New Books in Military History
Episodes
Laurien Vastenhout, "Between Community and Collaboration: 'Jewish Councils' in Western Europe under Nazi Occupation" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
23 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The first comprehensive, comparative study of the 'Jewish Councils' in the Netherlands, Belgium and France during Nazi rule. In the postwar period, th...
Rachel Kousser, "Alexander at the End of the World: The Forgotten Final Years of Alexander the Great" (Mariner Books, 2024)
22 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 330 BC, Alexander the Great conquers the city of Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire. His troops later burn it to the ground, ...
Jiří Hutečka, "Men Under Fire: Motivation, Morale, and Masculinity among Czech Soldiers in the Great War, 1914–1918" (Berghahn Books, 2019)
20 Aug 2024
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...
Susanne Barth, "From Schmelt Camp to 'Little Auschwitz': Blechhammer’s Role in the Holocaust" (Purdue UP, 2024)
19 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From Schmelt Camp to "Little Auschwitz" Blechhammer's Role in the Holocaust (Purdue UP, 2024) is the first in-depth study of the second largest Ausc...
Jeremy Black, "Rethinking Geopolitics" (Indiana UP, 2024)
17 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Amid the bloody Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2021 and the escalating tensions across the Taiwan Strait, the geopolitical balance of power has change...
Lauren Benton, "They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence" (Princeton UP, 2024)
16 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A sweeping account of how small wars shaped global order in the age of empires. Imperial conquest and colonization depended on pervasive raiding, slav...
Marc Ambinder, “The Brink: President Reagan and the Nuclear War Scare of 1983” (Simon & Schuster, 2018)
13 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Brink: President Reagan and the Nuclear War Scare of 1983 (Simon & Schuster, 2018), by Marc Ambinder, is a history of US-Soviet Relations under Ro...
Barbara Emerson, "The First Cold War: Anglo-Russian Relations in the 19th Century" (Hurst, 2024)
13 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Britain and Russia maintained a frosty civility for a few years after Napoleon's defeat in 1815. But, by the 1820s, their relations degenerated into c...
Matthew Evangelista, "Allied Air Attacks and Civilian Harm in Italy, 1940–1945: Bombing among Friends" (Routledge, 2024)
11 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Tens of thousands of Italian civilians perished in the Allied bombing raids of World War II. More of them died after the Armistice of September 1943...
Peter Hart, "The Gallipoli Evacuation" (Living History, 2020)
10 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most well-told episodes of the First World War, the 1915 Gallipoli expedition, also has its own long-ignored aspects - specifically, the st...
Gregory A. Daddis, "Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
05 Aug 2024
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...
Mark Walker, "Hitler's Atomic Bomb: History, Legend, and the Twin Legacies of Auschwitz and Hiroshima" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
05 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Who were the German scientists who worked on atomic bombs during World War II for Hitler's regime? How did they justify themselves afterwards? Exami...
Petra Goedde, "The Politics of Peace: A Global Cold War History" (Oxford UP, 2019)
04 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Earlier histories of the Cold War haven’t exactly been charitable toward the peace activists and pacifists who led peace initiatives. Pacifists in t...
Jeremy Black, "Histories of War" (Pen & Sword Military, 2024)
04 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A global account of histories of war, from Antiquity to the present day, Histories of War (Pen & Sword Military, 2024) shows how the varied modes of...
Edward Kaplan, "The End of Victory: Prevailing in the Thermonuclear Age" (Cornell UP, 2022)
02 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Waging and winning a nuclear war have been called “thinking about the unthinkable” but that’s exactly what Edward Kaplan and I discussed in our ...
David A. Messenger, "Hunting Nazis in Franco's Spain" (LSU Press, 2014)
30 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the waning days and immediate aftermath of World War II, Nazi diplomats and spies based in Spain decided to stay rather than return to a defeated G...
Kate McDonald on Asian Mobility History as Labor History
29 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Kate McDonald, Associate Professor of History at University of California, Santa Barbara, about her fascin...
Bastiaan Willems, "Violence in Defeat: The Wehrmacht on German Soil, 1944–1945" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
29 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the final year of the Second World War, as bitter defensive fighting moved to German soil, a wave of intra-ethnic violence engulfed the country. ...
Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, "The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973: The USSR's Military Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict" (Oxford UP, 2017)
28 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Russia's forceful re-entry into the Middle Eastern arena, and the accentuated continuity of Soviet policy and methods of the 1960s and '70s, highlight...
Kristie Flannery, "Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
28 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024) offers a new interpretation of Spanish colonial rule in t...
Lindsay Goss, "F*ck The Army!: How Soldiers and Civilians Staged the GI Movement to End the Vietnam War" (NYU Press, 2024)
27 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
F*ck The Army! How Soldiers and Civilians Staged the GI Movement to End the Vietnam War (NYU Press, 2024) offers a comprehensive history of the FTA, ...
Austin Knuppe, "Surviving the Islamic State: Contention, Cooperation, and Neutrality in Wartime Iraq" (Columbia UP, 2024)
26 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How did ordinary Iraqis survive the occupation of their communities by the Islamic State? How did they decide whether to stay or flee, to cooperate or...
Tim Sweijs and Jeffrey H. Michaels, "Beyond Ukraine: Debating the Future of War" (Oxford UP, 2024)
26 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
War in the 21st century will remain a chameleon that takes on different forms and guises. Beyond Ukraine: Debating the Future of War (Oxford Univers...
Jonathan Dimbleby, "Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War" (Oxford UP, 2024)
24 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The war on the Eastern front remains relatively less well explored as compared to the western front of World War II. Yet some of the most titanic batt...
Steven K. Bailey, "Target Hong Kong: A True Story of U.S. Navy Pilots at War" (Osprey, 2024)
23 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In January 1945, the final year of the Pacific War, Japanese-held Hong Kong became the site of coordinated attacks by the U.S. Navy on Japanese warshi...
Anaïs Maurer, "The Ocean on Fire: Pacific Stories from Nuclear Survivors and Climate Activists" (Duke UP, 2023)
23 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Bombarded with the equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb a day for half a century, Pacific people have long been subjected to man-made cataclysm. Well befo...
Donald L. Miller, "Vicksburg: Grant’s Campaign that Broke the Confederacy" (Simon and Schuster, 2019)
21 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Vicksburg: Grant’s Campaign that Broke the Confederacy (Simon & Schuster, 2019), Donald L. Miller explains in great detail how Grant ultimately s...
Anthony Kaldellis, "The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium" (Oxford UP, 2024)
20 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In recent decades, the study of the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as Byzantium, has been revolutionized by new approaches and more sophisticated mo...
Michelle Moffat, "Scottish Society in the Second World War: Tradition, Tension, Transformation" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)
19 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Surprisingly little is known about Scottish experiences of the Second World War. Scottish Society in the Second World War (Edinburgh University Pres...
Bill Lascher, "A Danger Shared: A Journalist’s Glimpses of a Continent at War" (Blacksmith Books, 2024)
18 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Melville Jacoby was a U.S. war correspondent during the Sino-Japanese War and, later, the Second World War, writing about the Japanese advances from C...
Jacob Lee, "Masters of the Middle Waters: Indian Nations and Colonial Ambitions Along the Mississippi" (Harvard UP, 2019)
16 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
America’s waterways were once the superhighways of travel and communication. Coursing through a central line across the landscape, with tributaries ...
Jonathan Marc Gribetz, "Reading Herzl in Beirut: The PLO Effort to Know the Enemy" (Princeton UP, 2024)
15 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How the Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center informed the PLO's relationship to Zionism and Israel In September 1982, the Israeli militar...
Alfred Peredo Flores, "Tip of the Spear: Land, Labor, and US Settler Militarism in Guåhan, 1944–1962" (Cornell UP, 2023)
14 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Tip of the Spear: Land, Labor, and US Settler Militarism in Guåhan, 1944–1962 (Cornell University Press, 2023), Dr. Alfred Peredo Flores argue...
Mark L. Haas, "Frenemies: When Ideological Enemies Ally" (Cornell UP, 2022)
13 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Alliances among ideological enemies confronting a common foe, or "frenemy" alliances, are unlike coalitions among ideologically-similar states facing ...
