New Books in Military History

Herbert Lin, "Cyber Threats and Nuclear Weapons" (Stanford UP, 2021)

22 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What does America’s growing dependence on modern information technology systems mean for the management of its nuclear weapons? In his new book, Cy...

Tanya L. Roth, "Her Cold War: Women in the U.S. Military, 1945–1980" (UNC Press, 2021)

19 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Tanya L. Roth's Her Cold War: Women in the U.S. Military, 1945–1980 (University of North Carolina Press, 2021) explains that while Rosie the Rivet...

Stephen Cushman, "The Generals' Civil War: What Their Memoirs Can Teach Us Today" (UNC Press, 2021)

17 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the decades following the American Civil War, several of the generals who had laid down their swords picked up their pens and published accounts of...

Jeremy Black, "Logistics: The Key to Victory" (Pen and Sword, 2021)

17 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

All commanders know that an army (or navy) cannot operate without supplies, yet most aspects of war studies emphasize strategy, tactics, weaponry, and...

Naoko Wake, "American Survivors: Trans-Pacific Memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

16 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The little-known history of U.S. survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings reveals captivating trans-Pacific memories of war, illness, g...

Mark Mazower, "The Greek Revolution: 1821 and the Making of Modern Europe" (Penguin, 2021)

16 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the exhausted, repressive years that followed Napoleon's defeat in 1815, there was one cause that came to galvanize countless individuals across Eu...

Gershom Gorenberg, "War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East" (PublicAffairs: 2021)

11 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Second Battle of El-Alamein, alongside Stalingrad and Midway, is taught in schools the world over as one of the turning points of the Second World...

Samuel Moyn, "Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War" (FSG, 2021)

10 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Geographic and temporal limits have typically contained modern wars—rulers can ask their populace to risk lives and treasure for so long before losi...

Yuri Kostenko, "Ukraine's Nuclear Disarmament: A History" (HURI, 2020)

09 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Yuri Kostenko’s Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament: A History (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2020) is a meticulous account of how the Ukraini...

War Stories: The Military Tactics of Ancient Egyptian Rulers As Illustrated by War Records

03 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The lives of ancient Egyptians were truly colorful, and of them, the royals led the most vivid lives. The military pharaohs have left behind many reco...

Gil Hahn, "Campaign for the Confederate Coast" (West 88th Street Press, 2021)

03 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Aubrey L. Glazer's Mystical Vertigo: Contemporary Kabbalistic Hebrew Poetry Dancing Over the Divide (Academic Studies Press, 2013) immerses readers ...

Tobias Hof, "Galeazzo Ciano: The Fascist Pretender" (U Toronto Press, 2021)

02 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

He was the son of a prominent politician, Benito Mussolini’s son-in-law, and viewed by many as the Duce’s likely successor, only to die before a ...

John D. Gazzelli. "Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Morgan, KCB: The Planner Who Saved Europe" (Palmetto, 2021)

02 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today I spoke to John D. Gazzelli about his book Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Morgan, KCB: The Planner Who Saved Europe (Palmetto, 2021). Histo...

Joseph Tachovsky, "40 Thieves on Saipan: The Elite Marine Scout-Snipers in One of WWII's Bloodiest Battles" (Regnery History, 2020)

29 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

An elite platoon of Marine Scout-Snipers, Lieutenant Frank Tachovsky's "40 Thieves" were chosen for their willingness to defy rules and beat all-comer...

Viviana B. MacManus, "Disruptive Archives: Feminist Memories of Resistance in Latin America's Dirty Wars" (U Illinois Press, 2020)

22 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Viviana MacManus, author of Disruptive Archives: Feminist Memories of Resistance in Latin America’s Dirty Wars published by the...

Sam Wineburg, "Why Learn History (When It's Already on Your Phone)" (U Chicago Press, 2018)

21 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We are surrounded by more readily available information than ever before. And a huge percentage of it is inaccurate. Some of the bad info is well-mean...

Leonidas Mylonakis, "Piracy in the Eastern Mediterranean: Maritime Marauders in the Greek and Ottoman Aegean" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

20 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Leonidas Mylonakis (PhD in History from the University of California, San Diego) is the author of Piracy in the Eastern Mediterranean: Maritime M...

