Rana Mitter, "Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937–1945" (HMH, 2013)
If we wish to understand the role of China in today’s global society, we would do well to remind ourselves of the tragic, titanic struggle which that country waged in the 1930s and 1940s not just for ...
19 Feb 202159min
R. Alan Covey, "Inca Apocalypse: The Spanish Conquest and the Transformation of the Andean World" (Oxford UP, 2020)
The arrival in 1532 of a small group of Spanish conquistadores at the Andean town of Cajamarca launched one of the most dramatic – and often misunderstood – events in world history. In Inca Apocalypse...
11 Feb 202151min
Robert J. Mrazek, "The Indomitable Florence Finch: The Untold Story of a War Widow Turned Resistance Fighter and Savior of American POWs" (Hachette, 2020)
Robert J. Mrazek, an author of eleven books and former congressman from New York, has written a gripping account of one the most determine heroines of World War II: The Indomitable Florence Finch: The...
10 Feb 202150min
R. Roberts and J. Smith, "War Fever: Boston, Baseball, and America in the Shadow of the Great War" (Basic Books, 2020)
In the fall of 1918, a fever gripped Boston. The streets emptied as paranoia about the deadly Spanish flu spread. Newspapermen and vigilante investigators aggressively sought to discredit anyone who l...
9 Feb 202126min
Jillian C. Rogers, "Resonant Recoveries: French Music and Trauma Between the World Wars" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Understanding how people cope with large-scale traumatic events has become more urgent as we continue to cope with the effects of the pandemic. In Resonant Recoveries: French Music and Trauma Between ...
8 Feb 20211h 6min
Kevin Weddle, "The Compleat Victory: Saratoga and the American Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2021)
British hopes that the American War for Independence would be brought to a swift conclusion began to wane in the early months of 1777. Despite brilliant victories over Washington and his continentals ...
4 Feb 20211h 9min
Olga Dror, "Making Two Vietnams: War and Youth Identities, 1965-1975" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
We are familiar with the history of the division of Vietnam in 1954 into two states, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north and the Republic of Vietnam in the south. What started out essentia...
1 Feb 20211h 1min
Emmanuel Kreike, "Scorched Earth: Environmental Warfare as a Crime Against Humanity and Nature" (Princeton UP, 2021)
In Scorched Earth: Environmental Warfare as a Crime Against Humanity and Nature (Princeton UP, 2021), Emmanuel Kreike offers a global history of environmental warfare and makes the case for why it sho...
25 Jan 20211h 22min