Huan Jin, "The Collapse of Heaven: The Taiping Civil War and Chinese Literature and Culture, 1850-1880" (Harvard UP, 2024)
13 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Collapse of Heaven: The Taiping Civil War and Chinese Literature and Culture, 1850-1880 (Harvard UP, 2024) investigates a long-neglected century ...
Laura Robson, "Human Capital: A History of Putting Refugees to Work" (Verso, 2023)
09 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When Americans and other citizens of advanced capitalist countries think of humanitarianism, they think of charitable efforts to help people displaced...
Karine Varley, "Vichy's Double Bind: French Collaboration between Hitler and Mussolini during the Second World War" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
09 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Karine Varley's book Vichy's Double Bind: French Collaboration between Hitler and Mussolini during the Second World War (Cambridge UP, 2023) advanc...
Maryna Shevtsova, "Feminist Perspective on Russia’s War in Ukraine: Hear Our Voices" (Lexington Books, 2024)
30 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Feminist Perspective on Russia’s War in Ukraine: Hear Our Voices came out with Lexington Books at the two-year’s mark of Russia’s full-scale in...
Rachel Williams, "Tabernacles in the Wilderness: The US Christian Commission on the Civil War Battlefront" (Kent State UP, 2024)
30 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Examining how a civilian organization used the Civil War to advance their religious mission. Tabernacles in the Wilderness: The US Christian Commissio...
Erin Lin, "When the Bombs Stopped: The Legacy of War in Rural Cambodia" (Princeton UP, 2024)
28 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Over the course of the Vietnam War, the United States dropped 500,000 tons of bombs over Cambodia—more than the combined weight of every man, woman,...
J. Megan Greene, "Building a Nation at War: Building a Nation at War: Transnational Knowledge Networks and the Development of China during and after World War II" (Harvard UP, 2022)
27 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Building a Nation at War: Building a Nation at War: Transnational Knowledge Networks and the Development of China during and after World War II (Harv...
Donald Stoker, "Purpose and Power: US Grand Strategy from the Revolutionary Era to the Present" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
25 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In our interview, I spoke with Donald Stoker about the changes in American grand strategy over the past 250 years and the major themes from his new bo...
M. Girard Dorsey, "Holding Their Breath: How the Allies Confronted the Threat of Chemical Warfare in World War II" (Cornell UP, 2023)
21 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Holding Their Breath: How the Allies Confronted the Threat of Chemical Warfare in World War II (Cornell UP, 2023), M. Girard Dorsey uncovers jus...
William W. Hagen, "Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1914-1920" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
19 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Widespread anti-Jewish pogroms accompanied the rebirth of Polish statehood out of World War I and Polish-Soviet War. In Anti-Jewish Violence in Pola...
Shannon Bontrager, "Death at the Edges of Empire: Fallen Soldiers, Cultural Memory, and the Making of an American Nation, 1863-1921" (U Nebraska Press, 2020)
11 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Hundreds of thousands of individuals perished in the epic conflict of the American Civil War. As battles raged and the specter of death and dying hung...
Eugene Rogan, "The Damascus Events: The 1860 Massacre and the Destruction of the Old Ottoman World" (Basic Book, 2024)
08 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Damascus Events: The 1860 Massacre and the Destruction of the Old Ottoman World (Basic Book, 2024) recreates one of the watershed moments in the ...
David Stahel, "Retreat from Moscow: A New History of Germany's Winter Campaign, 1941-1942" (FSG, 2019)
07 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Germany’s winter campaign of 1941–1942 is commonly seen as the Wehrmacht's first defeat. In Retreat from Moscow: A New History of Germany's Winter...
Citizen Soldiers, Republican Virtues, and the Roman Way of War
06 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How was the Roman way of war unique, and what were the virtues that defined the Roman Republic? Are there lessons for modern Republics from the Roman ...
Scott Crawford, "The Han-Xiongnu War, 133 BC-89 AD: The Struggle of China and a Steppe Empire Told Through Its Key Figures (Pen & Sword, 2023)
06 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For two centuries, the Xiongnu people–a vast nomadic empire that covered modern-day Siberia, Inner Mongolia, Gansu and Xinjiang—were one of the Ha...
