Podcasts by New Books in National Security
Interviews with Scholars of National Security about their New Books
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Further podcasts by Marshall Poe
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Alessandro Arduino and Xue Gong, "Securing the Belt and Road" (Red Globe Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Alessandro Arduino and Xue Gong’s Securing the Belt and Road, Risk Assessment, Private Security and Special Insurances Along the New Wave of Chinese Outbound Investments (Red Globe Press, 2018) sig...
ListenJudd C. Kinzley, "Natural Resources and the New Frontier: Constructing Modern China’s Borderlands" (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As public knowledge grows of the Chinese state’s subjugation of the central Asian region of Xinjiang, many may find themselves wondering what Beijing’s interest in this distant region is in the fir...
ListenSeth Anziska, "Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo" (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The question of Palestinian autonomy has been a key element of Middle Eastern and Arab politics for much of the last century. A new history, by Seth Anziska, Preventing Palestine: A Political Histo...
ListenPeter Hitchens, "The Phoney Victory: The World War II Illusion" (I.B. Tauris, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Was World War II really the 'Good War'? In the years since the declaration of peace in 1945 many myths have sprung up around the conflict in the victorious nations, especially the United Kingdom. I...
ListenEric Helleiner, "Forgotten Foundations: International Development and the Making of the Postwar Order" (Cornell UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The story of Bretton Woods has been told by countless historians. We have a good sense of the wartime context, the negotiations themselves, the roles of many of the main actors (especially Great Br...
ListenMcKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty...
ListenKevin Hamilton and Ned O’Gorman, "Lookout America!: The Secret Hollywood Studio at the Heart of the Cold War" (Dartmouth College Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
One of the major aspects of the end of the Cold War has been the discovery and release of records related to many government activities from the period. In Lookout America!: The Secret Hollywood St...
ListenLaszlo Borhi, "Dealing with Dictators: The United States, Hungary, and East Central Europe 1942-1989" (Indiana UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How does a political regime function? What contributes to a regime’s longevity and subversion? Laszlo Borhi’s Dealing with Dictators: The United States, Hungary, and East Central Europe 1942-1989(I...
ListenNathan K. Finney and Tyrell O. Mayfield, “Redefining the Modern Military: The Intersection of Profession and Ethics” (Naval Institute Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Redefining the Modern Military: The Intersection of Profession and Ethics (Naval Institute Press, 2018), edited by Nathan K. Finney and Tyrell O. Mayfield, is a collection of essays examining milit...
ListenN. M. Sambaluk, “The Other Space Race: Eisenhower and the Quest for Aerospace Security” (Naval Institute Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Many people place the beginning of the American space program at 7:28pm, October 4, 1957 – the moment the Soviet Union launched the first satellite, Sputnik I, into orbit. This event prompted the ...
ListenRobert Kagan, “The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World” (Knopf, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a columnist for The Washington Post. He is also the author of The Return of History and the End of Dreams, Dangerous Nation, Of Para...
ListenChing Kwan Lee, “The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa” (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we talked with Ching Kwan Lee, professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has just published The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investmen...
ListenRoland Philipps, “A Spy Named Orphan: the Enigma of Donald Maclean” (W.W. Norton, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Donald Maclean was one of the most treacherous and productive – for Moscow spies of the Cold War era and a key member of the infamous “Cambridge Five” spy ring, yet the complete extent of this shy,...
ListenGill Bennett, “The Zinoviev Letter: The Conspiracy that Never Dies” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Zinoviev Affair is a story of one of the most long-lasting and enduring conspiracy theories in modern British politics, an intrigue that still resonates nearly one-hundred years after it was wr...
ListenBrian VanDeMark, “The Road to Disaster: A New History of America’s Descent Into Vietnam” (Harper Collins, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Many books have been written on the tragic decisions regarding Vietnam made by the young stars of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Yet despite millions of words of analysis and reflection, ...
ListenThomas Schmidinger, “Rojava: Revolution, War and the Future of Syria’s Kurds” (Pluto Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Thomas Schmidinger‘s Rojava: Revolution, War and the Future of Syria’s Kurds (Pluto Press, 2018) is an exploration of the history and present of Syrian Kurdistan. It is an excellent introduction to...
ListenP.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, “LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), by P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, outlines the history of social media platforms and their use in popular culture...
ListenMegan Black, “The Global Interior: Mineral Frontiers and American Power” (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Of all of the departments of the U.S. government you might expect to be implicated in the exercise of imperialism, the Department of the Interior might not be the first one that you would think of....
ListenSamuel Helfont, “Compulsion in Religion: Saddam Hussein, Islam and the Roots of Insurgencies in Iraq” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Samuel Helfont‘s Compulsion in Religion: Saddam Hussein, Islam and the Roots of Insurgencies in Iraq (Oxford University Press, 2018) makes an invaluable contribution to an understanding of Iraqi st...
ListenJames M. Dorsey, “China and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For all that China’s twenty-first-century ‘rise’ is a much-discussed notion both within the country and globally, it is an increasingly difficult concept to grasp or keep pace with. As a result, bo...
ListenNick Kapur, “Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo” (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nick Kapur’s Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo (Harvard University Press, 2018) is an ambitious look at the transformations of Japanese society after the massive protests ...
ListenN.A.J. Taylor and R. Jacobs, eds., “Reimagining Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Nuclear Humanities in the Post-Cold War” (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
N.A.J. Taylor and Robert Jacobs,’s edited volume Reimagining Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Nuclear Humanities in the Post-Cold War (Routledge, 2017) developed out of a special journal issue of Critical M...
ListenMadiha Afzal, “Pakistan Under Siege: Extremism, Society, and the State” (Brookings, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Pakistan Under Siege: Extremism, Society, and the State (Brookings, 2018) provides a unique insight into Pakistan’s complex and multi-layered relationship with militancy and the role of the state i...
ListenStephen Tankel, “With Us and Against Us: How America’s Partners Help and Hinder the War on Terror” (Columbia UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
With Us and Against Us: How America’s Partners Help and Hinder the War on Terror (Columbia University Press, 2018) offers readers a fresh, insightful and new perspective on US counterterrorism coop...
ListenJohn M. Curatola, “Bigger Bombs for a Brighter Tomorrow: The Strategic Air Command and American War Plans at the Dawn of the Atomic Age, 1945-1950” (McFarland, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Conventional wisdom has long held the position that between 1945 and 1949, not only did the United States enjoy a monopoly on atomic weapons, but that it was prepared to use them if necessary again...
ListenMarc Ambinder, “The Brink: President Reagan and the Nuclear War Scare of 1983” (Simon & Schuster, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Brink: President Reagan and the Nuclear War Scare of 1983 (Simon & Schuster, 2018), by Marc Ambinder, is a history of US-Soviet Relations under Ronald Reagan and an exploration of nuclear comma...
ListenCraig Symonds, “World War II at Sea: A Global History” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Though there are numerous books about the naval history of the Second World War, very few of them attempt to cover the span of the conflict within the confines of a single volume. Craig Symonds und...
ListenSarah Snyder, “From Selma to Moscow: How Human Rights Activists Transformed Foreign Policy” from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Human rights as a concern in U.S. foreign policy and international politics has been well-documented, particularly in studies of the Carter Administration. However, how human rights emerged as an i...
ListenMaura Elizabeth Cunningham and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, “China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Knowing about China,” Maura Elizabeth Cunningham and Jeffrey Wasserstrom note in the preface to China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2018), is today “an...
ListenJoy Rohde, “Armed with Expertise: The Militarization of American Social Research During the Cold War” (Cornell UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Armed with Expertise: The Militarization of American Social Research During the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2013), Joy Rohde discusses the relationship between the social sciences, acade...
ListenGuy Burton, “Rising Powers and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Since 1947” (Lexington Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Rising Powers and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Since 1947 (Lexington Books, 2018), Guy Burton, who teaches politics and international relations at the Mohammed bin Rashid School of Government, stud...
ListenOdd Arne Westad, “The Cold War: A World History” (Basic Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There have been many histories and treatments of the Cold War, few however have the breath, range and definitiveness of Harvard Professor Odd Arne Westad’s new take on the subject: The Cold War: A ...
ListenJacob N. Shapiro, “Small Wars, Big Data: The Information Revolution in Modern Conflict” (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Small Wars, Big Data: The Information Revolution in Modern Conflict (Princeton University Press, 2018), Eli Berman, Joseph H. Felter, and Jacob N. Shapiro, takes a data-based approach to examine ho...
ListenNancy Mitchell, “Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War” (Stanford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we talked with Nancy Mitchell about her book Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War, published by Stanford University Press in 2016 as part of the Cold War International History Projec...
ListenJi-Young Lee, “China’s Hegemony: Four Hundred Years of East Asian Domination” (Columbia UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ji-Young Lee’s book investigates the changing nature of tribute relations during the Ming and High Qing between a dominant China and its less powerful neighbors, Korea and Japan. China’s Hegemony: ...
ListenHarlan Ullman, “Anatomy of Failure: Why America Loses Every War It Starts” (Naval Institute Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Since 1945, the United States has lost every war it started. Why? A Vietnam War veteran, Tufts University Ph. D. and intimate of many of the leading figures in the American national security appara...
