New Books in Military History
Episodes
Bleddyn E. Bowen, "Original Sin: Power, Technology and War in Outer Space" (Oxford UP, 2022)
17 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Space technology was developed to enhance the killing power of the state. The Moon landings and the launch of the Space Shuttle were mere sideshows, d...
Robin Prior, "Conquer We Must: A Military History of Britain, 1914-1945" (Yale UP, 2022)
17 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The First and Second World Wars were separated by a mere two decades, making the period 1914-1945 an unprecedentedly intense and violent era of histor...
The Deception Dividend: FDR's Undeclared War
14 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sean Lynn-Jones, editor of International Security, interviews author John Schuessler, whose article "The Deception Dividend: FDR's Undeclared War" app...
Susan Colbourn, "Euromissiles: The Nuclear Weapons That Nearly Destroyed NATO" (Cornell UP, 2022)
14 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Euromissiles: The Nuclear Weapons That Nearly Destroyed NATO (Cornell UP, 2022), Susan Colbourn tells the story of the height of nuclear crisis a...
Philip W. Blood, "Birds of Prey: Hitler's Luftwaffe, Ordinary Soldiers, and the Holocaust in Poland" (Ibidem Press, 2021)
13 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Birds of Prey: Hitler's Luftwaffe, Ordinary Soldiers, and the Holocaust in Poland (Ibidem Press, 2021) is a microhistory of the Nazi occupation of Bi...
Iva Vukušić, "Serbian Paramilitaries and the Breakup of Yugoslavia" (Routledge, 2022)
13 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Serbian Paramilitaries and the Breakup of Yugoslavia: State Connections and Patterns of Violence (Routledge, 2022) examines the nature and function...
Mark Axel Tveskov and Ashley Ann Bissonnette, "Conflict Archaeology, Historical Memory, and the Experience of War: Beyond the Battlefield" (UP of Florida, 2023)
10 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Mark Axel Tveskov and Ashley Ann Bissonnette's Conflict Archaeology, Historical Memory, and the Experience of War: Beyond the Battlefield (UP of Flo...
The Native American Veterans of Connecticut's Volunteer Regiments and the Union Army
08 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Bill Fowler, Chair of The New England Quarterly Board of Directors, and author David Naumec discuss his article "From Mashantucket to Appomattox: The ...
The Sobibor and Treblinka Death Camps: A Discussion with Chris Webb
08 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to historian Chris Web about two books detailing the workings of the Nazi extermination camps: Chris Webb, The Sobibor Death Camp: ...
Kiril Feferman, "If We Had Wings We Would Fly to You: A Soviet Jewish Family Faces Destruction 1941-42" (Academic Studies Press, 2020)
07 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If We Had Wings We Would Fly to You: A Soviet Jewish Family Faces Destruction 1941-42 (Academic Studies Press, 2020) is the first work in any langu...
Shivan Mahendrarajah, "A History of Herat: From Chingiz Khan to Tamerlane" (Edinburgh UP, 2022)
05 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Shivan Mahendrarajah's A History of Herat: From Chingiz Khan to Tamerlane (Edinburgh University Press, 2022) follows the history of the city, from ...
Geoffrey Parker and Colin Martin, "Armada: The Spanish Enterprise and England's Deliverance In 1588" (Yale UP, 2022)
03 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In July 1588 the Spanish Armada sailed from Corunna to conquer England. Three weeks later an English fireship attack in the Channel--and then a fierce...
Steve Kemper, "Our Man in Tokyo: An American Ambassador and the Countdown to Pearl Harbor" (Mariner Books, 2022)
02 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the years leading up to the Second World War, the U.S. was represented in Japan by Ambassador Joseph Grew: born from a patrician family, Harvard-ed...
Greta Lynn Uehling, "Everyday War: The Conflict Over Donbas, Ukraine" (Cornell UP, 2023)
02 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Everyday War: The Conflict Over Donbas, Ukraine (Cornell UP, 2023) provides an accessible lens through which to understand what noncombatant civilia...
Melvyn P. Leffler, "Confronting Saddam Hussein: George W. Bush and the Invasion of Iraq" (Oxford UP, 2023)
28 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
America's decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003 is arguably the most important foreign policy choice of the entire post-Cold War era. Nearly two decad...