Katherine Chandler, "Unmanning: How Humans, Machines and Media Perform Drone Warfare" (Rutgers UP, 2020)

19 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Katherine Chandler's Unmanning: How Humans, Machines and Media Perform Drone Warfare (Rutgers UP, 2020) studies the conditions that create unmanned...

Timothy Heck and B. A. Friedman, "On Contested Shores: The Evolving Role of Amphibious Operations in the History of Warfare" (Marine Corps UP, 2020)

19 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Perhaps no prediction has been as consistently made—and as consistently wrong—as the imminent death of amphibious operations. Whatever the changes...

Heather P. Venable, "How the Few Became the Proud: Crafting the Marine Corps Mystique 1874-1918" (US Naval Institute Press, 2019)

18 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

For more than half of its existence, members of the Marine Corps largely self-identified as soldiers. It did not yet mean something distinct to be a M...

Ivor Sokolić, "International Courts and Mass Atrocity: Narratives of War and Justice in Croatia" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)

15 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In his new book International Courts and Mass atrocity: Narratives of War and Justice in Croatia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) Ivor Sokolić explores t...

Gábor Ágoston, "The Last Muslim Conquest: The Ottoman Empire and Its Wars in Europe" (Princeton UP, 2021)

13 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The image of the Ottoman Turks and their interaction with the Christian West, has undergone many changes in the past: from William Gladstone's famous ...

Ozan Ozavci, "Dangerous Gifts: Imperialism, Security, and Civil Wars in the Levant, 1798-1864" (Oxford UP, 2021)

12 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

From Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt in 1798 to the foreign interventions in the ongoing civil wars in Syria, Yemen, and Libya today, global em...

Teun Voeten, "Mexican Drug Violence: Hybrid Warfare, Predatory Capitalism and the Logic of Cruelty" (2020)

08 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

With an estimated 250,000 people killed in 15 years, the Mexican drug war is the most violent conflict in the Western world. It shows no sign of abati...

Olesya Khromeychuk, "A Loss: The Story of a Dead Soldier Told by His Sister" (Ibidem, 2021)

06 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

This book is the story of one death among many in the war in eastern Ukraine. Its author is a historian of war whose brother was killed at the frontli...

Mark Atwood Lawrence, "The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era" (Princeton UP, 2021)

06 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Histories of the Vietnam War are not in short supply. In U.S. history, it ranks alongside the Civil War and World War Two in terms of author coverag...

David Brenner, "Rebel Politics: A Political Sociology of Armed Struggle in Myanmar's Borderlands" (Cornell UP, 2019)

04 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How can we best understand ethnic armed organizations on the borderlands of Myanmar? Why did the Karen embrace the military-initiated peace process in...

Ying Jia Tan, "Recharging China in War and Revolution, 1882-1955" (Cornell UP, 2021)

01 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Recharging China in War and Revolution, 1882–1955 (Cornell University Press, 2021), Ying Jia Tan explores the fascinating politics of Chinese ...

Why did the US Fail in Afghanistan?

30 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

With its ultimate debacle in August 2021, a discussion of the twenty-year military involvement of America and the West in Afghanistan is most timely. ...

Daniel Larsen, "Plotting for Peace: American Peacemakers, British Codebreakers, and Britain at War, 1914–1917" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

30 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

With Britain by late 1916 facing the prospect of an economic crisis and increasingly dependent on the US, rival factions in Asquith's government battl...

Shay Hazkani, "Dear Palestine: A Social History of the 1948 War" (Stanford UP, 2021)

29 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 1948, a war broke out that would result in Israeli independence and the erasure of Arab Palestine. Over twenty months, thousands of Jews and Arabs ...

Michael Geheran, "Comrades Betrayed: Jewish World War I Veterans under Hitler" (Cornell UP, 2020)

22 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What claims could Jewish veterans make on the Nazi state by virtue of their having fought for Germany? How often did Germans treat Jewish veterans di...

Elizabeth Borgwardt et al., "Rethinking American Grand Strategy" (Oxford UP, 2021)

14 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What is grand strategy? What does it aim to achieve? And what differentiates it from normal strategic thought--what, in other words, makes it "grand"?...

Giles Tremlett, "The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

10 Sep 2021

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 Nationali...