ListenGeorge Perkovich and Ariel E. Levite, “Understanding Cyber Conflict: 14 Analogies” (Georgetown UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Understanding Cyber Conflict: 14 Analogies (Georgetown University Press, 2017), edited by George Perkovich and Ariel E. Levite, uses analogies to conventional warfare and previous technological inn...
ListenDaniel Bessner, “Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual” (Cornell UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Daniel Bessner’s Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual (Cornell University Press, 2018) provides a fascinating account of Hans Speier, an oft forgotten yet highly...
ListenKatrin Paehler, “The Third Reich’s Intelligence Service: The Career of Walter Schellenberg” (Cambridge University Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Who was the spymaster of the Third Reich? How did Nazi ideology influence intelligence collection? Katrin Paehler answers these questions with the first analysis of Office VI of the Reich Security ...
ListenWilliam R. Polk, “Crusade and Jihad: The Thousand-Year War Between the Muslim World and the Global North” (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Crusade and Jihad: The Thousand-Year War Between the Muslim World and the Global North (Yale University Press, 2018) is an ambitious attempt to cover, in one volume, the entire history of the relat...
ListenAntony G. Hopkins, “American Empire: A Global History” (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In an expansive, engrossing, voluminously in depth analysis of the subject, Professor A. G. Hopkins, Professor Emeritus of Commonwealth History at the University of Cambridge, one of the foremost h...
ListenAlison McQueen, “Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Alison McQueen explores the apocalyptic thought of political theorists Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, and Hans Morgenthau in her new book, Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times (Cambridge Uni...
ListenAnthimos Tsirigotis, “Cybernetics, Warfare, and Discourse” Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On this episode, we will be talking to Anthimos Alexandros Tsirigotis about his book Cybernetics, Warfare, and Discourse: The Cybernetisation of Warfare in Britain (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017). Given...
ListenDavid Armitage, “Civil Wars: A History in Ideas” (Yale UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Civil wars are among the most intractable conflicts in the world. Yet exactly distinguishes civil war from other types of armed struggle? In his book Civil Wars: A History in Ideas (Vintage Books, ...
ListenGregory A. Daddis, “Westmoreland’s War: Reassessing America’s Strategy in Vietnam” (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the wake of Ken Burns’ most recent series, The Vietnam War, America’s fascination with the conflict shows no sign of abating. Fortunately the flood of popular retellings of old narratives is sup...
ListenRobert Meyer and Howard Kunreuther, “The Ostrich Paradox: Why We Underprepare for Disasters” (Wharton Digital Press, 2017)) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Ostrich Paradox: Why We Underprepare for Disasters (Wharton Digital Press, 2017), Robert Meyer and Howard Kunreuther summarize six major cognitive biases that explain why humans fail to adeq...
ListenRichard E. Schroeder, “The Foundation of the CIA: Harry Truman, the Missouri Gang and the Origins of the Cold War” (U. Missouri Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The CIA is a well-known agency to say the least. It is a key part of the United States’ national security apparatus and has been for the past 70 years. The CIA’s reputation is mixed though. From 19...
ListenVicki Bier, “Risk in Extreme Environments: Preparing, Avoiding, Mitigating, and Managing” (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Risk in Extreme Environments: Preparing, Avoiding, Mitigating, and Managing (Routledge, 2018), edited by Vicki Bier, is a series of multidisciplinary approaches to analysis of rare, severe risks. T...
ListenMark S. Hamm and Ramon Spaaij, “The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism” (Columbia UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism (Columbia University Press, 2017), by Mark S. Hamm and Ramon Spaaij, identifies patterns among individuals that commit acts of terror outside of a group or network. H...
ListenHendrik Meijer, “Arthur Vandenberg: The Man in the Middle of the American Century” (U Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As a United States senator in the 1930s and 1940s, Arthur Vandenberg was one of the leading Republican voices shaping the nation’s foreign policy. Though initially a staunch isolationist, as Hendri...
ListenStephen G. Craft, “American Justice in Taiwan: The 1957 Riots and Cold War Foreign Policy” (Kentucky UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On May 23, 1957, US Army Sergeant Robert Reynolds was acquitted of murdering Chinese officer Liu Ziran in Taiwan. Reynolds did not deny shooting Liu but claimed self-defense and, like all members o...
ListenMatthew Bunn and Scott D. Sagan, “Insider Threats” (Cornell UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017), co-editors Matthew Bunn and Scott D. Sagan bring together a series of case studies and lessons learned spanning public and private sectors. Essa...
ListenStewart Patrick, “The Sovereignty Wars: Reconciling America with the World” (Brookings Institution Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Sovereignty Wars: Reconciling America with the World (Brookings Institution Press, 2017) is an important and in depth study of American interaction with the intricate concept of Sovereignty, fr...
ListenMark Fenster, “The Transparency Fix: Secrets, Leaks, and Uncontrollable Government Information” (Stanford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Transparency Fix: Secrets, Leaks, and Uncontrollable Government Information (Stanford University Press, 2017) dispels the myth that transparency of information will result in a perfect governme...
ListenDavid G. Morgan-Owen, “The Fear of Invasion: Strategy, Politics, and British War Planning, 1880-1914” (Oxford University Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
David Morgan-Owen‘s The Fear of Invasion: Strategy, Politics, and British War Planning, 1880-1914 (Oxford University Press, 2017) tells a complex story clearly and concisely. In the decades prior t...
ListenNikhil Pal Singh, “Race and America’s Long War” (U. Cal Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From the export of the Chicago Police Department’s interrogation experts to Iraq after 2003, to casual references of the US-Indian Wars by US soldiers in Vietnam, Race and America’s Long War (Unive...
ListenShould the U.S. Have Entered World War One? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the inaugural podcast of Arguing History, historians Michael S. Neiberg and Brian Neumann address the question of Americas decision in 1917 to declare war against Germany. Together they discuss ...
ListenAdam Lockyer, “Australia’s Defence Strategy: Evaluating Alternatives for a Contested Asia (Melbourne University Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Australia’s Defence Strategy: Evaluating Alternatives for a Contested Asia (Melbourne University Press, 2017), Adam Lockyer, a Senior Lecturer in Security Studies at Macquarie University, explor...
ListenPhil Gurski, “Western Foreign Fighters: The Threat to Homeland and International Security” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Phil Gurski‘s Western Foreign Fighters: The Threat to Homeland and International Security (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016) is his second recent monograph on terrorism, and another useful resource for...
ListenJulie Wilhelmsen “Russia’s Securitization of Chechnya: How War Became Acceptable (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Russia’s Securitization of Chechnya: How War Became Acceptable (Routledge, 2017), a study of the transformations of the image of Chechnya in the Russian public sphere, Julie Wilhelmsen performs ...
ListenPaul Pedisich, “Congress Buys a Navy: Politics, Economics, and the Rise of American Naval Power, 1881-1921” (Naval Institute Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the forty years between 1881 and 1921, the United States Navy went from a small force focused on coastal defense to one of the world’s largest fleets. In Congress Buys a Navy: Politics, Economic...
ListenKaren J. Greenberg, “Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State” (Crown Publishers, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The 9/11 attacks revealed a breakdown in American intelligence and there was a demand for individuals and institutions to find out what went wrong, correct it, and prevent another catastrophe like ...
ListenMarc Sageman, “Misunderstanding Terrorism” (U. Pennsylvania Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Misunderstanding Terrorism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) Marc Sageman provides an important reassessment of the global neojihadi threat to the West. He argues that inaccurate evaluati...
ListenWilliam H. Shaw, “Utilitarianism and the Ethics of War” (Routledge, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On any mature view, war is horrific. Naturally, there is a broad range of fundamental ethical questions regarding war. According to most moral theories, war is nonetheless sometimes permitted, and ...
ListenTevi Troy, “Shall We Wake the President?: Two Centuries of Disaster Management from the Oval Office” (Lyons Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What happens during a presidential transition should a disaster occur? Who is in charge of addressing the 3am phone call, the outgoing or incoming administration? Tevi Troy is the author of Shall W...
ListenGeorge T. Diaz, “Border Contraband: A History of Smuggling Across the Rio Grande” (U. of Texas Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Border Contraband: A History of Smuggling Across the Rio Grande (University of Texas Press, 2015) Professor George T. Diaz examines a subject that has received scant attention by historians, but...
ListenMatthew Dallek, “Defenseless Under the Night: The Roosevelt Years and the Origins of Homeland Security” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Matthew Dallek is the author of Defenseless Under the Night: The Roosevelt Years and the Origins of Homeland Security (Oxford University Press, 2016). Dallek is associate professor of political man...
ListenTerri Diane Halperin, “The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798: Testing the Constitution” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798: Testing the Constitution (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), Terri Diane Halperin has provided a political history of the 1790s and explained the origins...
ListenStephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, “America Abroad: The United States’ Role in the 21st Century” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A decade and a half of exhausting wars, punishing economic setbacks, and fast-rising rivals has called into question America’s fundamental position and purpose in world politics. Will the US contin...
ListenNicole Nguyen, “A Curriculum of Fear: Homeland Security in US Public Schools” (U. of Minnesota Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It can be tempting to generalize certain attributes of schools as either being good or bad. Magnet and charter schools are often characterized as being inherently good. They usually offer special p...
ListenKelly Lytle Hernandez, “Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol” (UC Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As evidenced by many of the conversations featured on this podcast, scholarship on the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands composes a significant and influential genre within the field of U.S. Western History ...
