New Books in Military History
Episodes
Jillian C. Rogers, "Resonant Recoveries: French Music and Trauma Between the World Wars" (Oxford UP, 2021)
08 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Understanding how people cope with large-scale traumatic events has become more urgent as we continue to cope with the effects of the pandemic. In Re...
Kevin Weddle, "The Compleat Victory: Saratoga and the American Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2021)
04 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
British hopes that the American War for Independence would be brought to a swift conclusion began to wane in the early months of 1777. Despite brillia...
Olga Dror, "Making Two Vietnams: War and Youth Identities, 1965-1975" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
01 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We are familiar with the history of the division of Vietnam in 1954 into two states, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north and the Republic ...
Emmanuel Kreike, "Scorched Earth: Environmental Warfare as a Crime Against Humanity and Nature" (Princeton UP, 2021)
25 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Scorched Earth: Environmental Warfare as a Crime Against Humanity and Nature (Princeton UP, 2021), Emmanuel Kreike offers a global history of env...
Michael Gorra, "The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War" (Liveright, 2020)
21 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Michael Gorra about his new book The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War (Liveright, 2020). This episode touches on two ...
D. Barno and N. Bensahel, "Adaptation Under Fire: How Militaries Change in Wartime" (Oxford UP, 2020)
08 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Few human enterprises are as complex, dynamic, and unpredictable as war. Armed conflict substitutes the relatively ordered reality of peace with the u...
Jeremy Black, "A History of the Second World War in 100 Maps" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
06 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The First World War was marked by an exceptional expansion in the use and production of military cartography. But World War II took things even furthe...
Kelly A. Hammond, "China's Muslims and Japan's Empire: Centering Islam in World War II" (UNC Press, 2020)
30 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The 1930s-40s expansion of the Japanese empire was marked by significant interest among Japan-based scholars and policy-makers in China’s Muslim pop...
Donald F. Johnson, "Occupied America: British Military Rule and the Experience of Revolution" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020)
28 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When we read the Declaration of Independence, what tends to jump off the page are the lofty propositions concerning natural rights. Yet over a third o...
Mark Cornwall, "Sarajevo 1914: Sparking the First World War" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
17 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. This key event in 20th-century history continues to fascin...
Jeremy Black, "Tank Warfare" (Indiana UP, 2020)
16 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The story of the battlefield in the 20th century was dominated by a handful of developments. Foremost of these was the introduction and refinement of ...
Jiří Hutečka, "Men Under Fire: Motivation, Morale, and Masculinity among Czech Soldiers in the Great War, 1914–1918" (Berghahn Books, 2019)
09 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In historical writing on World War I, Czech-speaking soldiers serving in the Austro-Hungarian military are typically studied as Czechs, rarely as sold...
Rana Mitter, "China's Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism" (Harvard UP, 2020)
08 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Although World War II had been largely remembered in the People’s Republic of China as an experience of victimization since its founding in 1949, th...
Michael Brenes, "For Might and Right: Cold War Defense Spending and the Remaking of American Democracy" (U Massachusetts Press, 2020)
03 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Donald Trump campaigned on a great many things in 2016, but one of the issues he used to criticize Democrats was their role in supporting sequestratio...
Covell F. Meyskens, "Mao's Third Front: The Militarization of Cold War China" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
01 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1964, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) made a momentous policy decision. In response to rising tensions with the United States and Soviet Union, a...
Jeremy Black, "Geopolitics and the Quest for Dominance" (Indiana UP, 2016)
30 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
History and geography delineate the operation of power, not only its range but also the capacity to plan and the ability to implement. Approaching sta...
Paul Jankowski, "All Against All: The Long Winter of 1933 and the Origins of the Second World War" (Harper, 2020)
30 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In his latest monograph, All Against All: The Long Winter of 1933 and The Origins of the Second World War (Harper, 2020), Professor Paul Jankowski (...