Henry Reynolds and Nicholas Clements, "Tongerlongeter: First Nations Leader and Tasmanian War Hero" (NewSouth, 2021)

06 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Nicholas, today's guest, explains Australia has no war hero more impressive than Tongerlongeter. Leader of the Oyster Bay nation of south-east Tasman...

Joy Porter, "Trauma, Primitivism and the First World War: The Making of Frank Prewett" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

30 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Trauma, Primitivism and the First World War: The Making of Frank Prewett (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), Joy Porter examines the extraordinary lif...

Mark P. Bradley and Mary L. Dudziak, "Making the Forever War: Marilyn Young on the Culture and Politics of American Militarism" (U Massachusetts Press, 2021)

30 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Making the Forever War: Marilyn Young on the Culture and Politics of American Militarism (University of Massachusetts Press, 2021) is a timely col...

Stephen Biddle, "Nonstate Warfare: The Military Methods of Guerillas, Warlords, and Militias" (Princeton UP, 2021)

27 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

From the Taliban to Hezbollah, armed nonstate actors and civil warfare have dominated the US national security debate for much of the last 20 years. Y...

Kirsten A. Greer, "Red Coats and Wild Birds: How Military Ornithologists and Migrant Birds Shaped Empire" (UNC Press, 2020)

25 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Remapping empire, nature, and scientific enquiry beyond the simple binary exchange between periphery and metropole, Dr. Kirsten Greer demonstrates how...

Sarah J. Zimmerman, "Militarizing Marriage: West African Soldiers' Conjugal Traditions in Modern French Empire" (Ohio UP, 2021)

20 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Following tirailleurs sénégalais’ deployments in West Africa, Congo, Madagascar, North Africa, Syria-Lebanon, Vietnam, and Algeria from the 1880s ...

Jeremy Black, "How the Army Made Britain a Global Power: 1688-1815" (Casemate, 2021)

19 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the new book, How the Army Made Britain a Global Power: 1688-1815, published by Casemate, acclaimed historian and commentator Professor Jeremy Bla...

Amy J. Rutenberg, "Rough Draft: Cold War Military Manpower Policy and the Origins of Vietnam-Era Draft Resistance" (Cornell UP, 2019)

18 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Rough Draft: Cold War Military Manpower Policy and the Origins of Vietnam-Era Draft Resistance (Cornell University Press, 2019) draws the curtain on...

Jeremy Black, "Strategy and the Second World War: How the War Was Won, and Lost" (Robinson, 2021)

18 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

A concise, accessible account of strategy and the Second World War, Strategy and the Second World War: How the War Was Won, and Lost (Robinson, 2021...

Tom Phuong Le, "Japan's Aging Peace: Pacifism and Militarism in the Twenty-First Century" (Columbia UP, 2021)

18 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Since the end of World War II, Japan has not sought to remilitarize, and its postwar constitution commits to renouncing aggressive warfare. Yet many i...

Eliza Ablovatski, "Revolution and Political Violence in Central Europe: The Deluge of 1919" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

11 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the wake of the First World War and Russian Revolutions, Central Europeans in 1919 faced a world of possibilities, threats, and extreme contrasts. ...

Ian Ona Johnson, "Faustian Bargain: The Soviet-German Partnership and the Origins of the Second World War" (Oxford UP, 2021)

10 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

German Ambassador Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau believed that Germany and the Soviet Union were locked together in a Schicksalgemienshaft, or “comm...

James E. Lindsay and Suleiman Mourad, "Muslim Sources of the Crusader Period: An Anthology" (Hackett, 2021)

04 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the West, the study of the phenomenon known as the Crusades has long been dominated by European concerns: European periodization, European selectio...

Ruth Streicher, "Uneasy Military Encounters: The Imperial Politics of Counterinsurgency in Southern Thailand" (Cornell UP, 2020)

02 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Since 2004 the Malay-Muslim majority provinces in the border region of southern Thailand have been wracked by a violent insurgency. Over 7000 people h...

Robert Wooster, "The United States Army and the Making of America: From Confederation to Empire, 1775-1903" (UP of Kansas, 2021)

30 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The story of how the American military—and more particularly the regular army—has played a vital role in the late eighteenth- and nineteenth-centu...

