New Books in Diplomatic History
Episodes
Szabolcs László, "Cold War Brokers: Hungarian-American Cultural Exchanges and Transnational Mobility,1956-1989" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
04 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of the CEU Review of Books Podcast, I sat down with Szabolcs László to talk about his new book, Cold War Brokers: Hungarian-America...
Paola De Santo, "The Ambassador and the Courtesan: Political Bodies in Renaissance Italy" (U Delaware Press, 2026)
02 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Paola de Santo joins Jana Byars to talk about her new book, The Ambassador and the Courtesan: Political Bodies in Renaissance Italy (U Delaware Pres...
Charles W. A. Prior, "Treaty Ground: Diplomacy and the Politics of Sovereignty, from Roanoke to the Republic" (U Nebraska Press, 2026)
01 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In Treaty Ground: Diplomacy and the Politics of Sovereignty, from Roanoke to the Republic (U Nebraska Press, 2026), Professor Charles W. A. Prior of...
A Shakeup Is Coming for the Nation-State: A Conversation with Stephen Sims
27 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Stephen Sims’ New Atlantis essay examines how emerging technologies are reshaping the structure and authority of the modern nation-state. He argue...
Jack Cheevers, "Kennedy’s Coup: A White House Plot, a Saigon Murder, and America's Descent into Vietnam" (Simon and Schuster, 2026)
27 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Based on a decade of research and writing, enriched by eyewitness interviews and revealing documents obtained through dozens of freedom of information...
Nathaniel Greenberg, "The Long War of Ideas: American Public Diplomacy in Arabic After 9/11" (Columbia UP, 2026)
19 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of the September 11 attacks, US officials identified the so-called battle for hearts and minds as the “second front” in the war on ter...
Jane Vaynman, "Enemies in Agreement: Political Volatility and the Design of Arms Control" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
18 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Why do adversaries sometimes cooperate to restrain their military competition? Why do they design arms control agreements with intrusive verification ...
Myung-jin Han with Nicolas Levi, "I Was a North Korean Diplomat: Inside the Secret World of Pyongyang's Foreign Service" (Independently Published, 2026)
18 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Nicolas Levi is a researcher at the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He has authored numerous book...
Matthew Guariglia and Brian Hochman, "The Church Committee Report: Revelations from the Bombshell 1970s Investigation into the National Security State" (W. W. Norton & Co, 2026)
29 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Fifty years ago, a government investigation led by US senator Frank Church uncovered some of the darkest state secrets of the twentieth century. The C...
Tom Wells, "The Kissinger Tapes: Inside His Secretly Recorded Phone Conversations" (Oxford UP, 2026)
26 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A richly detailed collection of transcripts of Henry Kissinger's secretly recorded phone conversations from his time in the Nixon administration that ...
Jake Nabel, "The Arsacids of Rome: Misunderstanding in Roman-Parthian Relations" (U California Press, 2025)
16 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
At the beginning of the common era, the two major imperial powers of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East were Rome and Parthia. In this (open...
Aaron Donaghy, "The Second Cold War: Carter, Reagan, and the Politics of Foreign Policy" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
01 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Towards the end of the Cold War, the last great struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union marked the end of détente, and escalated into...
Marc Mierowsky, "A Spy Amongst Us: Daniel Defoe's Secret Service and the Plot to End Scottish Independence" (Yale UP, 2026)
10 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In 1706, Edinburgh was on the brink of a popular uprising. Men and women took to the streets to protest the planned union with England, fearing the en...
Florian Wagner, "Colonial Internationalism and the Governmentality of Empire, 1893–1982" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
09 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Florian Wagner about his new book Colonial Internationalism and the Governmentality of Empire, 1893–1982 (Cambridge UP, 2022). F...
Jonathan Wilson, "The Power and the Glory: The History of the World Cup" (Bold Type Books, 2025)
08 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
As the world prepares for the 2026 World Cup, Jonathan Wilson’s new book, The Power and the Glory: The History of the World Cup (Bold Type Books, ...