Cathal J. Nolan, "The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost" (Oxford UP, 2019)
02 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
History has tended to measure war's winners and losers in terms of its major engagements, battles in which the result was so clear-cut that they could...
Gary J. Bass, "Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia" (Knopf, 2023)
30 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In December 1948, a panel of 12 judges sentenced 23 Japanese officials for war crimes. Seven, including former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, were senten...
Peter Wetzler, "Imperial Japan and Defeat in the Second World War: The Collapse of an Empire" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
29 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Informed Western understanding of Imperial Japan still often conjures up images of militarism, blind devotion to leaders, and fanatical pride in the c...
Judy Batalion, "The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos" (William Morrow, 2021)
27 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Witnesses to the brutal murder of their families and neighbors and the violent destruction of their communities, a cadre of Jewish women in Poland--so...
Jan Grabowski, "On Duty: The Role of the Polish Blue and Criminal Police in the Holocaust" (Yad Vashem, 2024)
27 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"The Polish Police, commonly called the Blue or uniformed police in order to avoid using the term “Polish,” has played a most lamentable role in t...
Mark Jantzen and John D. Thiesen, "European Mennonites and the Holocaust" (U Toronto Press, 2021)
25 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
During the Second World War, Mennonites in the Netherlands, Germany, occupied Poland, and Ukraine lived in communities with Jews and close to various ...
Helen J. Nicholson, "Women and the Crusades" (Oxford UP, 2023)
25 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The crusade movement needed women: their money, their prayer support, their active participation, and their inspiration. Helen J. Nicholson's book Wo...
Tracey German, "Russia and the Changing Character of Conflict" (Cambria Press, 2023)
25 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Russia's actions in and around Ukraine in 2014, as well as its activities in Syria and further afield, sparked renewed debate about the character of w...
Adam Zientek, "A Thirst for Wine and War: The Intoxication of French Soldiers on the Western Front" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2024)
24 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Zientek, Assistant Professor of History at UC Davis joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, A Thirst for Wine and War: The Intoxication of ...
Peter Harmsen, "Bernhard Sindberg: The Schindler of Nanjing" (Casemate, 2024)
23 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In December 1937, Bernhard Sindberg arrives at a cement factory outside of Nanjing. He’s one of just two foreigners, and he gets there just weeks be...
Mark Moyar, "Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965-1968" (Encounter, 2023)
22 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965-1968 (Encounter, 2023) is the long-awaited sequel to the immensely influential Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam...
Robert Lyman, "A War of Empires: Japan, India, Burma, and Britain: 1941–45" (Osprey, 2021)
21 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1941 and 1942 the British and Indian Armies were brutally defeated and Japan reigned supreme in its newly conquered territories throughout Asia. Bu...
Anna Brinkman, "Balancing Strategy: Sea Power, Neutrality, and Prize Law in the Seven Years' War" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
18 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is the relationship between seapower, law, and strategy? In Balancing Strategy: Seapower, Neutrality, and Prize-Law in the Seven Years' War (Ca...
Jennifer Liu, "Indoctrinating the Youth: Secondary Education in Wartime China and Postwar Taiwan, 1937-1960" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
18 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Indoctrinating the Youth: Secondary Education in Wartime China and Postwar Taiwan, 1937-1960 (U Hawaii Press, 2024) examines how the Guomindang (GMD ...
Priya Satia, "Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
18 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution transformed Britain from an agricultural and artisanal economy to one domina...
Yaroslav Trofimov, "Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence" (Penguin, 2024)
18 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Yaroslav Trofimov has spent months on end at the heart of the conflict, very often on its front lines. ...
Frédéric Bonnesoeur et al., "New Microhistorical Approaches to an Integrated History of the Holocaust" (de Gruyter, 2023)
17 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1997, Saul Friedländer emphasized the need for an integrated history of the Holocaust. His suggestion to connect ‘the policies of the perpetrato...
Marc McMenamin, "Ireland's Secret War: Dan Bryan, G2 and the Lost Tapes that Reveal The Hunt for Ireland's Nazi Spies" (Gill Books, 2022)
17 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Marc McMenamin's Ireland's Secret War: Dan Bryan, G2 and the Lost Tapes that Reveal The Hunt for Ireland's Nazi Spies (Gill Books, 2022) is a thril...
