Frank Costigliola, "Kennan: A Life Between Worlds" (Princeton UP, 2023)
The diplomat and historian George F. Kennan (1904-2005) ranks as one of the most important figures in American foreign policy--and one of its most complex. Drawing on many previously untapped sources,...
19 Jun 20231h 3min
Tanvi Srivastava, trans., "The War Diary of Asha-san: From Tokyo to Netaji's Indian National Army" (Harper Collins, 2022)
On a trip many years ago to New Delhi, I was struck by an official memorial to Subhas Chandra Bose, the wartime leader of the Indian National Army, the Japan-affiliated force of Indians who fought aga...
15 Jun 202344min
Judith Hicks Stiehm, "Janet Reno: A Life" (UP of Florida, 2023)
In this first full biography of former United States attorney general Janet Reno (1938–2016), Judith Hicks Stiehm describes the independent and unconventional life of a woman who grew up on a rural So...
14 Jun 202323min
Douglas Kerr, "Orwell and Empire" (Oxford UP, 2022)
George Orwell was born in India and served in the Imperial Police in Burma as a young man. Douglas Kerr's book Orwell and Empire (Oxford UP, 2022) is a study of his writing about the East and the East...
9 Jun 202342min
Randy Grigsby, "This Labyrinth of Darkness and Light: Henrietta Szold, the Rescue of Children from Hitler's Europe and Her Palestine Experience" (Vallentine Mitchell, 2022)
Drawing on Henrietta Szold's letters and diary, extensive research, and historical sources of that time in Germany and Palestine, the book is a powerful narrative and spellbinding rescue story that br...
8 Jun 202352min
James H. Meyer, "Red Star over the Black Sea: Nazim Hikmet and His Generation" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Nâzım Hikmet (1902-1963) is best known as a poet and communist whose daring flight by motorboat from Turkey to the Eastern Bloc captured international headlines in 1951. One of the most important poet...
3 Jun 20231h 1min
Perry Mehrling, "Money and Empire: Charles P. Kindleberger and the Dollar System" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Charles Kindleberger ranks as one of the twentieth century's best known and most influential international economists. This book traces the evolution of his thinking in the context of a 'key-currency'...
2 Jun 202358min
Monica Macias, "Black Girl from Pyongyang: In Search of My Identity" (Duckworth, 2023)
Monica Macias, the youngest daughter of Equatorial Guinea’s first president at just seven years old, lands in Pyongyang, North Korea in 1979. Her father had sent her to the country to study, but what ...
1 Jun 202336min
