Mark Stoyle, "A Murderous Midsummer: The Western Rising of 1549" (Yale UP, 2022)
The Western Rising of 1549 was the most catastrophic event to occur in Devon and Cornwall between the Black Death and the Civil War. Beginning as an argument between two men and their vicar, the rebel...
3 Nov 202444min
Ronald Drabkin, "Beverly Hills Spy: The Double-Agent War Hero Who Helped Japan Attack Pearl Harbor" (William Morrow, 2024)
Frederick Rutland—”Rutland of Jutland”—was a war hero, renowned World War I aviator…and a Japanese spy. In the years leading up to Pearl Harbor, Rutland shared information on U.S. aviation and naval d...
31 Okt 202440min
Friederike Baer, "Hessians: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Between 1776 and 1783, Britain hired an estimated 30,000 German soldiers to fight in its war against the Americans. Collectively known as Hessians, they actually came from six German territories withi...
30 Okt 20241h 1min
Simon Kuznets and the Invention of the Economy
Economics sometimes feels like a physics–so sturdy, so objective, and so immutable. Yet, behind every clean number or eye-popping graph, there is usually a rather messy story, a story shaped by values...
27 Okt 20241h 3min
John Freed, “Frederick Barbarossa: The Prince and the Myth” (Yale UP, 2016)
For all of his importance as a medieval ruler, there are surprisingly few biographies in English of the German emperor Frederick Barbarossa (c. 1122-1190). John Freed fills this gap with his new book,...
22 Okt 20241h 11min
Beatrice de Graaf, "Fighting Terror after Napoleon: How Europe Became Secure after 1815" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
After twenty-six years of unprecedented revolutionary upheavals and endless fighting, the victorious powers craved stability after Napoleon's defeat in 1815. With the threat of war and revolutionary t...
22 Okt 202452min
Eran Ortal, "Battle Before the War: The Inside Story of the IDF's Transformation" (Dado Center, 2023)
A critical challenge for militaries is preparing for future, not past, wars. History shows that success often depends on accurately interpreting and harnessing technological and societal changes. In t...
20 Okt 202459min
E. L. Gaston, "Illusions of Control: Dilemmas in Managing U.S. Proxy Forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria" (Columbia UP, 2024)
Over the last two decades, the United States has supported a range of militias, rebels, and other armed groups in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Critics have argued that such partnerships have many per...
19 Okt 20241h
