Scott McGaugh, "Brotherhood of the Flying Coffin: The Glider Pilots of World War II" (Osprey, 2023)
This book distills war down to individual young men climbing into defenseless gliders made of plywood, ready to trust the towing aircraft that would pull them into enemy territory by a single cable wr...
28 Touko 20231h 1min
Strategy and Saratoga: A Conversation with Kevin Weddle
At the Battle of Saratoga, the tide of the Revolutionary War turned in favor of unlikely victors: the American patriots. What were the major strategy elements at play in the Saratoga Campaign, and wh...
27 Touko 202356min
Suzanne Sutherland, "The Rise of the Military Entrepreneur: War, Diplomacy, and Knowledge in Habsburg Europe" (Cornell UP, 2022)
In The Rise of the Military Entrepreneur: War, Diplomacy, and Knowledge in Habsburg Europe (Cornell UP, 2022), Suzanne Sutherland explores the role of the military entrepreneur and explains how these ...
24 Touko 202358min
Robert Kershaw, "Dünkirchen 1940: The German View of Dunkirk" (Osprey, 2022)
The surprise success of the German offensive in the West that commenced on May 10, 1940 caught the Allies completely off-guard, and France would soon capitulate to the Germans in late June. During the...
23 Touko 202354min
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, "A Stranger in Your Own City: Travels in the Middle East's Long War" (Knopf, 2023)
The history of reportage has often depended on outsiders--Ryszard Kapuściński witnessing the fall of the shah in Iran, Frances FitzGerald observing the aftermath of the American war in Vietnam. What w...
22 Touko 20231h 9min
Carlo Parisi, "Dagger Fencing: The Italian School" (Fallen Rook, 2016)
Today, fighting with dagger versus dagger, or with knife versus knife, is not a common scenario that people might expect to face. However, it was more common in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance,...
20 Touko 202355min
Simon Geissbühler, ed., "Romania and the Holocaust: Events, Contexts, Aftermath" (Ibidem Press, 2016)
From summer 1941 onwards, Romania actively pursued at its own initiative the mass killing of Jews in the territories it controlled. 1941 saw 13,000 Jewish residents of the Romanian city of Iai killed,...
19 Touko 20231h
Thom Shanker and Andrew Hoehn, "Age of Danger: Keeping America Safe in an Era of New Superpowers, New Weapons, and New Threats" (Hachette Books, 2023)
Again and again, American taxpayers are asked to open their wallets and pay for a national security machine that costs $1 trillion operate. Yet time and time again, the US government gets it wrong on ...
17 Touko 20231h 3min