Andrea Pető, "The Women of the Arrow Cross Party: Invisible Hungarian Perpetrators in the Second World War" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
27 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Andrea Pető's book The Women of the Arrow Cross Party: Invisible Hungarian Perpetrators in the Second World War (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) analyses...
Benjamin F. Armstrong, "Small Boats and Daring Men: Maritime Raiding, Irregular Warfare, and the Early American Navy" (U Oklahoma Press, 2019)
18 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Two centuries before the daring exploits of Navy SEALs and Marine Raiders captured the public imagination, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps were already...
David Vine, "The United States of War: A Global History of America's Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State" (U California Press, 2020)
13 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Since its founding, the United States has been at peace for only eleven years. Across nearly two-and-a-half centuries, that’s a lot of war. In his...
Niklas Frykman, "The Bloody Flag: Mutiny in the Age of Atlantic Revolution" (U California Press, 2020)
09 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The 1790s were a decade of turmoil and strife across the West. With the French Revolution, a new era of wars began that invoked the language of equal ...
David S. Nasca, "The Emergence of American Amphibious Warfare, 1898 to 1945" (Naval Institute Press, 2020)
04 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Amphibious warfare, as outlined by American Rear Admiral James E. Jouett in 1885, was a relatively straightforward affair: to project power from the s...
K. A. Lieber and D. G. Press, "The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution: Power Politics in the Atomic Age" (Cornell UP, 2020)
03 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution: Power Politics in the Atomic Age (Cornell University Press, 2020), Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press tackle the...
Chima J. Korieh, "Nigeria and World War II: Colonialism, Empire, and Global Conflict" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
02 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Reading the petitions that resident of colonial Nigeria submitted to the government during World War II, Marquette University historian, Prof. Chima J...
David Davis, "Wheels of Courage: How Paralyzed Veterans from World War II Invented Wheelchair Sports" (Center Street, 2020)
28 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Out of the carnage of World War II comes an unforgettable tale about defying the odds and finding hope in the most harrowing of circumstances. Wheels ...
Dónal Hassett, "Mobilizing Memory: The Great War and the Language of Politics in Colonial Algeria, 1918-1939" (Oxford UP, 2019)
27 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Dónal Hassett’s Mobilizing Memory: The Great War and the Language of Politics in Colonial Algeria, 1918-1939 (Oxford UP, 2019) is at once a history...
Frank Jacob, "Japanese War Crimes during World War II: Atrocity and the Psychology of Collective Violence" (Praeger, 2018)
22 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When you mention Japanese War crimes in World War Two, you’ll often get different responses from different generations. The oldest among us will ta...
Rhodri Jeffreys Jones, "The Nazi Spy Ring in America: Hitler’s Agents, the FBI and the Case that Stirred the Nation" (Georgetown UP, 2020)
13 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, The Nazi Spy Ring in America: Hitler’s Agents, the FBI & the Case that Stirred the Nation (Georgetown University Press, 2020), Rh...
Chris Lombardi, "I Ain’t Marching Anymore: Dissenters, Deserters and Objectors to America’s Wars" (The New Press, 2020)
09 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Before the U.S. Constitution had even been signed, soldiers and new veterans protested. Dissent, the hallowed expression of disagreement and refusal t...
Jon Lindsay, "Information Technology and Military Power" (Cornell UP, 2020)
07 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Many assume that information technology will one day clear away the “fog of war.” But as Jon Lindsay shows in Information Technology and Military ...
Christopher Capozzola, "Bound By War: How the United States and the Philippines Built America’s First Pacific Century" (Basic Books, 2020)
06 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ever since American troops occupied the Philippines in 1898, generations of Filipinos have served in and alongside the U.S. armed forces. In Bound By ...
Brandon M. Schechter, "The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects" (Cornell UP, 2019)
06 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects (Cornell University Press) uses everyday objects to tell the story of...
