New Books in Military History
Episodes
Ben Shepherd, “Terror in the Balkans: German Armies and Partisan Warfare” (Harvard UP, 2012)
26 Sep 2012
Contributed by Lukas
With Terror in the Balkans: German Armies and Partisan Warfare (Harvard University Press, 2012), Ben Shepherd, a Reader at Glasgow Caledonian Universi...
Gregory Crouch, “China’s Wings” (Bantam Books, 2012)
30 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
When I was a kid I loved the movie “The Flying Tigers.” You know, the one with John Wayne about the intrepid American volunteers sent to China to ...
Steven H. Jaffe, “New York at War: Four Centuries of Combat, Fear, and Intrigue in Gotham” (Basic Books, 2012)
11 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Many people – including myself – are no doubt surprised to learn about New York City’s rich four hundred year military history. I teach in Flush...
Richard Bessel, “Germany 1945: From War to Peace” (Harper, 2009)
02 Jul 2012
Contributed by Lukas
One chilling statistic relating to 1945 is that more German soldiers died in that January than in any other month of the war: 450,000. It was not just...
Gregory A. Daddis, “No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War” (Oxford UP, 2011)
17 Jun 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Ask any student or aficionado of the Vietnam War (1965-1972) for a top ten list of artifacts “unique” to the war, and chances are the phenomenon o...
Raymond Jonas, “The Battle of Adwa: African Victory in the Age of Empire” (Harvard UP, 2011)
01 May 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Raymond Jonas‘ The Battle of Adwa: African Victory in the Age of Empire (Harvard UP, 2011) places Menelik alongside Napoleon and other greatest stra...
Anna Krylova, “Soviet Women in Combat: A History of Violence on the Eastern Front” (Cambridge UP, 2010)
27 Apr 2012
Contributed by Lukas
We’re all familiar with the film cliche of the little band of soldiers who in ordinary life never would have had met, but who learn to appreciate e...
Karen Petrone, “The Great War in Russian Memory” (Indiana UP, 2012)
20 Apr 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Historical studies on the European memory of World War I are, to put it mildly, voluminous. There are too many monographs to count on a myriad of subj...
David Edgerton, “Britain’s War Machine: Weapons, Resources and Experts in the Second World War” (Oxford UP, 2011)
22 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
My grandfather joined up when the Second World War broke out, but he was soon returned to civvy street as he was much more valuable employing his mech...
Jorg Muth, “Command Culture: Officer Education in the U.S. Army and the German Armed Forces, 1901-1940” (UNT Press, 2011)
12 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
This week we’re continuing our focus on the Second World War, as our guest author, Jorg Muth, chats about his recent book Command Culture: Officer E...
Marcus Franke, “War and Nationalism in South Asia: The Indian State and the Nagas” (Routledge, 2011)
21 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
North East India is, as Marcus Franke’s War and Nationalism in South Asia: The Indian State and the Nagas (Routledge, 2011) all too convincingly dem...
David Stahel, “Operation Barbarossa and Germany’s Defeat in the East” (Cambridge UP, 2009)
13 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
This week’s podcast is an interview with David Stahel. I will be talking to him about his 2009 work, Operation Barbarossa and Germany’s Defeat in ...
Cynthia Wachtell, “War No More: The Antiwar Impulse in American Literature, 1861-1914” (LSU Press, 2010)
03 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
My favorite book as a teenager (and in fact the only book I ever read as a teenager) was All Quiet on the Western Front. I liked it mostly for the viv...
Artemy Kalinovsky, “A Long Goodbye: The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan” (Harvard UP, 2011)
16 Jan 2012
Contributed by Lukas
It’s been twenty years since the Soviet Union collapsed, and scholars still joust over its long- and short-term causes. Amid the myriad factors–st...
Michael Matheny, “Carrying the War to the Enemy: American Operational Art to 1945” (University of Oklahoma Press, 2011)
16 Dec 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Ask many military historians about the origins of American operational art and many will place it sometime after the Second World War. Conventional wi...
Timothy Nunan, “Carl Schmitt, ‘Writings on War'” (Polity Press, 2011)
25 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) was the author of numerous influential books and essays on political theory, law, and other subjects. In Carl Schmitt: Writin...
