John Lisle, "The Dirty Tricks Department: Stanley Lovell, the OSS, and the Masterminds of World War II Secret Warfare" (St. Martin's Press, 2023)
In the summer of 1942, Stanley Lovell, a renowned industrial chemist, received a mysterious order to report to an unfamiliar building in Washington, D.C. When he arrived, he was led to a barren room w...
21 Apr 20231h 2min
Elena Pedigo Clark, "Trauma and Truth: Teaching Russian Literature on the Chechen Wars" (Academic Studies Press, 2023)
The collapse of the USSR was relatively bloodless. The Chechen Wars were not. A tiny nation on the edge of Russia, Chechnya brought one of the largest armies in the world to its knees. Elena Pedigo Cl...
19 Apr 202359min
Cao Yin, "Chinese Sojourners in Wartime Raj, 1942-45" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Since the outbreak of the Pacific War, British India had been taken as the main logistic base for China's war against the Japanese. Chinese soldiers, government officials, professionals, and merchants...
19 Apr 20231h 10min
Jeffrey E. Stern, "The Mercenary: A Story of Brotherhood and Terror in the Afghanistan War" (PublicAffairs, 2023)
In the early days of the Afghanistan war, Jeff Stern was scouring the streets of Kabul for a big story. He was accompanied by a driver, Aimal, who had ambitions of his own: to get rich off the sudden ...
18 Apr 20231h 3min
Nicholas Guyatt, "The Hated Cage: An American Tragedy in Britain's Most Terrifying Prison" (Basic Books, 2022)
After the War of 1812, more than five thousand American sailors were marooned in Dartmoor Prison on a barren English plain; the conflict was over but they had been left to rot by their government. Alt...
18 Apr 20231h 4min
Karen E. Eccles and Debbie McCollin, "World War II and the Caribbean" (U West Indies Press, 2017)
Karen E. Eccles and Debbie McCollin edited volume World War II and the Caribbean (U West Indies Press, 2017) focuses on one of the most exciting periods in the history of the region as the Caribbean t...
17 Apr 202358min
Heidi Langbein-Allen, "Save the Last Bullet: Memoir of a Boy Soldier in Hitler's Army" (Pen & Sword Military, 2022)
Today I talked to Heidi Langbein-Allen about Save the Last Bullet: Memoir of a Boy Soldier in Hitler's Army (Pen & Sword Military, 2022). Willi Langbein was just thirteen when the Nazis took him away ...
16 Apr 202354min
Piotr M. A. Cywiński, "Auschwitz: A Monograph on the Human" (Muzeum Auschwitz, 2022)
Auschwitz is perhaps the best-known memorial site in the world. Epicenter of the Nazi extermination campaign of Europe’s Jewish population, the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp system also held over 400,000 in...
16 Apr 20231h