Joshua D. Zimmerman, "Jozef Pilsudski: Founding Father of Modern Poland" (Harvard UP, 2022)
08 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1920s, Józef Piłsudski was a household name not just in Poland, but across Europe and across the Atlantic Ocean as well. Yet this complex and...
Gregory T. Chin and Kevin P. Gallagher, "China and the Global Economic Order" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
02 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
China and the Global Economic Order (Cambridge University Press, 2026) examines China's evolving relations with the Bretton Woods institutions (BWIs...
Nicole Wegner, "Martialling Peace: How the Peacekeeper Myth Legitimises Warfare" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)
31 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Martialling Peace: How the Peacekeeper Myth Legitimises Warfare (Edinburgh University Press, 2023) by Dr. Nicole Wegner is not a book about peacekeep...
Swapna Kona Nayudu, "The Nehru Years: An International History of Indian Non-Alignment" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
29 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Scholars of international relations, political thought, and India's international and diplomatic history are increasingly interested in the relevance ...
Bram de Maeyer, "Building for Belgium: Belgian Embassies in a Globalising World (1945-2020)" (Leuven UP, 2025)
28 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Embassy buildings are the most tangible evidence of a state’s diplomatic presence abroad. State authorities have invested in the architectural conce...
Anna Reid, "A Nasty Little War: The West's Fight to Reverse the Russian Revolution" (Basic Books, 2024)
24 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In A Nasty Little War: The Western Fight to Reverse the Russian Revolution (Basic Books, 2024), award-winning reporter Anna Reid tells the extraordi...
Joseph Maiolo and Laura Robson, "The League of Nations" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
23 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Laura Robson and Joe Maiolo challenge histories of the League of Nations that present it as a meaningful if flawed experiment in global governance in ...
Alex Wellerstein, "The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age" (Harper, 2025)
21 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Dropping the atomic bombs on Japan during World War II was, arguably, the most controversial decision of the 20th century. The responsibility for that...
Richard Fine, "The Price of Truth: The Journalist Who Defied Military Censors to Report the Fall of Nazi Germany" (Cornell, 2023)
13 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In The Price of Truth: The Journalist Who Defied Military Censors to Report the Fall of Nazi Germany (Cornell, 2023), Richard Fine recounts the inte...
Amitav Acharya, "The Once and Future World Order: Why Global Civilization Will Survive the Decline of the West" (Hachette UK, 2025)
10 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Since the dawn of the twenty-first century, the West has been in crisis. Social unrest, political polarization, and the rise of other great powers—e...
Rachel Midura, "Postal Intelligence: The Tassis Family and Communications Revolution in Early Modern Europe" (Cornell UP, 2025)
08 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Rachel Midura joins Jana Byars to talk about Postal Intelligence: The Tassis Family and Communications Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cornell UP...
Dylan Loh, "China's Rising Foreign Ministry: Practices and Representations of Assertive Diplomacy" (Stanford UP, 2025)
07 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
How has China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs transformed itself into one of the most assertive diplomatic actors on the global stage? What explains t...
Aaron Bateman. "Weapons in Space: Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative" (MIT Press, 2024)
06 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A new and provocative take on the formerly classified history of accelerating superpower military competition in space in the late Cold War and beyond...
Philip J. Stern, "Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism" (Harvard UP, 2023)
04 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Philip Stern places the corporation―more than the Crown―at the heart of British colonialism, arguing that companies built and governed global empi...
Kerry Brown, "The Great Reversal: Britain, China and the 400-Year Contest for Power" (Yale UP, 2024)
01 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the sixteenth century, Queen Elizabeth I tried to send several letters to her Chinese counterpart, the Wan Li Emperor. The letters tried to ask the...
Joel S. Wit, "Fallout: The Inside Story of America's Failure to Disarm North Korea" (Yale UP, 2025)
26 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
After nearly four decades of negotiations, sanctions, summits, threats, and backdoor channels, the United States has failed to stop North Korea's nucl...
Samuel Helfont, "The Iraq Wars: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2025)
24 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
American wars in Iraq were a defining feature of global politics for almost thirty years. The Gulf War of 1991, the American invasion of Iraq in 2003,...
