Susan Eisenhower, "How Ike Led: The Principles Behind Eisenhower's Biggest Decisions" (Thomas Dunne, 2020)
Few people have made decisions as momentous as Eisenhower, nor has one person had to make such a varied range of them. From D-Day to Little Rock, from the Korean War to Cold War crises, from the Red S...
5 Jul 20211h 19min
Sinja Graf, "The Humanity of Universal Crime: Inclusion, Inequality, and Intervention in International Political Thought" (Oxford UP, 2021)
We often hear or read the phrase “crimes against humanity” when we learn about the Holocaust, or genocide in places like Rwanda or Serbia. And just as often, we don’t reflect on what this phrase means...
1 Jul 202150min
Christopher Grey, "Brexit Unfolded: How No One Got What They Wanted (and Why They Were Never Going To)" (Biteback, 2021)
In 2020-21, the UK left first the EU and then the 30-nation European Economic Area. Much of the impact has been masked by the coronavirus pandemic but, as that lifts, there will be profound effects on...
30 Jun 202148min
Marie Favereau, "The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World" (Harvard UP, 2021)
The Mongols are widely known for one thing: conquest. Through the ages, word "horde" has entered the English lexicon with a negative connotation, conjuring up images of warriors on horseback, sweeping...
29 Jun 20211h 5min
Giovanni Mantilla, "Lawmaking Under Pressure: International Humanitarian Law and Internal Armed Conflict" (Cornell UP, 2020)
Giovanni Mantilla’s new book, Lawmaking under Pressure: International Humanitarian Law and Internal Armed Conflict (Cornell University Press, 2020), traces the origins and development of the internati...
25 Jun 20211h 5min
Philip Zelikow, "The Road Less Traveled: The Secret Battle to End the Great War, 1916-1917" (PublicAffairs, 2021)
During a pivotal few months in the middle of the First World War all sides-Germany, Britain, and America-believed the war could be concluded. Peace at the end of 1916 would have saved millions of live...
24 Jun 202135min
Sean McMeekin, "Stalin's War: A New History of World War II" (Basic Books, 2021)
World War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its events. But Hitler was not in power when the conflict erupted in Asia—and...
23 Jun 20211h 15min
Ecological Civilization: Chinese Dream or Global Strategy?
How seriously should take the Chinese government’s discourse about ‘ecological civilization’? Mette Hansen argues that whatever the shortcomings of this rather grandiose notion, it offers an invaluabl...
18 Jun 202125min
