NB Military History

21/06/2022

In CHEMICAL HEROES: Pharmacological Supersoldiers in the US Military (Duke University Press), Andrew Bickford analyzes the US military's attempts to design performance enhancement technologies and create pharmacological "supersoldiers" capable of withstanding extreme trauma. Bickford traces the deep history of efforts to biologically fortify and extend the health and lethal power of soldiers from the Cold War era into the twenty-first century, from early adoptions of mandatory immunizations to bio-protective gear, to the development and spread of new performance enhancing drugs during the global War on Terrorism. In his examination of government efforts to alter soldiers' bodies through new technologies, Bickford invites us to contemplate what constitutes heroism when armor becomes built in, wired in, and even edited into the molecular being of an American soldier. Lurking in the background and dark recesses of all US military enhancement research, Bickford demonstrates, is the desire to preserve US military and imperial power. Author-interview podcast link ⤵️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/chemical-heroes

14/06/2022

In CLAIMING UNION WIDOWHOOD: Race, Respectability, and Poverty in the Post-Emancipation South (Duke University Press), Brandi Clay Brimmer analyzes the US pension system from the perspective of poor black women during and after the Civil War. Reconstructing the grassroots pension network in New Bern, North Carolina, through a broad range of historical sources, she outlines how the mothers, wives, and widows of black Union soldiers struggled to claim pensions in the face of evidentiary obstacles and personal scrutiny. Brimmer exposes and examines the numerous attempts by the federal government to exclude black women from receiving the federal pensions that they had been promised. Her analyses illustrate the complexities of social policy and law administration and the interconnectedness of race, gender, and class formation. Expanding on previous analyses of pension records, Brimmer offers an interpretive framework of emancipation and the freedom narrative that places black women at the forefront of demands for black citizenship. Brimmer joins us on the podcast ⤵️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/claiming-union-widowhood

09/06/2022

Most existing literature regarding civil-military relations in the United States references either the Cold War or post-Cold War era, leaving a significant gap in understanding as our political landscape rapidly changes. RECONSIDERING AMERICAN CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS: The Military, Society, Politics, and Modern War (Oxford University Press) builds upon our current perception of civil-military relations, filling in this gap and providing contemporary understanding of these concepts. The authors examine modern factors such as increasing partisanship and political division, evolving technology, new dynamics of armed conflict, and the breakdown of conventional democratic and civil-military norms, focusing on the multifaceted ways they affect civil-military relations and American society as a whole. Delve deeper on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/reconsidering-american-civil-military-relations

24/05/2022

Founded in 1884 and incorporated by Congress in 1889 for the promotion of historical studies, the American Historical Association provides leadership for the discipline and promotes the critical role of historical thinking in public life. The Association defends academic freedom, develops professional standards, supports innovative scholarship and teaching, and helps to sustain and enhance the work of historians. As the largest membership association of professional historians in the world (over 11,500 members), the AHA serves historians in a wide variety of professions and represents every historical era and geographical area. On this episode of the NBN's Scholarly Societies Series, Caleb Zakarin interviews AHA Executive Director James Grossman and James H. Sweet, Vilas-Jartz Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. PODCAST LINK ⤵️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-american-historical-association-a-discussion-with-jim-grossman-and-james-sweet

The American Historical Association: A Discussion with Jim Grossman and James Sweet

23/05/2022

Most stories of medical progress come with ready-made heroes. John Snow traced the origins of London's 1854 cholera outbreak to a water pump, leading to the birth of epidemiology. Florence Nightingale's contributions to the care of soldiers in the Crimean War revolutionized medical hygiene, transforming hospitals from crucibles of infection to sanctuaries of recuperation. Yet histories of individual innovators ignore many key sources of medical knowledge, especially when it comes to the science of infectious disease.

Reexamining the foundations of modern medicine, Jim Downs shows that the study of infectious disease depended crucially on the unrecognized contributions of nonconsenting subjects--conscripted soldiers, enslaved people, and subjects of empire. Plantations, slave ships, and battlefields were the laboratories in which physicians came to understand the spread of disease. Military doctors learned about the importance of air quality by monitoring Africans confined to the bottom of slave ships. Statisticians charted cholera outbreaks by surveilling Muslims in British-dominated territories returning from their annual pilgrimage. The field hospitals of the Crimean War and the US Civil War were carefully observed experiments in disease transmission.