ListenSusan Turner Haynes, “Chinese Nuclear Proliferation: How Global Politics is Transforming China’s Weapons Buildup and Modernization” (Potomac Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
While the world’s attention is focused on the nuclearization of North Korea and Iran and the nuclear brinkmanship between India and Pakistan, China is believed to have doubled the size of its nucle...
ListenLance deHaven-Smith, “Conspiracy Theory in America” (U of Texas Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Lance deHaven-Smith‘s Conspiracy Theory in America (University of Texas Press, 2014) investigates how the Founders’ hard-nosed realism about the likelihood of elite political misconduct articulated...
ListenMichael Barnett, “The Star and the Stripes” (Princeton UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Star and the Stripes: A History of the Foreign Policies of American Jews (Princeton University Press, 2016), Michael Barnett, University Professor of International Affairs and Political Scie...
ListenHo-fung Hung, “The China Boom: Why China Will Not Rule the World” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ho-fung Hung‘s new book has two main goals: to to outline the historical origins of Chinas capitalist boom and the social and political formations in the 1980s that gave rise to this boom, and to e...
ListenDaniel Deudney, "Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Space is again in the headlines. E-billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are planning to colonize Mars. The Trump Administration has created a "Space Force" to achieve "space dominance" with expens...
ListenIrene L. Gendzier, “Dying to Forget: Oil, Power, Palestine, and the Foundations of U.S. Policy in the Middle East” (Columbia UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Dying to Forget: Oil, Power, Palestine, and the Foundations of U.S. Policy in the Middle East (Columbia University Press, 2015), Irene L. Gendzier, Professor Emerita in the Department of Politic...
ListenLaura DeNardis, "The Internet in Everything: Freedom and Security in a World with No Off Switch" (Yale UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Most people recognize that the internet is growing at an exponential rate. But few have thought as deeply as Laura DeNardis, a Professor and Interim Dean at the School of Communication at American ...
ListenJohn Bew, “Realpolitik: A History” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Since its coinage in mid-19th century Germany, Realpolitik has proven both elusive and protean. To some, it represents the best approach to meaningful change and political stability in a world buff...
ListenRobert Vitalis, "Oilcraft: The Myths of Scarcity and Security That Haunt U.S. Energy Policy" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We've heard and rehearsed the conventional wisdom about oil: that the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf is what guarantees access to this strategic resource; that the "special" relationshi...
ListenRenata Keller, “Mexico’s Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican Revolution” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When former Mexican president Lazaro Cardenas traveled to Havana in 1959 to celebrate the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, he stood shoulder to shoulder with Fidel Castro in front of a crowd of tho...
ListenDavid S. Nasca, "The Emergence of American Amphibious Warfare, 1898 to 1945" (Naval Institute Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Amphibious warfare, as outlined by American Rear Admiral James E. Jouett in 1885, was a relatively straightforward affair: to project power from the sea, all one had to do was offload soldiers, ani...
ListenSamantha Newbery, “Interrogation, Intelligence and Security: Controversial British Techniques” (Manchester UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Interrogation, Intelligence and Security: Controversial British Techniques (Manchester University Press, 2015) by Samantha Newbery examines issues of history, efficacy, and policy in her thorough e...
ListenK. A. Lieber and D. G. Press, "The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution: Power Politics in the Atomic Age" (Cornell UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution: Power Politics in the Atomic Age (Cornell University Press, 2020), Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press tackle the central puzzle of the nuclear age: the persist...
ListenDavid E. Hoffman’s “The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal” (Doubleday, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
David E. Hoffman‘s The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal (Doubleday, 2015) was first brought to my attention in a superb interview conducted with the author at The...
ListenIan Buruma, "The Churchill Complex" (Penguin Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From one of its keenest observers, The Churchill Complex: The Curse of Being Special, from Winston and FDR to Trump and Brexit (Penguin Press) is a brilliant, witty journey through the "Special Rel...
ListenPeter A. Shulman, “Coal and Empire: The Birth of Energy Security in Industrial America” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Peter A. Shulman‘s new book is a fascinating history of the emergence of a connection between energy (in the form of coal), national interests, and security in nineteenth century America. Coal and ...
ListenJana K. Lipman, "In Camps: Vietnamese Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Repatriates" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Camps: Vietnamese Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Repatriates (University of California Press, 2020) is an in-depth study of the fate of the nearly 800,000 Vietnamese refugees who left their countr...
ListenClare Croft, “Dancers as Diplomats: American Choreography in Cultural Exchange” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What’s missing from our understanding of the role of dancers in the context of American Cultural Diplomacy? Clare Croft‘s first book, Dancers as Diplomats: American Choreography in Cultural Exchang...
ListenRobert Zoellick, "America in the World: A History of U.S. Diplomacy and Foreign Policy" (Twelve, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ranging from Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson to Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, and James Baker, America in the World: A History of U.S. Diplomacy and Foreign Policy (Tw...
ListenGordon H. Chang, “Fateful Ties: A History of America’s Preoccupation with China” (Harvard UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“There was China before there was an America, and it is because of China that America came to be.” According to Gordon H. Chang‘s new book, the idea of “China” became “an ingredient within the dev...
ListenBarry C. Lynn, "Liberty From All Masters: The New American Autocracy vs. the Will of the People” (St. Martin's Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Americans are obsessed with liberty, mad about liberty. On any day, we can tune into arguments about how much liberty we need to buy a gun or get an abortion, to marry who we want or adopt the gend...
ListenJames D. Boys, “Clinton’s Grand Strategy: U.S. Foreign Policy in a Post-Cold War World” (Bloomsbury, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How should we look back at President Bill Clinton’s foreign policy legacy? As muddled? Visionary? Or simply uninspired? To answer these questions, James D. Boys has just written Clinton’s Grand Str...
ListenAnthony L. Gardner, "Stars with Stripes: The Essential Partnership between the European Union and the United States" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If the US is – in the words of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright – the "indispensible nation" then the economic, democratic and institutional alliance between the US and the EU is the “e...
ListenEd Conway, “The Summit: Bretton Woods, 1944” (Pegasus Books, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The functioning of the global economy remains as relevant a topic as ever before. Commentators continue to debate the causes and consequences of the financial crisis that hit the United States from...
ListenScott Laderman, "The 'Silent Majority' Speech: Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War, and the Origins of the New Right" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On November 3, 1969 Richard M. Nixon addressed the nation in what would come to be known as “The Silent Majority Speech”. In 32 minutes, the president promoted his plan for a “Vietnamization” of th...
ListenBenjamin Armstrong, “Twenty-First-Century Mahan” and “Twenty-First-Century Sims” (Naval Institute, 2013-2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Alfred Thayer Mahan and William Sims – two of the most important figures in American Naval History – are the subject of our discussion with Lieutenant Commander Benjamin (“BJ”) Armstrong. A doctora...
ListenPhilip Cunliffe, "The New Twenty Years' Crisis: A Critique of International Relations, 1999-2019" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
At the end of the 20th century, the liberal international order appeared unassailable after its triumph over the authoritarian challenges of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Twenty years later, howe...
ListenBrian Vick, “The Congress of Vienna: Power and Politics after Napoleon” (Harvard University Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who knows anything about European history–and European diplomatic history in particular–who doesn’tknow a little something about the Congress of Vienna. That “l...
ListenRichard L. Hasen, "Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy" (Yale UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As the 2020 presidential campaign begins to take shape, there is widespread distrust of the fairness and accuracy of American elections. In Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat...
ListenAlex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, “The Myth of the Taliban/Al Qaeda Merger in Afghanistan, 1970-2010” (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn‘s An Enemy We Created: The Myth of the Taliban/Al Qaeda Merger in Afghanistan, 1970-2010 (Oxford University Press, reprint edition 2014) offers what is in...
ListenValerie Olson, "Into the Extreme: U.S. Environmental Systems and Politics Beyond Earth" (U Minnesota Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What if outer space is not outside the human environment but, rather, defines it? This is the unusual starting point of Valerie Olson’s Into the Extreme: U.S. Environmental Systems and Politics Bey...
ListenCabeiri Robinson, “Body of Victim, Body of Warrior: Refugee Families and the Making of Kashmiri Jihadists” (University of California Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The idea of jihad is among the most keenly discussed yet one of the least understood concepts in Islam. In her brilliant new book Body of Victim, Body of Warrior: Refugee Families and the Making of...
ListenMichael Walzer, "A Foreign Policy for the Left" (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In my old age, I try to argue more quietly, though I still believe that sharp disagreement is a sign of political seriousness. What engaged citizens think and say matters; we should aim to get it r...
ListenBilyana Lily, “Russian Foreign Policy toward Missile Defense” (Lexington Books, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The current conflict in Ukraine has reopened old wounds and brought the complexity of Russia’s relationship with the United States and Europe to the forefront. One of the most important factors in ...
ListenH. Shelest and M. Rabinovych, "Decentralization, Regional Diversity, and Conflict: The Case of Ukraine" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The articles presented in Decentralization, Regional Diversity, and Conflict: The Case of Ukraine (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) aim to explore the current political and administrative challenges that ...
ListenGeneral Daniel Bolger, “Why We Lost” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
During the past several years, numerous books and articles have appeared that grapple with the legacy and lessons of the recent U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This development should surprise f...
