Since 2011, civil wars and state failure have wracked the Arab world, underlying the misalignment between national identity and political borders. In Break all the Borders: Separatism and the Resshaping of the Middle East (Oxford UP, 2019), Ariel I. Ahram examines the separatist movements that aimed to remake those borders and create new independent states. With detailed studies of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the federalists in eastern Libya, the southern resistance in Yemen, and Kurdis...
Apr 22, 2019•50 min•Ep. 33
Since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, conspiratorial thinking has taken deep root in contemporary Russia, moving from the margins to the forefront of cultural, historical, and political discourse and fueled by centuries-long prejudices and new paranoias. In his characteristically witty, irreverent style, Eliot Borenstein (Professor of Russian & Slavic Studies, Collegiate Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Acting Chair of East Asian Studies, and Senior Academic Convenor fo...
Apr 16, 2019•53 min•Ep. 85
In recent years, the concept of a ‘Cold War’ has been revived to describe the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the two most influential states occupying positions of geopolitical importance in the Persian Gulf, who lay claim to leadership over the Islamic world. In the years after the 1979 revolution in Iran, the two states became embroiled in a rivalry that risked consuming the region, dividing it along religious lines. Although latent for a good number of years, the rivalry has erupted i...
Apr 16, 2019•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 491
Of all the blank spots in the mental maps of many Americans, Africa is one of the largest. Informed by a number of misconceptions and popular myths, knowledge of the continent’s complexity is poorly understood not just by ordinary citizens but by policymakers as well. This ignorance informs foreign relations with African states: as Maxine Waters once put it, when it came to the Rwandan Genocide, she couldn’t tell whether the Hutus or the Tutsis were right, and because of that she couldn’t tell a...
Apr 15, 2019•1 hr•Ep. 489
Tonight we are talking with Federico Varese about his new book Mafias on the Move: How Organized Crime Conquers New Territories (Princeton University Press, 2011). Whenever you read a book about transnational crime one of the themes will be about how globalisation has made it easier for organized crime groups to operate. You will also see another chapter about how large mafia style groups are spreading outside their traditional domains. But there have been very few studies, other than individual...
Apr 12, 2019•43 min
In his new book, Apartheid Guns and Money: A Tale of Profit (Hurst, 2019), Hennie van Vuuren examines the final decades of the apartheid regime in South Africa. He weaves together archival material, interviews and newly declassified documents to expose some of the darkest secrets of apartheid’s economic crimes and their murderous consequences. Those who profited from sustaining white power in South Africa included heads of state, arms dealers, aristocrats, bankers, spies, journalists and secret ...
Apr 10, 2019•42 min•Ep. 53
To mobilize America’s intellectual resources to meet the security challenges of the post–9/11 world, US Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates observed that “we must again embrace eggheads and ideas.” But the gap between national security policymakers and international relations scholars has become a chasm. In Cult of the Irrelevant: The Waning Influence of Social Science on National Security (Princeton University Press, 2019), Michael Desch traces the history of the relationship between the Beltw...
Apr 05, 2019•50 min
In Enemy Number One: The United States of American in Soviet Ideology and Propaganda, 1945-1959 (Oxford University Press, 2019), Dr. Rósa Magnúsdóttir of Aarhus University, explores depictions of America in post-war Soviet propaganda. While the 1945 “meeting on the Elbe” marked a high point in United States/Soviet friendship, official relations deteriorated quickly thereafter. Enemy Number One incorporates a wide range of source material such as letters by Soviet citizens, popular magazines, Voi...
Apr 04, 2019•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 84
In his new book, Mussolini and Hitler: The Forging of the Fascist Alliance (Yale University Press, 2018), Christian Goeschel , Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Manchester, examines the relationship between Hitler and Mussolini and how their relationship developed and affected both countries. In this highly readable book, Goeschel, revisits all of Mussolini and Hitler’s key meetings and asks how these meetings constructed a powerful image of a strong Fascist-Nazi re...
Apr 02, 2019•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 62
Throughout modern history, British and American rivalry has gone hand in hand with common interests. Now renown diplomatic historian Professor Kathleen Burk in her newest book, The Lion and the Eagle: The Interaction of the British and American Empires, 1783-1972 (Bloomsbury, 2019), examines and looks at the different kinds and forms of power and influence that these the two empires have projected, and the ways and means they have used to do it. What these two empires have shared is a mixture of...
