Antony Kalashnikov's Monuments for Posterity: Self-Commemoration and the Stalinist Culture of Time (Cornell UP, 2023) analyzes Stalinist monument-building. From the 1930's through the Great Patriotic War, architectural monuments such as subway stations were designed to emphasize the perpetual endurance of the nation, regardless of the many crises of the peri ... Show More
Nov 23
Tom White, "Bad Dust: A History of the Asbestos Disaster" (Repeater, 2025)
Once used extensively in schools, hospitals, and housing, asbestos has taken the lives of millions. Bad Dust: A History of the Asbestos Disaster (Repeater, 2025) by Tom White traces the international history of the asbestos disaster — from mining operations in apartheid South Afr ... Show More
39m 40s
Nov 17
John Goodall, "The Castle: A History" (Yale UP, 2022)
In The Castle: A History (Yale University Press, 2022) Dr. John Goodall presents a vibrant history of the castle in Britain, from the early Middle Ages to the present day.
The castle has long had a pivotal place in British life, associated with lordship, landholding, and military ... Show More
56m 49s
Oct 31
Claudia Gastrow, "The Aesthetics of Belonging: Indigenous Urbanism and City Building in Oil-Boom Luanda" (UNC Press Books, 2024)
After centuries of colonial rule, the end of Angola’s three-decade civil war in 2002 provided an irresistible opportunity for the government to reimagine the Luanda cityscape. Awash with petrodollars cultivated through strategic foreign relationships, President José Eduardo dos S ... Show More
58m 19s
Jun 2019
Eleonor Gilburd, "To See Paris and Die: The Soviet Lives of Western Culture" (Harvard UP, 2018)
Josef Stalin’s death in 1953 marked a noticeable shift in Soviet attitudes towards the West. A nation weary of war and terror welcomed with relief the new regime of Nikita Khrushchev and its focus on peaceful cooperation with foreign powers. A year after Stalin’s death, author ... Show More
1h 27m
Dec 2021
Barbara Martin, "Dissident Histories in the Soviet Union: From De-Stalinization to Perestroika" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
In Dissident Histories in the Soviet Union: From De-Stalinization to Perestroika (Bloomsbury,, 2019), Barbara Martin traces the careers of four prominent figures: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Roy Medvedev, Aleksandr Nekrich and Anton Antonov-Ovseenko. Based on extensive archival resea ... Show More
1h 1m
Feb 2020
Maria Taroutina, "The Icon and the Square: Russian Modernism and the Russo-Byzantine Revival" (Penn State UP, 2018)
In The Icon and the Square: Russian Modernism and the Russo-Byzantine Revival (Penn State University Press, 2018), Maria Taroutina examines how the traditional interests of institutions such as the crown, the church, and the Imperial Academy of Arts temporarily aligned with the r ... Show More
1h 4m
Feb 2021
Roger R. Reese, "The Imperial Russian Army in Peace, War, and Revolution, 1856-1917" (U Kansas Press, 2019)
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 d ... Show More
1h 2m
Aug 2019
Susan Jaques, "The Caesar of Paris: Napoleon Bonaparte, Rome, and the Artistic Obsession That Shaped An Empire" (Pegasus Books, 2018)
In her book, The Caesar of Paris: Napoleon Bonaparte, Rome, and the Artistic Obsession That Shaped An Empire (Pegasus Books, 2018), Susan Jaques offers up a richly detailed and researched account of Napoleon’s fascination with ancient Rome, and how this obsession shaped not only ... Show More
44m 36s