New Books in Military History

In her new book, This Is Really War: The Incredible True Story of a Navy Nurse POW in the Occupied Philippines (Chicago Review Press, 2019), Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi presents the largely unknown story of the US Navy nurses captured by the Japanese in the Philippines during World War II. Focusing on what she calls the “twelve anchors,” Lucchesi examines the lives of these women as they lived in prison camps throughout the Philippines, while at the same time continuing to work as nurses, and often the only medical professionals, in each camp. Focusing on the story of navy nurse Dorothy Still, Lucchesi starts at the attack on Pearl Harbor, chronicling the Japanese attack on the Philippines and the capture of thousands of Americans, including Dorothy. The narrative follows Dorothy, Chief Nurse Laura Cobb, and ten other navy nurses who continued to work in a makeshift hospital in the civilian prison camp they were sent to. Recounting their experiences with death, disease, malnutrition, starvation, and overcrowded conditions, This is Really War, follows these “twelve anchors” during the over two years that they spent imprisoned until the prison camps were liberated. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

19 Juli 20191h 5min

Danny Orbach’s Curse on This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan (Cornell University Press, 2017) provides new insights into the origins of the insubordination that plagued and characterized the Imperial Japanese Army in the 1930s. Orbach identifies the causes of insubordination in both the political culture of the military dating back to the Meiji Restoration itself and a series of systemic “bugs” that infected the modern political system but that were in themselves the result of mostly reasonable solutions to challenges Japan faced early on in its blitzkrieg modernization. By assembling a series of mostly well known events into a coherent narrative from the 1860s to the 1930s, Orbach shows how insubordination in the name of the emperor rotted the Army from its core and destroyed civilian control in the process, culminating in the military governments of the Second World War period. The book is not only a convincing reevaluation of the history of the Army and modern Japan, but also a refreshing antidote to persistent misconceptions about the roots and timeline of Japan’s imperial ambitions. Instead of a geopolitical imperial strategy with roots in the 1870s, in which there is a continuity of aggressive expansionist purpose, what we come away with is a story about the continuity of structural/systemic “bugs” and their long-term unintended consequences. This podcast was recorded in front of a live audience at Nagoya University. 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 Juli 201955min

As Russian militarism becomes increasingly intertwined with Russian Orthodoxy theology in the 21st century, the history of the Church’s relationship to war and its justification becomes particularly relevant. Betsy Perabo’s book Russian Orthodoxy and the Russo-Japanese War (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) is a unique and important contribution to this area of inquiry, representing a rare contemporary academic exploration of just war theory within Russian Orthodoxy in the context of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. Perabo examines the conflict through the concept of an “interreligious war” between Christian and Buddhist nations, paying particular attention to the writings of Nikolai of Japan, the Russian leader of Orthodox Church in Japan, as well as Russian soldiers, chaplains, military psychologists, and missionary leaders. In this interview we discuss the genealogy of Christian just war theory, the Russian Orthodox mission in in the late 19th-early 20th century the Japanese and Russian perception of religious motivations and divine influence in the 1904-05 war, and the implications of this history for Russian militarism today. 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 Juli 201949min

In this provocative challenge to United States policy and strategy, former Professor of Strategy & Policy at the US Naval War College, and author or editor of eleven books, Dr. Donald Stoker argues that America endures endless wars because its leaders no longer know how to think about war in strategic terms and he reveals how ideas on limited war and war in general have evolved against the backdrop of American conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. These ideas, he shows, were and are flawed and have undermined America's ability to understand, wage, and win its wars, and to secure peace afterwards. America's leaders he argues have too often taken the nation to war without understanding what they want or valuing victory, leading to the “forever wars” of today in Afghanistan and Iraq. Why America Loses Wars: Limited War and US Strategy from the Korean War to the Present(Cambridge University Press, 2019) dismantles seventy years of misguided thinking and lays the foundations for a new approach to the wars of tomorrow. Why American Loses War is a must read for policy practitioners, serving soldiers and the lay educated public. Charles Coutinho has a doctorate in history from New York University. Where he studied with Tony Judt, Stewart Stehlin and McGeorge Bundy. His Ph. D. dissertation was on Anglo-American relations in the run-up to the Suez Crisis of 1956. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written recently for the Journal of Intelligence History and Chatham House’s International Affairs. It you have a recent title to suggest for a podcast, please send an e-mail to Charlescoutinho@aol.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

8 Juli 201946min

In 1349 the City-Republic of Florence had just endured a horrific epidemic of bubonic plague, that contagion that became known as the Black Death. Nevertheless, despite the effects upon both their population and treasury, they marshaled their resources to fight the Ubaldini clan who dominated the mountain passes through the Appenines to the north of the city. This event my guest Bill Caferro refers to as “Petrarch’s War,” since the Florentine humanist Petrarch–normally regarded as a promoter of peace in Italy–had urged Florence to attack the Ubaldini after they had waylaid and killed a friend of his. Caferro examines this little war to find out its institutional and economic effects–to see what it says about wages of soldiers, and to answer such curious questions as why Florence sent a cook on an embassy to the court of Hungary. Bill’s arguments in his new book Petrarch's War: Florence and the Black Death in Context(Cambridge University Press, 2018) aren’t just about Florence. Ultimately, he is suggesting that context matters a great deal to historical thinking, and that pleas to ignore the short term in favor of the long term ignore the fact that understanding the short term is always at the heart of the historian’s task. Long-term wage studies, he argues, have cut corners both in terms of evidence and through epistemological jumps. “The current long-term methodological construct,” Caferro writes, “is as stubborn as it is pernicious.” Ultimately, Caferro believes, “a proper understanding of context lies at the core of the historians’ task.” Al Zambone is a historian and the host of the podcast Historically Thinking. You can subscribe to Historically Thinking on Apple Podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

