Stephan Kieninger, "Securing Peace in Europe: Strobe Talbott, NATO, and Russia After the Cold War" (Columbia UP, 2025)
This deeply researched book offers new perspective on the NATO-Russia relationship through the eyes of Strobe Talbott, a deputy secretary of state for seven years under President Bill Clinton and the ...
24 Elo 202540min
Raymond Jonas, "Habsburgs on the Rio Grande: The Rise and Fall of the Second Mexican Empire" (Harvard UP, 2024)
For a few years in the middle of the nineteenth century, Mexico was ruled by an Austrian and defended by a French army. This often neglected story is more than just historical trivia - it's a way of u...
23 Elo 20251h 5min
K. Ian Shin, "Imperial Stewards: Chinese Art and the Making of America's Pacific Century" (Stanford UP, 2025)
This episode, which is co-hosted with Delaney Chieyen Holton, features Dr. K. Ian Shin discussing his recently published book, Imperial Stewards: Chinese Art and the Making of America’s Pacific Centur...
23 Elo 20251h 7min
Paul Thomas Chamberlin, "Scorched Earth: A Global History of World War II" (Basic Books, 2025)
In popular memory, the Second World War was an unalloyed victory for freedom over totalitarianism, marking the demise of the age of empires and the triumph of an American-led democratic order. In Scor...
19 Elo 20251h 4min
Reid B. C. Pauly, "The Art of Coercion: Credible Threats and the Assurance Dilemma" (Cornell UP, 2025)
Strong states are surprisingly bad at coercion. History shows they prevail only a third of the time. Dr. Pauly argues that coercion often fails because targets fear punishment even if they comply. In ...
19 Elo 202559min
Mary Bridges on US Bankers Abroad and the Making of a Global Superpower
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Mary Bridges, Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of...
18 Elo 20251h 8min
Georgiy Kasianov et al., "From 'the Ukraine' to Ukraine: A Contemporary History, 1991-2021" (Ibidem Press, 2021)
In 2021, Ukraine celebrates its thirty-year independence anniversary. During this relatively short period of time—when considered in historical terms—Ukraine underwent a number of drastic changes that...
17 Elo 202551min
Michael Jabara Carley, "Stalin's Great Game: War and Neutrality, 1939-1941" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
The period from September 1939 to early 1942 was crucial for Soviet foreign policy and coincided with the early stages of the Second World War, including the Great Patriotic War. In Stalin's Great Gam...
13 Elo 20251h 29min