Mayu Fujikawa, "Envisioning Diplomacy: Japanese Ambassadors in Early Modern Europe" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2025)
19 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Japan sent its first diplomatic delegations to visit the popes and dignitaries of Europe. Europ...
Thomas Gidney, "An International Anomaly: Colonial Accession to the League of Nations" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
18 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It is often assumed that only sovereign states can join the United Nations. But this was not always the case. At the founding of the United Nations, a...
Magda Long et. al., "Covert Action: National Approaches to Unacknowledged Intervention (Georgetown UP, 2025)
09 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Covert action is generally understood as unacknowledged interference by one state in the affairs of another state or non-state actor to affect change....
Yanqiu Zheng, "In Search of Admiration and Respect: Chinese Cultural Diplomacy in the United States, 1875–1974" (U Michigan Press, 2024)
21 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean for a country to seek admiration — and what kinds of institutions try to make that admiration possible? Yanqiu Zheng’s In Sear...
Philip Nash, "Clare Boothe Luce: American Renaissance Woman" (Routledge, 2022)
17 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Philip Nash's book Clare Boothe Luce: American Renaissance Woman (Routledge, 2022) is a concise and highly readable political biography that examine...
Eric H. Cline, "Love, War, and Diplomacy: The Discovery of the Amarna Letters and the Bronze Age World They Revealed" (Princeton UP, 2025)
14 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From the acclaimed author of 1177 B.C., a spellbinding account of the archaeological find that opened a window onto the vibrant diplomatic world of th...
Ronald Angelo Johnson, "Entangled Alliances: Racialized Freedom and Atlantic Diplomacy During the American Revolution" (Cornell UP, 2025)
13 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Entangled Alliances is a reinterpretation of the American Revolution through analysis of diplomacy in the emerging United States during decades of he...
Aaron Magid, "The Most American King: Abdullah of Jordan" (Universal Publishers, 2025)
12 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Most American King: Abdullah of Jordan (Universal Publishers, 2025) is the first comprehensive biography on Jordan’s King Abdullah. Drawing o...
Kalathmika Natarajan, "Coolie Migrants, Indian Diplomacy: Caste, Class and Indenture Abroad, 1914-67" (Oxford UP, 2026)
02 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Over the centuries, millions of migrant labourers sailed from the Indian subcontinent, across the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean, to shape what is now...
Yong-Shik Lee, "Sustainable Peace in Northeast Asia" (Anthem Press, 2023)
22 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the long run, countries in Northeast Asia will have to see the need for collective defense. Otherwise, you won’t be able to stop rivalry between ...
Ada Ferrer, "Cuba: An American History" (Scribner, 2021)
20 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“No country is ever just one thing.” In her new book Cuba: An American History (Scribner, 2021), NYU historian Ada Ferrer shows this again and a...
William Doyle, "Napoleon at Peace: How to End a Revolution" (Reaktion Books, 2022)
19 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The French Revolution facilitated the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, but after gaining power he knew that his first task was to end it. In this book Will...
Mia Bennett and Klaus Dodds, "Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic" (Yale UP, 2025)
13 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A vital account of the state of the Arctic today--emphasising the twin dangers of climate change and geopolitical competition Nowhere is the dual thre...
Maria Fedorova, "Seeds of Exchange: Soviets, Americans, and Cooperation in Agriculture, 1921–1935" (Northern Illinois UP, 2025)
09 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Seeds of Exchange: Soviets, Americans, and Cooperation in Agriculture, 1921–1935 (Northern Illinois UP, 2025) examines the US and Soviet exchange ...
Joshua Eisenman and David H. Shinn, "China's Relations with Africa: A New Era of Strategic Engagement" (Columbia UP, 2023)
08 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Since Xi Jinping’s accession to power in 2012, nearly every aspect of China’s relations with Africa has grown dramatically. Beijing has increased ...
Emma Ashford, "First Among Equals: U. S. Foreign Policy in a Multipolar World" (Yale UP, 2025)
05 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A fresh, concise roadmap for U.S. grand strategy in a multipolar world For the past thirty years, post-Cold War triumphalism and a desire to reshape t...