The Story of American Vietnam War Resisters in Canada
27 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The idea of moving to Canada figures prominently in the imagination of many disaffected Americans. Most recently, it was comedian Marc Maron who said ...
Jonathan W. White and Lydia J. Davis, ed., "My Work Among the Freedmen: The Civil War and Reconstruction Letters of Harriet M. Buss" (U Virginia Press, 2021)
26 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1863 and 1871, Harriet M. Buss of Sterling, Massachusetts, taught former slaves in three different regions of the South, in coastal South Caro...
Seiji Shirane, "Imperial Gateway: Colonial Taiwan and Japan's Expansion in South China and Southeast Asia, 1895-1945" (Cornell UP, 2022)
24 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Seiji Shirane’s Imperial Gateway: Colonial Taiwan and Japan's Expansion in South China and Southeast Asia, 1895-1945 (Cornell UP, 2022) demonstrat...
Jeffrey J. Matthews, "Colin Powell: Imperfect Patriot" (U Notre Dame Press, 2019)
24 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Until he passed away in 2021, Colin Powell was revered as one of America's most trusted and admired leaders. Jeffrey J. Matthews' Colin Powell: Imper...
Peter Hayes, "Why? Explaining the Holocaust" (Norton, 2017)
23 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Hayes's book Why? Explaining the Holocaust (Norton, 2017) explores one of the most tragic events in human history by addressing eight of the ...
Mark Juergensmeyer, "When God Stops Fighting: How Religious Violence Ends" (U California Press, 2022)
22 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How does religious violence end? When God Stops Fighting: How Religious Violence Ends (U California Press, 2022) probes for answers through case st...
Gerald F. Goodwin, "Race in the Crucible of War: African American Servicemen and the War in Vietnam" (U Massachusetts Press, 2023)
19 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When African American servicemen went to fight in the Vietnam War, discrimination and prejudice followed them. Even in a faraway country, their milita...
Joseph MacKay, "The Counterinsurgent Imagination: A New Intellectual History" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
17 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Counterinsurgency, the violent suppression of armed insurrection, is among the dominant kinds of war in contemporary world politics. Often linked to p...
Kevin Blackburn, "The Comfort Women of Singapore in History and Memory" (National U of Singapore Press, 2022)
17 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
"Comfort women" or ianfu is the euphemism used by the Japanese military for the women they compelled to do sex work in the Second World War. The role ...
Lurgio Gavilán Sánchez, "When Rains Became Floods: A Child Soldier’s Story" (Duke UP, 2015)
16 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When Rains Became Floods: A Child Soldier’s Story (Duke UP, 2015) is the gripping autobiography of Lurgio Gavilán Sánchez, who as a child soldier...
John D. Hosler, "Jerusalem Falls: Seven Centuries of War and Peace" (Yale UP, 2022)
16 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When the armies of the Rashidun Caliphate entered Jerusalem in 638, the city was quite different from what it is today–one of the most important cit...
The Lives of Canada’s War Women
14 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Stacey Barker and Krista Cooke on the lives of Canadian women and their involvement in the two wor...
Spencer Jones, "The Darkest Year: The British Army on the Western Front 1917" (Helion and Company, 2021)
14 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The Darkest Year: The British Army on the Western Front 1917 (Helion and Company, 2021), leading First World War historians examine key aspects o...
Tore Jørgensen, "Stutthof Diaries Collection: For Truth & Honor" (FriesenPress, 2022)
12 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the early days of World War II, as Nazi Germany brutally invaded and occupied neighboring countries around Europe, hundreds of Norwegian police off...
Emily Strasser, "Half-Life of a Secret: Reckoning with a Hidden History" (UP of Kentucky, 2023)
05 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1942, the US government began construction on a sixty-thousand-acre planned community named Oak Ridge in a rural area west of Knoxville, Tennessee....
Matthew Taylor, "Sport and the Home Front: Wartime Britain at Play, 1939-45" (Routledge, 2020)
04 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Matthew Taylor, Professor of History at De Montfort University, and author of Sport and the Home Front: Wartime Britain at Pla...
