Patrice Gueniffey, "Napoleon and de Gaulle: Heroes and History" (Harvard UP, 2020)
One of France’s most famous historians compares and contrasts the two most famous French exemplars of political and military leadership of the past two-hundred and fifty years to make the case that in...
11 Aug 202039min
J. Browning and T. Silver, "An Environmental History of the Civil War" (UNC Press, 2020)
This sweeping new history recognizes that the Civil War was not just a military conflict but also a moment of profound transformation in Americans' relationship to the natural world. To be sure, envir...
6 Aug 202059min
John C. McManus, "Fire and Fortitude: The US Army in the Pacific War, 1941-1943 (Dutton Caliber, 2019)
For most Americans, the war the United States waged in the Pacific in the Second World War was one fought primarily by the Navy and the Marine Corps. As John C. McManus demonstrates in Fire and Fortit...
6 Aug 20201h 12min
W. J. Perry and T. Z. Collina, "The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump" (BenBella Books, 2020)
As we enter the third decade of the 21st century, American nuclear policy continues to be influenced by the legacies of the Cold War. Nuclear policies remain focused on easily identifiable threats, in...
6 Aug 202049min
Leah Zani, "Bomb Children: Life in the Former Battlefields of Laos" (Duke UP, 2019)
In this episode, I talk with Dr. Leah Zani, a public anthropologist and poet based in California, about her truly wonderful book Bomb Children: Life in the Former Battlefields of Laos (Duke University...
5 Aug 202050min
Theresa Kaminski, "Dr. Mary Walker's Civil War: One Woman's Journey to the Medal of Honor and the Fight for Women's Rights" (Lyons Press, 2020)
Among the tens of thousands of Americans who volunteered their services during the Civil War was Mary Walker, a daring young woman who was one of the handful of female doctors in the nation at that ti...
28 Jul 202051min
Lakshmi Subramanian, "The Sovereign and the Pirate: Ordering Maritime Subjects in India's Western Littoral" (Oxford UP, 2016)
Lakshmi Subramanian’s The Sovereign and the Pirate: Ordering Maritime Subjects in India's Western Littoral (Oxford University Press, 2016) offers an amphibious history written around the juncture of t...
27 Jul 20201h 26min
Elizabeth Shesko, "Conscript Nation: Coercion and Citizenship in the Bolivian Barracks" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2020)
Elizabeth Shesko’s Conscript Nation: Coercion and Citizenship in the Bolivian Barracks (University of Pittsburgh Press) is an intimate and rich history of the militarization of Bolivia over the course...
23 Jul 20201h 15min
