This week’s Great Political Fiction is Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (1862), the definitive novel about the politics – and emotions – of intergenerational conflict. How did Turgenev manage to write a wistful novel about nihilism? What made Russian politics in the early 1860s so chock-full of frustration? Why did Turgenev’s book infuriate his contemporarie ... Show More
Nov 2015
Nicholas Stargardt, “The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-1945” (Basic Books, 2015)
In all of the thousands upon thousands of books written about Nazi Germany, it’s easy to lose track of some basic questions. What did Germans think they were fighting for? Why did they support the war? How did they (whether the they were soldiers fighting in France or Russia, wom ... Show More
1h 10m
Nov 2021
Stephen Cushman, "The Generals' Civil War: What Their Memoirs Can Teach Us Today" (UNC Press, 2021)
In the decades following the American Civil War, several of the generals who had laid down their swords picked up their pens and published accounts of their service in the conflict. In The Generals’ Civil War: What Their Memoirs Can Teach Us Today (University of North Carolina Pr ... Show More
56m 37s
Mar 2024
The New Coming-of-Age Story
<p>For centuries, the bildungsroman, or novel of education, has offered a window into a formative period of life—and, by extension, into the historical moment in which it’s set. Vinson Cunningham sent the draft of “Great Expectations,” a book loosely based on his experience on Ba ... Show More
50m 1s
May 2024
“The End of Everything,” with Victor Davis Hanson | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
<p>Classicist Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of hundreds of articles, book reviews, and newspaper editorials on Greek, agrarian, and military history and essays on contemporary culture. He has written or ... Show More
1h 5m
Nov 2023
Writing the History of Money and Monetary Policy
What do the histories of currency and monetary policy tell us about societies at large, political structures, and cultures? Ekaterina Pravilova and Rebecca Spang tackle these questions, respectively, in two important books that examine the history of the Russian ruble from the ti ... Show More
58m 24s
Nov 2021
The Underground Man - Dostoevsky's Warning to The World
<p>Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote Notes from Underground in 1864 which is considered to be one of the first existentialist works, emphasising the importance of freedom, responsibility and individuality. It is an extraordinary piece of literature, social critique and sat ... Show More
24m 49s
<p>This is a conversation with <a href="https://scrane.web.arizona.edu/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Susan A. Crane</a>, author of the book “<a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=32383" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Nothing Happened: A History</a> ... Show More
