Today
Arnoud S. Q. Visser, "On Pedantry: A Cultural History of the Know-it-All" (Princeton UP, 2025)
A lively and entertaining cultural history of a supremely annoying intellectual vice Intellectuals have long provoked scorn and irritation, even downright aggression. Many learned individuals have cast such hostility as a badge of honor, a sign of envy, or a form of resistance to ... Show More
34m 12s
Yesterday
Danielle N. Boaz, "Voodoo: The History of a Racial Slur" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Coined in the middle of the nineteenth century, the term "voodoo" has been deployed largely by people in the U.S. to refer to spiritual practices--real or imagined--among people of African descent. "Voodoo" is one way that white people have invoked their anxieties and stereotypes ... Show More
1h 2m
Jan 31
Peter Stansky, "The Socialist Patriot: George Orwell and War" (Stanford UP, 2023)
Few English writers wielded a pen so sharply as George Orwell, the quintessential political writer of the twentieth century. His literary output at once responded to and sought to influence the tumultuous times in which he lived—decades during which Europe and eventually the enti ... Show More
43m 9s
Mar 2023
Jennie E. Burnet, "To Save Heaven and Earth: Rescue in the Rwandan Genocide" (Cornell UP, 2023)
In To Save Heaven and Earth: Rescue in the Rwandan Genocide (Cornell UP, 2023), Jennie E. Burnet considers people who risked their lives in the 1994 Rwandan genocide of Tutsi to try and save those targeted for killing. Many genocide perpetrators were not motivated by political id ... Show More
1h 12m
Jan 2016
Ron Grigor Suny, “They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else: A History of the Armenian Genocide” (Princeton UP, 2015)
Anniversaries are funny things. Sometimes, as with the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, they are accompanied by a flood of discussion and debate. Other times they are allowed to pass in silence.
The hundredth year anniversary of the Genocide of the ... Show More
1h 6m
Jul 2025
How Governments Disappear Humans
There is a chilling pattern of how governments have systematically dehumanized, displaced, and exterminated entire groups of people throughout history using bureaucratic steps.Drawing from real atrocities such as the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge regime, the Rwandan genocide, and th ... Show More
30m 43s
Mar 2024
An Unfinished History of the Holocaust
<p>The Holocaust is much discussed, much memorialized, and much portrayed. But there are major aspects of its history that have been overlooked.</p> <p>Spanning the entirety of the Holocaust, this sweeping history deepens our understanding. Dan Stone—Director of the Holocaust Res ... Show More
1h 36m
Mar 2025
Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe, "Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, and Cult" (Ibidem Press, 2014)
Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist (Ibidem Verlag, 2014) is the first comprehensive and scholarly biography of the Ukrainian far-right leader Stepan Bandera and the first in-depth study of his political cult. In this fascinating book, Grzegorz Rosso ... Show More
56m 45s
Mar 2024
Stefanos Geroulanos, "The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins" (Liveright, 2024)
Books about the origins of humanity dominate bestseller lists, while national newspapers present breathless accounts of new archaeological findings and speculate about what those findings tell us about our earliest ancestors. We are obsessed with prehistory—and, in this respect, ... Show More
1h 14m
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries marked a pivotal time for the United States as the nation emerged as a political and industrial powerhouse and fashioned its new value system. Amid waves of emigration and evolving cultural exchanges, Italy’s relationship with America became a complex tapestry of admiration, critique, and adaptation.
This st ... Show More
'Genocide' is a powerful term — it's been called the "crime of crimes". When does large-scale violence become genocide, and why is it so difficult to prove and punish? - نسل وژنه (Genocide) یوه پیاوړې اصطلاح ده. مګر د دغې اصطلاع اصلي معنی څه ده؟ او څوک پریکړه نیسي چې څه وخت یوه ش ... Show More
