Alberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019)

From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution transformed Britain from an agricultural and artisanal economy to one dominated by industry, ushering in unprecedented growth in technology and trade and putting the country at the center of the global economy. But the commonly accepted story of the industrial revolution, anchored in images of cotton factories and steam engines invented by unfettered geniuses, overlooks the true root of economic and industrial expansion: the lucrative military contracting that enabled the country's near-constant state of war in the eighteenth century. Demand for the guns and other war materiel that allowed British armies, navies, mercenaries, traders, settlers, and adventurers to conquer an immense share of the globe in turn drove the rise of innumerable associated industries, from metalworking to banking. Bookended by the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution (Bloomsbury, 2019) traces the social and material life of British guns over a century of near-constant war and violence at home and abroad. Priya Satia develops this story through the life of prominent British gun-maker and Quaker Samuel Galton Jr., who was asked to answer for the moral defensibility of producing guns as new uses like anonymous mass violence rose. Reconciling the pacifist tenet of his faith with his perception of the economic realities of the time, Galton argued that war was driving the industrial economy, making everyone inescapably complicit in it. Through his story, Satia illuminates Britain's emergence as a global superpower, the roots of the government's role in economic development, and the origins of our own era's debates over gun control and military contracting. Priya Satia is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History and Professor of British History at Stanford University. She is the author of Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle East (2009), and her writing has appeared in Slate, the Financial Times, the Nation, and the Huffington Post, among other publications. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

18 Maj 202453min

Indoctrinating the Youth: Secondary Education in Wartime China and Postwar Taiwan, 1937-1960 (U Hawaii Press, 2024) examines how the Guomindang (GMD or Nationalists) sought to maintain control of middle-school students and cultivate their political loyalty over the trajectory of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Chinese Civil War, and postwar Taiwan. During the Sino-Japanese War the Nationalists managed middle-school refugee students by merging schools, publishing and distributing updated textbooks, and assisting students as they migrated to the interior with their principals and teachers. In Taiwan, the China Youth Corps (CYC) became a symbol of the regime’s successful establishment. Tracing Nationalist efforts to indoctrinate ideology and martial spirit, Jennifer Liu investigates how GMD leaders Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo tried to build support among young people in their efforts to stabilize Taiwanese society under their rule. By comparing two key youth organizations—the Three People’s Principles Youth Corps in China, and the CYC on Taiwan—Liu uses education as a lens to analyze state-building in modern China. Liu’s careful analysis of the inner workings of GMD youth organizations also illuminates the day-to-day operations of military training in gender-segregated upper-middle schools—including how the government selected instructors and the skills taught to students. According to Liu, mandatory military training contributed to preventing major protest against the government but the policy was not without critics. Intellectuals, parents, and students voiced their dissent at what they perceived as excessive control by a repressive government and a waste of resources interfering with academics. The government-mandated civics curriculum, including government-approved textbooks and standards, reveals the characteristics and duties GMD officials believed modern citizens of the next generation should possess. Through provisions for refugee students, youth organizations, military training, and civics classes, GMD secondary education policy played a critical role in the process of state building in both modern China and Taiwan. Skillfully combining archival work in Nanjing and Taipei, along with oral interviews with former students and CYC administrators, instructors, and members, Liu offers a unique perspective toward a balanced assessment of Nationalist Party rule. Jennifer Liu is associate professor of East Asian history at Central Michigan University. She specializes in the political and social history of twentieth-century China, particularly education, youth culture, studen​t protest, and ethnic identity. Li-Ping Chen is a teaching fellow in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include literary translingualism, diaspora, and nativism in Sinophone, inter-Asian, and transpacific contexts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

18 Maj 20241h 10min

What is the relationship between seapower, law, and strategy? In Balancing Strategy: Seapower, Neutrality, and Prize-Law in the Seven Years' War (Cambridge University Press, 2024) Dr. Anna Brinkman uses in-depth analysis of cases brought before the Court of Prize Appeal during the Seven Years' War to explore how Britain worked to shape maritime international law to its strategic advantage. Within the court, government officials and naval and legal minds came together to shape legal decisions from the perspectives of both legal philosophy and maritime strategic aims. As a result, neutrality and the negotiation of rights became critical to maritime warfare. Balancing Strategy unpicks a complex web of competing priorities: deals struck with the Dutch Republic and Spain; imperial rivalry; mercantilism; colonial trade; and the relationships between metropoles and colonies, trade, and the navy. Ultimately, influencing and shaping international law of the sea allows a nation to create the norms and rules that constrain or enable the use of seapower during war. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

18 Maj 202455min

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Yaroslav Trofimov has spent months on end at the heart of the conflict, very often on its front lines. In Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence (Penguin, 2024), he traces the war’s decisive moments—from the battle for Kyiv to more recently the gruelling and bloody arm wrestle involving the Wagner group over Bakhmut—to show how Ukraine and its allies have turned the tide against Russia, one of the world’s great military powers, in a modern-day battle of David and Goliath. Putin had intended to conquer and annex Ukraine with a vicious blitzkrieg, redrawing the map of Europe in a few short weeks with seismic geopolitical consequences. Ukrainian resistance—determined, nimble, often heroic—upset those plans. Trofimov’s eloquent reporting of resistance in Ukraine is simultaneously clear-eyed and complex; his account is as illuminating as it is riveting. In this conversation of May 2024, he talks as well about how the situation is evolving. Yaroslav Trofimov, Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, is a seasoned war reporter and a native of Kyiv, Ukraine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