ListenAlan Chong, "Critical Reflections on China’s Belt and Road Initiative" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Political scientists Alan Chong and Quang Min Pham bring with their edited volume, Critical Reflections on China’s Belt and Road Initiative (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020), originality as well as dimens...
ListenJames Giordano, “Neurotechnology in National Security and Defense” (CRC Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Neurotechnology in National Security and Defense: Practical Considerations, Neuroethical Concerns (CRC Press, 2014), edited by Dr. James Giordano, is an impressive collection of essays by authors a...
ListenC. Chan and F. de Londras, "China’s National Security: Endangering Hong Kong’s Rule of Law?" (Hart, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On July 1, 2020, China introduced a National Security Law into Hong Kong partly in an attempt to quell months of civil unrest, as a mechanism to safeguard China’s security. In this new book, China’...
ListenHenry Nau, “Conservative Internationalism: Armed Diplomacy under Jefferson, Reagan, Truman, and Polk” (Princeton UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have raised important questions about the future direction of U.S. foreign policy and how Americans can best exercise power abroad in the coming years. Comme...
ListenRhodri Jeffreys Jones, "The Nazi Spy Ring in America: Hitler’s Agents, the FBI and the Case that Stirred the Nation" (Georgetown UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, The Nazi Spy Ring in America: Hitler’s Agents, the FBI & the Case that Stirred the Nation (Georgetown University Press, 2020), Rhodri Jeffreys Jones tells the dramatic story of the...
ListenJacob N. Shapiro, “The Terrorist’s Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations” (Princeton UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jacob N. Shapiro‘s The Terrorist’s Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations (Princeton University Press, 2013) is a welcome addition to a field that sometimes depicts terrorist activity as an...
ListenDavid Barash, "Threats: Intimidation and Its Discontents" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What are the similar ways in which animals and people try to intimidate others? In his new book, Threats: Intimidation and Its Discontents (Oxford UP, 2020), David Barash explains. Barash is a rese...
ListenVahid Brown and Don Rassler, “Fountainhead of Jihad: The Haqqani Nexus, 1973-2012” (Oxford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Vahid Brown and Don Rassler‘s Fountainhead of Jihad: The Haqqani Nexus, 1973-2012 (Oxford University Press, 2013) is a meticulously researched and remarkably detailed exposition of the Haqqani netw...
ListenJon Lindsay, "Information Technology and Military Power" (Cornell UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Many assume that information technology will one day clear away the “fog of war.” But as Jon Lindsay shows in Information Technology and Military Power (Cornell UP, 2020), the digitization of warfa...
ListenAlexander Cooley, “Great Game, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest in Central Asia” (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Central Asia is one of the least studied and understood regions of the Eurasian landmass, conjuring up images of 19th century Great Power politics, endless steppe, and impenetrable regimes. Alexand...
ListenChris Fenton, "Feeding the Dragon: Inside the Trillion Dollar Dilemma Facing Hollywood, the NBA, and American Business" (Post Hill Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For seventeen years, Chris Fenton served as the president of DMG Entertainment Motion Picture Group, a multi-billion-dollar global media company headquartered in Beijing. He has produced or supervi...
ListenAngela Stent, “The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twentieth-First Century” (Princeton University Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 2005, the Comedy Central Network aired an episode of “South Park” in which one of the characters asked if any “Third World” countries other than Russia had the ability to fly a whale to the moon...
ListenLorenz M. Lüthi, "Cold Wars: Asia, the Middle East, Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What was the Cold War that shook world politics for the second half of the twentieth century? Standard narratives focus on Soviet-American rivalry as if the superpowers were the exclusive driving f...
ListenDonald Holbrook, “The Al-Qaeda Doctrine: The Framing and Evolution of the Leadership’s Public Discourse” (Bloomsbury, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Donald Holbrook‘sThe Al-Qaeda Doctrine: The Framing and Evolution of the Leadership’s Public Discourse (Bloomsbury, 2014)represents a significant scholarly contribution to the study of Al-Qaeda and...
ListenRachel M. Gillum, "Muslims in a Post-9/11 America" (U Michigan Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Muslims in a Post-9/11 America (University of Michigan Press, 2018) examines how public fears about Muslims in the United States compare with the reality of American Muslims’ attitudes on a range o...
ListenMark Mazzetti, “The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth” (Penguin, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There are many movies about evil CIA agents assassinating supposed enemies of the US. Those who saw the latest Captain America movie will have witnessed the plan by Hydra (a fascist faction within ...
ListenJustin Q. Olmstead, "The United States' Entry into the First World War: The Role of British and German Diplomacy" (Boydell Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The complicated situation which led to the American entry into the First World War in 1917 is often explained from the perspective of public opinion, US domestic politics, or financial and economic...
ListenEric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, “Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda” (Time Books, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There are many books about the war against Al Qaeda. Most of these focus on counter-terrorism or counter insurgency military tactics or espionage operations. These books have become more frequent w...
ListenVictor McFarland, "Oil Powers: A History of the US-Saudi Alliance" (Columbia UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia is a critical feature of the modern international system. It binds the global hegemon to a region on the other side of the planet. And it...
ListenGuido Steinberg, “German Jihad: On the Internationalisation of Islamist Terrorism” (Columbia UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I have read quite a few books on terrorism but always from an English language perspective. This has meant that I was missing the alternative stories from other nations. Guido Steinberg has done me...
ListenNadine Strossen, “Hate: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship” (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The updated paperback edition of Hate: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship (Oxford University Press) dispels misunderstandings plaguing our perennial debates about "hate speech...
ListenJohn Earl Haynes, et al., “Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America” (Yale UP, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For decades, the American Right and Left argued about the degree to which the KGB infiltrated the U.S. political and scientific establishment. The Right said “A lot”; the Left said “Much less than ...
ListenSean Roberts, "The War on the Uyghurs: China’s Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In today’s new episode, we speak with Sean Roberts about his brand new book The War on the Uyghurs: China’s Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority (Princeton University Press, 2020). Roberts i...
ListenPatrick James and Abigail Ruane, “The International Relations of Middle-Earth: Learning from the Lord of the Rings” (University of Michigan Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Patrick James is the Dornsife Dean’s Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California. A self-described intellectual “fox,” James works on a wide variety of subjects in...
ListenMuhammed Fraser-Rahim, "America’s Other Muslims" (Lexington Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
America's Other Muslims: Imam W.D. Mohammed, Islamic Reform, and the Making of American Islam explores the oldest and perhaps the most important Muslim community in America, whose story has receive...
ListenMartin A. Miller, “The Foundations of Modern Terrorism” (Cambridge UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Terrorism seems like the kind of thing that has existed since the beginning of states some 5,000 years ago. Understood in one, narrow way–as what we call “insurgency”–it probably has. But modern te...
ListenPhilip Nash, "Breaking Protocol: America's First Female Ambassadors, 1933-1964" (UP of Kentucky, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
"It used to be," soon-to-be secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright said in 1996, "that the only way a woman could truly make her foreign policy views felt was by marrying a diplomat and then pour...
ListenJeffrey D. Simon, “Lone Wolf Terrorism: Understanding the Growing Threat” (Prometheus Books, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It was timely to record this interview just after the Boston Bombing. Lone Wolf terrorists are individuals operating outside organized groups. If the allegations about the bombers in Boston are cor...
ListenThomas A. Schwartz, "Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography" (Hill and Wang, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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, purs...
ListenKathleen M. Vogel, “Phantom Menace or Looming Danger?: A New Framework for Assessing Bioweapons Threats” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Kathleen M. Vogel‘s new book is enlightening and inspiring. Phantom Menace or Looming Danger?: A New Framework for Assessing Bioweapons Threats (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012) uses an approa...
ListenOumar Ba, "States of Justice: The Politics of the International Criminal Court" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
States of Justice: The Politics of the International Criminal Court (Cambridge University Press, 2020) theorizes the ways in which states that are presumed to be weaker in the international system ...
ListenPatrick Dunleavy, “The Fertile Soil of Jihad: Terrorism’s Prison Connection” (Potomac Books, 2011 ) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Patrick Dunleavy is the author of The Fertile Soil of Jihad: Terrorism’s Prison Connection (Potomac Books, 2011). He provides us with a fascinating insight into the radicalization process within th...
ListenA. Meleagrou-Hitchens, "Incitement: Anwar al-Awlaki’s Western Jihad" (Harvard UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Anwar al-Awlaki was, according to one of his followers, “the main man who translated jihad into English.” By the time he was killed by an American drone strike in 2011, he had become a spiritual le...
ListenElizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, “American Umpire” (Harvard UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Is there an “American Empire?” A lot of people on the Left say “yes.” Actually, a lot of people on the Right say “yes” too. But Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman says “no.” In her stimulating new treatment ...
ListenCaron Gentry, "Disordered Violence: How Gender, Race and Heteronormativity Structure Terrorism" (Edinburgh UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Disordered Violence: How Gender, Race and Heteronormativity Structure Terrorism (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), Caron Gentry looks at how gender, race, and heteronormative expectations of pu...
ListenPaul Kan, “Cartels at War: Mexico’s Drug-Fueled Violence and the Threat to US National Security” (Potomac Books, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The violence in Mexico is receiving a lot of media attention internationally. Paul Rexton Kan has produced a book that provides us with a comprehensive and comprehendible introduction to the backgr...
