1,153 episodes

Interviews with Scholars of Military History about their New Books
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New Books in Military History Marshall Poe

    • Society & Culture
    • 4.1 • 142 Ratings

Interviews with Scholars of Military History about their New Books
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

    Tyler Fox, "Battle Surgeons: Care Under Fire in the 504th Parachute Infantry" (2023)

    Tyler Fox, "Battle Surgeons: Care Under Fire in the 504th Parachute Infantry" (2023)

    The pages of Battle Surgeons are inscribed with the 371 days of front-line duty worked by medics of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Set within the epic of European airborne missions, Battle Surgeons animates their band—the stalwart surgeons, their happy-go-lucky chaplain, and the youthful dentist—as they navigate World War II.
    Up the gray peaks of Italy they trod, where Captain Sheehan was shot; and in the marshlands of Anzio, where Captain Sheek withstood the worst malaria could throw; and the Dutch lowlands, where Captain Shapiro crossed broad rivers; and through Belgium’s frozen forests, where Captain Halloran lamented the injury of a friend; through all this and more the doctors were in it, at places whose names echo through history: San Pietro, Anzio, Nijmegen.
    In the wake of Sicily, the book’s sub-plot opens. Casualties were a struggle to evacuate and clear due to deficiencies in equipment, organization, and training. It ignited a series of reforms within the 82nd Airborne Division which the book picks up again during the English interlude. They reach their high water mark in Operation Market Garden, made famous by A Bridge Too Far. Grizzled with experience, casualty care in the 82nd was at its most efficient.
    Battle Surgeons offers a penetrating look at the airborne medical service, the 82nd Airborne Division, and provides a touchstone for the big impact of a small detachment.
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    • 39 min
    Adam Lazarus, "The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams" (Citadel Press, 2023)

    Adam Lazarus, "The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams" (Citadel Press, 2023)

    It was 1953, the Korean War in full throttle, when two men—already experts in their fields—crossed the fabled 38th Parallel into Communist airspace aboard matching Panther jets. John Glenn was an ambitious operations officer with fifty-nine World War II combat missions under his belt. His wingman was Ted Williams, the two-time American League Triple Crown winner who, at the pinnacle of his career, had been inexplicably recalled to active service in the United States Marine Corps. Together, the affable flier and the notoriously tempestuous left fielder soared into North Korea, creating a death-defying bond. Although, over the next half century, their contrasting lives were challenged by exhilarating highs and devastating lows, that bond would endure.
    Through unpublished letters, unit diaries, declassified military records, manuscripts, and new and illuminating interviews, The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams (Citadel Press, 2023) reveals an epic and intimate portrait of two heroes—larger-than-life and yet ineffably human, ordinary men who accomplished the extraordinary. At its heart, this was a conflicted friendship that found commonality in mutual respect—throughout the perils of war, sports dominance, scientific innovation, cutthroat national politics, the burden of celebrity, and the meaning of bravery. Now, author Adam Lazarus sheds light on a largely forgotten chapter in these legends’ lives—as singular individuals, inspiring patriots, and eventually, however improbable, profoundly close friends.
    Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book, The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All was published in 2020. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep.
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    • 53 min
    Vladimir Solonari, "A Satellite Empire: Romanian Rule in Southwestern Ukraine, 1941–1944" (Cornell UP, 2019)

    Vladimir Solonari, "A Satellite Empire: Romanian Rule in Southwestern Ukraine, 1941–1944" (Cornell UP, 2019)

    A Satellite Empire: Romanian Rule in Southwestern Ukraine, 1941–1944 (Cornell UP, 2019) is an in-depth investigation of the political and social history of the area in southwestern Ukraine under Romanian occupation during World War II. Transnistria was the only occupied Soviet territory administered by a power other than Nazi Germany, a reward for Romanian participation in Operation Barbarossa.
    Vladimir Solonari's invaluable contribution to World War II history focuses on three main aspects of Romanian rule of Transnistria: with fascinating insights from recently opened archives, Solonari examines the conquest and delimitation of the region, the Romanian administration of the new territory, and how locals responded to the occupation. What did Romania want from the conquest? The first section of the book analyzes Romanian policy aims and its participation in the invasion of the USSR. Solonari then traces how Romanian administrators attempted, in contradictory and inconsistent ways, to make Transnistria "Romanian" and "civilized" while simultaneously using it as a dumping ground for 150,000 Jews and 20,000 Roma deported from a racially cleansed Romania. The author shows that the imperatives of total war eventually prioritized economic exploitation of the region over any other aims the Romanians may have had. In the final section, he uncovers local responses in terms of collaboration and resistance, in particular exploring relationships with the local Christian population, which initially welcomed the occupiers as liberators from Soviet oppression but eventually became hostile to them. Ever increasing hostility towards the occupying regime buoyed the numbers and efficacy of pro-Soviet resistance groups.
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    • 1 hr 14 min
    An Oral History Archive of World War One: A Discussion with Peter Liddle

