Mikhail Zygar, "War and Punishment: Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine" (Scribner, 2023)
As soon as the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, prominent independent Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar circulated a Facebook petition signed first by hundreds of his cultural and journalistic contac...
15 Sep 20241h 5min
Peter Rose, "The Good War of Consul Reeves" (Blacksmith Books, 2024)
Macau was supposed to be a sleepy post for John Reeves, the British consul for the Portuguese colony on China’s southern coast. He arrived, alone, in June 1941, his wife and daughter left behind in Ch...
12 Sep 202448min
Isaac Nakhimovsky, "The Holy Alliance: Liberalism and the Politics of Federation" (Princeton UP, 2024)
The Holy Alliance is now most familiar as a label for conspiratorial reaction. In The Holy Alliance: Liberalism and the Politics of Federation (Princeton University Press, 2024), Dr. Isaac Nakhimovsky...
12 Sep 20241h 10min
Terrence G. Peterson, "Revolutionary Warfare: How the Algerian War Made Modern Counterinsurgency" (Cornell UP, 2024)
The Algerian War of Independence constituted a major turning point of 20th century history. The conflict exacerbated divisions in French society, culminating in an unsuccessful coup attempt by the OAS...
7 Sep 202449min
James M. Scott, "Black Snow: Curtis Lemay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb" (Norton, 2024)
In our interview about Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb (W. W. Norton & Company, 2022), James M. Scott discusses the principles and personalities inv...
6 Sep 202455min
David Chaffetz, "Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires" (Norton, 2024)
After reading David Chaffetz’s newest book, you’d think that the horse–not oil–has been humanity’s most important strategic commodity. As David writes in his book Raiders, Rulers and Traders: The Hors...
5 Sep 202445min
Dan Stone, "Fate Unknown: Tracing the Missing after World War II and the Holocaust" (Oxford UP, 2023)
In Fate Unknown: Tracing the Missing after World War II and the Holocaust (Oxford University Press, 2023), Dan Stone tells the story of the last great unknown archive of Nazism, the International Trac...
5 Sep 20241h 7min
Daniel Todman, "Britain's War: A New World, 1942-1947" (Oxford UP, 2020)
The second of Daniel Todman's two sweeping volumes on Great Britain and World War II, Britain's War: A New World, 1942-1947 (Oxford UP, 2020), begins with the event Winston Churchill called the "worst...
31 Aug 202452min