ListenPost Script: A Deep Dive on China from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today’s begins a new set of podcasts from New Books in Political Science called POST-SCRIPT. Lilly Goren and I invite authors back to the podcast to react to contemporary political developments tha...
ListenJason Brownlee, “Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the U.S.-Egyptian Alliance” (Cambridge UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the U.S.-Egyptian Alliance (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Jason Brownlee explains the two countries relationship over the past several decades. From t...
ListenW. J. Perry and T. Z. Collina, "The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump" (BenBella Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As we enter the third decade of the 21st century, American nuclear policy continues to be influenced by the legacies of the Cold War. Nuclear policies remain focused on easily identifiable threats,...
ListenBlake Mobley, “Terrorism and Counter-Intelligence: How Terrorist Groups Elude Detection” (Columbia University Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we talked to Blake Mobley about his new book Terrorism and Counter-Intelligence: How Terrorist Groups Elude Detection (Columbia University Press, 2012). There have been many books examining t...
ListenDaniel P. Aldrich, "Black Wave: How Networks and Governance Shaped Japan’s 3/11 Disasters" (U Chicago Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Despite the devastation caused by the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and 60-foot tsunami that struck Japan in 2011, some 96% of those living and working in the most disaster-stricken region of T?hoku mad...
ListenMaurice Punch, “State Violence, Collusion and the Troubles: Counter Insurgency, Government Deviance and Northern Ireland” (Pluto Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we spoke to Maurice Punch about his new book: State Violence, Collusion and the Troubles: Counter Insurgency, Government Deviance and Northern Ireland (Pluto Press, 2012). The Troubles refers...
ListenH. Eric Schockman, "Peace, Reconciliation and Social Justice Leadership in the 21st Century" (Emerald, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Peace, Reconciliation and Social Justice Leadership in the 21st Century: The Role of Leaders and Followers (Emerald, 2019) co-edited by Dr. H. Eric Schockman, Vanessa Alexandra Hernandez Soto, a...
ListenMark Haas, “The Clash of Ideologies: Middle Eastern Politics and American Security” (Oxford UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How do ideologies shape foreign policy? That is question Dr. Mark Haas examines in his new book The Clash of Ideologies: Middle Eastern Politics and American Security (Oxford University Press, 2012...
ListenSigurd Neubauer, "The Gulf Region and Israel: Old Struggles, New Alliances" (Kodesh Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Gulf scholar Sigurd Neubauer’s?The Gulf Region and Israel: Old Struggles, New Alliances?makes a significant contribution to our understanding of what drives shifting alliances in the Middle East, a...
ListenRiaz Hassan, “Suicide Bombings” (Routledge, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Suicide Bombings is a Routledge Shortcuts version of Riaz Hassan‘s longer book Life as a Weapon: The Global Rise of Suicide Bombings (Routledge, 2011), a study of suicide bombing around the world. ...
ListenGregory Afinogenov, "Spies and Scholars: Chinese Secrets and Imperial Russia’s Quest for World Power" (Harvard UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The ways in which states and empires spy on and study one another has changed a great deal over time in line with shifting political priorities, written traditions and technologies. Even on this hi...
ListenKhalid Almezaini, “The UAE and Foreign Policy: Foreign Aid, Identity, and Interests” (Routledge, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The UAE and Foreign Policy: Foreign Aid, Identity, and Interests (Routledge, 2011), Khalid Almezaini describes the history of the UAE’s foreign policy, its goals, and the methods in which the go...
ListenAndreas Fulda, "The Struggle for Democracy in Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong" (Routledge, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The key question in The Struggle for Democracy in Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong: Sharp Power and its Discontents (Routledge, 2020), is to what extent political activists in these three domi...
ListenJeffrey Mankoff, “Russian Foreign Policy: The Return of Great Power Politics” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this episode, I spoke with Jeffrey Mankoff, an adjunct fellow with the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, and a visiting scholar ...
ListenP. W. Singer and A. Cole, "Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution" (HMH, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In P. W. Singer and August Cole's groundbreaking book, Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020), an FBI agent hunts a new kind of terrorist through a Washin...
ListenGarrett Graff, “The Threat Matrix: The FBI at War in the Age of Global Terror” (Little Brown, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How has the FBI evolved since the days of chasing gangsters and bootleggers, and is it equipped to face the challenges of a global war on terror? According to Garrett Graff’s The Threat Matrix: Th...
ListenEvy Poumpouras, "Becoming Bulletproof" (Atria Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Former Secret Service agent and star of Bravo’s Spy Games, Evy Poumpouras, shares lessons learned from protecting presidents, as well insights and skills from the oldest and most elite security for...
ListenMichael Auslin, “Pacific Cosmopolitans: A Cultural History of U.S.-Japan Relations” (Harvard UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How have the United States and Japan managed to remain such strong allies, despite having fought one another in a savage war less than 70 years ago? In Michael Auslin’s Pacific Cosmopolitans: A Cu...
ListenS. Moskalenko and C. McCauley, "Radicalization to Terrorism: What Everyone Needs to Know" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Terrorism and radicalization came to the forefront of news and politics in the US after the unforgettable attacks of September 11th, 2001. When George W. Bush famously asked "Why do they hate us?,"...
ListenStewart A. Baker, “Skating on Stilts: Why We Aren’t Stopping Tomorrow’s Terrorism” (Hoover Institution, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How do government officials decide key homeland security questions? How do those decisions affect our day to day lives? In Skating on Stilts: Why We Aren’t Stopping Tomorrow’s Terrorism (Hoover Ins...
ListenDavid Shimer, "Rigged: America, Russia, and One Hundred Years of Covert Electoral Interference" (Knopf, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The "guard is tired." With that simple phrase, the newly installed Bolshevik regime in Russia dismissed the duly elected Constituent Assembly in January 1918. And, one might say, so started Russia'...
ListenWilliam Bennett and Seth Leibsohn, “The Fight of Our Lives: Choosing to Win the War Against Radical Islam” (Thomas Nelson, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Where do we stand on the War on Terror? Is it still going on, and if so, are we winning or losing it? In William Bennett and Seth Leibsohn’s The Fight of Our Lives: Knowing the Enemy, Speaking the ...
ListenVincent Bevins, "The Jakarta Method" (Public Affairs, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Why did the word “Jakarta” appear as graffiti on the streets of Santiago in 1973? Why did left-wing Chilean activists receive postcards in the mail with the ominous message “Jakarta is coming”? Why...
ListenW. Taylor Fain, “American Ascendance and British Retreat in the Persian Gulf Region” (Palgrave-McMillan, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you ask most Americans when the U.S. became heavily involved in the Persian Gulf, they might cite the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1981 or, more probably, the First Gulf War of 1990. Of course the ...
ListenMichael Schuman, "Superpower Interrupted: The Chinese History of the World" (PublicAffairs, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We stand on the eve of a different kind of world, but comprehending it is difficult: we are so accustomed to dealing with the paradigms of the contemporary world that we inevitably take them for gr...
ListenAudrey Kurth Cronin, “How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns” (Princeton UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It’s one thing to say that the study of history is “relevant” to contemporary problems; it’s another to demonstrate it. In How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Camp...
ListenE. Bruce Geelhoed, "Diplomacy Shot Down: The U-2 Crisis and Eisenhower's Aborted Mission to Moscow, 1959–1960" (U Oklahoma Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The history of the Cold War is littered with what-ifs, and in?Diplomacy Shot Down: The U-2 Crisis and Eisenhower's Aborted Mission to Moscow, 1959–1960 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2020), Profess...
ListenNicholas Thompson, “The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War” (Henry Holt, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I met George Kennan twice, once in 1982 and again in about 1998. On both occasions, I found him tough to read. He was a very dignified man–I want to write “correct”–but also quite distant, even cer...
ListenCatherine Belton, "Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West" (FSG, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Russian state is back. That may not be a big surprise to Russia watchers. The degree to which it is a KGB state, however, is documented in great detail in Catherine Belton's new book Putin's Pe...
ListenJulian E. Zelizer, “Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security From WWII to the War on Terrorism” (Basic Books, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Historians are by their nature public intellectuals because they are intellectuals who write about, well, the public. Alas, many historians seem to forget the “public” part and concentrate on the “...
ListenGeorge Lawson, "Anatomies of Revolution" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The success of populist politicians and the emergence of social justice movements around the world, and the recent demonstrations against police violence in the United States, demonstrate a widespr...
ListenRobert Hendershot, “Family Spats: Perception, Illusion and Sentimentality in the Anglo-American Special Relationship” (VDM, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Gordon Brown, the British PM, came calling to Washington recently. He jumped the pond, of course, to have a chat with his new counterpart, President Barack Obama. They had a lot to talk about, what...
ListenPaul D’Anieri, "Ukraine and Russia: From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Paul D’Anieri’s Ukraine and Russia: From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War (Cambridge University Press, 2019) documents in a nuanced way the development of the current military conflict between Russ...
ListenMicol Seigel, "Violence Work: State Violence and the Limits of Police" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Recent calls for the defunding or abolition of police raise important questions about the legitimacy of state violence and the functions that police are supposed to serve. Criticism of the militari...
ListenThomas C. Field Jr. et al., "Latin America and the Global Cold War" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Latin America and the Global Cold War (University of North Carolina Press, 2020) analyzes more than a dozen of Latin America’s forgotten encounters with Africa, Asia, and the Communist world, and b...