Peter Mauch, “Sailor Diplomat: Nomura Kichisaburo and the Japanese-American War” (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011)
17 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Mauch‘s Sailor Diplomat: Nomura Kichisaburo and the Japanese-American War (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011) is an exhaustively researched...
David J. Ulbrich, “Preparing for Victory: Thomas Holcomb and the Making of the Modern Marine Corps, 1936-1943” (Naval Institute Press, 2011).
05 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
The story of the United States Marine Corps in the Pacific Theatre in the Second World War is no doubt quite familiar to our listeners. Less well know...
John Grenier, “The Far Reaches of Empire: War in Nova Scotia, 1710-1760” (University of Oklahoma Press, 2008)
23 Sep 2011
Contributed by Lukas
For many readers, colonial history begins and ends with the original 13 American colonies. This perception overlooks the other British colonies throug...
Charles Townshend, “Desert Hell: The British Invasion of Mesopotamia” (Harvard University Press, 2011)
31 Aug 2011
Contributed by Lukas
An earlier author described the British invasion of Mesopotamia in 1914 as “The Neglected War.” It no longer deserves that title thanks to the bri...
Rodric Braithwaite, “Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan, 1979-89” (Oxford UP, 2011)
26 Aug 2011
Contributed by Lukas
I was still in high school the year the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, 1979. I remember reading about it in Time magazine and watching President Ca...
Michael Neiberg, “Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I” (Harvard University Press, 2011)
04 Aug 2011
Contributed by Lukas
As we close in on the centennial of the First World War, no doubt there will be a flood of new interpretations and “hidden histories” of the confl...
Konrad H. Jarausch, “Reluctant Accomplice: A Wehrmacht Soldier’s Letters from the Eastern Front” (Princeton University Press, 2011)
12 Jul 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Konrad H. Jarausch, whose varied and important works on German history have been required reading for scholars for several decades, has published Relu...
Christopher DeRosa, “Political Indoctrination in the U.S. Army from World War II to the Vietnam War” (University of Nebraska Press, 2006)
20 Jun 2011
Contributed by Lukas
One of the greatest challenges American military leaders have faced since the American Revolution has been to motivate citizens to forego their own se...
Matthias Strohn, “The German Army and the Defense of the Reich: Military Doctrine and the Conduct of the Defensive Battle, 1918-1939” (Cambridge UP, 2011)
03 Jun 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Matthias Strohn‘s The German Army and the Defense of the Reich: Military Doctrine and the Conduct of the Defensive Battle, 1918-1939 (Cambridge Univ...
Adam Hochschild, “To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918” (Houghton Mifflin, 2011)
30 May 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Today is Memorial Day here in the United States, the day on which we remember those who have fought and died in the service of our country. It’s fit...
Chad L. Williams, “Torchbearers of Democracy: African-American Soldiers in the World War I Era” (The University of North Carolina Press, 2010)
13 May 2011
Contributed by Lukas
One of the great “grey” areas of World War I historiography concerns the African-American experience. Even as the war was ending, white historians...
Robert Citino, “Death of the Wehrmacht: The German Campaigns of 1942” (UP of Kansas, 2007)
22 Apr 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Citino is one of a handful of scholars working in German military history whose books I would describe as reliably rewarding. Even when one qui...
David J. Silbey, “A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902” (Hill and Wang, 2008)
08 Apr 2011
Contributed by Lukas
The Spanish-American War was not only the beginning of a new imperial period for the United States, David Silbey observes in his book A War of Frontie...
Thomas Bruscino, “A Nation Forged in War: How World War II Taught Americans to Get Along” (University of Tennessee Press, 2010)
25 Mar 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Prior to 1945, the United States was still largely a collection of different ethnic and racial communities, living alongside each other in neighborhoo...
Beth Bailey, “America’s Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force” (Harvard UP, 2009)
18 Mar 2011
Contributed by Lukas
The United States Army is a product of our society and its values (for better and for worse), but it also makes claims to shape our society – and of...
David Day, “Conquest: How Societies Overwhelm Others” (Oxford UP, 2008)
15 Mar 2011
Contributed by Lukas
People will often say that “this land”–wherever this land happens to be–is theirs because their ancestors “have always lived there.” But y...
