An earlier author described the British invasion of Mesopotamia in 1914 as “The Neglected War.” It no longer deserves that title thanks to the brilliant treatment of the subject by Professor Charles Townshend (University of Keele). His Desert Hell: The British Invasion of Mesopotamia (Harvard University Press, 2011) describes in impressive detail both the po ... Show More
Today
Marek Kohn, "The Stories Old Towns Tell: A Journey Through Cities at the Heart of Europe" (Yale UP, 2023)
Historic quarters in cities and towns across the middle of Europe were devastated during the Second World War—some, like those of Warsaw and Frankfurt, had to be rebuilt almost completely. They are now centers of peace and civility that attract millions of tourists, but the stori ... Show More
59m 34s
Nov 22
John Bodnar, "Divided by Terror: American Patriotism after 9/11" (UNC Press, 2021)
September 11th, 2001 marked the beginning of the so-called war on terror, but the attacks of that day also re-ignited battles over the nature of American patriotism. In Divided by Terror: American Patriotism after 9/11 (UNC Press, 2021), Professor John Bodnar argues that the natu ... Show More
1h 8m
Nov 19
Tim Seiter, "Wrangling Pelicans: Military Life in Texas Presidios" (U Texas Press, 2025)
A richly detailed history of daily life for colonial Spanish soldiers surviving on the eighteenth-century Texas Gulf Coast.
In 1775, Spanish King Carlos III ordered the capture of American pelicans for his wildlife park in Madrid. The command went to the only Spanish fort on the ... Show More
39m 50s
Oct 2023
205 - Victory to Defeat: The British Army 1918-40
<p>As some of you may know, I am also a First World War historian, and the academic history of the war can be very different from the public perspective, which dwells on the first two years of the war. </p> <p>Forgetting the victories of 1917 and 1918 is not new; it is something ... Show More
56m 31s
Mar 2023
Tony Blair & The Iraq War
March 2023 marks the 20th anniversary of the Iraq war, seeing US and British troops enter the country - the legalities of which are still debated today. The legacy it’s left behind includes over 1 million Iraqi deaths, thousands of troops, and a power vacuum that allowed the rise ... Show More
39m 50s
Jun 2023
Douglas Kerr, "Orwell and Empire" (Oxford UP, 2022)
George Orwell was born in India and served in the Imperial Police in Burma as a young man. Douglas Kerr's book Orwell and Empire (Oxford UP, 2022) is a study of his writing about the East and the East in his writing. It argues that empire was central to his cultural identity and ... Show More
42m 30s
Jun 2021
Sean McMeekin, "Stalin's War: A New History of World War II" (Basic Books, 2021)
World War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its events. But Hitler was not in power when the conflict erupted in Asia—and he was certainly dead before it ended. His armies did not fight in multiple the ... Show More
1h 15m
Sep 2023
Salar Abdoh, "Out of Mesopotamia" (Akashic Books, 2020)
Saleh, the narrator of Out of Mesopotamia (Akashic Books, 2020), is a middle-aged Iranian journalist who moonlights as a writer for one of Iran's most popular TV shows but cannot keep himself away from the front lines in neighboring Iraq and Syria. There, the fight against the Is ... Show More
1h 14m
Jul 2024
Jeremy Black, "Defoe's Britain" (St. Augustine's Press, 2023)
The Weight of Words Series continues with Defoe's Britain (St. Augustine's Press, 2023), as historian Jeremy Black uses this writer to interpret Britain in the late 1600s, and likewise looks to the times to interpret the fiction. As seen in previous studies on Christie, Smollett, ... Show More
24m 15s