In his latest monograph, All Against All: The Long Winter of 1933 and The Origins of the Second World War (Harper, 2020), Professor Paul Jankowski (Brandeis University) provides a wide-angled account of a critical period of world history, the interwar years, in which the world transitioned from postwar to the prewar and saw the disintegration of collective s ... Show More
Yesterday
Our Age of War: A Discussion with Author Robert Pape
Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, has been writing about war for decades, including in his book Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Cornell University Press, 1996). In our conversation, we step back from the immediate conflict in Iran to ... Show More
42m 59s
Mar 15
Foster Chamberlin, "Uncivil Guard: Policing, Military Culture, and the Coming of the Spanish Civil War" (Louisiana State UP, 2025)
In Uncivil Guard: Policing, Military Culture, and the Coming of the Spanish Civil War (Louisiana State UP, 2025), Foster Chamberlin evaluates the role of militarized police forces in the political violence of interwar Europe by tracing the evolution of one such group, Spain’s Civ ... Show More
53m 11s
Mar 15
Gudrun Persson, "Russian Military Thought: The Evolution of Strategy Since the Crimean War" (Georgetown UP, 2025)
The development of the Russian military's strategic thought is an understudied and thus misunderstood subject in the West. Strategy in Russia encompasses the broader context of foreign and domestic policy as well as the military's ties to the country's leadership. The military's ... Show More
1h 22m
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
Mar 2020
Jeffrey James Byrne, "Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order" (Oxford UP, 2016)
In his brilliant, category-smashing book, Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order (Oxford University Press, 2016), Jeffrey James Byrne places Algeria at the center of many of the twentieth-century’s international dynamics: decolonization, the Cold ... Show More
1h 24m
Apr 2021
Michael Wheeler, "The Athenaeum: More Than Just Another London Club" (Yale UP, 2020)
When it was founded in 1824, the Athenæum broke the mold. Unlike in other preeminent clubs, its members were chosen on the basis of their achievements rather than on their background or political affiliation. Public rather than private life dominated the agenda. The club, with it ... Show More
53m 37s
Oct 2021
Hans Martin Krämer and Julian Strube, "Theosophy across Boundaries: Transcultural and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Modern Esoteric Movement" (SUNY Press, 2020)
Theosophy across Boundaries: Transcultural and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Modern Esoteric Movement (SUNY Press, 2020) brings a global history approach to the study of esotericism, highlighting the important role of Theosophy in the general histories of religion, science, ... Show More
1h 3m
May 2019
J. Edgar Hoover's FBI - Humanizing History with David McCullough | 7
<p>Pulitzer Prize winner. National Book Award winner. Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient. Today David McCullough, one of America’s greatest living historians, joins us to discuss his new book, <em>The Pioneers</em>, about the heroic men and women who shaped the Northwest Ter ... Show More
35m 16s