Lisa Langdon Koch, "Nuclear Decisions: Changing the Course of Nuclear Weapons Programs" (Oxford UP, 2023)
16 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout the nuclear age, states have taken many different paths toward or away from nuclear weapons. These paths have been difficult to predict and...
Chris Stephen, "The Future of War Crimes Justice" (Melville House, 2024)
15 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Future of War Crimes Justice (Melville House, 2024), journalist and war correspondent Chris Stephen takes a colourful look at the erratic history...
Lisa Bhungalia, "Elastic Empire: Refashioning War Through Aid in Palestine" (Stanford UP, 2023)
15 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The United States integrated counterterrorism mandates into its aid flows in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the early years of the global war on ...
Shelley X. Liu, "Governing After War: Rebel Victories and Post-War Statebuilding" (Oxford UP, 2024)
13 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Governing After War: Rebel Victories and Post-war Statebuilding (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Shelley X. Liu explores how wartime processes ...
Cecily N. Zander, "The Army under Fire: The Politics of Antimilitarism in the Civil War Era" (LSU Press, 2024)
12 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Cecily N. Zander’s The Army under Fire: The Politics of Antimilitarism in the Civil War Era (LSU Press, 2024) is a pathbreaking study focusing on...
Robert K. D. Colby, "An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South" (Oxford UP, 2024)
10 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Confederate States of America was born in defense of slavery and, after a four-year struggle to become an independent slaveholding republic, died ...
Richard Dannatt and Robert Lyman, "Victory to Defeat: The British Army 1918-40" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
10 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The British Army won a convincing series of victories between 1916 and 1918. But by 1939 the British Army was an entirely different animal. The hard-w...
Lawrence Freedman, "Modern Warfare: Lessons from Ukraine" (Penguin, 2023)
08 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The foremost authority on modern war in the English-speaking world examines Europe's most important conflict since World War II. More than any other m...
"The US Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Volume IV" (Indiana UP, 2022)
06 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Volume IV (Indiana UP, 2022) examines an under-researche...
Julia G. Young, "Mexican Exodus: Emigrants, Exiles, and Refugees of the Cristero War" (Oxford UP, 2019)
05 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Mexican Exodus: Emigrants, Exiles, and Refugees of the Cristero War (Oxford University Press, 2019), Julia G. Young reframes the Cristero War a...
Donald Stoker, "Why America Loses Wars: Limited War and US Strategy from the Korean War to the Present" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
05 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this provocative challenge to United States policy and strategy, former Professor of Strategy & Policy at the US Naval War College, and author or e...
Prit Buttar, "Centuries Will Not Suffice: A History of the Lithuanian Holocaust" (Amberley, 2023)
05 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Prit Buttar's book Centuries Will Not Suffice: A History of the Lithuanian Holocaust (Amberley, 2023) explores how different people responded to the...
Tanisha M. Fazal, "Military Medicine and the Hidden Costs of War" (Oxford UP, 2024)
05 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Decisions to go to war are often framed in cost-benefit terms, and typically such assessments do not factor in longer term costs. However, recent dram...
David J. Silbey and Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai, "Wars Civil and Great: The American Experience in the Civil War and World War I" (UP of Kansas, 2023)
04 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Civil War and the Great War occupy very different places in American memory and, often, in U.S. history books. Yet, they were fought only fifty ye...
Illia Ponomarenko, "I Will Show You How It Was: The Story of Wartime Kyiv" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
03 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The spring 2022 battle for Kyiv was "one of the most tragic – and the most bizarre – events in modern history," writes Illia Ponomarenko. "Outnum...
Jen Stout, "Night Train to Odesa: Covering the Human Cost of Russia's War" (Polygon, 2024)
02 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As a teenager in Shetland, Jen Stout fell in love with Russia and, later, Ukraine – their languages, cultures, and histories. Although life kept get...
Bryan K. Miller, "Xiongnu: The World's First Nomadic Empire" (Oxford UP, 2024)
01 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Xiongnu: The World’s First Nomadic Empire (Oxford UP, 2024), Bryan K. Miller weaves together archaeology and history to chart the course of t...
