New Books in Military History
Episodes
Anthony Kaldellis, “Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood: The Rise and Fall of Byzantium, 955 A.D. to the First Crusade” (Oxford UP, 2017)
23 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the 10th century, a succession of Byzantine rulers reversed centuries of strategic policy by embarking on a series of campaigns that dramatically r...
Hussein Fancy, “The Mercenary Mediterranean: Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon” (U of Chicago Press, 2016)
12 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Hussein Fancy’s book The Mercenary Mediterranean: Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (University of Chicago Press, ...
Richard Rubin, “Back Over There” (St. Martin’s Press, 2017)
06 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The majority of the books we profile on New Books in Military History are traditional research narratives, monographs written by historians and author...
Gerben Zaagsma, “Jewish Volunteers, the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017)
24 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In Jewish Volunteers, the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), Gerben Zaagsma, Senior researcher at the centr...
Peter Eisner, “MacArthur’s Spies: The Solider, the Singer, and the Spymaster Who Defied the Japanese in WWII” (Viking, 2017)
20 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The conquest of the Philippines in 1942 brought thousands of Americans under the control of the empire of Japan. While most of them were interned or i...
Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, “The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973: The USSR’s Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict” (Oxford UP, 2017)
19 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The title of Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez‘s The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973: The USSR’s Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict (Oxford...
Jennifer T. Roberts, “The Plague of War: Athens, Sparta, and the Struggle for Ancient Greece” (Oxford UP, 2017)
16 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The Peloponnesian War was one of the first subjects of historical inquiry, and one that has been the subject of many works ever since Thucydides wrote...
Patrick N. Hunt, “Hannibal” (Simon and Schuster, 2017)
13 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In 218 BCE, the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca launched an invasion of Italy designed to bring the Roman Republic to its knees. Yet for all of hi...
Robert M. Browning Jr., “Lincoln’s Trident: The West Gulf Blockading Squadron during the Civil War” (U. of Alabama Press, 2015)
10 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Though the U.S. Navy’s blockade of the Confederacy has not received the attention devoted to the bloody campaigns on land, it was an important contr...
Should the U.S. Have Entered World War One?
24 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the inaugural podcast of Arguing History, historians Michael S. Neiberg and Brian Neumann address the question of Americas decision in 1917 to decl...
Gary Kulik, “War Stories: False Atrocity Tales, Swift Boaters, and Winter Soldiers” (Potomac Books, 2009)
15 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
One often hears stories of World War II and Korean War veterans who came back from the war and refused to talk about what they had experienced in comb...
Andrew Boyd, “The Royal Navy in Eastern Waters: The Linchpin of Victory, 1935-1942” (Seaforth Publishing, 2017)
14 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1930s the Royal Navy faced the problem of defending its empire in eastern Asia and Australia against the formidable naval power of Japan. How t...
John P. Langellier, “Fighting for Uncle Sam: Buffalo Soldiers in the Frontier Army” (Schiffer, 2016)
08 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
From the American Revolution to the present day, African Americans have stepped forward in their nation’s defense. Fighting for Uncle Sam: Buffalo S...
Patrick J. Hayes, “The Civil War Diary of Rev. James Sheeran, Confederate Chaplain and Redemptorist” (Catholic Univ. of America Press, 2016)
23 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
During the Civil War Father James Sheeran served as a Catholic chaplain for the 14th Louisiana Infantry. Between his various responsibilities Sheeran ...
Michael Bryant,” A World History of War Crimes: From Antiquity to the Present,” (Bloomsbury, 2016)
18 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Bryant’s book is both less and more ambitious than its title. He’s writing less of a history of war crimes than he is a history of the ide...
Steve Dunn, “Securing the Narrow Sea: The Dover Patrol, 1914-1918” (Seaforth/US Naval Institute, 2017)
15 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Most accounts about the naval battles of the First World War focus upon the stalemate between the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet, ...
Lynn Dumenil, “The Second Line of Defense: American Women and World War I” (UNC Press, 2017)
18 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
When America went to war against Germany in 1917, the scale of the conflict required the mobilization of women as well as men in order to achieve vict...