Stephen C. Kepher, "COSSAC: Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick Morgan and the Genesis of Operation OVERLORD" (Naval Institute Press, 2020)
05 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
D-Day, June 6, 1944, looms large in both popular and historical imaginations as the sin qua non, or single defining moment, of the Second World War. T...
Geoffrey Plank, "Atlantic Wars: From the Fifteenth Century to the Age of Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2020)
29 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For the people of the Dawnland, they were floating islands. The sails resembled clouds, and the men gathered on deck looked like bears. When Europeans...
Gregory A. Daddis, "Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
25 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In his compelling evaluation of Cold War popular culture, Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines (Cambridge UP, 2020), G...
Lorenz M. Lüthi, "Cold Wars: Asia, the Middle East, Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
25 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What was the Cold War that shook world politics for the second half of the twentieth century? Standard narratives focus on Soviet-American rivalry as ...
Justin Q. Olmstead, "The United States' Entry into the First World War: The Role of British and German Diplomacy" (Boydell Press, 2019)
22 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The complicated situation which led to the American entry into the First World War in 1917 is often explained from the perspective of public opinion, ...
Despina Stratigakos, "Hitler’s Northern Utopia: Building the New Order in Occupied Norway" (Princeton UP, 2020)
17 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book Hitler’s Northern Utopia: Building the New Order in Occupied Norway (Princeton University Press, 2020), Despina Stratigakos investi...
Thomas R. Metcalf, "Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860-1920" (University of California Press, 2008)
14 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Thomas R. Metcalf’s Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860-1920 (University of California Press) is an innovative remapping of ...
Mark Santiago, "A Bad Peace and A Good War: Spain and the Mescalero Apache Uprising of 1795-1799" (U Oklahoma Press, 2018)
11 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In August 1795, Apaches wiped out two Spanish patrols In the desert borderlands of the what is today the American Southwest and Mexican north. This at...
Wendy Moore, "No Man’s Land: The Trailblazing Women Who Ran Britain's Most Extraordinary Military Hospital During World War I (Basic Books, 2020)
07 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest is journalist and author, Wendy Moore. Her new book, No Man’s Land: The Trailblazing Women Who Ran Britain's Most Extraordinary Mili...
Rafael Medoff, "The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and the Holocaust" (JPS, 2019)
31 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Like so many Americans, American Jews supported President Roosevelt. They adored him. They believed in him. They idolized him. Perhaps they shouldn’...
S. Grayzel and T. Proctor, "Gender and the Great War" (Oxford UP, 2017)
28 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this week episode of “New Books in History,” we’ll discuss Gender and the Great War (Oxford University Press, 2017) with editors Sue Grayzel ...
Khary O. Polk, "Contagions of Empire: Scientific Racism, Sexuality, and Black Military Workers Abroad, 1898-1948" (UNC Press, 2020)
19 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Khary Oronde Polk is the author of Contagions of Empire: Scientific Racism, Sexuality, and Black Military Workers Abroad, 1898-1948, published by the ...
Patrice Gueniffey, "Napoleon and de Gaulle: Heroes and History" (Harvard UP, 2020)
11 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
One of France’s most famous historians compares and contrasts the two most famous French exemplars of political and military leadership of the past ...
J. Browning and T. Silver, "An Environmental History of the Civil War" (UNC Press, 2020)
06 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This sweeping new history recognizes that the Civil War was not just a military conflict but also a moment of profound transformation in Americans' re...
W. J. Perry and T. Z. Collina, "The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump" (BenBella Books, 2020)
06 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As we enter the third decade of the 21st century, American nuclear policy continues to be influenced by the legacies of the Cold War. Nuclear policies...
John C. McManus, "Fire and Fortitude: The US Army in the Pacific War, 1941-1943 (Dutton Caliber, 2019)
06 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For most Americans, the war the United States waged in the Pacific in the Second World War was one fought primarily by the Navy and the Marine Corps. ...