Robert Gerwarth, "November 1918: The German Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2020)
29 Apr 2024
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...
Mukund Padmanabhan, "The Great Flap of 1942: How the Raj Panicked over a Japanese Non-invasion (Vintage Books, 2024)
25 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In April 1942, at least half a million people fled the city of Madras, now known as Chennai. The reason? The British, after weeks of growing unease ab...
Geoff Eley, "Nazism as Fascism: Violence, Ideology, and the Ground of Consent in Germany 1930-1945" (Routledge, 2013)
24 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Offering a dynamic and wide-ranging examination of the key issues at the heart of the study of German Fascism, Nazism as Fascism: Violence, Ideology,...
Jason Bell, "Cracking the Nazi Code: The Untold Story of Canada's Greatest Spy" (Pegasus Books, 2024)
23 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The thrilling true story of Agent A12, the earliest enemy of the Nazis, and the first spy to crack Hitler's deadliest secret code: the framework of th...
Robert Rozett and Iael Nidam-Orvieto, "After So Much Pain and Anguish: First Letters After Liberation" (Yad Vashem, 2016)
21 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After So Much Pain and Anguish: First Letters After Liberation (Yad Vashem, 2016) comprises letters written by survivors and liberating soliders in ...
Stephen Morillo, "War and Conflict in the Middle Ages" (Polity Press, 2022)
20 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In War and Conflict in the Middle Ages (Polity, 2022), Dr. Stephen Morillo offers the first global history of armed conflict between 540 and 1500 or...
Felipe Fernández-Armesto and Manuel Lucena Giraldo, "How the Spanish Empire Was Built: A 400 Year History" (Reaktion, 2024)
16 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sixteenth-century Spain was small, poor, disunited and sparsely populated. Yet the Spaniards and their allies built the largest empire the world had e...
David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts, "Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare From 1945 to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine" (Harper, 2023)
12 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this deep and incisive study, General David Petraeus, who commanded the US-led coalitions in both Iraq, during the Surge, and Afghanistan and forme...
Jonathan W. Hackett, "Theory of Irregular War" (McFarland, 2024)
07 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From Afghanistan to Angola, Indonesia to Iran, and Colombia to Congo, violent reactions erupt, states collapse, and militaries relentlessly pursue ope...
Joseph M. Thompson, "Cold War Country: How Nashville's Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism" (UNC Press, 2024)
06 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Country music maintains a special, decades-long relationship to American military life, but these ties didn't just happen. This readable history revea...
Stefan Aune, "Indian Wars Everywhere: Colonial Violence and the Shadow Doctrines of Empire" (U California Press, 2023)
04 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From Black Hawk helicopters to the exclamation "Geronimo" used by paratroopers jumping from airplanes, words and images referring to Indians have been...
Matthieu Grandpierron, "Nostalgic Virility as a Cause of War: How Leaders of Great Powers Cope with Status Decline" (McGill-Queen's Press, 2024)
02 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why do great powers go to war? Why are non-violent, diplomatic options not prioritised? Nostalgic Virility as a Cause of War: How Leaders of Great Po...
Tyler Fox, "Battle Surgeons: Care Under Fire in the 504th Parachute Infantry" (2023)
29 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The pages of Battle Surgeons are inscribed with the 371 days of front-line duty worked by medics of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Set withi...
Adam Lazarus, "The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams" (Citadel Press, 2023)
27 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It was 1953, the Korean War in full throttle, when two men—already experts in their fields—crossed the fabled 38th Parallel into Communist airspac...
Vladimir Solonari, "A Satellite Empire: Romanian Rule in Southwestern Ukraine, 1941–1944" (Cornell UP, 2019)
26 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A Satellite Empire: Romanian Rule in Southwestern Ukraine, 1941–1944 (Cornell UP, 2019) is an in-depth investigation of the political and social h...
An Oral History Archive of World War One: A Discussion with Peter Liddle
25 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Liddle OBE FRHistS (born 1934) is a British historian and author specialising in the study of the First and Second World Wars. In 1968 Liddle s...