Phil Gurski, “Western Foreign Fighters: The Threat to Homeland and International Security” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016)
17 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Phil Gurski‘s Western Foreign Fighters: The Threat to Homeland and International Security (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016) is his second recent monogr...
Seth Barrett Tillman, “Ex Parte Merryman: Myth, History, and Scholarship,” Military Law Review 481 (2016)
04 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Seth Barrett Tillman has written “Ex Parte Merryman: Myth, History and Scholarship,” an article about the famous case that is popularly thought to...
Norman Ohler, “Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017)
08 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Norman Ohler’s Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) explores the drug culture of Nazi Germany. Far from being a natio...
Edward Westermann, “Hitler’s Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars: Comparing Genocide and Conquest” (U. Oklahoma Press, 2016)
02 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The intersection of colonialism and mass atrocities is one of the most exciting insights of the past years of genocide studies. But most people don’...
Michael S. Neiberg, “The Path to War: How the First World War Created Modern America” (Oxford UP, 2016)
28 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In The Path to War: How the First World War Created Modern America (Oxford University Press, 2016), acclaimed historian Michael Neiberg examines the ...
David Curtis Skaggs, “William Henry Harrison and the Conquest of the Ohio Country: Frontier Fighting in the War of 1812” (JHU Press, 2014)
14 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Though best remembered today for his brief tenure as the ninth president of the United States, William Henry Harrison’s most significant contributio...
Paul Pedisich, “Congress Buys a Navy: Politics, Economics, and the Rise of American Naval Power, 1881-1921” (Naval Institute Press, 2016)
30 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the forty years between 1881 and 1921, the United States Navy went from a small force focused on coastal defense to one of the world’s largest fl...
Ellen Eisenberg, “The First to Cry Down Injustice?: Western Jews and Japanese Removal during WWII” (Lexington Books, 2008)
27 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The mass incarceration of Japanese Americans in the Pacific West is one of the most shameful episodes in our nation’s history. As the United States ...
Tim Brady, “His Father’s Son: The Life of General Ted Roosevelt, Jr.” (NAL, 2017)
19 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Tim Brady’s book His Father’s Son: The Life of General Ted Roosevelt, Jr. (NAL, 2017) is not just the biography of the eldest son and namesake of ...
Timothy S. Huebner, “Liberty and Union: The Civil War Era and American Constitutionalism” (U. Press of Kansas, 2016)
19 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Timothy S. Huebner, the Irma O. Sternberg Professor of History at Rhodes College in Memphis, has written Liberty & Union: The Civil War Era and Americ...
Jane Eppinga, “Henry Ossian Flipper: West Point’s First Black Graduate” (Wild Horse Press, 2015)
09 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The remarkable story of Henry Ossian Flipper, a young man born into slavery on the eve of the Civil War, and his struggle for recognition left its mar...
Larrie Ferreiro, “Brothers at Arms: Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It” (Knopf, 2016)
02 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Was the War for American Independence really about American independence? It depends on who you ask. In his new book, Brothers at Arms: American Inde...
Marc R. Blackburn, “Interpreting American Military History at Museums and Historical Sites,” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016)
28 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Our guest for this interview combines his academic expertise in American military history with his professional experience as an employee of the Natio...
Jelena Batinic, “Women and Yugoslav Partisans: A History of World War II Resistance” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
01 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Jelena Batinic’s Women and Yugoslav Partisans: A History of World War II Resistance (Cambridge University Press, 2015) examines the role women playe...
Robert Matzen, “Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe” (GoodKnight Books, 2016)
24 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Jimmy Stewart has a well-deserved reputation as one of the major stars of the classic film era. Yet his life was greatly affected by his experiences a...
John Prados, “Storm Over Leyte: The Philippine Invasion and the Destruction of the Japanese Navy” (NAL, 2016)
13 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Narratives of the Pacific War frequently examine the 1944 Battle of Leyte Gulf from the operational perspective, focusing on the desperate actions of ...
Elizabeth Reich, “Militant Visions: Black Soldiers, Internationalism, and the Transformation of American Cinema” (Rutgers UP, 2016)
10 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Elizabeth Reich is an assistant professor of film studies at Connecticut College in New London. Militant Visions: Black Soldiers, Internationalism, an...
