This past September saw the sixty-eighth anniversary of one of the European Theater of Operations’ most familiar operations. Conceived by Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, MARKET GARDEN was the Western Allies’ great gamble in the fall of 1944. With the Nazi war machine appearing to be on the ropes following its ignominious collapse in France, victory see ... Show More
Jun 14
Derek R. Peterson, "A Popular History of Idi Amin's Uganda" (Yale UP, 2025)
Idi Amin ruled Uganda between 1971 and 1979, inflicting tremendous violence on the people of the country. How did Amin's regime survive for eight calamitous years? Drawing on recently uncovered archival material, Derek Peterson reconstructs the political logic of the era, focusin ... Show More
1h 3m
Jun 12
Richard Bennet and Alexander Noyes, "War at Arm's Length: How America Can Build Effective Partners Through Military Assistance" (Yale UP, 2026)
An in-depth examination of how the United States can build more effective partner militaries. Military assistance has a bad reputation. Large-scale attempts to build partner militaries in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam cost the United States billions of dollars and ended ignomini ... Show More
39m 40s
Jun 10
Justin F Jackson, "The Work of Empire: War, Occupation, and the Making of American Colonialism in Cuba and the Philippines" (UNC Press, 2025)
In 1898, on the eve of the Spanish-American War, the US Army seemed minuscule and ill-equipped for global conflict. Yet over the next fifteen years, its soldiers defeated Spain and pacified nationalist insurgencies in both Cuba and the Philippines. Despite their lack of experienc ... Show More
1h 17m
Jan 2024
The Ghost Army of World War 2
In the summer of 1944, a handpicked group of young GIs—including such future luminaries such as Bill Blass, Ellsworth Kelly, Arthur Singer, Victor Dowd, Art Kane, and Jack Masey—landed in France to conduct a secret mission. From Normandy to the Rhine, the 1,100 men of the 23rd He ... Show More
41m 39s
May 2024
452. Custer's Last Stand: The Battle of the Little Bighorn (Part 7)
“You and I are going home today, and by a trail that is strange to us both…”
The Battle of The Little Bighorn is one of the totemic moments of American frontier history. However, it is also mysterious, with the exact events of that blood-soaked day difficult to trace. On the 22nd ... Show More
1h 1m
May 2024
451. Custer's Last Stand: The Charge of the 7th Cavalry (Part 6)
The U.S. was cast into a spiralling panic following the economic depression of 1873, and waves of paramilitary violence swept through the south as the debates surrounding Reconstruction swirled on. Amidst this uncertainty, the government, under the leadership of Ulysses S. Grant ... Show More
1 h
Apr 2023
Unearthing World War II mass graves and the Boston bombing
<p>Max Pearson presents a collection of this week's Witness History and Sporting Witness episodes from the BBC World Service.</p><p>We hear about the unearthing of a mass grave in Sernyky, Ukraine, in 1990, and when the Boston Marathon was the target of a terror attack in 2013.</ ... Show More
51m 13s