Every so often I read a book that reminds me that things weren’t at all what they appear to have been in hindsight. James Zug‘s wonderfully written The Guardian: The History of South Africa’s Extraordinary Anti-Apartheid Newspaper (Michigan State UP, 2007) is one such book. For years I studied and wrote about Russia and the Soviet Union. In that time, I came ... Show More
Jan 23
Betto van Waarden, "Politicians and Mass Media in the Age of Empire" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
How did politicians deal with mass communication in a rapidly changing society? And how did the performance of public politics both help and hinder democratization? In Politicians and Mass Media in the Age of Empire (Cambridge UP, 2025), Dr. Betto van Waarden explores the emergen ... Show More
1h 21m
Jan 13
Richard Fine, "The Price of Truth: The Journalist Who Defied Military Censors to Report the Fall of Nazi Germany" (Cornell, 2023)
In The Price of Truth: The Journalist Who Defied Military Censors to Report the Fall of Nazi Germany (Cornell, 2023), Richard Fine recounts the intense drama surrounding the German surrender at the end of World War II and the veteran Associated Press journalist Edward Kennedy’s c ... Show More
57m 43s
Jan 3
Brooke Kroeger, "Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism" (Knopf, 2023)
Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism (Knopf, 2023) is a representative history of the American women who surmounted every impediment put in their way to do journalism's most valued work. From Margaret Fuller's improbable success to the highly paid reporters of the mid ... Show More
45m 12s
Jul 2019
Little Red Book, Big Red Ideas: Part 2 of A Global History of Maoism
This week, in part 2 of a special two-part edition of ChinaEconTalk, Jordan interviews Professor Julia Lovell, author of the recently published book on Mao’s international legacy entitled Maoism: A Global History. In this episode, Lovell recounts the ways in which Maoism truly st ... Show More
1h 4m
May 2023
The Rise and Fall of “Woke” with Dr. Ibram X. Kendi
What’s it like to be at the forefront of a cultural backlash? Academic and author Dr. Ibram X. Kendi certainly knows. His books, “How to Be an Antiracist,” and its follow-up, a youth-friendly version called, “How to Be a (Young) Antiracist,” teach readers how to actively fight ra ... Show More
28m 6s
Jul 2008
Christopher Capozzola, “Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of The Modern American Citizen” (Oxford UP, 2008)
I confess I sometimes wonder where we got in the habit of proclaiming, usually with some sort of righteous indignation, that we have the “right” to this or that as citizens. I know that the political theorists of the eighteenth century wrote a lot about “rights,” and that “rights ... Show More
1h 7m