Richard Overy, "Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945" (Viking, 2022)
04 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Overy sets out in Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945 (Viking, 2022) to recast the way in which we view the Second World War a...
Anthony Tucker-Jones, "Kursk 1943: Hitler's Bitter Harvest" (History Press, 2018)
04 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The year 1943 was a pivotal one on the Eastern Front during World War II. The Axis had suffered a catastrophic defeat at the battle of Stalingrad earl...
Chris Webb, "The Belzec Death Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance" (Ibidem, 2016)
31 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Chris Webb's The Belzec Death Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance (Ibidem, 2016) is a comprehensive account of the Belzec death camp in Poland, ...
Zachary Shore, "This Is Not Who We Are: America’s Struggle Between Vengeance and Virtue" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
29 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What kind of country is America? Zachary Shore tackles this polarizing question by spotlighting some of the most morally muddled matters of WWII. Shou...
Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, "Beautiful, Gruesome, and True: Artists at Work in the Face of War" (Columbia Global Reports, 2022)
29 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Art has a long history of engaging with conflict and violence. From the antiquities, through Goya, to Guernica, our museums are filled with depictions...
Radu Ioanid, "The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Roma Under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)
28 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Roma Under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022), Radu Ioanid explores i...
Postscript: Narrative and Influence Activities in the Russo-Ukraine War
26 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For almost a year now, we have been absorbing news and information about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. There are a variety of different, or competin...
In the Swiss Guards: Reflections on Two Years Guarding the Pope
26 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
David Geisser was a Swiss Guard protecting Pope Francis and the Apostolic Palace between 2013 and 2015. He was following the footsteps of his father w...
Michael Fleming, "In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Poland, the United Nations War Crimes Commission, and the Search for Justice" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
25 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the midst of the Second World War, Central and East European governments-in-exile struggled to make their voices heard as they reported back to the...
Podcast Series: Hell on Earth--The 30 Years War and the Violent Birth of Capitalism
22 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Hell on Earth: The 30 Years War and the Violent Birth of Capitalism is a new 10-part series from the creators of Hell of Presidents — one of Ent...
Amy Kohout, "Taking the Field: Soldiers, Nature, and Empire on American Frontiers" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)
22 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The US military didn't just conquer its way across the US West and the Pacific - it also collected and categorized across these spaces too. In Taking...
James M. Deem, "The Prisoners of Breendonk: Personal Histories from a World War II Concentration Camp" (Mariner Books, 2020)
16 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Fort Breendonk was built in the early 1900s to protect Antwerp, Belgium, from possible German invasion. Damaged at the start of World War I, it fell i...
Paul S. Landau, "Spear: Mandela and the Revolutionaries" (Ohio UP, 2022)
13 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the middle of the twentieth century, in South Africa, Nelson Mandela organized a group of revolutionary freedom fighters to openly denounce the rac...
Jayita Sarkar, "Ploughshares and Swords: India's Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War" (Cornell UP, 2022)
12 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1974, India surprised the world with “Smiling Buddha”: a secret underground nuclear test at Pokhran, Rajasthan. India called it a “peaceful n...
Jonathan W. White, "To Address You as My Friend: African Americans' Letters to Abraham Lincoln" (UNC Press, 2021)
08 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Many African Americans of the Civil War era felt a personal connection to Abraham Lincoln. For the first time in their lives, an occupant of the White...
Franziska Exeler, "Ghosts of War: Nazi Occupation and Its Aftermath in Soviet Belarus" (Cornell UP, 2022)
06 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How do states and societies confront the legacies of war and occupation, and what do truth, guilt, and justice mean in that process? In Ghosts of W...
Ronald H. Spector, "A Continent Erupts: Decolonization, Civil War, and Massacre in Postwar Asia, 1945-1955" (Norton, 2023)
05 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On September 2, 1945, Japan surrendered to the United States, ending the Second World War. Yet the Japanese invasion had upended the old geopolitical ...
Sebastian Elischer, "Salafism and Political Order in Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
04 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Violent Islamic extremism is affecting a growing number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In some, jihadi Salafi organizations have established home...
The Russo-Ukrainian War from a Military Point of View
03 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On February 24 2022, Vladimir Putin shocked the world by invading Ukraine. In this short interview, veteran military historian Jeremy Black looks at t...