ListenKurt Braddock, "Weaponized Words" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Kurt Braddock's new book Weaponized Words: The Strategic Role of Persuasion in Violent Radicalization and Counter-Radicalization (Cambridge University Press, 2020) applies existing theories of pers...
ListenLauren Turek, "To Bring the Good News to All Nations" (Cornell UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Lauren Turek is an Assistant Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. She earned her doctorate from the University of Virginia in 2015 and holds a degree in Museum Studies ...
ListenJoyce E. Leader, "From Hope to Horror: Diplomacy and the Making of the Rwanda Genocide" (Potomac Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Earlier this year the world marked the 25th anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide. An occasion for mourning and reflection also offered a chance to reflect on the state of research about the genocide...
ListenBrian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Brian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics, a...
ListenElizabeth A. Stanley, "Widen the Window" (Avery Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Stress is our internal response to an experience that our brain perceives as threatening or challenging. Trauma is our response to an experience in which we feel powerless or lacking agency. Until ...
ListenRichard Lachmann, "First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship: Elite Politics and the Decline of Great Powers" (Verso, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Richard Lachmann’s First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship: Elite Politics and the Decline of Great Powers (Verso, 2020) is a two-for-one deal. The first half of the book is a historical analysis ...
ListenJeffrey Wasserstrom, "Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink" (Columbia Global Reports, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This podcast was recorded on May 21st, 2020 – the same day that the Chinese government proposed new national security laws that would give China greater control over Hong Kong. What motivates these...
ListenToshihiro Higuchi, "Political Fallout: Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Political Fallout: Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis (Stanford University Press, 2020), Toshihiro Higuchi presents a history of the 1963 Partial Test Ban Tr...
ListenCourtney J. Fung, "China and Intervention at the UN Security Council: Reconciling Status" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
China is a veto-holding member of the UN Security Council yet Chinese officials have been skeptical of using the powers of the UN to pressure nations accused of human rights violations. The PRC has...
ListenAndrew Monaghan, "Dealing with the Russians" (Polity, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Are the generals fighting the last war? In Dealing with the Russians (Polity, 2019), Andrew Monaghan argues that Western policy makers are using an outdated Cold War model of ideology, language and...
ListenIbrahim Fraihat, "Iran and Saudi Arabia: Taming a Chaotic Conflict" (Edinburgh UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ibrahim Fraihat’s latest book, Iran and Saudi Arabia: Taming a Chaotic Conflict (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) is much more than an exploration of the history of animosity between Saudi Arabia ...
ListenMaría Cristina García, "The Refugee Challenge in Post-Cold War America" (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Never again!” This was the rallying cry, seemingly universal and unanimous, among liberal nation-states as they formed the United Nations (UN) in 1945 and later signed the UN Declaration on Human ...
ListenLeslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. Brophy, is the first edited collection of schola...
ListenAbraham Newman and Henry Farrell, "Of Privacy and Power: The Transatlantic Struggle over Freedom and Security" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We live in an interconnected world. People, goods, and services leap across borders like never before. Terrorist organizations, like al-Qaida, and digital platforms, like Facebook, have gone global...
ListenJeremy Black, "Military Strategy: A Global History" (Yale UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jeremy Black, professor of history at Exeter University, is one of the most insightful historians of military strategy from early modernity to the present day. In his most recent book, Military Str...
ListenSara E. Davies, "Containing Contagion: The Politics of Disease Outbreaks in Southeast Asia" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
At the start of 2020 few of us would have recognized the face of the current director general of the World Health Organization. Three months later, and in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic he a...
ListenMax Blumenthal, "The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump" (Verso, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump (Verso, 2019), Max Blumenthal excavates the real, connected story behind the...
ListenCarole Fink, "West Germany and Israel: Foreign Relations, Domestic Politics and the Cold War" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, West Germany and Israel: Foreign Relations, Domestic Politics and the Cold War (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Carole Fink examines the relationship between West Germany and Is...
ListenOliver Kaplan, "Resisting War: How Communities Protect Themselves" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Reporters and scholars often focus on violence and victimization: “if it bleeds, it leads.” But unarmed civilians around the world often protect themselves against armed combatants using social pro...
ListenChristine Fair, "In Their Own Words: Understanding Lashkar-e-Tayyaba" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The attacks on the luxurious Taj Hotel in Mumbai in 2008 put Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, a jihadist terrorist group, in the international / Western spotlight for the first time, though they had been deadly ...
ListenSanjib Baruah, "In the Name of the Nation: India and its Northeast" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sanjib Baruah’s latest book In the Name of the Nation: India and its Northeast (Stanford University Press, 2020) completes a trilogy on India’s northeastern borderland region of which the first two...
ListenV. Hudson, D. Bowen, P. Nielsen, "The First Political Order: How Sex Shapes Governance and National Security Worldwide" (Columbia UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Global history records an astonishing variety of forms of social organization. Yet almost universally, males subordinate females. How does the relationship between men and women shape the wider pol...
ListenMatt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn't require tangibles, like ra...
ListenJoana Cook, "A Woman's Place: US Counterterrorism Since 9/11" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The 9/11 attacks fundamentally transformed how the US approached terrorism, and led to the unprecedented expansion of counterterrorism strategies, policies, and practices. While the analysis of the...
ListenJoseph S. Nye, Jr., "In Do Morals Matter?: Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Americans since the beginning of their history, have constantly made moral judgments about presidents and foreign policy. Unfortunately, many of these assessments are poorly thought through and ass...
ListenMathias Haeussler, "Helmut Schmidt and British-German Relations: A European Misunderstanding" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The former West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt grew up as a devout Anglophile, yet he clashed heavily and repeatedly with his British counterparts Wilson, Callaghan, and Thatcher during his time ...
ListenMichelle Murray, "The Struggle for Recognition in International Relations: Status, Revisionism, and Rising Powers" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Is a rising power – like China – a threat to the world order? The conventional wisdom in international relations says that power transitions – particularly increases in military power – are intrins...
ListenSarah Burns, "The Politics of War Powers: The Theory and History of Presidential Unilateralism" (UP of Kansas, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sarah Burns’ new book The Politics of War Powers: The Theory and History of Presidential Unilateralism (University Press of Kansas, 2020) pulls together distinct threads in analyzing the theoretica...
ListenMaria Ryan, "Full Spectrum Dominance: Irregular Warfare and the War on Terror" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
America's war on terror is widely defined by the Afghanistan and Iraq fronts. Yet, as this book demonstrates, both the international campaign and the new ways of fighting that grew out of it played...
ListenAliide Naylor, "The Shadow in the East: Vladimir Putin and the New Baltic Front" (I.B. Tauris, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Baltics are about to be thrust onto the world stage. With a 'belligerent' Vladimir Putin to their east (and 'expansionist' NATO to their west), Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are increasingly th...
ListenPhillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong, assistant professor in sociology at McM...
ListenEddie Michel, "The White House and White Africa" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Rhodesian Unilateral Declaration of Independence was one of the last crises of formal imperialism. British settlers in present-day Zimbabwe, then known as Rhodesia, refused to accept demands fr...
ListenYaakov Katz, "Shadow Strike: Inside Israel’s Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power" (St. Martin's Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
With the world’s attention riveted to the nuclear threat from Iran, Yaakov Katz’s new book could not be more timely. In Shadow Strike: Inside Israel’s Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Pow...
ListenK. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. However, if you’ve spent the last several years work...
ListenMark Katz, "Build: The Power of Hip Hop Diplomacy in a Divided World" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In April 2014, a cohort of twenty-five hip hop artists assembled in Washington, D.C. for the first orientation meeting of a new cultural diplomacy program sponsored by the United States State Depar...
ListenMagnus Nordenman, "The New Battle for the Atlantic: Emerging Naval Competition with Russia in the Far North" (Naval Institute Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The New Battle for the Atlantic: Emerging Naval Competition with Russia in the Far North (Naval Institute Press, 2019), Magnus Nordenman explores the emerging competition between the United Stat...
ListenJosh Reno, "Military Waste: The Unexpected Consequences of Permanent War Readiness" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Seven decades of military spending during the cold war and war on terror have created a vast excess of military hardware – what happens to all of this military waste when it has served its purpose ...
ListenElizabeth Economy, "The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A trade war with China has dangerous implications for the global economy. What began more than a year ago with President Trump’s decision to impose tariffs has become an unpleasant economic reality...
ListenAlice Hill, "Building a Resilient Tomorrow: How to Prepare for the Coming Climate Disruption" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Climate change impacts-more heat, drought, extreme rainfall, and stronger storms-have already harmed communities around the globe. Even if the world could cut its carbon emissions to zero tomorrow,...
ListenJenna Jordan, "Leadership Decapitation: Strategic Targeting of Terrorist Organizations" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
One of the central pillars of US counterterrorism policy is that capturing or killing a terrorist group's leader is effective. Yet this pillar rests more on a foundation of faith than facts. In Lea...
ListenC. J. Alvarez, "Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US-Mexico Divide" (U Texas Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Recent debates over the building of a border wall on the U.S.-Mexico divide have raised logistical and ethical issues, leaving the historical record of border building uninvoked. A recent book, wri...