Leah Zani, "Bomb Children: Life in the Former Battlefields of Laos" (Duke UP, 2019)
05 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I talk with Dr. Leah Zani, a public anthropologist and poet based in California, about her truly wonderful book Bomb Children: Life i...
Theresa Kaminski, "Dr. Mary Walker's Civil War: One Woman's Journey to the Medal of Honor and the Fight for Women's Rights" (Lyons Press, 2020)
28 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Among the tens of thousands of Americans who volunteered their services during the Civil War was Mary Walker, a daring young woman who was one of the ...
Lakshmi Subramanian, "The Sovereign and the Pirate: Ordering Maritime Subjects in India's Western Littoral" (Oxford UP, 2016)
27 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Lakshmi Subramanian’s The Sovereign and the Pirate: Ordering Maritime Subjects in India's Western Littoral (Oxford University Press, 2016) offers an...
Elizabeth Shesko, "Conscript Nation: Coercion and Citizenship in the Bolivian Barracks" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2020)
23 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Elizabeth Shesko’s Conscript Nation: Coercion and Citizenship in the Bolivian Barracks (University of Pittsburgh Press) is an intimate and rich hist...
Roger Moorhouse, "Poland 1939: The Outbreak of World War II" (Basic Books, 2020)
22 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Historian and academic Roger Moorhouse, revisits the opening campaign of World War II, the German invasion of Poland in September 1939., in his new bo...
The Cold War as History
21 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Cold War, the on again and off again confrontation between the West and the Soviet Union is one of the most famous historical episodes of the shor...
Erik Grimmer-Solem, "Learning Empire: Globalization and the German Quest for World Status, 1875-1919"(Cambridge UP, 2019)
16 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, Learning Empire: Globalization and the German Quest for World Status, 1875-1919 (Cambridge University Press) Erik Grimmer-Solem e...
Crystal Mun-hye Baik, "Reencounters: On the Korean War and Diasporic Memory Critique" (Temple UP, 2020)
10 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This interview coincides with the 70th anniversary of the Korean War, a war that, as Baik reminds us, has not officially ended. How are the particular...
Jeremy Black, "War in Europe: 1450 to the Present" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016)
10 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
War in Europe: 1450 to the Present (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016) is a masterful overview of war and military development in Europe since 1450, bringing ...
Francine Hirsch, "Soviet Judgement at Nuremberg" (Oxford UP, 2020)
09 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How did an authoritarian regime help lay the cornerstones of human rights and international law? Soviet Judgement at Nuremberg: A New History of the I...
Jeremy Black, "History of Europe: From Prehistory to the 21st Century" (Arcturus, 2019)
08 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In History of Europe: From Prehistory to the 21st Century, Jeremy Black presents a learned and yet entertaining exploration of the history: politi...
Robert Gerwarth, "November 1918: The German Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2020)
08 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Was Weimar doomed from the outset? In November 1918: The German Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2020), Robert Gerwarth argues that this is the wr...
Greg Mitchell, "The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood—and America—Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (The New Press, 2020)
07 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
dSoon after atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, MGM set out to make a movie studio chief Louis B. Mayer called “the most impo...
Josh Cerretti, "Abuses of the Erotic: Militarizing Sexuality in the Post-Cold War United States" (U Nebraska Press, 2020)
26 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Jana Byars talks to Josh Cerretti, Associate Professor of History and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Western Washington Univ...
Thomas C. Rust, "Watching over Yellowstone: The US Army's Experience in America's First National Park, 1886–1918" (UP of Kansas, 2020)
25 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When, in 1883, Congress charged the US Army with managing Yellowstone National Park, soldiers encountered a new sort of hostility: work they were untr...
Richard Carswell, "The Fall of France in the Second World War: History and Memory" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
25 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This fascinating book by Richard Carswell looks at how the fall of France in the Second World War has been recorded by historians and remembered withi...
