Forrest Gump,” upon which the hit movie was based.

The crowd at Grant Park in Chicago waves flags as it is announced that Barack Obama has been elected the President of the United States, Tuesday night, Nov. 4, 2008. (AP)

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History was all over the vote count last night, as Barack Obama — Democrat, first-term senator, African-American son of a Kenyan father and Kansan mother — was elected 44th president of the United States.

In any country on Earth, such a rise would be stunning. In America, with its deep history of slavery, racial strife and race-tarred politics, it is for many astounding. And it has happened.

It was just 40 years ago that Martin Luther King Jr. gave his last speech in Memphis. On April 3, 1968, King said he’d seen the potential for equal rights in the United States: “I may not get there with you,” he said. But the Promised Land would come.

Yesterday’s election of Barack Obama may not be the Promised Land. But it is a giant moment in America’s singular national story.

This hour, On Point: Obama’s victory, in the context of history.

You can join the conversation. How would you describe, for the history books, what happened yesterday at the polls? What does it mean for America’s national story?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Stanford, California, is David M. Kennedy, professor of history at Stanford University. His many books include the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945″ and the bestselling textbook “The American Pageant: A History of the Republic.”

And from Rutgers University in New Jersey, we welcome Nell Irvin Painter, professor emerita of history at Princeton University. She is a leading scholar of the experiences of African-Americans, women and the working class. Her many books include “Southern History Across the Color Line,” “Creating Black Americans,” and “Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol.”

"The Adoption of the Constitution" by J. B. Stearns, oil., ca. 1856. (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts)

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It’s Election Day, and Americans know that one way or another they are making history today with their vote.

As voters go to the polls, we are going back, to the beginning — to the American Revolution and founders, and to the real story of how they created a nation.

The country’s first turbulent decades were a time of unfolding possibilities, big triumphs, big compromises. America was still being made.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis says the founders weren’t gods, and their plans were not pure genius. They weren’t even set on making a democracy with their revolution. But they did. And today we are shaping it still.

This hour, On Point: human then and human now. Historian Joseph Ellis and the story of the American creation.

You can join the conversation. Does it all look etched in stone to you now? Can you imagine a time when it really wasn’t?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

We’re joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis, a professor of history at Mount Holyoke College. He is author of “American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic,” now available in paperback. His other books include “His Excellency: George Washington” (2004), “Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation” (2000), and “American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson” (1996).

Read an excerpt from “American Creation” at RandomHouse.com.

FDR

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On Friday, it was exhausted smiles and relief in Washington as the massive bailout package finally went through.

By Monday, today, it was cold sweat time again. Markets way down in Asia and beyond. Europe scrambling for stability. It’s one thing to pass a rescue package. Whether it will work is another issue.

In some ways this is not new terrain. Since the earliest years of the Republic, U.S. governments have intervened in financial crises. Results? Mixed.

And this time, the whole world is tied in like never before.

This hour, On Point: Bailout hopes, bailout history, as the crisis rolls on.

You can join the conversation. Are you feeling confident that this bailout will work? Are you reading up on the Depression, Japan, Sweden, to assess how we’re coping, this time, with a meltdown?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Washington is Zanny Minton Beddoes, the economics editor for The Economist. She’s been watching the U.S. and Europe face this storm.

Joining us from Philadelphia is Robert Wright, professor of economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business and author of “One Nation Under Debt: Hamilton, Jefferson, and the History of What We Owe.” His forthcoming book is “Born in Debt: America’s First National Debt and Its Lessons for Today.”

And with us from Charlottesville, Virginia, is Robert Bruner, dean at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business Administration. He is co-author of “The Panic of 1907: Lessons Learned from the Market’s Perfect Storm.”

Look at a map of the USA, and every state tells a story. Oklahoma’s panhandle tells a tale of slavery. Missouri’s boot-heel hitch into Arkansas is the footprint of a real earthquake and one man’s dream.

Texas and California are huge for a reason. There’s a tale in West Virginia’s unicorn horn.

State boundaries may look like a crazy jigsaw — random, or rigged, or arbitrarily straight and narrow. But there’s a reason every time. And some wild stories out there.

This hour, On Point: We’re having fun with history, and how the states got their shapes.

- Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Mark Stein, author of “How the States Got Their Shapes.”