Roger Reese’s recent book, The Imperial Russian Army in Peace, War, and Revolution, 1856-1917 (University of Kansas, 2019), takes a deep dive into the internal workings of the Russian army. Focusing particularly on relations between officers and the rank and file, as well as on divisions within the officer corps itself, Reese notices that conditions for sold ... Show More
Yesterday
Rosella Cappella Zielinski and Paul Poast, "Wheat at War: Allied Economic Cooperation in the Great War" (Oxford UP, 2025)
The battlefields were not the only places that threatened death during World War I. As conflict raged on and supply lines tightened, the allied powers of France, Britain, and Italy faced a fundamental problem: keeping their soldier and civilian populations safe from starvation. W ... Show More
54m 45s
Mar 1
Trish FitzSimons and Madelyn Shaw, "Fleeced: Unraveling the History of Wool and War" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Not everything about wool is warm and fuzzy. Wool, for millennia the cold climate textile fiber, has a long relationship to war, both in terms of supporting it and causing it. Wool's strategic value in wartime, a position it gained over centuries, and contrived shortages of same ... Show More
1h 9m
Mar 1
James Giesler, "Francisco de Saavedra's American Revolutionary War, The Spanish Contribution to the Battle of Yorktown" (James Giesler, 2025)
Francisco de Saavedra’s American Revolutionary War: The Spanish Contribution to the Battle of Yorktown (James Giesler, 2025) by James Giesler is the story of how the decisive victory in the American Revolutionary War, at the Battle of Yorktown in October 1781, was the result of F ... Show More
59m 34s
Aug 2021
Jonathan Haslam, "The Spectre of War: International Communism and the Origins of World War II" (Princeton UP, 2021)
The Spectre of War: International Communism and the Origins of World War II (Princeton UP, 2021), looks at a subject we thought we knew—the roots of the Second World War—and upends our assumptions with a new interpretation. Professor Jonathan Haslam, in the words of historian, Ge ... Show More
1h 3m
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
Aug 2023
Alexander Hill, "The War on the Eastern Front: The Soviet Union, 1941-1945 - A Photographic History" (Pen & Sword Military, 2021)
In The War on the Eastern Front: The Soviet Union, 1941-1945 - A Photographic History (Pen & Sword Military, 2021), Professor Alexander Hill has collected photographs from the brutal conflict on the Eastern Front and the extraordinary experience of the soldiers and civilians who ... Show More
50m 16s