Mark Bradley, “Vietnam at War” (Oxford UP, 2009)
14 Mar 2011
Contributed by Lukas
My uncle fought in Vietnam. He flew F-105 Thundercheifs, or “Thuds.” He bombed the heck out of an area north of Hanoi called “Thud Ridge.” He’...
Mark Bradley and Marilyn Young, “Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars” (Oxford UP, 2008)
14 Mar 2011
Contributed by Lukas
What to think about the Vietnam War? A righteous struggle against global Communist tyranny? An episode in American imperialism? A civil war into which...
Gregory J. W. Urwin, “Victory in Defeat: The Wake Island Defenders in Captivity” (Naval Institute Press, 2010)
03 Mar 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Gregory J. W. Urwin’s Victory in Defeat: The Wake Island Defenders in Captivity (Naval Institute Press, 2010) tells the story of the Americans captu...
J. E. Lendon, “Song of Wrath: The Peloponnesian War Begins” (Basic, 2010)
18 Feb 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Reading J. E. Lendon’s writerly Song of Wrath: The Peloponnesian War Begins (Basic Books, 2010) took me back to the eventful days of my youth at Pri...
Thomas Weber, “Hitler’s First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War” (Oxford UP, 2010)
03 Dec 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Here’s something interesting. If you search Google Books for “Hitler,” you’ll get 3,090,000 results. What’s that mean? Well, it means that m...
Joe Maiolo, “Cry Havoc: How the Arms Race Drove the World to War, 1931-1941” (Basic Books, 2010)
12 Nov 2010
Contributed by Lukas
In Cry Havoc: How the Arms Race Drove the World to War, 1931-1941 (Basic Books, 2010), Joe Maiolo proposes (I want to write “demonstrates,” but pl...
Valerie Hebert, “Hitler’s Generals on Trial: The Last War Crimes Tribunal at Nuremberg” (University Press of Kansas, 2010)
27 Aug 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Clausewitz famously said war was the “continuation of politics by other means.” Had he been unfortunate enough to witness the way the Wehrmacht fo...
Todd Moye, “Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II” (Oxford UP, 2010)
23 Jul 2010
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1940s, the United States military performed an “experiment,” the substance of which was the formation of an all-black aviation unit known t...
Azar Gat, “War in Human Civilization” (Oxford UP, 2006)
15 Jul 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Historians don’t generally like the idea of “human nature.” We tend to believe that people are intrinsically malleable, that they have no innate...
John Steinberg, “All the Tsar’s Men: Russia’s General Staff and the Fate of the Empire, 1898-1914” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2010)
09 Jul 2010
Contributed by Lukas
The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was the most important political event of the twentieth century (no Revolution; no Nazis; no Nazis, no World War II; ...
Michael Kranish, “Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War” (Oxford UP, 2010)
01 Jul 2010
Contributed by Lukas
The past is always with us, but it’s really always with politicians. Once you put yourself up for office, and particularly national office, everybod...
Heather Cox Richardson, “Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre” (Basic Books, 2010)
03 Jun 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Of all the events in American history, two are far and away the most troubling: slavery and the near-genocidal war against native Americans. In truth,...
Fearghal McGarry, “The Rising: Ireland, Easter 1916” (Oxford UP, 2010)
24 May 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes when you win you lose. That’s called a Pyrrhic victory. But sometimes when you lose you win. We don’t have a name for that (at least as ...
Jeffrey Reznick, “John Galsworthy and the Disabled Soldiers of the Great War” (Manchester UP, 2009)
18 May 2010
Contributed by Lukas
You may not know who John Galsworthy is, but you probably know his work. Who hasn’t seen some production of The Forsyte Saga? Galsworthy was one of ...
Andrew Donson, “Youth in the Fatherless Land: War Pedagogy, Nationalism, and Authority in Germany, 1914-1918” (Harvard UP, 2010)
23 Apr 2010
Contributed by Lukas
I was a little kid during the Vietnam War. It was on the news all the time, and besides my uncle was fighting there. I followed it closely, or as clos...
Ben Kiernan, “Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur” (Yale UP, 2007)
12 Feb 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Chimps, our closest relatives, kill each other. But chimps do not engage in anything close to mass slaughter of their own kind. Why is this? There are...