The scientific knowledge derived from discarding and exploiting human life is now the basis of our ability to protect humanity from epidemics. Boldly argued and eye-opening, MALADIES of EMPIRE: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine (Harvard University Press) gives a full account of the true price of medical progress. Learn more 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/maladies-of-empire

06/05/2022

In 1914, seven million Jews across Eastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean were caught in the crossfire of warring empires in a disaster of stupendous, unprecedented proportions. In response, American Jews developed a new model of humanitarian relief for their suffering brethren abroad, wandering into American foreign policy as they navigated a wartime political landscape. The effort continued into peacetime, touching every interwar Jewish community in these troubled regions through long-term refugee, child welfare, public health, and poverty alleviation projects. Against the backdrop of war, revolution, and reconstruction, this is the story of American Jews who went abroad in solidarity to rescue and rebuild Jewish lives in Jewish homelands. As they constructed a new form of humanitarianism and re-drew the map of modern philanthropy, they rebuilt the Jewish Diaspora itself in the image of the modern social welfare state.

Our guest for this episode is Jaclyn Granick, author of INTERNATIONAL JEWISH HUMANITARIANISM in the AGE of the GREAT WAR (Cambridge University Press - History, Classics and Archaeology). Listen in 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/international-jewish-humanitarianism-in-the-age-of-the-great-war

03/05/2022

FOR KING and COUNTRY: The British Monarchy and the First World War (Cambridge University Press - History, Classics and Archaeology) is a ground-breaking history of the British monarchy in the First World War and of the social and cultural functions of monarchism in the British war effort. Heather Jones examines how the conflict changed British cultural attitudes to the monarchy, arguing that the conflict ultimately helped to consolidate the crown's sacralised status. She looks at how the monarchy engaged with war recruitment, bereavement, gender norms, as well as at its political and military powers and its relationship with Ireland and the empire. She considers the role that monarchism played in military culture and examines royal visits to the front, as well as the monarchy's role in home front morale and in interwar war commemoration. Her findings suggest that the rise of republicanism in wartime Britain has been overestimated and that war commemoration was central to the monarchy's revered interwar status up to the abdication crisis. Give her NBN interview a listen 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/for-king-and-country

18/04/2022

HAITI FIGHTS BACK: The Life and Legacy of Charlemagne Péralte (Rutgers University Press), by Yveline Alexis, is the first US study of the politician and caco leader (guerrilla fighter) who fought against the US occupation of Haiti from 1915-1934. Alexis locates rare multilingual sources from both nations and documents Péralte's political movement and citizens' protests. The interdisciplinary work offers a new approach to studies of the US invasion period by documenting how Caribbean people fought back. Learn more as Alexis discusses the book on the podcast ↙️↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/haiti-fights-back

15/04/2022

Three rulers from the House of Orange-Nassau reigned over the Netherlands from 1813 to 1890: King William I from 1813 to 1840, King William II from 1840 to 1849, and King William III from 1849 to 1890. Theirs is an epic tale of joy and tragedy, progress and catastrophe, disappointment and glory--all set against the backdrop of a Europe plagued by war and revolution. Tune in as Jeroen Koch talks to Jana Byars about THE HOUSE of ORANGE in REVOLUTION and WAR: A European History, 1772-1890 (Reaktion Books), an epic account of the House of Orange-Nassau over 150 years of European history, on the podcast ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-house-of-orange-in-revolution-and-war

15/04/2022

To say that WORLD WAR II and SOUTHEAST ASIA: Economy and Society under Japanese Occupation (Cambridge University Press - History, Classics and Archaeology) is an impressive achievement is a huge understatement. Based on years of research in over 2 dozen archives on 3 continents, Gregg Huff's book explores how Japan, as part of its plan to build an East Asian empire and secure oil supplies essential for war in the Pacific, swiftly took control of Southeast Asia. Delve deeper as Huff joins Michael Vann on the podcast ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-economics-of-world-war-ii-in-southeast-asia

13/04/2022

Robert Jacob’s book, NUCLEAR BODIES: Global Hibakusha (Yale University Press) re‑envisions the history of the Cold War as a slow nuclear war, fought on remote battlegrounds against populations powerless to prevent the contamination of their lands and bodies. Jacobs’s book put these “nuclear bodies” and the legacy of our 80 years history of nuclear weapon and power use at the center of his inquiry. Listen in as Jacobs discusses the book on the podcast ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/nuclear-bodies