John Roosa, "Buried Histories: The Anticommunist Massacres of 1965-1966 in Indonesia" (U Wisconsin Press, 2020)
24 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On the night of September 30/October 1, 1965, a bungled coup d’état resulted in the deaths of a handful of Indonesian generals and a young girl. Wi...
E. Bruce Geelhoed, "Diplomacy Shot Down: The U-2 Crisis and Eisenhower's Aborted Mission to Moscow, 1959–1960" (U Oklahoma Press, 2020)
24 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The history of the Cold War is littered with what-ifs, and in Diplomacy Shot Down: The U-2 Crisis and Eisenhower's Aborted Mission to Moscow, 1959–...
Why Did the Allies Win World War One?
11 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Great War was perhaps the greatest single upheaval of the 20th century. While World War II saw more lives lost, in terms of the shock to European/...
Alexander Gendler, "Khurbm 1914-1922: Prelude to the Holocaust" (Varda Books, 2019)
08 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The murder of two-thirds of European Jews, referred to by many as the Holocaust, did not begin June 22, 1941, with the German invasion of the Soviet U...
Eric Lee, "The Night of the Bayonets: The Texel Uprising and Hitler's Revenge, April–May 1945" (Greenhill Books, 2020)
02 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Eric Lee's new book The Night of the Bayonets: The Texel Uprising and Hitler's Revenge, April–May 1945 (Greenhill Books, 2020) tells the story of th...
Brian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020)
02 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Brian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for S...
Mary Fraser, "Policing the Home Front, 1914-1918: The Control of the British Population at War" (Routledge, 2018)
26 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When Britain went to war in 1914, policemen throughout Great Britain found themselves called upon to perform an ever-increasing range of new tasks tha...
Stanley D. M. Carpenter, "Southern Gambit: Cornwallis and the British March to Yorktown" (U Oklahoma Press, 2019)
22 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Charles Lord Cornwallis’s campaign through the southern American colonies came to an ignominious close on October 19, 1781, on an open field outside...
Maria Rashid, "Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army" (Stanford UP, 2020)
08 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In her spellbindingly brilliant new book, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army (Stanford University...
Le’Trice D. Donaldson, "Duty Beyond the Battlefield: African American Soldiers Fight for Racial Uplift, Citizenship, and Manhood, 1870-1920" (SIUP, 2020)
28 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book Duty Beyond the Battlefield: African American Soldiers Fight for Racial Uplift, Citizenship, and Manhood, 1870-1920 (Southern Illinois...
Leslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019)
28 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. B...
Why did the Allies win World War II?
27 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Why did the Allies win World War II? In the this podcast of Arguing History, Professor of History Emeritus at Exeter University, Jeremy Black and Dr. ...
Kevin Miller, "Fight Fight" (Braveship Books, 2018)
27 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this interview we discuss Fight Fight (Braveship Books, 2018), book 3 of the Raven One series. In Fight Fight, former aviator Kevin Miller explore...
Jeremy Black, "Military Strategy: A Global History" (Yale UP, 2020)
24 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jeremy Black, professor of history at Exeter University, is one of the most insightful historians of military strategy from early modernity to the pre...
Adam H. Domby, "The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory" (U Virginia Press, 2020)
23 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Adam H. Domby, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Charleston, has written a rigorous analysis of American political memory as it c...
Pauline Shanks Kaurin, "On Obedience: Contrasting Philosophies for the Military, Citizenry, and Community" (Naval Institute Press, 2020)
22 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Obedience is integral to the military, to society, and to communities. To bring individuals together to work cohesively and successfully towards a com...
Alexander Watson, "The Fortress: The Siege of Przemysl and the Making of Europe's Bloodlands" (Basic Books, 2020)
06 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The opposing powers had already suffered casualties on a scale previously unimaginable by October 1914. On both the Western and Eastern fronts elabora...
Kate Imy, "Faithful Fighters: Identity and Power in the British Indian Army" (Stanford UP, 2019)
03 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In her fascinating and remarkable new book Faithful Fighters: Identity and Power in the British Indian Army (Stanford University Press, 2019), Kate I...