Zachary Schrag, "The Princeton Guide to Historical Research" (Princeton UP, 2021)
31 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The essential handbook for doing historical research in the twenty-first century The Princeton Guide to Historical Research (Princeton UP, 2021) pro...
Sean Patterson, "Makhno and Memory: Anarchist and Mennonite Narratives of Ukraine's Civil War, 1917-1921" (U Manitoba Press, 2020)
28 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the chaos of the end of WWI, the Russian Civil War, and a brief period of Ukrainian independence there occurred a series of massacres of German Men...
Julia Elsky, "Writing Occupation: Jewish Émigré Voices in Wartime France" (Stanford UP, 2020)
28 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Among the Jewish writers who emigrated from Eastern Europe to France in the 1910s and 1920s, a number chose to switch from writing in their languages ...
Involution and Negative Equilibrium: Explaining the Ongoing Conflict in the Congo
28 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This week on International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey is joined by Jason Stearns, assistant professor of international studies at Simon Frase...
Ian Garner, "Stalingrad Lives!: Stories of Combat and Survival" (McGill-Queen's Press, 2022)
26 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the fall of 1942, only the city of Stalingrad stood between Soviet survival and defeat as Hitler’s army ran rampant. With the fate of the USSR ha...
Justin Dolan Stover, "Enduring Ruin: Environmental Destruction During the Irish" (U College Dublin Press, 2022)
24 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Justin Dolan Stover is Associate Professor of transnational European history at Idaho State University, where he teaches courses on war and violence, ...
Jane Tynan, "Trench Coat" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Object Lessons is a Bloomsbury series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. This interview focuses on Trenc...
Matthew F. Delmont, "Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad" (Viking, 2022)
18 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Over one million Black men and women served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in segregat...
Munira Khayyat, "A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon" (U California Press, 2022)
18 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What worlds take root in war? In A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon (U California Press, 2022), anthropologis...
Kiril Feferman, "The Holocaust in the Crimea and the North Caucasus" (Yad Vadhem, 2016)
17 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Kiril Feferman's The Holocaust in the Crimea and the North Caucasus (Yad Vadhem, 2016) presents a comprehensive account of the Jews in the Crimea an...
The Future of the Arms Industry: A Discussion with Pieter D. Wezeman
17 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
If you read the business pages of most newspapers, they are filled with stories about the sort of companies that people do business with – airlines,...
Catherine Bateson, "Irish American Civil War Songs: Identity, Loyalty, and Nationhood" (Louisiana UP, 2022)
14 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Catherine Bateson is Associate Lecturer of American History at the University of Kent. She researches and writes about the role of song in the Amer...
Daniel Immerwahr, "The Galactic Vietnam: Technology, Modernization, and Empire in George Lucas’s Star Wars" (2022)
10 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode I got to chat about two of my favorite things: the history of imperialism and Star Wars with Daniel Immerwahr, Professor of History ...
Tanisha M. Fazal, "Wars of Law: Unintended Consequences in the Regulation of Armed Conflict" (Cornell UP, 2020)
08 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Wars of Law: Unintended Consequences in the Regulation of Armed Conflict (Cornell UP, 2020), Tanisha M. Fazal assesses the unintended consequence...
Sandra Ott, "War, Judgment, And Memory In The Basque Borderlands, 1914-1945" (U Nevada Press, 2008)
07 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
During the first half of the twentieth century, the French Basque province of Xiberoa was a place of refuge, conflict, and foreign occupation. With th...
Janet I. Lewis, "How Insurgency Begins: Rebel Group Formation in Uganda and Beyond" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
06 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How and why do rebel groups initially form? Prevailing scholarship has attributed the emergence of armed rebellion to the explosion of pre-mobilized p...
Aomar Boum and Sarah Abrevaya Stein, "Wartime North Africa: A Documentary History, 1934-1950" (Stanford UP, 2022)
06 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Aomar Boum and Sarah Abrevaya Stein's book Wartime North Africa: A Documentary History, 1934-1950 (Stanford UP, 2022), the first-ever collection of ...