08/04/2022

Well into its third decade, the military conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been dubbed a "forever war"--a perpetual cycle of war, civil unrest, and local feuds over power and identity. Millions have died in one of the worst humanitarian calamities of our time. THE WAR THAT DOESN'T SAY ITS NAME: The Unending Conflict in the Congo (Princeton University Press) investigates the most recent phase of this conflict, asking why the peace deal of 2003--accompanied by the largest United Nations peacekeeping mission in the world and tens of billions in international aid--has failed to stop the violence. Jason Stearns argues that the fighting has become an end in itself, carried forward in substantial part through the apathy and complicity of local and international actors. Hear his NBN interview ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/jason-k-stearns-the-war-that-doesnt-say-its-name-the-unending-conflict-in-the-congo-princeton-up-2022

07/04/2022

Our guest for this episode is Adrian Shuber, author of a new book on the 19th century Spanish soldier-statesman Baldomero Espartero.

Baldomero Espartero (1793–1879,) who Shubert compares to Napoleon and Garibaldi and for whom a postage stamp was released in May 2020 in Spain, led a life resembling that of a character created by Stendhal or Gabriel García Márquez. Indeed Espartero was famed to have been the peacemaker who promoted national unity who had brought an end to the horrific Carlist civil war, a highly internationalized conflict. He became the harbinger of a nationalism that was not elitist but collective.

Learn more about THE SWORD of LUCHANA: Baldomero Espartero and the Making of Modern Spain, 1793–1879 University of Toronto Press) on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-sword-of-luchana

07/04/2022

ENGINEERING EXPANSION: The U.S. Army and Economic Development, 1787-1860 (University of Pennsylvania Press) threads together political science, history, economics, American political development, and administrative developments to understand the unique role that the United States’ Army played in laying the groundwork for so much of the growth and evolution both before and after the Civil War in the U.S.

Listen in as political scientist William Adler examines the understanding and place of the state in early America, digging at what really happened in the decades after the revolutionary war and the establishment of the new constitutional system. PODCAST LINK 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/engineering-expansion

06/04/2022

As the horrors of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine unfold before our eyes, we have witnessed a massive wave of refugees absorbed by a range of Eastern European countries – with the most refugees so far remaining in Poland. This is a remarkably apt moment to talk about the lessons of an important new study by historian Jochen Lingelbach. In ON the EDGES of WHITENESS: Polish Refugees in British Colonial Africa during and after the Second World War ( Berghahn Books), Lingelbach tells the story of just under 20,000 Polish refugees (many, from present-day Ukraine) who, initially deported into the Soviet Union at the start of World War II, found themselves in British hands after the USSR joined the Allies in 1941, and were transferred to the British-held colonies of East and Central Africa. Learn more on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/on-the-edges-of-whiteness

28/03/2022

STALINISM AT WAR: The Soviet Union in World War II (Bloomsbury Academic ) tells the epic story of the Soviet Union in World War Two.

Starting with Soviet involvement in the war in Asia and ending with a bloody counter-insurgency in the borderlands of Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltics, the Soviet Union's war was both considerably longer and more all-encompassing than is sometimes appreciated. Here, acclaimed scholar Mark Edele explores the complex experiences of both ordinary and extraordinary citizens – Russians and Koreans, Ukrainians and Jews, Lithuanians and Georgians, men and women, loyal Stalinists and critics of his regime – to reveal how the Soviet Union and leadership of a ruthless dictator propelled Allied victory over Germany and Japan. He joins us on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/stalinism-at-war

23/02/2022

Robert K. Sutton's N***S on the POTOMAC: The Top-Secret Intelligence Operation that Helped Win World War II (Casemate, 2022) is the first full account of the crucial work done at Fort Hunt, Virginia during World War II, where the highest-level German prisoners were interrogated, and captured documents analyzed. Now a green open space enjoyed by residents, Fort Hunt, Virginia, about 15 miles south of Washington, DC was the site of one of the highest-level, clandestine operations during World War II.