Apr 02, 2019•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 483
Keith Gave spent six years in the NSA during the Cold War, but his most daring mission may have come later, while working as a sports writer. In the late 1980s, Gave was asked by the Detroit Red Wings to reach behind the Iron Curtain and initiate contact with the team's newest draft picks, two players on the Soviet Union's famed Red Army hockey club. His hazardous quest helped pave the way for an unforgettable era in hockey, one that would eventually feature five former Soviet players playing to...
Mar 19, 2019•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 128
In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic. How can publishers and authors contribute to this process? This podcast addresses this issue. We interview Professor Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick , whose book, The Good Drone: How Social Movements Democratize Surveillance (forthcoming with MIT Press ) is undergoing a Massive Online Peer-Review (MOPR) process, where everyone can make comments o...
Mar 19, 2019•32 min•Ep. 15
During the first half of the 20th century the American historian Charles Austin Beard enjoyed both professional success and a national prominence that suffered with his outspoken opposition to the direction of foreign policy under Franklin Roosevelt. In Charles Austin Beard: The Return of the Master Historian of American Imperialism (Cornell University Press, 2018), Richard Drake traces the development of Beard’s ideas in this area and his involvement in the contemporary discourse over current e...
Mar 12, 2019•53 min•Ep. 141
“Is America an Empire?” is a popular question for pundits and historians, likely because it sets off such a provocative debate. All too often, however, people use empire simply because the United States is a hegemon, ignoring the country’s imperial traits to focus simply on its power. Dr. Daniel Immerwahr ’s book How to Hide an Empire: The History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019) corrects this by explicitly focusing on the country’s territories and territories overs...
Mar 07, 2019•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 478
This episode of the New Books in Military History podcast is something of a sea change, so to speak, as we turn our attention to naval policy and strategy. Institutional reform is a well-established topic in studies of the ground and air forces of the United States, ranging from Alexander Hamilton and John C. Calhoun through to Emory Upton and Billy Mitchell. By comparison, with the noted exception of Alfred Thayer Mahan, much less has been written about the growing professionalism and instituti...
Mar 06, 2019•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 71
The Crossroads of Globalization. A Latin American View (World Scientific Publishing Co. 2019) explores the complex interaction of several forces shaping the current world economic situation. Alfredo Toro Hardy analyzes the leadership of China and the economic strength of Asia, transnational companies, and international organizations like the IMF as forces in favor of globalization, while populism, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution are part of the anti-globalization trend. By giving a worldwid...
Feb 21, 2019•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 40
In the aftermath of the Second World War, Great Britain was forced to give up the bulk of its vast, globe-spanning empire. While most histories of this process have examined it from the perspective of high politics and focused on matters of state construction, in The British End of the British Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2018) Sarah Stockwell addresses the role played by a number of non-state and quasi-state bodies – the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the Bank of England, the Roya...
Feb 18, 2019•57 min•Ep. 477
It was a pleasure, earlier today, to speak to Jeremy Black , professor of history at the University of Exeter, about his new book, Britain and Europe: A Short History (Hurst, 2018). Jeremy is one of the best-known and certainly the most prolific of British historians, and his new book demonstrates both his extraordinary range and his compelling arguments. Beginning in the iron age and concluding in the present, Britain and Europe traces relationships between territories and cultures that change ...
Feb 13, 2019•37 min•Ep. 20
Insurgent Women: Female Combatants in Civil Wars (Georgetown University Press, 2019), investigates the mobilization of female fighters, women’s roles in combat, and what happens to women when conflicts end. The book focuses on three case studies of asymmetric conflicts. Jessica Trisko Darden contributes research looking at Ukraine, Alexis Henshaw discusses the civil war in Columbia, and Ora Szekley provides insights into conflict involving Kurdish groups. The book includes lessons for policy mak...
Feb 11, 2019•55 min•Ep. 31
In his new book, Matthew Longo takes the reader on an unusual journey, at least within political theory, since his work combines a normative political theory approach with an ethnographic approach to understand both the conceptual and actual issue of borders as spaces that separate and distinguish states and nations, and individuals and citizens. The Politics of Borders: Sovereignty, Security, and the Citizen after 9/11 (Cambridge University Press, 2017) is not simply about the border because, a...