ListenStephanie Malia Hom, "Empire's Mobius Strip: Historical Echoes in Italy's Crisis of Migration and Detention" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Italy's current crisis of Mediterranean migration and detention has its roots in early twentieth century imperial ambitions. Stephanie Malia Hom's new book Empire's Mobius Strip: Historical Echoes ...
ListenChristopher A. Preble, "Fuel to the Fire: How Trump made America’s Foreign Policy Even Worse" (Cato Institute, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump broke not only from the Republican Party consensus but also from the bipartisan consensus on the direction of recent U.S. foreign policy. Calling the Iraq ...
ListenThe Treaty of Versailles On Hundred Years On from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Versailles Treaty of 1919, celebrates its one-hundred anniversary this year. And, yet unlike the more recent centenaries, such as that of the outbreak of the Great War or the Russian Revolution...
ListenSeyed Ali Alavi, "Iran and Palestine: Past, Present, and Future" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Iran and Palestine: Past, Present and Future (Routledge, 2019), Seyed Ali Alavi (SOAS University of London) surveys the history of the relationship between Iran – and especially the Islamic Repu...
ListenPaul Robinson, "Russian Conservatism" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Professor Paul Robinson's new book, Russian Conservatism (Cornell University Press, 2019) is a comprehensive examination of the roots and development of the hardy strain of conservative political t...
ListenBeth Fischer, "The Myth of Triumphalism: Rethinking President Reagan's Cold War Legacy" (UP of Kentucky, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Every time that I teach any portion of a course dealing with Ronald Reagan and the end of the Cold War, I gird myself for the inevitable myth-busting that I’m going to do. The idea that Reagan won ...
ListenMichael Krona and Rosemary Pennington, "The Media World of ISIS" (Indiana UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From efficient instructions on how to kill civilians to horrifying videos of beheadings, no terrorist organization has more comprehensively weaponized social media than ISIS. Its strategic, multi-p...
ListenAudrey Kurth Cronin, "Power to the People: How Open Technological Innovation is Arming Tomorrow’s Terrorists" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Never have so many possessed the means to be so lethal. The diffusion of modern technology (robotics, cyber weapons, 3-D printing, autonomous systems, and artificial intelligence) to ordinary peopl...
ListenDavid H. McIntyre, "How to Think about Homeland Security" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today I talked to David H. McIntyre about How to Think about Homeland Security; Volume 1: The Imperfect Intersection of National Security and Public Safety and Volume 2: Risk, Threats, and the New ...
ListenAlberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous?and easier to sh...
ListenAppeasement Eighty Years On from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
According to one dictionary definition, the term means: “to yield or concede to the belligerent demands of (a nation, group, person, etc.) in a conciliatory effort, sometimes at the expense of just...
ListenEyal Mayroz, "Reluctant Interveners: America's Failed Responses to Genocide from Bosnia to Darfur" (Rutgers UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Why don’t governments do more to prevent genocide? What role does the public have in compelling their governments to take an active stand in the face of genocide? In Reluctant Interveners: America'...
ListenIain MacGregor, "Checkpoint Charlie: The Cold War, The Berlin Wall, and the Most Dangerous Place On Earth" (Scribner, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There is perhaps no more iconic symbol of the Cold War than the Berlin Wall, the 96-mile-long barrier erected around West Berlin in 1961 to stem the flow of refugees from Eastern Europe. In Checkpo...
ListenSara Lorenzini, "Global Development: A Cold War History" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As Dr. Sara Lorenzini points out in her new book Global Development: A Cold War History (Princeton UP, 2019), the idea of economic development was a relatively novel one even as late as the 1940s. ...
ListenStuart Schrader, "?Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing?" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Following World War II, in the midst of global decolonization and intensifying freedom struggles within its borders, the United States developed a worldwide police assistance program that aimed to ...
ListenAurélie Basha i Novosejt, "I Made Mistakes: Robert McNamara's Vietnam War Policy, 1960-1968 (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Speaking to an advisor in 1966 about America's escalation of forces in Vietnam, American Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara confessed: 'We've made mistakes in Vietnam … I've made mistakes. But...
ListenKathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trade books in that most of them are what you might...
ListenBruce Rydel, "Beirut 1958: How America's Wars in the Middle East Began" (Brookings, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In July 1958, U.S. Marines stormed the beach in Beirut, Lebanon, ready for combat. Farcically. they were greeted by vendors and sunbathers. Fortunately, the rest of their mission—helping to end Leb...
ListenHoward Kunreuther, "The Future of Risk Management" (U Penn Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Whether man-made or naturally occurring, large-scale disasters can cause fatalities and injuries, devastate property and communities, savage the environment, impose significant financial burdens on...
ListenJ. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude that developing expertise requires -- do not nec...
ListenMichael Mandelbaum, "The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the twenty-five years after 1989, the world enjoyed the deepest peace in history. In The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth (Oxford Univiersity Press, 2019), the eminent foreign policy scholar Mich...
ListenJoshua Tallis, "The War for Muddy Waters: Pirates, Terrorists, Traffickers, and Maritime Security" (Naval Institute Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book The War for Muddy Waters: Pirates, Terrorists, Traffickers, and Maritime Security (Naval Institute Press, 2019), Joshua Tallis uses the “broken windows” theory of policing to reexam...
ListenSeth J. Frantzman, "After Isis: America, Iran and the Struggle for the Middle East" (Gefen, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The enterprise of journalism is in crisis. Today’s journalists face accusations of “fake news” on the one hand, and harassment, arrest, and even the murder of reporters on the other. At the same ti...
ListenKeir Giles, "Moscow Rules: What Drives Russia to Confront the West" (Chatham House, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From Moscow, the world looks different. It is through understanding how Russia sees the world—and its place in it—that the West can best meet the new Russian challenge to the existing world order. ...
ListenJay Sexton, "A Nation Forged by Crisis: A New American History" (Basic Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A popular myth in the American nationalist imaginary is that the country has been on a continued path of progress. Another is that the country’s history has been the self-realization of the princip...
ListenDarren E. Tromblay, "Spying: Assessing US Domestic Intelligence Since 9/11" (Lynne Rienner, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Initiated in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, have the reforms of the US intelligence enterprise served their purpose? What have been the results of the creation of the Departme...
ListenMichael Beckley, "Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World's Sole Superpower" (Cornell UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The United States has been the world's dominant power for more than a century. Now many analysts and commentators believe that other countries such as China are rising and the United States is in d...
ListenEmrah ?ahin, "Faithful Encounters: Authorities and American Missionaries in the Ottoman Empire" (McGill-Queens UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The past decade has seen a tremendous production of scholarship on American missionary endeavors in the Middle East. In Faithful Encounters: Authorities and American Missionaries in the Ottoman Emp...
ListenDaniel Vukovich, "Illiberal China: The Ideological Challenge of the People's Republic of China" (Palgrave, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Illiberal China: The Ideological Challenge of the People's Republic of China (Palgrave, 2018) by Daniel Vukovich analyzes the 'intellectual political culture' of post-Tiananmen China in comparison ...
ListenJames W. Pardew, "Peacemakers: American Leadership and the End of Genocide in the Balkans" (U Kentucky Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his book Peacemakers: American Leadership and the End of Genocide in the Balkans (University of Kentucky Press, 2017), Ambassador James W. Pardew describes the role of the U.S. involvement in e...
ListenJeremy Friedman, "Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World" (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If today’s geopolitical fragmentation and the complexities of a ‘multipolar’ world order have led some to reminisce about the apparent stability of the Cold War era’s two ‘camps’, it should be reme...
ListenDonald Stoker, "Why America Loses Wars: Limited War and US Strategy from the Korean War to the Present" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this provocative challenge to United States policy and strategy, former Professor of Strategy & Policy at the US Naval War College, and author or editor of eleven books, Dr. Donald Stoker argues...
ListenLaura Robson and Arie Dubnov, "Partitions: A Transnational History of Twentieth-Century Territorial Separatism" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The practice of Partition understood as the physical division of territory along ethno-religious lines into separate nation-states is often regarded as a successful political "solution" to ethnic c...
ListenJeffrey Lantis, "Foreign Policy Advocacy and Entrepreneurship: How a New Generation in Congress Is Shaping U.S. Engagement with the World" (U Michigan Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
With the US in the midst of on-going negotiations with Iran, North Korea, and China, how is Congress playing a part? How is the new generation of Congress advocating for and against US action? Jeff...
ListenDarren Dochuk, "Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America" (Basic Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America (Basic Books, 2019) places religion and oil at the center of American history. As prize-winning historian Darren Dochuk reveals, fr...
ListenSusanna P. Campbell, "Global Governance and Local Peace: Accountability and Performance in International Peacebuilding" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Why do international peacebuilding organizations sometimes succeed and sometimes fail, even within the same country? Bridging the gaps between the peacekeeping, peacebuilding, and global governance...
ListenSasha D. Pack, "The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Hispano-African Border" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Hispano-African Border(Stanford, 2019), Sasha D. Pack considers the Strait of Gibraltar as an untamed in-between s...
ListenJonathan D. T. Ward, "China's Vision of Victory" (Atlas Publishing, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Someday we may say that we never saw it coming. After seventy-five years of peace in the Pacific, a new challenger to American power has emerged, on a scale not seen since the Soviet Union at its h...