3 Juli 201959min

Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill and the Road to War(Tim Duggan Books, 2019) is a groundbreaking history of the disastrous years of indecision, failed diplomacy and parliamentary infighting that help to make Hitler’s domination of Europe possible. Drawing on the available archival research, Oxford graduate, professional writer and one-time Channel 4 news journalist, Tim Bouverie has created a highly interesting portrait of the ministers, aristocrats, and amateur diplomats who, through their actions and inaction, shaped their country’s policy and determined the fate of Europe. Among other historical figures who appear in this tale are Hitler, Churchill, Chamberlain, Eden and Baldwin. Beginning with the advent of Hitler in 1933, we embark on a fascinating journey from the early days of the Third Reich to the beaches of Dunkirk and the downfall of Chamberlain’s premiership. Bouverie takes us not only into the backrooms of Parliament and 10 Downing Street but also into the drawing rooms and dining clubs of imperial Britain, where Hitler enjoyed support among the ruling class and even some members of the royal family. Both sweeping and detail laden, Tim Bouverie provides both the first-time reader of this historical tale and the more experienced one, with a highly interesting and involved narrative of one of the most important periods in world history. Charles Coutinho has a doctorate in history from New York University. Where he studied with Tony Judt, Stewart Stehlin and McGeorge Bundy. His Ph. D. dissertation was on Anglo-American relations in the run-up to the Suez Crisis of 1956. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written recently for the Journal of Intelligence History and Chatham House’s International Affairs. It you have a recent title to suggest for a podcast, please send an e-mail to Charlescoutinho@aol.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

27 Juni 201939min

The year 1453 marked the end of an intermittent yet seemingly endless series of wars between the Kingdom of France and the Kingdom of England that, some four hundred years later, was dubbed the Hundred Years War. Depending on how you count even the most conservative estimate of its beginnings would make it longer than that. This conflict led to numerous changes in the life of not only Kings, but in those of men and women; of warriors, priests and peasants; landowners, great and small; ladies, nuns, and housewives; and prisoners of war, and the poor in their infinite variety. Writing in the midst of this turmoil, after the defeat and capture of the King Jean II of France at the Battle of Poitier, a chronicler wrote: "From that time on all went wrong with the Kingdom and the state was undone. Thieves and robbers rose up everywhere in the land. The nobles despised and hated all others and took no thought for the mutual usefulness and profit of lord and men. They subjected and despoiled the peasants and the men of the villages. In no wise did they defend their country from enemies. Rather did they trample it underfoot, robbing and pillaging the peasants’ goods…" With me to explain this dreadful period, and its many consequences is David Green, author of The Hundred Years War: A People’s History, published by Yale University Press (2014). A Senior Lecturer in British Studies and History at Harlaxton College, he has published several earlier studies on other aspects of the Hundred Years War. Al Zambone is a historian and the host of the podcast Historically Thinking. You can subscribe to Historically Thinking on Apple Podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

19 Juni 201954min

In her debut book, Between the Ottomans and the Entente: The First World War in the Syrian and Lebanese Diaspora, 1908-1925 (Oxford University Press, 2019), Stacy Fahrenthold sheds a timely light on Syrian and Lebanese immigrants who established vibrant diaspora communities in the Americas during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Drawing on an impressive array of innovative and transnational sources, including a burgeoning migrant press, police records, passports, forged travel documents, memoirs, and diplomatic cables, Fahrenthold uncovers ethnic associations and transnational networks of migrants who sought to contribute to the betterment of their homeland. Between the Ottomans and the Entente shows how mahjar (diaspora) communities grappled with a series of enormous changes to their homeland from the Young Turk Revolution (1908), to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, and the imposition of the French Mandate in 1920. The book vividly illustrates the precarious position Syrians and Lebanese found themselves in as they occupied a fraught liminal space in Ottoman, French, and American law. Even so, Fahrenthold stresses the agency of the Syrian and Lebanese diaspora, which organized, petitioned, recruited soldiers for the Entente, and engaged in contentious debates over what a post-Ottoman Middle East should look like. Written in the midst of the horrific Syrian refugee crisis, as well as a rising tide of xenophobia and trenchant nationalism around the globe, Fahrenthold's exploration of migration, citizenship, repatriation, and an early American "Muslim ban" invite the reader to reflect on both past and present. Stacy Fahrenthold is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of California-Davis, where she teaches courses on global migration and modern Middle East history. She earned her PhD in History from Northeastern University and previously taught at the University of California-Stanislaus. Joshua Donovan is a PhD candidate at Columbia University's Department of History. His dissertation examines national and sectarian identity formation within the Greek Orthodox Christian community in Syria, Lebanon, and the diaspora. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

19 Juni 201954min