Was Presidential Leadership Decisive in Determining the Outcome of the Civil War?
In the third podcast of Arguing History, historians William J. Cooper and Richard Carwardine address the question of the role presidential leadership played in determining the outcome of the American ...
12 Sep 20171h 15min
Asher Orkaby, “Beyond the Arab Cold War: The International History of the Yemen Civil War, 1962-68” (Oxford UP, 2017)
The civil war in Yemen today harkens back to a similar conflict half a century ago, when the overthrow of the ruling imam, Muhammad al-Badr, in 1962 sparked a conflict that dragged on for the rest of ...
5 Sep 201759min
Wendy Pearlman, “We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria” (Custom House, 2017)
In the wake of the Arab Spring and the ensuing Syrian Civil War, the stories of the millions displaced by the conflict as well as the millions Syria has lost since 2011 remain largely untold. Wendy Pe...
30 Aug 201756min
Anthony Kaldellis, “Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood: The Rise and Fall of Byzantium, 955 A.D. to the First Crusade” (Oxford UP, 2017)
In the 10th century, a succession of Byzantine rulers reversed centuries of strategic policy by embarking on a series of campaigns that dramatically reshaped their empire. This effort and its conseque...
23 Aug 201756min
Hussein Fancy, “The Mercenary Mediterranean: Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon” (U of Chicago Press, 2016)
Hussein Fancy’s book The Mercenary Mediterranean: Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (University of Chicago Press, 2016) begins with the description of five Muslim jen...
12 Aug 201747min
Richard Rubin, “Back Over There” (St. Martin’s Press, 2017)
The majority of the books we profile on New Books in Military History are traditional research narratives, monographs written by historians and authors seeking to present a particular campaign, organi...
6 Aug 20171h 29min
Gerben Zaagsma, “Jewish Volunteers, the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017)
In Jewish Volunteers, the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), Gerben Zaagsma, Senior researcher at the centre for contemporary and digital history at the Univ...
24 Jul 201733min
Peter Eisner, “MacArthur’s Spies: The Solider, the Singer, and the Spymaster Who Defied the Japanese in WWII” (Viking, 2017)
The conquest of the Philippines in 1942 brought thousands of Americans under the control of the empire of Japan. While most of them were interned or imprisoned for the duration of the war, a remarkabl...
20 Jul 20171h