18 Maj 202447min

Marc McMenamin's Ireland's Secret War: Dan Bryan, G2 and the Lost Tapes that Reveal The Hunt for Ireland's Nazi Spies (Gill Books, 2022) is a thrilling account of the true extent of Irish-Allied co-operation during World War II. It reveals strategic Nazi intentions for Ireland and the real role of leading government figures of the time, placing Dan Bryan and G2 - the military intelligence branch of the Irish Defence Forces - firmly at the centre of the country's battle against Nazi Germany. With the help of over thirty-five hours of previously unpublished audio recordings that were held in storage in northern California for over fifty years, McMenamin reveals the extraordinary unheard history of WWII in Ireland, told from the point of view of the main protagonists. Fascinating and entertaining, Ireland's Secret War reassesses the legacy of the Irish contribution to the Allied war effort through the voices of those involved at the time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

17 Maj 20241h 18min

In 1997, Saul Friedländer emphasized the need for an integrated history of the Holocaust. His suggestion to connect ‘the policies of the perpetrators, the attitudes of surrounding society, and the world of the victims’ provides the inspiration for this volume. Following in these footsteps, this innovative study approaches Holocaust history through a combination of macro analysis with micro studies.  Featuring a range of contemporary research from emerging scholars in the field, New Microhistorical Approaches to an Integrated History of the Holocaust (de Gruyter, 2023) provides detailed engagement with a variety of historical sources, such as documents, artifacts, photos, or text passages. The contributors investigate particular aspects of sound, materiality, space and social perceptions to provide a deeper understanding of the Holocaust, which have often been overlooked or generalised in previous historical research. Yet, as we approach an era of no first hand witnesses, this multidisciplinary, micro-historical approach remains a fundamental aspect of Holocaust research, and can provide a theoretical framework for future studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

17 Maj 20241h 10min

Throughout the nuclear age, states have taken many different paths toward or away from nuclear weapons. These paths have been difficult to predict and cannot be explained simply by a stable or changing security environment. We can make sense of these paths by examining leaders' nuclear decisions. The political decisions state leaders make to accelerate or reverse progress toward nuclear weapons define each state's course. Whether or not a state ultimately acquires nuclear weapons depends to a large extent on those nuclear decisions. Nuclear Decisions: Changing the Course of Nuclear Weapons Programs (Oxford University Press, 2023) offers a novel theory of nuclear decision-making that identifies two mechanisms that shape leaders' understandings of the costs and benefits of their nuclear pursuits. The internal mechanism is the intervention of domestic experts in key scientific and military organizations. If the conditions are right, those experts may be able to influence a leader's nuclear decision-making. The external mechanism emerges from the structure and politics of the international system. This book identifies three different proliferation eras, in which changes to international political and structural conditions have constrained or freed states pursuing nuclear weapons development. Scholars and practitioners alike will gain new insights from the fascinating case studies of nine states across the three eras. Through this global approach to studying nuclear proliferation, this book pushes back against the conventional wisdom that determined states pursue a straight path to the bomb. Instead, nuclear decisions define a state's nuclear pursuits. Our guest today is Lisa Langdon Koch, Associate Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College. Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Amherst College and author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

16 Maj 202448min

The Future of War Crimes Justice (Melville House, 2024), journalist and war correspondent Chris Stephen takes a colourful look at the erratic history of war crimes justice, and the pioneers who created it. He examines its shortcomings, and options for making it more effective, including the case for prosecuting the corporations and banks who fund warlords. Casting the net wider, he examines alternatives to war crimes trials, and looks into the minds of war criminals themselves through an evaluation of evidence from psychiatric studies. With international law advocates fighting for justice on one side, and reluctant governments unwilling to relinquish control on the other, he sets out to answer whether the world of the future will be governed by the rule of law or might is right. The podcast begins by exploring what is meant by ‘justice’ in the context of war crimes – whether it is (or should be) a process and collection of rights-respecting investigations and trials, or an outcome (the prosecution, conviction and sentencing of people who have committed the worst crimes) – and then discusses the challenges at the heart of the system of international war crimes justice as it has developed from the post-World War II trials of Nuremberg and Toyko. Chris Stephen discusses the impossibility of bringing leaders of major powers to justice, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, under the current system of war crimes justice, acknowledging the role that realpolitik and national state interest plays in preventing greater engagement with the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Alex Batesmith is a Lecturer in Legal Profession in the School of Law at the University of Leeds, and a former barrister and UN war crimes prosecutor, with teaching and research interests in international criminal law, cause lawyering and the legal profession, and law and emotion. Twitter: @batesmith. LinkedIn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

15 Maj 20241h 1min