James Carl Nelson, “I Will Hold: The Story of USMC Legend Clifton B. Cates, From Belleau Wood to Victory in the Great War” (NAL, 2016)
16 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Best remembered as the nineteenth commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, Clifton B. Cates began his long and distinguished military career as a second l...
Akiko Takenaka, “Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan’s Unending Postwar” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2015)
24 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Akiko Takenaka’s new book looks carefully at Yasukuni Shrine as a war memorial, examining its role in waging war, honoring the dead, promoting peace...
Richard L. Davis, “From Warhorses to Ploughshares: The Later Tang Reign of Emperor Mingzong” (Hong Kong UP, 2015)
17 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Ruling as he did during the Five Dynasties period of Chinese history, the emperor Mingzong (r. 926-933) has not received the same degree attention fro...
Lauren Faulkner Rossi, “Wehrmacht Priests: Catholicism and the Nazi War of Annihilation” (Harvard UP, 2015)
16 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
I teach at a Catholic university and last semester co-taught (with a theologian) a class titled The Holocaust and its Legacies. Once my students becam...
Paul M. Cobb, “The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades” (Oxford UP, 2014)
25 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The Crusades loom large in contemporary popular consciousness. However, our public understanding has largely been informed from a western perspective,...
Mitchell Yockelson, “Forty-Seven Days: How Pershing’s Warriors Came of Age to Defeat the German Army in WWI” (NAL Caliber, 2016)
25 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In Forty-Seven Days: How Pershing’s Warriors Came of Age to Defeat the German Army in World War I (NAL Caliber, 2016), National Archives historian a...
John Freed, “Frederick Barbarossa: The Prince and the Myth” (Yale UP, 2016)
15 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
For all of his importance as a medieval ruler, there are surprisingly few biographies in English of the German emperor Frederick Barbarossa (c. 1122-1...
Marc Lynch, “The New Arab Wars: Uprisings and Anarchy in the Middle East” (PublicAffairs, 2016)
13 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Marc Lynch is the author of The New Arab Wars: Uprisings and Anarchy in the Middle East (Public Affairs, 2016). Lynch is a professor of political scie...
Michael Broer, “Napoleon: Soldier of Destiny” (Pegasus, 2015)
13 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Most biographers writing about the life and achievements of Napoleon Bonaparte have focused on his dramatic personality or his military campaigns. In ...
Doug Bradley and Craig Werner, “We Gotta Get Out Of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War” (U of Massachusetts Press, 2015)
30 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
From the “Ballad of the Green Berets” to “Bad Moon Rising,” the music of the Vietnam War is woven through every vets memories. Vietnam vet Dou...
Joshua Zimmerman, “The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939-1945” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
18 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Some books fly high above the field, making sweeping generalizations about big questions. Other books circle over a specific problem, analyzing it in...
John M. Kinder, “Paying with Their Bodies: American War and the Problem of the Disabled Veteran” (U of Chicago Press, 2015)
18 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
John Kinder brings to life the challenges and problems faced by the disabled veteran in American history from the Civil War to the current day in his ...
Daniel Tortora, "Carolina in Crisis: Cherokees, Colonists, and Slaves in the American Southeast, 1756-1763" (UNC Press, 2015)
18 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Long viewed conventionally through the lens of inter-European/colonist conflict, warfare in colonial era North America is currently experiencing a res...
Peter Thorsheim, “Waste into Weapons: Recycling in Britain during the Second World War” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
17 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In Waste into Weapons: Recycling in Britain during the Second World War (Cambridge University Press 2015), Peter Thorsheim explores the role of waste ...
Jennifer Mittelstadt, “The Rise of the Military Welfare State” (Harvard UP, 2015)
10 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Have you seen those Facebook memes floating around, arguing that we shouldn’t support a 15-dollar -per-hour minimum wage for service sector workers ...
Nicholas Stargardt, “The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-1945” (Basic Books, 2015)
18 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In all of the thousands upon thousands of books written about Nazi Germany, it’s easy to lose track of some basic questions. What did Germans think ...