Nicholas Morton, "The Mongol Storm: Making and Breaking Empires in the Medieval Near East" (Basic Books, 2022)
05 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For centuries, the Crusades have been central to the story of the medieval Near East, but these religious wars are only part of the region’s complex...
John Delury, "Agents of Subversion: The Fate of John T. Downey and the CIA's Covert War in China" (Cornell UP, 2022)
04 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Agents of Subversion: The Fate of John T. Downey and the CIA's Covert War in China (Cornell University Press, 2022) by Dr. John Delury reconstructs t...
Adam Brookes, "Fragile Cargo: The World War II Race to Save the Treasures of China's Forbidden City" (Atria Books, 2022)
02 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The two parallel Palace Museums in Beijing and Taiwan, and their separate collections of thousands of precious artworks and artifacts from imperial ti...
Jonathan R. Hunt, "The Nuclear Club: How America and the World Policed the Atom from Hiroshima to Vietnam" (Stanford UP, 2022)
01 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Nuclear Club: How America and the World Policed the Atom from Hiroshima to Vietnam (Stanford UP, 2022) reveals how a coalition of powerful and d...
Henni Alava, "Christianity, Politics and the Afterlives of War in Uganda: There is Confusion" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
01 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I had the pleasure of talking to Dr. Henni Alava, postdoctoral researcher at Tampere University, on her fascinating new book published by Bloo...
Huw J. Davies, "The Wandering Army: The Campaigns That Transformed the British Way of War" (Yale UP, 2022)
01 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Wandering Army: The Campaigns that Transformed the British Way of War (Yale University Press, 2022), Dr. Huw J. Davies presents a compelling ...
Xabier Irujo and Queralt Solé, "Nazi Juggernaut in the Basque Country and Catalonia" (Center for Basque Studies, 2019)
28 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Xabier Irujo about his book (co-authored with Queralt Solé) Nazi Juggernaut in the Basque Country and Catalonia (Center for Bas...
Stephen Bourne, "Under Fire: Black Britain in Wartime 1939-45" (The History Press, 2020)
25 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Under Fire: Black Britain in Wartime 1939-45 (The History Press, 2020), Stephen Bourne tells the whole story of Britain's black community during ...
Jennifer Mittelstadt and Mark R. Wilson, "The Military and the Market" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)
25 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout its history, the U.S. military has worked in close connection to market-based institutions and structures. It has run systems of free and u...
Eli Gumener, "A Ukrainian Chapter: A Jewish Aid Worker’s Memoir Of Sorrow" (Slavica, 2022)
23 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Michael Eli Nutkiewicz about his translation A Ukrainian Chapter: A Jewish Aid Worker’s Memoir Of Sorrow (Slavica, 2022). Eli...
John Spencer and Liam Collins, "Understanding Urban Warfare" ((Howgate Publishing Limited, 2022)
23 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
With the growing urbanization of the world's population, it also follows that much of contemporary military operations would also be conducted within ...
Michael A. Verney, "A Great and Rising Nation: Naval Exploration and Global Empire in the Early US Republic" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
23 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A Great and Rising Nation: Naval Exploration and Global Empire in the Early US Republic (University of Chicago Press, 2022) by Dr. Michael A. Verney ...
Steve Kemper, "Our Man In Tokyo: An American Ambassador and the Countdown to Pearl Harbor" (Mariner Books, 2022)
17 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A gripping, behind-the-scenes account of the personalities and contending forces in Tokyo during the volatile decade that led to World War II, as seen...
Michael A. Hunzeker, "Dying to Learn: Wartime Lessons from the Western Front" (Cornell UP, 2021)
16 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Dying to Learn: Wartime Lessons from the Western Front (Cornell UP, 2021), Michael Hunzeker develops a novel theory to explain how wartime milita...
Andrea Graziosi and Frank E. Sysyn, "Genocide: The Power and Problems of a Concept" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022)
11 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Since the 1980s the study of genocide has exploded, both historically and geographically, to encompass earlier epochs, other continents, and new cases...
Abiodun Alao, "Rage and Carnage in the Name of God: Religious Violence in Nigeria" (Duke UP, 2022)
11 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Rage and Carnage in the Name of God (Duke University Press, 2022), Dr. Abiodun Alao examines the emergence of a culture of religious violence in ...