Deborah Willis, "The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship" (NYU Press, 2021)

21 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Photography emerged in the 1840s in the United States, and it became a visual medium that documents the harsh realities of enslavement. Similarly, the...

Mary Louise Roberts, "Sheer Misery: Soldiers in Battle in WWII" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

21 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Marching across occupied France in 1944, American GI Leroy Stewart had neither death nor glory on his mind: he was worried about his underwear. "I ran...

Nathan Kalmoe, "With Ballots and Bullets: Partisanship and Violence in the American Civil War" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

15 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Political Scientist Nathan Kalmoe has written a fascinating historical and political exploration of the connections between violence and partisanship ...

Adam Crymble, "Technology and the Historian: Transformations in the Digital Age" (U Illinois Press, 2021)

15 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The digital age has touched and changed pretty much everything, even altering how historical research is practiced. In his new book Technology and th...

Nick Lloyd, "The Western Front: A History of the Great War, 1914-1918" (Liveright, 2021)

09 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Western Front evokes images of mud-spattered men in waterlogged trenches, shielded from artillery blasts and machine-gun fire by a few feet of dir...

Cees Heere, "Empire Ascendant: The British World, Race, and the Rise of Japan, 1894-1914" (Oxford UP, 2020)

07 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 1902, the British government concluded a defensive alliance with Japan, a state that had surprised much of the world with its sudden rise to promin...

Susan Eisenhower, "How Ike Led: The Principles Behind Eisenhower's Biggest Decisions" (Thomas Dunne, 2020)

05 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Few people have made decisions as momentous as Eisenhower, nor has one person had to make such a varied range of them. From D-Day to Little Rock, from...

Margaret MacMillan, "War: How Conflict Shaped Us" (Random House, 2020)

28 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

“…and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither sh...

Edward G. Longacre, "Unsung Hero of Gettysburg: The Story of Union General David McMurtrie Gregg" (U Nebraska Press, 2021)

24 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Edward G. Longacre about his new book Unsung Hero of Gettysburg: The Story of Union General David McMurtrie Gregg (University of N...

Philip Zelikow, "The Road Less Traveled: The Secret Battle to End the Great War, 1916-1917" (PublicAffairs, 2021)

24 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

During a pivotal few months in the middle of the First World War all sides-Germany, Britain, and America-believed the war could be concluded. Peace at...

Sean McMeekin, "Stalin's War: A New History of World War II" (Basic Books, 2021)

23 Jun 2021

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 ...

Bradley Cesario, "New Crusade: The Royal Navy and British Navalism, 1884-1914" (De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021)

17 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the years leading up to the First World War, a loose combination of serving naval officers, journalists, and politicians in Great Britain orchestra...

Jelena Đureinović, "The Politics of Memory of the Second World War in Contemporary Serbia" (Routledge, 2019)

07 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Exploring the concepts of collaboration, resistance, and postwar retribution and focusing on the Chetnik movement, Jelena Đureinović's book The Pol...

Michael E. Lynch, "Edward M. Almond and the US Army: From the 92nd Infantry Division to the X Corps" (U Kentucky Press, 2019)

02 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Edward M. Almond belonged to the generation of US Army officers who came of age during World War I and then ascended to senior command positions duri...

Jeremy Black, "To Lose an Empire: British Strategy and Foreign Policy, 1758-90" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

02 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Bringing strategy, foreign policy, domestic and imperial politics together, this book challenges the conventional understanding as to why the British ...

Tim Lockley, "Military Medicine and the Making of Race: Life and Death in the West India Regiments, 1795–1874" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

26 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Military Medicine and the Making of Race: Life and Death in the West India Regiments (Cambridge University Press, 2020) by Tim Lockley demonstrates ...

Linda Colley, "The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World" (Liveright, 2021)

26 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Linda Colley is a luminary in the fields of British and imperial history, and the Shelby M. C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University...

Beatrice de Graaf, "Fighting Terror after Napoleon: How Europe Became Secure after 1815" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

21 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

After twenty-six years of unprecedented revolutionary upheavals and endless fighting, the victorious powers craved stability after Napoleon's defeat i...