John Kinder, “Paying with Their Bodies: American War and the Problem of the Disabled Veteran” (U of Chicago Press, 2015)
06 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
John Kinder brings to life the challenges and problems faced by the disabled veteran in American history from the Civil War to the current day in his ...
Derek J. Penslar, “Jews and the Military: A History” (Princeton UP, 2015)
01 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In Jews and the Military: A History (Princeton University Press, 2015), Derek J. Penslar, the Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies at the Univers...
Terrance J. Finnegan, “A Delicate Affair on the Western Front: America Learns How to Fight a Modern War in the Woevre Trenches” (The History Press, 2015)
14 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In his second book, author Terrance J. Finnegan describes America’s early experience fighting the Germans during World War I. Finnegan’s A Delicat...
Dan Stone, “The Liberation of the Camps: The End of the Holocaust and its Aftermath” (Yale UP, 2015)
25 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Every year I ask my students to tell me when the Holocaust ended. Most of them are surprised to hear me say that it has not yet. Today’s podcast is...
Parks M. Coble, “China’s War Reporters: The Legacy of Resistance against Japan” (Harvard UP, 2015)
10 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Parks M. Coble‘s new book is a wonderful study of memory, war, and history that takes the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945 and its aftermath as its fo...
Barak Kushner, “Men to Devils, Devils to Men: Japanese War Crimes and Chinese Justice” (Harvard UP, 2015)
01 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Barak Kushner‘s new book considers what happened in the wake of Japan’s surrender, looking closely at diplomatic and military efforts to bring “...
Suzanne Broderick, “Real War vs. Reel War: Veterans, Hollywood, and WWII” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2015)
24 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In hew new book Real War vs. Reel War: Veterans, Hollywood, and WWII (Rowman and Littlefield, 2015), Suzanne Broderick shares how she discussed a num...
David R. Stone, “The Russian Army in the Great War: The Eastern Front, 1914-1917” (UP of Kansas, 2015)
12 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Readers wanting to learn more about the Great War on the Eastern Front can do no better than David R. Stone‘s new work, The Russian Army in the Grea...
Juergen Matthaus et al., “War, Pacification and Mass Murder, 1939: The Einsatzgruppen in Poland” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2014)
18 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Historians have spent the last two decades detailing and explaining the actions of the Einsatzgruppen in the Soviet Union. We now know much more tha...
Michael Leggiere, “Blucher: Scourge of Napoleon” (U Oklahoma Press, 2014)
01 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
I have really enjoyed Michael Leggiere‘s earlier work, including the excellent Napoleon and Berlin : The Franco-Prussian War in North Germany, 1813 ...
Benjamin Armstrong, “Twenty-First-Century Mahan” and “Twenty-First-Century Sims” (Naval Institute, 2013-2015)
25 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Alfred Thayer Mahan and William Sims – two of the most important figures in American Naval History – are the subject of our discussion with Lieute...
Colonel Ty Seidule, “West Point History of the Civil War” (Simon and Schuster, 2014)
13 Mar 2015
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 Depar...
Don H. Doyle, “The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War” (Basic Books, 2015)
16 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Many Americans know about the military side of the Civil War, and the private, official diplomacy of the Civil War is also well documented. The Cause ...
Kenneth M. Swope, “The Military Collapse of China’s Ming Dynasty, 1618-44” (Routledge, 2014)
11 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Our interview with Kenneth M. Swope about his book, The Military Collapse of China’s Ming Dynasty, 1618-44 (Routledge, 2014), published through Rout...
Jan Lemnitzer, “Power, Law and the End of Privateering” (Palgrave, 2014)
22 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Jan Lemnitzer‘s new book Power, Law and the End of Privateering (Palgrave, 2014) offers an exciting new take on the relationship between law and pow...
Elizabeth Schmidt, “Foreign Intervention in Africa: From the Cold War to the War on Terror” (Cambridge UP, 2013)
21 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Elizabeth Schmidt‘sForeign Intervention in Africa: From the Cold War to the War on Terror (Cambridge University Press, 2013)depicts the foreign poli...
Glen Jeansonne and David Luhrssen, “War on the Silver Screen” (Potomac Books, 2014)
05 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
War has been a constant topic for feature films since the invention of the motion picture camera. These events made for interesting stories and dynami...