Stephen G. Rabe, "The Lost Paratroopers of Normandy: A Story of Resistance, Courage, and Solidarity in a French Village" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The fateful days and weeks surrounding 6 June 1944 have been extensively documented in histories of the Second World War, but less attention has been ...
On Thucydides' "History of the Peloponnesian War"
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sometime around 450 BC in ancient Greece, a young Thucydides went with his father to hear the historian Herodotus speak. After the lecture, Thucydides...
Sarah E. Wagner, "What Remains: Bringing America's Missing Home from the Vietnam War" (Harvard UP, 2019)
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For many families the Vietnam War remains unsettled. Nearly 1,600 Americans— and more than 300,000 Vietnamese—involved in the conflict are still u...
William Doyle, "Napoleon at Peace: How to End a Revolution" (Reaktion Books, 2022)
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The French Revolution facilitated the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, but after gaining power he knew that his first task was to end it. In this book Will...
Jianglin Li, "When the Iron Bird Flies: China's Secret War in Tibet" (Stanford UP, 2022)
09 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In When the Iron Bird Flies: China's Secret War in Tibet (Stanford University Press, 2022), Jianglin Li presents an untold story that reshapes our u...
Holger Afflerbach, "On a Knife Edge: How Germany Lost the First World War" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
09 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In On a Knife Edge: How Germany Lost the First World War (Cambridge UP, 2022), Holger Afflerbach argues that the outcome of the war was actually in...
Richard Overy, "Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945" (Viking, 2022)
08 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Overy sets out in Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945 (Viking, 2022) to recast the way in which we view the Second World War a...
Daniel Scarborough, "Russia's Social Gospel: The Orthodox Pastoral Movement in Famine, War, and Revolution" (U Wisconsin Press, 2022)
07 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The late Russian Empire experienced rapid economic change, social dislocation, and multiple humanitarian crises, enduring two wars, two famines, and t...
Bree Akesson and Andrew R. Basso, "From Bureaucracy to Bullets: Extreme Domicide and the Right to Home" (Rutgers UP, 2022)
04 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
There are currently a record-setting number of forcibly displaced persons in the world. This number continues to rise as solutions to alleviate humani...
Andrew Fitzmaurice, "King Leopold's Ghostwriter: The Creation of Persons and States in the Nineteenth Century" (Princeton UP, 2021)
03 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Eminent jurist, Oxford professor, advocate to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Travers Twiss (1809–1897) was a model establishment figure in Victorian ...
Jonathan Brunstedt, "The Soviet Myth of World War II: Patriotic Memory and the Russian Question in the USSR" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
03 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Soviet Myth of World War II: Patriotic Memory and the Russian Question in the USSR (Cambridge UP, 2021), Jonathan Brunstedt examines how Sovi...
Clayton J. Butler, "True Blue: White Unionists in the Deep South during the Civil War and Reconstruction" (LSU Press, 2022)
02 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
During the American Civil War, thousands of citizens in the Deep South remained loyal to the United States. Though often overlooked, this small number...
Matthew Delmont, "Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad" (Viking, 2022)
02 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Matthew Delmont about his new book Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad (V...
A. Carly Buxton, "Un-Thinking Collaboration: American Nisei in Transwar Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2022)
26 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I will be talking to Carly Buxton about her book Unthinking collaboration: American Nisei in transwar Japan, which came out this year [2022] wi...
Robert Hutchinson, "After Nuremberg: American Clemency for Nazi War Criminals" (Yale UP, 2022)
24 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Hutchinson's After Nuremberg: American Clemency for Nazi War Criminals (Yale UP, 2022) is about the fleeting nature of American punishment fo...
Gwen Shuni D'Arcangelis, "Bio-Imperialism: Disease, Terror, and the Construction of National Fragility" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
21 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Gwen Shuni D'Arcangelis's book Bio-Imperialism: Disease, Terror, and the Construction of National Fragility (Rutgers UP, 2020) focuses on an unders...
Eric Jay Dolin, "Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution" (Liveright, 2022)
20 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The bestselling author of Black Flags, Blue Waters reclaims the daring freelance sailors who proved essential to the winning of the Revolutionary Wa...