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
Michael Matheny, “Carrying the War to the Enemy: American Operational Art to 1945” (University of Oklahoma Press, 2011)
Ask many military historians about the origins of American operational art and many will place it sometime after the Second World War. Conventional wisdom has long held that the American military only...
16 Dec 201155min
Timothy Nunan, “Carl Schmitt, ‘Writings on War'” (Polity Press, 2011)
Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) was the author of numerous influential books and essays on political theory, law, and other subjects. In Carl Schmitt: Writings on War (Polity Press, 2011), Rhodes Scholar Tim...
25 Okt 20111h 7min
Peter Mauch, “Sailor Diplomat: Nomura Kichisaburo and the Japanese-American War” (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011)
Peter Mauch‘s Sailor Diplomat: Nomura Kichisaburo and the Japanese-American War (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011) is an exhaustively researched and very rich biographical account of the man who w...
17 Okt 20111h 2min
David J. Ulbrich, “Preparing for Victory: Thomas Holcomb and the Making of the Modern Marine Corps, 1936-1943” (Naval Institute Press, 2011).
The story of the United States Marine Corps in the Pacific Theatre in the Second World War is no doubt quite familiar to our listeners. Less well known, however, is the story of how the Marine Corps r...
5 Okt 20111h 11min
John Grenier, “The Far Reaches of Empire: War in Nova Scotia, 1710-1760” (University of Oklahoma Press, 2008)
For many readers, colonial history begins and ends with the original 13 American colonies. This perception overlooks the other British colonies throughout the New World, each of which created their ow...
23 Sep 201146min
Charles Townshend, “Desert Hell: The British Invasion of Mesopotamia” (Harvard University Press, 2011)
An earlier author described the British invasion of Mesopotamia in 1914 as “The Neglected War.” It no longer deserves that title thanks to the brilliant treatment of the subject by Professor Charles T...
31 Aug 20111h 5min
Rodric Braithwaite, “Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan, 1979-89” (Oxford UP, 2011)
I was still in high school the year the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, 1979. I remember reading about it in Time magazine and watching President Carter denounce it on TV. The Soviets, everyone said...
26 Aug 20111h 6min