Charles F. Walker, “The Tupac Amaru Rebellion” (Harvard UP, 2014)
23 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Charles F. Walker‘s book The Tupac Amaru Rebellion (Harvard University Press, 2014) charts the rise, fall, and legacy of a massive uprising in colon...
Mark R. Anderson, “The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony” (UP of New England, 2014)
15 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
My most current guest is Mark R. Anderson, author of The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony: America’s War of Liberation in Canada, 1774-1776 (Univers...
Boyd Cothran, “Remembering the Modoc War: Redemptive Violence and the Making of American Innocence” (UNC Press, 2014)
09 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
If George Armstrong Custer had kept off of Greasy Grass that June day in 1875, Vine Deloria, Jr.’s manifesto might well have been called “Canby Di...
Michelle Moyd, “Violent Intermediaries: African Soldiers, Conquest, and Everyday Colonialism in German East Africa” (Ohio UP, 2014)
04 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In her imaginative and scrupulous book, Violent Intermediaries: African Soldiers, Conquest, and Everyday Colonialism in German East Africa (Ohio Unive...
John Morrow and Jeffrey Sammons, “Harlem’s Rattlers and the Great War” (University Press of Kansas, 2014)
04 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
John Morrow and Jeffrey Sammons share their insights on the story of the fabled 369th Infantry Regiment in their book, Harlem’s Rattlers and the Gre...
Carlotta Gall, “The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014)
23 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Pulitzer-prize winning New York Times reporter Carlotta Gall reported from Afghanistan and Pakistan for almost the entire duration of the American i...
Beth Linker, “War’s Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America” (University of Chicago Press, 2014)
23 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Beth Linker is the author of War’s Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America (University of Chicago Press, 2011). As she reveals, the story of ...
Guy Chet, “The Ocean is a Wilderness: Atlantic Piracy and the Limits of State Authority, 1688-1856” (U of Massachusetts Press, 2014)
22 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Guy Chet, Associate Professor of early American and military history at the University of North Texas, in his book The Ocean is a Wilderness: Atlantic...
Willard Sunderland, “The Baron’s Cloak: A History of the Russian Empire in War and Revolution” (Cornell UP, 2014)
04 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The Russian Empire once extended from the Baltic Sea to the Sea of Japan and contained a myriad of different ethnicities and nationalities. Dr. Willar...
Mark Mazzetti, “The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth” (Penguin, 2013)
08 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
There are many movies about evil CIA agents assassinating supposed enemies of the US. Those who saw the latest Captain America movie will have witness...
Tom Weiner, “Called to Serve: Stories of Men and Women Confronted by the Vietnam War Draft” (Levellers Press, 2011)
31 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In 1969, the United States created and implemented a new method of drafting young men for military service–the “draft lottery.” The old system, ...
Jacqueline E. Whitt, “Bringing God to Men: American Military Chaplains and the Vietnam War” (University of North Carolina Press, 2014)
05 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In this original and innovative study of the American military chaplaincy, Jacqueline E. Whitt examines the institution’s challenges and struggles i...
Filip Slaveski, “The Soviet Occupation of Germany” (Cambridge UP, 2013)
02 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
For over three years, from June 1941 to late 1944, the German Army and related Nazi forces (the SS, occupation troops, administrative organizations) c...
Stephen R. Platt, “Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War” (Vintage, 2012)
03 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Stephen R. Platt‘s new book is a beautifully written and intricately textured account of the bloodiest civil war of all time. Autumn in the Heavenl...
Geoffrey Wawro, “A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire” (Basic Books, 2014)
27 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
When I was in graduate school, those of us who studied World War One commented regularly on the degree to which historians concentrated their attentio...
Christine Knauer, “Let Us Fight as Free Men: Black Soldiers and Civil Rights” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014)
20 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Recent controversies over integrating the military have focused on issues of gender and sexuality. In the 1940s and 50s, however, the issue was racial...
Matthew Muehlbauer and David Ulbrich, “Ways of War” (Routledge, 2013)
07 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In their new survey for Routledge, military historians Matthew Muehlbauer and David Ulbrich move beyond a simplified critique of Russell F. Weigley’...