Patrick Spero, "Frontier Rebels: The Fight for Independence in the American West, 1765-1776" (Norton, 2018)

21 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Boston, Philadelphia, London...Fort Loudon, PA. One of these places is not usually included when imagining the crucial scenes of the American Revoluti...

Jay Lockenour, "Dragonslayer: The Legend of Erich Ludendorff in the Weimar Republic and Third Reich" (Cornell UP, 2021)

19 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Erich Ludendorff is a contentious figure in military history. Focused, energetic, and hailing from humble origins, Ludendorff rose through the ranks o...

Sten Rynniing et al., "War Time: Temporality and the Decline of Western Military Power" (Chatham House, 2020)

17 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The "decline of the West" is once again a frequent topic of speculation. Often cited as one element of the alleged decline is the succession of prolon...

Louis Nelson, "Mosaic: War Monument Mystery" (239 Productions, 2021)

14 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Korean War is now America's seminal war. It was the first war conducted with the new United Nations, the first war fought against the Chinese Comm...

Jacqueline L. Hazelton, "Bullets Not Ballots: Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare" (Cornell UP, 2021)

13 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Why do liberal great powers like the United States struggle to defeat insurgencies across the globe? In her new book, Bullets Not Ballots: Success in...

Ora Szekely, et al., "Insurgent Women: Female Combatants in Civil Wars" (Georgetown UP, 2019)

07 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Ora Szekely about Insurgent Women: Female Combatants in Civil Wars (Georgetown UP, 2019), which she co-edited with Jessica Trisk...

David A. Rennie, "American Writers and World War I" (Oxford UP, 2020)

04 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In American Writers and World War I (Oxford University Press, 2020), David A. Rennie argues that authors' war writing continuously evolved in resp...

Erik Grimmer-Solem, "Learning Empire: Globalization and the German Quest for World Status, 1875-1919" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

28 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The First World War marked the end point of a process of German globalization that began in the 1870s, well before Germany acquired a colonial empire ...

Stella Ghervas, "Conquering Peace: From the Enlightenment to the European Union" (Harvard UP, 2021)

28 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Stella Ghervas's Conquering Peace: From the Enlightenment to the European Union (Harvard University Press, 2021) is a bold new look at war and dipl...

Brent D. Ziarnick, "To Rule the Skies: General Thomas S. Power and the Rise of Strategic Air Command in the Cold War" (US Naval Institute Press, 2021)

27 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

A sadist. A madman. A sociopath seduced by the terrible allure of nuclear weapons. These are but a few of the pejoratives commonly used to describe Un...

Richard Hammond, "Strangling the Axis: The Fight for Control of the Mediterranean during the Second World War" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

27 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In his new book, Strangling the Axis: The Fight for Control of the Mediterranean during the Second World War (Cambridge University Press, 2020) , D...

Douglas M. O'Reagan, "Taking Nazi Technology: Allied Exploitation of German Science after the Second World War" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021)

23 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In his new book Taking Nazi Technology: Allied Exploitation of German Science After the Second World War (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), Dou...

David Hosaflook (trans.), "The Siege of Shkodra: Albania's Courageous Stand Against Ottoman Conquest, 1478" (2017)

15 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Mehmet the Conqueror shook Europe to its foundations when he captured Constantinople in 1453 and, over the next decades, the Ottoman sultan continued ...

Stefano Marcuzzi, "Britain and Italy in the Era of the First World War: Defending and Forging Empires" (Cambridge UP, 2020).

14 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

This is a reassessment of British and Italian grand strategies during the First World War. Dr. Stefano Marcuzzi, Max Weber Fellow at the European Uni...

Bing West, "The Last Platoon: A Novel of the Afghanistan War" (Bombardier Books, 2020)

09 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Last Platoon: A Novel of the Afghanistan War (Bombardier Books, 2020) is a riveting book of infantry ground combat. As a work of fiction it is su...

Gershom Gorenberg, "War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East" (Public Affairs, 2021)

31 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

As World War II raged in North Africa, General Erwin Rommel was guided by an uncanny sense of his enemies' plans and weaknesses. In the summer of 1942...

Sarah Kovner, "Prisoners of the Empire: Inside Japanese POW Camps" (Harvard UP, 2020)

24 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Sarah Kovner’s Prisoners of the Empire: Inside Japanese POW Camps (Harvard UP, 2020) is a nuanced look at the experiences, narratives―and the po...