Michael Jabara Carley, "Stalin's Gamble: The Search for Allies Against Hitler, 1930-1936" (U Toronto Press, 2023)
26 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Shedding light on the origins of the Second World War in Europe, Stalin's Gamble: The Search for Allies Against Hitler, 1930-1936 (University...
Adam R. C. Humphreys and Hidemi Suganami, "Causal Inquiry in International Relations" (Oxford UP, 2024)
20 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Causal Inquiry in International Relations (Oxford UP, 2024) by Adam R. C. Humphreys and Hidemi Suganami defends a new, philosophically informed acc...
George Papaconstantinou and Jean Pisani-Ferry, "New World New Rules: Global Cooperation in a World of Geopolitical Rivalries" (Agenda, 2024)
17 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The need for collective action has never been greater, but geopolitics, structural changes and diverging preferences mean that existing global governa...
Michael Poznansky, "Great Power, Great Responsibility: How the Liberal International Order Shapes US Foreign Policy" (Oxford UP, 2025)
16 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of World War II, the United States leveraged its hegemonic position in the international political system to gradually build a new global ...
Zach Fredman and Judd Kinzley eds., "Uneasy Allies: Sino-American Relations at the Grassroots, 1937–1949" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
16 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This timely collection of essays examines Sino-American relations during the Second World War, the Chinese Civil War and the opening of the Cold War. ...
Peter Sparding, "No Better Friend? The United States and Germany Since 1945" (Hurst, 2024)
12 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The German-American relationship is the decisive transatlantic dynamic of our time. Long seen as one of the most stable connections between Europe and...
Thomas Graham, "Getting Russia Right" (Polity Press, 2023)
10 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia,” Winston Churchill once said. “It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” That s...
Joanne Yao, "The Ideal River: How Control of Nature Shaped the International Order" (Manchester UP, 2022)
08 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Environmental politics has traditionally been a peripheral concern for international relations theory, but increasing alarm over global environmental ...
Jeremy Black, "British Politics and Foreign Policy, 1744-57" (Routledge, 2016)
05 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The years between 1744 and 1757 were a testing time for the British government as political unrest at home exploded into armed rebellion, whilst on th...
Robert Ivermee, "Glorious Failure: The Forgotten History of French Imperialism in India" (Oxford UP, 2025)
02 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a powerful new account of a chapter in history that is crucial to understand, yet often overlooked. For 150 years, from the reign of Louis XIV...
David Bosco, "The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World's Oceans" (Oxford UP, 2021)
30 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Oceanic Studies. An interdisciplinary podcast that examines the past, present, and future of ocean governance In 1609, the Dutch lawyer Hugo Gro...
Olga Touloumi, "Assembly by Design: The United Nations and Its Global Interior" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)
30 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For almost seven years after World War II, a small group of architects took on an exciting task: to imagine the spaces of global governance for a new ...
Thane Gustafson, "Perfect Storm: Russia's Failed Economic Opening, the Hurricane of War and Sanctions, and the Uncertain Future" (Oxford UP, 2025)
29 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 brought a tragic close to a thirty-year period of history that began with the collapse of the Soviet Union and th...
Mark L. Haas, "The Geriatric Peace: Population Aging and the Decline of War" (Oxford UP, 2025)
27 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The vast majority of the world's countries are experiencing a demographic revolution: dramatic, sustained, and likely irreversible population aging. S...
Jérémy Filet, "The Jacobites and the Grand Tour: Educational Travel and Small-States' Diplomacy" (Manchester UP, 2025)
26 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Jacobites and the Grand Tour: Educational travel and small-states' diplomacy (Manchester University Press, 2025) by Dr. Jérémy Filet is the fir...
Gregory A. Daddis, "Faith and Fear: America's Relationship with War Since 1945" (Oxford UP, 2025)
25 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In a groundbreaking reassessment of the long Cold War era, historian Gregory A. Daddis argues that ever since the Second World War's fateful conclusio...
Stephan Kieninger, "Securing Peace in Europe: Strobe Talbott, NATO, and Russia After the Cold War" (Columbia UP, 2025)
24 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This deeply researched book offers new perspective on the NATO-Russia relationship through the eyes of Strobe Talbott, a deputy secretary of state for...
