Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, "The Battle of Manila: Poisoned Victory in the Pacific War" (Oxford UP, 2025)
On Feb. 6, 1945, just three days after the U.S. army started to fight the Japanese in the city of Manila, General Douglas MacArthur declared that “Manila had fallen.” In truth, the battle would take a...
26 Mar 1h 10min
Susanne Vees-Gulani, 'Icon Dresden: Baroque City, Air War Symbol, Political Token" (U Michigan Press, 2026)
Icon Dresden: Baroque City, Air War Symbol, Political Token (University of Michigan Press, 2026) by Dr. Susanne Vees-Gulani explores how memory and politics in Dresden after its 1945 bombing are deepl...
23 Mar 43min
Sidra Hamidi, "After Fission: Recognition and Contestation in the Atomic Age" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Nuclear status is typically treated as a stable feature of a state's capacity to possess, use, or build nuclear weapons. Challenging this view, After Fission: Recognition and Contestation in the Atomi...
21 Mar 56min
Timothy Manion, "Why Barbarossa Failed: Germany and Russia in the Second World War" (Helion, 2026)
Why did Operation Barbarossa fail? For more than eight decades, historians have offered one dominant answer: Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union was doomed from the outset. Vast distances, bru...
20 Mar 1h 52min
Our Age of War: A Discussion with Author Robert Pape
Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, has been writing about war for decades, including in his book Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Cornell University Press, ...
18 Mar 42min
Foster Chamberlin, "Uncivil Guard: Policing, Military Culture, and the Coming of the Spanish Civil War" (Louisiana State UP, 2025)
In Uncivil Guard: Policing, Military Culture, and the Coming of the Spanish Civil War (Louisiana State UP, 2025), Foster Chamberlin evaluates the role of militarized police forces in the political vio...
15 Mar 53min
Gudrun Persson, "Russian Military Thought: The Evolution of Strategy Since the Crimean War" (Georgetown UP, 2025)
The development of the Russian military's strategic thought is an understudied and thus misunderstood subject in the West. Strategy in Russia encompasses the broader context of foreign and domestic po...
15 Mar 1h 22min
Matthew Moran et al., "Coercing Syria on Chemical Weapons" (Oxford UP, 2025)
In 2012, US President Barack Obama stated that the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons on its population would cross a red line that would require the US government to reconsider its approach ...
14 Mar 37min