Julian E. Zelizer, “Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security From WWII to the War on Terrorism” (Basic Books, 2010)
14 Jan 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Historians are by their nature public intellectuals because they are intellectuals who write about, well, the public. Alas, many historians seem to fo...
Rebecca Manley, “To the Tashkent Station: Evacuation and Survival in the Soviet Union at War” (Cornell UP, 2009)
20 Nov 2009
Contributed by Lukas
By the time the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the Bolshevik Party had already amassed a considerable amount of expertise in moving ...
Alexander Watson, “Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914-1918” (Cambridge UP, 2008)
06 Aug 2009
Contributed by Lukas
It’s a question I’ve long asked myself: Why and how did common soldiers fight for so long in the First World War? The conditions were awful, death...
Susan Brewer, “Why America Fights: Patriotism and War Propaganda from the Philippines to Iraq” (Oxford UP, 2009)
11 Jul 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Like it or not, governments need to mobilize their populations in times of crisis and one of the ways they do it is to disseminate propaganda. Now thi...
Giles MacDonogh, “After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation” (Basic Books, 2007)
20 Jun 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Many years ago I had the opportunity to spend a summer in Germany, more specifically in a tiny town on the Rhine near Koblenz. The family I stayed wit...
Benjamin Carp, “Rebels Rising: Cities in the American Revolution” (Oxford UP, 2007)
05 Jun 2009
Contributed by Lukas
When I was in college about a million years ago, we used to sit in bars and talk about the Revolution. Actually, it was this bar and something like th...
Norman Stone, “World War One: A Short History” (Basic Books, 2009)
14 May 2009
Contributed by Lukas
When I was in high school, I really didn’t go in for reading. Until, that is, I somehow encountered Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Wester...
Yuma Totani, “The Tokyo War Crimes Trials: The Pursuit of Justice in the Wake of World War II” (Harvard UP, 2008)
04 Apr 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Most everyone has heard of the Nuremberg Trials. Popular books have been written about them. Hollywood made movies about them. Some of us can even nam...
Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, “Jews in the Russian Army, 1827-1917” (Cambridge UP, 2008)
07 Feb 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Every Jew knows the story. The evil tsarist authorities ride into the Shtetl. They demand a levy of young men for the army. Mothers’ weep. Fathers’...
Edwin Burrows, “Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners During the Revolutionary War” (Basic Books, 2008)
15 Nov 2008
Contributed by Lukas
While researching his Pulitzer-Prize-winning Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (with Mike Wallace; Oxford UP 1999), Edwin Burrows uncovered t...
Richard Fogarty, “Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914-1918” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2008)
03 Nov 2008
Contributed by Lukas
The thing about empire building is that when you’re done building one, you’ve got to figure out what to do with it. This generally involves the “...
Mark Mazower, “Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe” (Penguin, 2008)
02 Oct 2008
Contributed by Lukas
It’s curious how historical images become stereotyped over time. One hears the word “Nazi,” and immediately the Holocaust springs to mind. This ...
James Willbanks, “Abandoning Vietnam: How America Left and South Vietnam Lost Its War” (University of Kansas Press, 2008)
19 Sep 2008
Contributed by Lukas
U.S. forces invade a distant country in order to disarm an international threat to American security. They fight well, and win every major battle deci...
Howard Jones, “The Bay of Pigs” (Oxford UP, 2008)
30 Aug 2008
Contributed by Lukas
There is just something about Fidel Castro that American presidents don’t like very much. Maybe it’s the long-winded anti-American diatribes. Mayb...
Christopher Capozzola, “Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of The Modern American Citizen” (Oxford UP, 2008)
26 Jul 2008
Contributed by Lukas
I confess I sometimes wonder where we got in the habit of proclaiming, usually with some sort of righteous indignation, that we have the “right” t...
John Lukacs, “Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: The Dire Warning” (Basic Books, 2008)
18 Jul 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Much has been written about Winston Churchill recently. Some love him, some hate him. But few understand him, at least as well as John Lukacs. That’...
Kimberly Jensen, “Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War” (University of Illinois Press, 2008)
31 May 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Today we have Professor Kimberly Jensen on the show. She teaches in the Department of History and in the Gender Studies Program at Western Oregon Univ...