K. Ian Shin, "Imperial Stewards: Chinese Art and the Making of America's Pacific Century" (Stanford UP, 2025)
23 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode, which is co-hosted with Delaney Chieyen Holton, features Dr. K. Ian Shin discussing his recently published book, Imperial Stewards: Chi...
Raymond Jonas, "Habsburgs on the Rio Grande: The Rise and Fall of the Second Mexican Empire" (Harvard UP, 2024)
23 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For a few years in the middle of the nineteenth century, Mexico was ruled by an Austrian and defended by a French army. This often neglected story is ...
Paul Thomas Chamberlin, "Scorched Earth: A Global History of World War II" (Basic Books, 2025)
19 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In popular memory, the Second World War was an unalloyed victory for freedom over totalitarianism, marking the demise of the age of empires and the tr...
Reid B. C. Pauly, "The Art of Coercion: Credible Threats and the Assurance Dilemma" (Cornell UP, 2025)
19 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Strong states are surprisingly bad at coercion. History shows they prevail only a third of the time. Dr. Pauly argues that coercion often fails becaus...
Mary Bridges on US Bankers Abroad and the Making of a Global Superpower
18 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Mary Bridges, Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy at the Belfer Center for Science and International...
Georgiy Kasianov et al., "From 'the Ukraine' to Ukraine: A Contemporary History, 1991-2021" (Ibidem Press, 2021)
17 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2021, Ukraine celebrates its thirty-year independence anniversary. During this relatively short period of time—when considered in historical term...
Michael Jabara Carley, "Stalin's Great Game: War and Neutrality, 1939-1941" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
13 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The period from September 1939 to early 1942 was crucial for Soviet foreign policy and coincided with the early stages of the Second World War, includ...
Edward Luce, "Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet" (Simon and Schuster, 2025)
12 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Zbigniew Brzezinski was a key architect of the Soviet Union’s demise, which ended the Cold War. A child of Warsaw—the heart of central Europe’s ...
Rita Kiki Edozie and Moses Khisa, "Africa's New Global Politics: Regionalism in International Relations" (Lynne Rienner, 2022)
10 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The African Union's threat to lead African states' mass withdrawal from the International Criminal Court in 2008 marked just one of many encounters th...
Grace C. Huang, "Chiang Kai-Shek's Politics of Shame: Leadership, Legacy, and National Identity in China" (Harvard UP, 2021)
09 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Once a powerful figure who reversed the disintegration of China and steered the country to Allied victory in World War II, Chiang Kai-shek fled into e...
Megan Brown, "The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community" (Harvard UP, 2022)
09 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community (Harvard University Press, 2022), Dr. Megan Brown details the surprising st...
Jonathan Fisher and Nina Wilén, "African Peacekeeping" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
09 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In African Peacekeeping (Cambridge University Press, 2022), Dr. Jonathan Fisher and Dr. Nina Wilén explore the story of Africa's contemporary histo...
Alan McPherson, "Ghosts of Sheridan Circle: How a Washington Assassination Brought Pinochet's Terror State to Justice" (UNC Press, 2019)
09 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On September 21, 1976, a car bomb exploded in Washington DC, killing a former Chilean diplomat named Orlando Letelier and his American colleague Ronni...
Zack Cooper, "Tides of Fortune: The Rise and Decline of Great Militaries" (Yale UP, 2025)
06 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
An ambitious look at how the twentieth century's great powers devised their military strategies and what their implications mean for military competit...
Giles Tremlett, "The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
04 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When civil war broke out in Spain in 1936, tens of thousands of young men and women from across the world flocked there to fight against the Nation...
Dan Reiter, "Untied Hands: How States Avoid the Wrong Wars" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
03 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do states advance their national security interests? Conventional wisdom holds that states must court the risk of catastrophic war by “tying the...
Sarah E. K. Smith, "Trading on Art: Cultural Diplomacy and Free Trade in North America" (UBC Press, 2025)
02 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
hat is the relationship between culture and trade? In Trading on Art: Cultural Diplomacy and Free Trade in North America Sarah E. K. Smith, an Asso...