    An Oral History Archive of World War One: A Discussion with Peter Liddle

    Peter Liddle OBE FRHistS (born 1934) is a British historian and author specialising in the study of the First and Second World Wars. In 1968 Liddle started interviewing people about their lives during and around the First World War, collecting oral history from the era. He founded the Liddle Collection and worked to expand throughout the 1970s and 1980s, placing advertisements and recording many thousands of interviews. The director of Cambridge University Library, considered the collection "one of the most important private collections of 20th century papers". 
    The Liddle Collection is now kept by Leeds University Library and can be accessed here.
    Peter is 89 years old and due to hearing and technical difficulties that emerged during the recording, we asked him to read out and the answer questions sent by email. We feel believe that we are contributing to public education by helping share some of his insights into the value and importance of this type of historical research.
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    • 23 min
    Chiara Renzo, "Jewish Displaced Persons in Italy 1943-1951: Politics, Rehabilitation, Identity" (Routledge, 2023)

    Chiara Renzo, "Jewish Displaced Persons in Italy 1943-1951: Politics, Rehabilitation, Identity" (Routledge, 2023)

    Chiara Renzo's book Jewish Displaced Persons in Italy 1943-1951: Politics, Rehabilitation, Identity (Routledge, 2023) focuses on the experiences of thousands of Jewish displaced persons (DPs) who lived in refugee camps in Italy between the liberation of the southern regions in 1943 and the early 1950s, waiting for their resettlement outside of Europe. It explores the Jewish DPs' daily life in the refugee camps and what this experience of displacement meant to them. This book sheds light on the dilemmas the Jewish DPs faced when reconstructing their lives in the refugee camps after the Holocaust and how this challenging process was deeply influenced by their interaction with the humanitarian and political actors involved in their rescue, rehabilitation, and resettlement. Relating to the peculiar context of post-fascist Italy and the broader picture of the postwar refugee crisis, this book reveals overlooked aspects that contributed to the making of an incredibly diverse and lively community in transit, able to elaborate new paradigms of home, belonging and family.
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    • 36 min
    George S. Takach, "Cold War 2.0: Artificial Intelligence in the New Battle between China, Russia, and America" (Pegasus Book, 2024)

    George S. Takach, "Cold War 2.0: Artificial Intelligence in the New Battle between China, Russia, and America" (Pegasus Book, 2024)

    A vivid, thoughtful examination of how technological innovation—especially AI—is shaping the tensions between democracy and autocracy during the new Cold War. 
    So much of what we hear about China and Russia today likens the relationship between these two autocracies and the West to a “rivalry” or a “great-power competition.” Some might consider it alarmist to say we are in the midst of a second Cold War, but that may be the only responsible way to describe today’s state of affairs. What’s more, we have come a long way from Mao Zedong’s infamous observation that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Now we live in an age more aptly described by Vladimir Putin’s cryptic prophecy that “artificial intelligence is the future not only of Russia, but of all mankind, and whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become ruler of the world.” 
    George S. Takach’s incisive and meticulously researched new volume, Cold War 2.0: Artificial Intelligence in the New Battle between China, Russia, and America (Pegasus Book, 2024), is the book we need to thoroughly understand these frightening and perilous times. In the geopolitical sphere, there are no more pressing issues than the appalling mechanizations of a surveillance state in China, Russia’s brazen attempt to assert its autocratic model in Ukraine, and China’s increasingly likely plans to do the same in Taiwan. But the key here, Takach argues, is that our new Cold War is not only ideological but technological: the side that prevails in Cold War 2.0 will be the one that bests the other in mastering the greatest innovations of our time. Artificial intelligence sits in our pockets every day—but what about AI that coordinates military operations and missile defense systems? Or the highly sophisticated semiconductor chips and quantum computers that power those missiles and a host of other weapons? And, where recently we have seen remarkable feats of bio-engineering to produce vaccines at record speed, shouldn’t we be concerned how catastrophic it would be if bio-engineering were co-opted for nefarious purposes? Takach thoroughly examines how each of these innovations will shape the tension between democracy and autocracy, and how each will play a central role in this second Cold War. Finally, he crafts a precise blueprint for how Western democracies should handle these innovations to respond to the looming threat of autocracy—and ultimately prevail over it.
    AJ Woodhams hosts the "War Books" podcast. You can subscribe on Apple here and on Spotify here. War Books is on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.
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    • 1 hr 8 min

Customer Reviews

4.1 out of 5
142 Ratings

142 Ratings

Georgia Boy US sailorman ,

1st time listener

I learned a lot about something I thought I was well schooled in.

Vanguard06 ,

A Wasted Opportunity on a Timely Topic

This is a very complex topic, and I appreciate the author’s attempt to distill it into a 25-minute excerpt. Like the scholars cited in the research, Robinson’s work should be given a prominent place in mid- and senior-level PME.

The interviewer did a poor job of eliciting detailed answers. In fact, she sounded by turns bored or patronizing, and was either out of her depth or so inattentive that she bungled Robinson’s full name at the end. Not nearly the best episode I’ve heard, but I will check out the book.

Ian spettell ,

Get an interviewer who can speak ...

... the host has a bizarre accent that sounds like Peter Sellers as "Dr. Strangelove" but to make it worse makes awful, weird grunting sounds. He also interrupts as does not give the interviewee enough time to speak. Great books, great topics but the host makes the podcast unlistenable.

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