Anna Krylova, “Soviet Women in Combat: A History of Violence on the Eastern Front” (Cambridge UP, 2010)
We’re all familiar with the film cliche of the little band of soldiers who in ordinary life never would have had met, but who learn to appreciate each other in the battles of World War II. All white,...
27 Apr 20121h 24min
Karen Petrone, “The Great War in Russian Memory” (Indiana UP, 2012)
Historical studies on the European memory of World War I are, to put it mildly, voluminous. There are too many monographs to count on a myriad of subjects addressing the acts of remembrance and commem...
20 Apr 201255min
David Edgerton, “Britain’s War Machine: Weapons, Resources and Experts in the Second World War” (Oxford UP, 2011)
My grandfather joined up when the Second World War broke out, but he was soon returned to civvy street as he was much more valuable employing his mechanic’s skills to fight the Nazis from a factory in...
22 Mars 201243min
Jorg Muth, “Command Culture: Officer Education in the U.S. Army and the German Armed Forces, 1901-1940” (UNT Press, 2011)
This week we’re continuing our focus on the Second World War, as our guest author, Jorg Muth, chats about his recent book Command Culture: Officer Education in the U.S. Army and the German Armed Force...
12 Mars 20121h 18min
Marcus Franke, “War and Nationalism in South Asia: The Indian State and the Nagas” (Routledge, 2011)
North East India is, as Marcus Franke’s War and Nationalism in South Asia: The Indian State and the Nagas (Routledge, 2011) all too convincingly demonstrates, often considered peripheral to ‘India (or...
21 Feb 20121h 8min
David Stahel, “Operation Barbarossa and Germany’s Defeat in the East” (Cambridge UP, 2009)
This week’s podcast is an interview with David Stahel. I will be talking to him about his 2009 work, Operation Barbarossa and Germany’s Defeat in the East (Cambridge University Press, 2009). One of ou...
13 Feb 20121h 3min
Cynthia Wachtell, “War No More: The Antiwar Impulse in American Literature, 1861-1914” (LSU Press, 2010)
My favorite book as a teenager (and in fact the only book I ever read as a teenager) was All Quiet on the Western Front. I liked it mostly for the vivid scenes of trench warfare. Teenage boys love tha...
3 Feb 20121h 7min
Artemy Kalinovsky, “A Long Goodbye: The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan” (Harvard UP, 2011)
It’s been twenty years since the Soviet Union collapsed, and scholars still joust over its long- and short-term causes. Amid the myriad factors–stagnating economy, reform spun out of control, globaliz...
16 Jan 20121h 5min