Tobie Meyer-Fong, “What Remains: Coming to Terms with Civil War in Nineteenth-Century Century China” (Stanford UP, 2013)
01 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Tobie Meyer-Fong‘s beautifully written and masterfully argued new book explores the remains (in many senses and registers, both literal and figurati...
Robert Neer, “Napalm: An American Biography” (Harvard UP, 2013)
13 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Just as there is no one way to write a biography, nor should there be, so there is no rule dictating that biography must be about the life of a person...
Waitman Beorn, “Marching into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus” (Harvard UP, 2013)
10 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The question of Wehrmacht complicity in the Holocaust is an old one. What might be called the “received view” until recently was that while a smal...
Ken MacLeish, “Fort Hood: Life and Uncertainty in a Military Community” (Princeton UP, 2013)
12 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Ken MacLeish offers an ethnographic look at daily lives and the true costs borne by soldiers, their families, and communities, in his new book Making ...
Aaron S. Moore, “Constructing East Asia: Technology, Ideology, and Empire in Japan’s Wartime Era, 1931-1945” (Stanford UP, 2013)
26 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
We tend to understand the modernization of Japan as a story of its rise as a techno-superpower. In East Asia: Technology, Ideology, and Empire in Japa...
Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, “Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda” (Time Books, 2011)
25 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
There are many books about the war against Al Qaeda. Most of these focus on counter-terrorism or counter insurgency military tactics or espionage oper...
Robert Gerwarth, “Hitler’s Hangman: The Life of Heydrich” (Yale UP, 2012)
24 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Few history books sell better than biographies of Nazi leaders. They attract anyone even tangentially interested in World War Two or Nazi Germany. ...
Brian Sandberg, “Warrior Pursuits: Noble Culture and Civil Conflict in Early Modern France” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2010)
15 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Brian Sandberg‘s Warrior Pursuits: Noble Culture and Civil Conflict in Early Modern France (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010) significantly revi...
Dale Maharidge, “Bringing Mulligan Home: The Other Side of the Good War” (Public Affairs, 2013)
03 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Dale Maharidge‘s Bringing Mulligan Home: The Other Side of the Good War (PublicAffairs, 2013) is something of a departure from our regular offerings...
David J. Silbey, “The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game in China” (Hill and Wang, 2012)
03 Jun 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Historian David Silbey returns to New Books in Military History with his second book, The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game in China (Hill and Wang, ...
James Q. Whitman, “The Verdict of Battle: The Law of Victory and the Making of Modern War” (Harvard UP, 2012)
29 Apr 2013
Contributed by Lukas
James Whitman wants to revise our understanding of warfare during the eighteenth century, the period described by my late colleague and friend Russell...
Stanley Payne, “The Spanish Civil War” (Cambridge UP, 2012)
13 Mar 2013
Contributed by Lukas
The Spanish Civil War is one of those events that I have always felt I should know more about. Thanks to Stanley Payne‘s concise, lucid new work on ...
Bernard Kelly, “Returning Home: Irish Ex-Servicemen and the Second World War” (Merrion, 2012)
21 Feb 2013
Contributed by Lukas
The Republic of Ireland (aka The Irish Free State, Eire) declared neutrality during the Second World War. That wasn’t particularly unusual: Portugal...
Sanders Marble, “Scraping the Barrel: The Military Use of Substandard Manpower, 1860-1960” (Fordham UP, 2012)
28 Jan 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Sanders Marble, senior historian of the United States Army’s Office of Medical History, presents a collection of essays related to the problems of s...
Frank Ellis, “The Damned and the Dead: The Eastern Front through the Eyes of Soviet and Russian Novelists” (University Press of Kansas, 2011)
05 Dec 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Frank Ellis’ The Damned and the Dead: The Eastern Front through the Eyes of Soviet and Russian Novelists (University Press of Kansas, 2011) introduc...
John C. McManus, “September Hope: The American Side of a Bridge Too Far” (NAL, 2012)
04 Nov 2012
Contributed by Lukas
This past September saw the sixty-eighth anniversary of one of the European Theater of Operations’ most familiar operations. Conceived by Field Mars...