Jan 30
Najati Sidqi, "Memoirs of a Palestinian Communist: The Secret Life of Najati Sidqi" (U Texas Press, 2025)
In the public eye, Najati Sidqi was known as a journalist and writer, a translator of Russian classics, and an outspoken opponent of Nazism. However, Sidqi concealed a critical component of his life from the world and his family. He was an underground activist for the Palestinian ... Show More
25m 54s
Jan 29
Yossef Rapoport, "Becoming Arab: The Formation of Arab Identity in the Medieval Middle East" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Today, much of the Middle East is “Arab”—an identity that now extends across North Africa and up through the Near East to Syria. Yet how did this region become Arab? How did this identity spread? Was it due to migration, or conquest? Historian Yossef Rapoport, in his book Becomi ... Show More
41m 38s
Jan 26
Adam Bursi, "Traces of the Prophets: Relics and Sacred Spaces in Early Islam" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)
Adam Bursi’s Traces of the Prophets: Relics and Sacred Spaces in Early Islam (Edinburg University Press, 2024) uses writings by early Muslims to map a history of material objects, relics, and tombs of prophetic figures as they were conceptualized in the 8th and 9th centuries. The ... Show More
56m 59s
Mar 2023
The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, The Cold War, And The World On The Brink | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
<p>Will Inboden is a man of many talents: author, academic, and national policy maker. He held positions with the State Department and the National Security Council before returning to academia to serve as executive director of the Clements Center for National Security and associ ... Show More
57m 48s
Nov 2020
Paul Jankowski, "All Against All: The Long Winter of 1933 and the Origins of the Second World War" (Harper, 2020)
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 tr ... Show More
50m 20s
Jan 2021
America in the World – A Conversation on the History of U.S. Foreign Policy with Amb. Bob Zoellick
In this episode, Dan speaks with Ambassador Bob Zoellick, an American public official who most recently served as the 11th President of the World Bank. He is the author of a fascinating new book, America in the World: A History of U.S. Diplomacy and Foreign Policy. In the traditi ... Show More
51m 51s
Dec 2023
Thomas A. Schwartz, "Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography" (Hill and Wang, 2020)
Over the past six decades, Henry Kissinger has been America's most consistently praised--and reviled--public figure. He was hailed as a "miracle worker" for his peacemaking in the Middle East, pursuit of détente with the Soviet Union, negotiation of an end to the Vietnam War, and ... Show More
45m 31s
Nov 2022
Ep 6 - The Interview: Jeffrey Feltman
In this episode, I speak to Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman, long time American diplomat, now a fellow at the Brookings Institution to find more about how U.S. foreign policy is made, what are its limitations and its possibilities as well as the highs and lows of his career. From meet ... Show More
46m 45s
Nov 2022
In 1963, A Stuttering, Nebbish Magazine Editor Negotiated a Secret Deal Between JFK and Khrushchev, Averting Nuclear War
As the editor of the Saturday Review for more than thirty years, Norman Cousins had a powerful platform to shape American public debate during the height of the Cold War. Although he was a low-key, nebbish figure, under Cousins's leadership, the magazine was considered one of the ... Show More
47m 23s
Nov 2020
Civil Servants' role in the formulation of British foreign policy and the role of women, with Prof Gaynor Johnson
Prof Gaynor Johnson explores the often-overlooked role civil servants in the formulation of foreign policy, including the role of women in the British Foreign Office. She discusses innovative methodological approaches to the study of diplomatic history, including the use of proso ... Show More
34m 50s
What happens to policies when a president dies in office? Do they get replaced by the new president, or do advisers carry on with the status quo? In November 1963, these were important questions for a Kennedy-turned-Johnson administration.
Among these officials was a driven National Security Council staffer named Robert Komer, who had made it his personal mi ... Show More