Michael Kluger and Richard Evans, "Roosevelt's and Churchill's Atlantic Charter: A Risky Meeting at Sea that Saved Democracy" (Naval Institute Press, 2021)

24 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Winston Churchill was no stranger to storms. They had engulfed him in various ways throughout his long career and he had always turned to face them wi...

Richard V. Barbuto, "New York's War of 1812: Politics, Society, and Combat" (U Oklahoma Press, 2021)

23 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

From its use as a staging ground for invasions of Canada to the blockading of its ports, New York found itself at the forefront of America’s war wit...

Elizabeth Thompson, "How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2020)

23 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

When Europe’s Great War engulfed the Ottoman Empire, Arab nationalists rose in revolt against their Turkish rulers and allied with the British on th...

Lorenzo Servitje, "Medicine Is War: The Martial Metaphor in Victorian Literature and Culture" (SUNY Press, 2021)

23 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Medicine is most often understood through the metaphor of war. We encounter phrases such as “the war against the coronavirus,” “the front lines ...

Elizabeth Becker, "You Don't Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War" (PublicAffairs, 2021)

10 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Who were your heroes during your formative years? As a child of the 1970s, many of mine were journalists, especially those reporting on war and revolu...

James R. Holmes, "A Brief Guide to Maritime Strategy" (US Naval Institute Press, 2019)

03 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

A Brief Guide to Maritime Strategy (US Naval Institute Press, 2019), is a readable introduction to the world of maritime strategy. While Prof Holmes ...

W. P. Leeman and J. B. Hattendorf, "Forging the Trident: Theodore Roosevelt and the United States Navy" (Naval Institute Press, 2021)

03 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Theodore Roosevelt was a titan of American politics, society, and culture. Rarely soft spoken, always eager to brandish a big stick, and animated by a...

Gary Scott Smith, "Duty and Destiny: The Life and Faith of Winston Churchill" (Eerdmans, 2021)

02 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Though Churchill harbored intellectual doubts about Christianity throughout his life, he nevertheless valued it greatly and drew on its resources, esp...

Ty Seidule, "Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause" (St. Martin's Press, 2021)

02 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We're very fortunate to be joined by the editor of The West Point History of the Civil War (Simon and Schuster, 2014), the Head of the History Depa...

Alexander Morrison, "The Russian Conquest of Central Asia: A Study in Imperial Expansion, 1814–1914" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

02 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Alexander Morrison’s study of the conquest of Central Asia offers new perspectives on a topic long obscured by misleading grand narratives. Based on...

R. A. Bennette, "Diagnosing Dissent: Hysterics, Deserters, and Conscientious Objectors in Germany During World War One" (Cornell UP, 2020)

23 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Although physicians during World War I, and scholars since, have addressed the idea of disorders such as shell shock as inchoate flights into sickness...

Roger R. Reese, "The Imperial Russian Army in Peace, War, and Revolution, 1856-1917" (U Kansas Press, 2019)

22 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Roger Reese’s recent book, The Imperial Russian Army in Peace, War, and Revolution, 1856-1917 (University of Kansas, 2019), takes a deep dive into...

Rana Mitter, "Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937–1945" (HMH, 2013)

19 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

If we wish to understand the role of China in today’s global society, we would do well to remind ourselves of the tragic, titanic struggle which tha...

R. Alan Covey, "Inca Apocalypse: The Spanish Conquest and the Transformation of the Andean World" (Oxford UP, 2020)

11 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The arrival in 1532 of a small group of Spanish conquistadores at the Andean town of Cajamarca launched one of the most dramatic – and often misun...

Robert J. Mrazek, "The Indomitable Florence Finch: The Untold Story of a War Widow Turned Resistance Fighter and Savior of American POWs" (Hachette, 2020)

10 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Robert J. Mrazek, an author of eleven books and former congressman from New York, has written a gripping account of one the most determine heroines of...

R. Roberts and J. Smith, "War Fever: Boston, Baseball, and America in the Shadow of the Great War" (Basic Books, 2020)

09 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the fall of 1918, a fever gripped Boston. The streets emptied as paranoia about the deadly Spanish flu spread. Newspapermen and vigilante investiga...