Sasha D. Pack, "The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Hispano-African Border" (Stanford UP, 2019)
01 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Hispano-African Border(Stanford, 2019), Sasha D. Pack considers the...
Michael Vorenberg, "Lincoln's Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War" (Random House, 2023)
29 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
More than a century and a half after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, historians are still searching for exactly when the U.S. Civil War...
Julian Jackson, "De Gaulle" (Harvard UP, 2018)
26 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Charles de Gaulle is one of the greatest figures of twentieth century history. If Sir Winston Churchill was (in the words of Harold Macmillan) the "gr...
Agathe Demarais, "Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against U.S. Interests" (Columbia UP, 2022)
25 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sanctions have become the go-to foreign policy tool for the United States. Coercive economic measures such as trade tariffs, financial penalties, and ...
Luke A. Nichter, "The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election Of 1968" (Yale UP, 2024)
22 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A sitting Democratic president who chooses not to run for re-election, a vice president running out of the president’s shadow, and a Republican nomi...
Ketian Zhang, "China's Gambit: The Calculus of Coercion" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
21 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Emerging from an award-winning article in International Security, China's Gambit examines when, why, and how China attempts to coerce states over pe...
Sean McMeekin, "Stalin's War: A New History of World War II" (Basic Books, 2021)
20 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
World War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its events. But Hitler was ...
Frank L. Jones, "Sam Nunn: Statesman of the Nuclear Age" (UP Kansas, 2020)
20 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In a 2012 opinion piece bemoaning the state of the US Senate, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank cited a “leading theory: There are no giants in...
How ClioVis is Transforming Education and Historical Research
19 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today I’m speaking with Marcus Golding, historian and Director of Educational Operations at ClioVis. ClioVis is an incredible software and learnin...
Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman, "Hitler's American Gamble: Pearl Harbor and Germany's March to Global War" (Basic Books, 2021)
13 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A riveting account of the five most crucial days in twentieth-century diplomatic history: from Pearl Harbor to Hitler's declaration of war on the Unit...
Paul Tucker, "Global Discord: Values and Power in a Fractured World Order" (Princeton UP, 2024)
03 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How to sustain an international system of cooperation in the midst of geopolitical struggle? Can the international economic and legal system survive t...
Sam Dalrymple, "Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia" (HarperCollins UK, 2025)
02 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As recently as 1928, a vast swathe of Asia – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait – ...
Sven Saaler, Kudō Akira, and Tajima Nobuo eds., "Mutual Perceptions and Images in Japanese-German Relations, 1860-2010" (Brill, 2017)
01 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Mutual Perceptions and Images in Japanese-German Relations, 1860-2010 (Brill, 2017) examines the mutual images formed between Japan and Germany from...
Jack Snyder, "Human Rights for Pragmatists: Social Power in Modern Times" (Princeton UP, 2024)
30 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Human rights are among our most pressing issues today. But rights promoters have reached an impasse in their effort to achieve rights for all. Human ...
Ross A. Kennedy, "The United States and the Origins of World War II in Europe" (Taylor & Francis, 2025)
28 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The United States and the Origins of World War II in Europe (Taylor & Francis, 2025), spans 1914–1939 to provide a concise interpretation of the...
Yaroslav Hrytsak, "Ukraine: The Forging of a Nation" (PublicAffairs, 2024)
25 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the world witnessed the “creative, freewheeling, darkly humorous, and deeply resilient society” that is conte...
Stephan Kieninger, "The Diplomacy of Détente: Cooperative Security Policies from Helmut Schmidt to George Shultz" (Routledge, 2018)
21 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Diplomacy of Détente: Cooperative Security Policies from Helmut Schmidt to George Shultz (Routledge, 2020) investigates the underlying reasons ...
James D. Brown, "Cracking the Crab: Russian Espionage Against Japan, from Peter the Great to Richard Sorge" (Hurst, 2025)
19 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Sorge is one of history’s most famous spies. This hard-drinking, womanising, motorcycle-crashing Soviet officer penetrated the German embass...