Feb 04, 2019•55 min•Ep. 324
Monica Kim provides a fresh look at the Korean War with a people-centered approach that studies the experiences of prisoners of war. As the first major conflict after the 1949 Geneva Conventions, POW repatriation during the Korean War became a new battleground for the recognition of state sovereignty and a larger tool for political propaganda. The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War: The Untold History (Princeton University Press, 2019) opens with a captured Korean solider who must navigate wh...
Jan 29, 2019•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 30
At an often-stressful time in global affairs, and with the very idea of the ‘international community’ seemingly under threat, it can be beneficial to look at the 'global order’ from its disorderly fringes. Andray Abrahamian ’s North Korea and Myanmar: Divergent Paths (McFarland, 2018) does precisely this, comparing and contrasting North Korea’s and Myanmar’s long careers as ‘pariah’ states during the 20th and 21st centuries, and offering a convincing account of how one – Myanmar – has to some ex...
Jan 28, 2019•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 256
Experiencing a major crisis from different viewpoints, step by step: the Suez crisis of 1956— one of the major crises of the 1950s offers a potential master class in statecraft and the politics of strategy. It was an explosive Middle East confrontation capped by a surprise move that reshaped the region for many years to come. It was a diplomatic confrontation between the world’s two major colonial powers (France & Britain) and a major third-world country (Egypt), as well as a conflict betwee...
Jan 25, 2019•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 472
Noah Coburn 's Under Contract: The Invisible Workers of America's Global War (Stanford University Press, 2018) is about the hidden workers of American’s foreign wars: third country nationals who while not serving in their country’s militaries, still work to support the American war effort. These men and women serve as laborers, cooks, logisticians, engineers and security guards. They bear the burden of service in a war zone with the hopes of good pay, but are sometimes, maybe even often, disappo...
Jan 24, 2019•1 hr•Ep. 27
Andrew Lambert , Professor of Naval History at King’s College, London, author of eighteen books, and winner of the prestigious Anderson Medal—turns his attention in a book that historian Felipe Fernandez Armesto describes as full of ‘ambition’, ‘verve’ and at times ‘brilliance’ - to Athens, Carthage, Venice, the Dutch Republic, and Britain. In Seapower States: Maritime Culture, Continental Empires and the Conflict That Made the Modern World (Yale UP, 2018), Professor Lambert, examines how each o...
Jan 23, 2019•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 471
Jonathan Fulton 's China's Relations with the Gulf Monarchies (Routledge, 2018) sheds light on China’s increasing economic role at a moment that the traditionally dominant role in international oil markets of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf oil producers is changing as a result of the United States having become more or less self-sufficient, China replacing the US as the Gulf’s foremost export market, and members of the Organization of Oil-Producing Export Countries (OPEC) becoming increasingly depe...
Jan 17, 2019•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 70
In his new book On the Brink: Trump, Kim, and The Threat of Nuclear War (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Van Jackson succinctly explains the major issues facing U.S.-North Korea relations since the Korean Armistice Agreement. Jackson argues that the 2017 nuclear crisis was a product of a gradual hardening of U.S. policy towards North Korea, as well as the particular characteristics of the current leadership of both countries. The book provides an excellent overview of U.S. policy towards Nort...
Jan 16, 2019•55 min•Ep. 29
In Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World (Scribner Books, 2018), Dr. Michele Gelfand leverages cultural psychology research to examine social norms and their implications on individuals, organizations, and nations. Dr. Gelfand examines how the threat environment shapes a nation’s culture, as well as how organizations, such as the military, are shaped by cultural forces. Rule Makers, Rule Breakers is written for a broad audience and includes research that nationa...
Jan 10, 2019•45 min•Ep. 28
Just when you thought that you knew everything and anything pertaining to the Cold War and the ending of it, along comes University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Professor Michael Cotey Morgan to tell you that you are profoundly wrong. Based upon voluminous archival research in eight countries and in five languages, his book, The Final Act: The Helsinki Accords and the Transformation of the Cold War (Princeton University Press, 2018) provides the reader with the first in-depth account of the ...
Jan 03, 2019•1 hr 35 min•Ep. 466
Jonathan Fulton and Li-Chen Sim ’s edited volume, External Powers and the Gulf Monarchies (Routledge, 2018) is a timely contribution to understanding the increasingly diversified relations between the Gulf’s six oil-rich monarchies and external powers. Traditionally reliant on the United States for their security, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain have become far more assertive in the wake of the 2011 popular Arab revolts and mounting doubts about the reliability ...
Dec 28, 2018•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 69