ListenTim Bouverie, "Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill and the Road to War" (Tim Duggan Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill and the Road to War(Tim Duggan Books, 2019) is a groundbreaking history of the disastrous years of indecision, failed diplomacy and parliamentary infight...
ListenJennifer Hubbert, "China in the World: An Anthropology of Confucius Institutes, Soft Power, and Globalization" (U Hawaii Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In recent years, Confucius Institutes—cultural and language programs funded by the Chinese government—have garnered attention in the United States due to a debate over whether they threaten free sp...
ListenDavid Milne, "Worldmaking: The Art and Science of American Diplomacy" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There are countless ways to study the history of U.S. foreign policy. David Milne, however, makes the case that it is “often best understood” as “intellectual history.” In his innovative book, Worl...
ListenPaul Thomas Chamberlin, "The Cold War's Killing Fields: Rethinking the Long Peace" (Harper, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Paul Thomas Chamberlin has written a book about the Cold War that makes important claims about the nature and reasons for genocide in the last half of the Twentieth Century. In The Cold War's Killi...
ListenMark Galeotti, “The Vory: Russia’s Super Mafia” (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Vory: Russia’s Super Mafia (Yale University Press, 2018) by Mark Galeotti is an engrossing read about a topic mainstream scholarship has largely ignored: Russia’s criminal underworld. With Gale...
ListenCathal J. Nolan, "The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
History has tended to measure war's winners and losers in terms of its major engagements, battles in which the result was so clear-cut that they could be considered "decisive." Marathon, Cannae, To...
ListenBrian A. Jackson, "Practical Terrorism Prevention" (RAND Corporation, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Practical Terrorism Prevention: Reexamining U.S. National Approaches to Addressing the Threat of Ideologically Motivated Violence (RAND Corporation, 2019), examines past countering-violent-extremis...
ListenJennifer Fluri and Rachel Lehr, "The Carpetbaggers of Kabul and Other American-Afghan Entanglements" (U Georgia Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For most people, geopolitics is something that happens out there, in boardrooms and on battlefields. But critical geographers, and feminist political geographers in particular, have in recent years...
ListenTimothy A. Sayle, "Enduring Alliance: A History of NATO and the Postwar Global Order" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization regularly appears in newspapers and political science scholarship. Surprisingly, historians have yet to devote the attention that the organization’s history m...
ListenJames Crossland, "War, Law and Humanity: The Campaign to Control Warfare, 1853-1914" (Bloomsbury, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Beginning in the mid-1850s, a number of people in Europe and the United States undertook a range of efforts in response to the horrors of war. In his book War, Law and Humanity: The Campaign to Con...
ListenJeremy Black, "War and its Causes" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jeremy Black, professor of history at Exeter, is well-known as one of the most prolific of publishing historians. His latest book, War and its Causes (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), returns to a subj...
ListenHenry Kissinger and Winston Lord, "Kissinger on Kissinger: Reflections on Diplomacy, Grand Strategy, and Leadership" (All Points Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In a series of riveting and in depth interviews, America's senior statesman, former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, discusses the challenges of directing foreign policy during times of great g...
ListenAndreas Krieg, "Divided Gulf: The Anatomy of a Crisis" (Palgrave, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Andreas Krieg’s edited volume, Divided Gulf: The Anatomy of a Crisis(Palgrave, 2019), brings together a group of prominent Gulf scholars to discuss the Gulf crisis that pits a Saudi-United Arab Emi...
ListenGregory V. Raymond, "Thai Military Power: A Culture of Strategic Accommodation" (NIAS Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Thailand is one of the world’s last remaining military dictatorships, and the last in Asia. While we are familiar with the Thai military’s frequent interventions in Thai politics, we know rather le...
ListenMichael J. Mazarr, "Leap of Faith: Hubris, Negligence, and America’s Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy" (Public Affairs, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Michael J. Mazarr has written a history of the policy planning process leading up to the Iraq War in 2003. Mazarr has conducted over one hundred interviews with senior policy officials from the Ge...
ListenPang Yang Huei, "Strait Rituals: China, Taiwan, and the United States in the Taiwan Strait Crises, 1954-1958" (Hong Kong UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Taiwan Strait Crises of 1954-55 and 1958 occurred at the height of the Cold War. Mao’s China bombarded Nationalist-controlled islands, and U.S. President Eisenhower threatened the use of nuclea...
ListenWendy Pearlman and Boaz Atzili, "Triadic Coercion: Israel’s Targeting of States That Host Nonstate Actors" (Columbia UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the post–Cold War era, states increasingly find themselves in conflicts with nonstate actors. Finding it difficult to fight these opponents directly, many governments instead target states that ...
ListenAriel I. Ahram, "Break all the Borders: Separatism and the Resshaping of the Middle East" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 Ressh...
ListenDilip Hiro, "Cold War in the Islamic World: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Struggle for Supremacy" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 i...
ListenEliot Borenstein, "Plots Against Russia: Conspiracy and Fantasy after Socialism" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 dis...
ListenElizabeth Schmidt, "Foreign Intervention in Africa after the Cold War: Sovereignty, Responsibility, and the War on Terror" (Ohio UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 poorl...
ListenHennie van Vuuren, "Apartheid Guns and Money: A Tale of Profit" (Hurst, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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,...
ListenMichael Desch, "Cult of the Irrelevant: The Waning Influence of Social Science on National Security (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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....
ListenRósa Magnúsdóttir, "Enemy Number One: The United States of American in Soviet Ideology and Propaganda, 1945-1959" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 A...
ListenChristian Goeschel, "Mussolini and Hitler: The Forging of the Fascist Alliance" (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 Manches...
ListenKathleen Burk, "The Lion and the Eagle: The Interaction of the British and American Empires, 1783-1972" (Bloomsbury, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 Eag...
ListenDiscussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 contri...
ListenKeith Gave, "The Russian Five: A Story of Espionage, Defection, Bribery and Courage" (Gold Star Publishing, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 Wi...
ListenRichard Drake, "Charles Austin Beard: The Return of the Master Historian of American Imperialism" (Cornell UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
ListenDaniel Immerwahr, "How to Hide an Empire: The History of the Greater United States" (FSG, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“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 S...
ListenScott Mobley, "Progressives in Navy Blue: Maritime Strategy, American Empire, and the Transformation of U.S. Naval Identity, 1873-1898" (Naval Institute Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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-establish...
ListenAlfredo Toro Hardy, "The Crossroads of Globalization. A Latin American View" (World Scientific Publishing. 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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. Alfred...
ListenSarah Stockwell, "The British End of the British Empire" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
ListenJeremy Black, "Britain and Europe: A Short History" (Hurst, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
ListenJessica Trisko Darden, Alexis Henshaw, and Ora Szekley, "Insurgent Women: Female Combatants in Civil Wars" (Georgetown UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 confl...
ListenMatthew Longo, "The Politics of Borders: Sovereignty, Security, and the Citizen after 9/11" (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
ListenMonica Kim, "The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War: The Untold History" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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, P...
ListenAndray Abrahamian, "North Korea and Myanmar: Divergent Paths" (McFarland, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
ListenPhilip Zelikow and Ernest May, "Suez Deconstructed: An Interactive Study in Crisis, War, and Peacemaking" (Brookings Institution, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
ListenNoah Coburn, "Under Contract: The Invisible Workers of America's Global War" (Stanford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 whi...
ListenAndrew Lambert, "Seapower States: Maritime Culture, Continental Empires and the Conflict That Made the Modern World" (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 Fern...
ListenVan Jackson, "On the Brink: Trump, Kim, and The Threat of Nuclear War" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
ListenMichele Gelfand, "Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World" (Scribner Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 implic...
ListenMichael Cotey Morgan, "The Final Act: The Helsinki Accords and the Transformation of the Cold War" (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 t...
ListenJonathan Fulton and Li-Chen Sim, "External Powers and the Gulf Monarchies" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 th...
ListenRory Cormac, "Disrupt and Deny: Spies, Special Forces, and the Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the decades following the Second World War, the British government increasingly turned to covert operations as a means of achieving their foreign policy goals. In Disrupt and Deny: Spies, Specia...
ListenBrian Crim, "Our Germans: Project Paperclip and the National Security State" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, Our Germans: Project Paperclip and the National Security State (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), Brian Crim, Associate Professor of History at the University of Lynchburg, lo...
ListenJohn B. Judis, "The Nationalist Revival: Trade, Immigration, and the Revolt Against Globalization" (Columbia Global Reports, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Donald Trump in the United States, Brexit vote in the U.K., various anti-EU parties in Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, and Hungary, as well as nativist or authoritarian le...
ListenRobert Hendershot, “Family Spats: Perception, Illusion and Sentimentality in the Anglo-American Special Relationship” (VDM, 2009) from 2009-03-13T22:56:36
Gordon Brown, the British PM, came calling to Washington recently. He jumped the pond, of course, to have a chat with his new counterpart, President Barack Obama. They had a lot to talk about, what...
ListenRobert Hendershot, “Family Spats: Perception, Illusion and Sentimentality in the Anglo-American Special Relationship” (VDM, 2009) from 2009-03-13T22:56:36
Gordon Brown, the British PM, came calling to Washington recently. He jumped the pond, of course, to have a chat with his new counterpart, President Barack Obama. They had a lot to talk about, what...
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