Alexander Mikaberidze, "The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History" (Oxford UP, 2020)
03 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Austerlitz, Wagram, Borodino, Trafalgar, Leipzig, Waterloo: these are the battles most closely associated with the Napoleonic Wars. But how did this p...
Matt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020)
30 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat....
The Origins of World War One
12 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Who or what originated and/or caused the Great War from breaking out in July 1914? Was it Serbia with its expansionist and aggressive designs on Austr...
Jamie L. H. Goodall, "Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay: From the Colonial Era to the Oyster Wars" (The History Press, 2020)
11 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The story of Chesapeake pirates and patriots begins with a land dispute and ends with the untimely death of an oyster dredger at the hands of the Mary...
Steve Vogel, "Betrayal in Berlin: The True Story of the Cold War's Most Audacious Espionage Operation" (Custom House, 2019)
11 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book Betrayal in Berlin: The True Story of the Cold War's Most Audacious Espionage Operation (Custom House, 2019), Steve Vogel tells the as...
Sarah Burns, "The Politics of War Powers: The Theory and History of Presidential Unilateralism" (UP of Kansas, 2020)
09 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Burns’ new book The Politics of War Powers: The Theory and History of Presidential Unilateralism (University Press of Kansas, 2020) pulls tog...
Aimee Fox, "Learning to Fight: Military Innovation and Change in the British Army, 1914-1918" (Cambridge UP, 2017)
05 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Learning, innovation and adaptation are not concepts that we necessarily associate with the British Army of the First World War. Yet the need to learn...
Kathy Peiss, "The Information Hunters" (Oxford UP, 2019)
04 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
While armies have seized enemy records and rare texts as booty throughout history, it was only during World War II that an unlikely band of librarians...
Maria Ryan, "Full Spectrum Dominance: Irregular Warfare and the War on Terror" (Stanford UP, 2019)
02 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
America's war on terror is widely defined by the Afghanistan and Iraq fronts. Yet, as this book demonstrates, both the international campaign and the ...
Phillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020)
25 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Philli...
Yaakov Katz, "Shadow Strike: Inside Israel’s Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power" (St. Martin's Press, 2019)
19 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
With the world’s attention riveted to the nuclear threat from Iran, Yaakov Katz’s new book could not be more timely. In Shadow Strike: Inside Isra...
Alex J. Kay and David Stahel, "Mass Violence in Nazi-Occupied Europe" (Indiana UP, 2018)
11 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Alex J. Kay (senior lecture of History at Potsdam University in Berlin) and David Stahel (senior lecturer in History at the University of New South Wa...
Megan Kate Nelson, "The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West" (Scribner, 2019)
10 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What did the American Civil War look like from Diné Bikéyah and Apacheria? This is just one of the many questions that drives historian Megan Kate N...
Howard Jones, "My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness" (Oxford UP, 2017)
07 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In his book My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness (Oxford UP, 2017), Dr. Howard Jones describes how on March 16th, 1968, several units ...
K. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020)
30 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. How...
Eric Setzekor, "The Rise and Fall of an Officer Corps: The Republic of China Military, 1942-1955" (U Oklahoma Press, 2018)
30 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Following the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, two antipodal ideologies vied for control of China's military. The first, advanced by Sun Yat-sen, lea...
Andrew Marble, "Boy on the Bridge: The Story of John Shalikashvili’s Remarkable Success" (UP of Kentucky, 2019)
21 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When President Bill Clinton nominated John Shalikashvili to be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1993, it represented the climax of a long ...
Graham T. Clews, "Churchill’s Phoney War: A Study in Folly and Frustration" (Naval Institute Press, 2019)
13 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Given the overwhelming amount of books printed in the past ten years on various (usually rather obscure) aspects of Sir Winston Churchill’s glorious...