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...
20 Jul 20251h 15min
Frank L. Jones, "Sam Nunn: Statesman of the Nuclear Age" (UP Kansas, 2020)
In a 2012 opinion piece bemoaning the state of the US Senate, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank cited a “leading theory: There are no giants in the chamber today.” Among the respected members who...
20 Jul 20251h 3min
How ClioVis is Transforming Education and Historical Research
Today I’m speaking with Marcus Golding, historian and Director of Educational Operations at ClioVis. ClioVis is an incredible software and learning tool that allows educators and studies to create dig...
19 Jul 202522min
Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman, "Hitler's American Gamble: Pearl Harbor and Germany's March to Global War" (Basic Books, 2021)
A riveting account of the five most crucial days in twentieth-century diplomatic history: from Pearl Harbor to Hitler's declaration of war on the United States. By early December 1941, war had change...
13 Jul 202546min
Paul Tucker, "Global Discord: Values and Power in a Fractured World Order" (Princeton UP, 2024)
How to sustain an international system of cooperation in the midst of geopolitical struggle? Can the international economic and legal system survive today’s fractured geopolitics? Democracies are faci...
3 Jul 202547min
Sam Dalrymple, "Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia" (HarperCollins UK, 2025)
As recently as 1928, a vast swathe of Asia – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait – were bound together under a single imperial banner, an...
2 Jul 20251h 3min
Sven Saaler, Kudō Akira, and Tajima Nobuo eds., "Mutual Perceptions and Images in Japanese-German Relations, 1860-2010" (Brill, 2017)
Mutual Perceptions and Images in Japanese-German Relations, 1860-2010 (Brill, 2017) examines the mutual images formed between Japan and Germany from the mid-nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, and t...
1 Jul 20251h 8min
Jack Snyder, "Human Rights for Pragmatists: Social Power in Modern Times" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Human rights are among our most pressing issues today. But rights promoters have reached an impasse in their effort to achieve rights for all. Human Rights for Pragmatists (Princeton University Press,...
30 Jun 202546min