Shortly after the United States entered World War II, the US military realized that it had to work on exploiting any advantages it might gain on the Axis Powers. One part of these endeavors was to establish a secret facility not too close, but also not too far from the Pentagon which would interrogate and eavesdrop on the highest-level N**i prisoners and also translate and analyze captured German war documents. That complex was established at Fort Hunt, known by the code name: PO Box 1142. Learn more on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/nazis-on-the-potomac

15/02/2022

QUAGMIRE in CIVIL WAR ( Cambridge University Press - History, Classics and Archaeology) provides the first treatment of quagmire in civil war, moving beyond the notion that quagmire is intrinsic to certain countries or wars. In a rigorous but accessible analysis, Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl explains how quagmire can emerge from domestic-international interactions and strategic choices. To support the argument, Schulhofer-Wohl draws upon field research on Lebanon's 16-year civil war, structured comparisons with civil wars in Chad and Yemen, and rigorous statistical analyses of all civil wars worldwide fought between 1944 and 2006. Delve deeper on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/quagmire-in-civil-war

04/02/2022

World War II, known in Russia today as The Great Patriotic War, was a defining moment for the 24-year-old Soviet State. If the Revolutions of 1917 created the USSR, it was the hard-won victory over the N**is in The Great Patriotic War that turned it into a Great Power. The cost of that victory remains breath-taking today: 27 million men and women lost their lives, major cities were destroyed, and millions were left displaced. No family escaped the collective trauma, which is still felt today.

In examining the sites of memory, the essays in THE MEMORY of the SECOND WORLD WAR in SOVIET- and POST-SOVIET RUSSIA (Routledge History, Heritage Studies and Archaeology) offer a comprehensive look at the developing deployment of war memory, particularly by the current Russian leadership. Learn more on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-memory-of-the-second-world-war-in-soviet-and-post-soviet-russia

26/01/2022

When the Choctaw Nation was forcibly resettled in Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma in the 1830s, it was joined by enslaved Black people—the tribe had owned enslaved Blacks since the 1720s. By the eve of the Civil War, 14 percent of the Choctaw Nation consisted of enslaved Blacks. Avid supporters of the Confederate States of America, the Nation passed a measure requiring all whites living in its territory to swear allegiance to the Confederacy and deemed any criticism of it or its army treasonous and punishable by death. Choctaws also raised an infantry force and a cavalry to fight alongside Confederate forces.

In CHOCTAW CONFEDERATES: The American Civil War in Indian Country (University of North Carolina Press), Fay A. Yarbrough reveals that, while sovereignty and states’ rights mattered to Choctaw leaders, the survival of slavery also determined the Nation’s support of the Confederacy. Mining service records for approximately 3,000 members of the First Choctaw and Chickasaw Mounted Rifles, Yarbrough examines the experiences of Choctaw soldiers and notes that although their enthusiasm waned as the war persisted, military service allowed them to embrace traditional masculine roles that were disappearing in a changing political and economic landscape. By drawing parallels between the Choctaw Nation and the Confederate states, Yarbrough looks beyond the traditional binary of the Union and Confederacy and reconsiders the historical relationship between Native populations and slavery. Learn more on the podcast ↙

https://newbooksnetwork.com/choctaw-confederates

30/12/2021

For better or worse, much of Britain today is ultimately the product of the experiences of 1938-1941.

BRITAIN AT BAY: The Epic Story of the Second World War, 1938-1941 (Alfred A. Knopf) draws on a large cast of characters--from the leading statesmen and military commanders who made the decisions, to the ordinary men, women, and children who carried them out and lived through their consequences--in a comprehensible and compelling single history of forty-six million people. Learn more about the many-faceted, world-historically significant story of Britain at war as Alan Allport joins Mark Klobas on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/britain-at-bay

17/12/2021

Tanya L. Roth's HER COLD WAR: Women in the U.S. Military, 1945–1980 (University of North Carolina Press) explains that while Rosie the Riveter had fewer paid employment options after being told to cede her job to returning World War II veterans, her sisters and daughters found new work opportunities in national defense. Classified as noncombatants, servicewomen filled roles that they might hold in civilian life, such as secretarial or medical support positions. Listen in as Tanya L. Roth discusses how the battles these servicewomen fought for equality paved the way for women in combat, a prerequisite for promotion to many leadership positions, and opened opportunities for other servicepeople, including those with disabilities, LGBT and gender nonconforming people, noncitizens, and more 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/her-cold-war-1

17/12/2021

When people think of the “Vietnam War” they usually think of the hugely devastating and divisive conflict between North Vietnam and a United States-backed South Vietnam that finally ended in 1975. We know much less about the earlier conflict, often referred to as the “First Indochina War”, from 1946 to 1954, which ended almost a century of French colonial rule and brought about the division of the country into North and South Vietnam. In his new book, THE FIRST VIETNAM WAR: Sovereignty and the Fracture of the South, 1945-1956 (Cambridge University Press - History, Classics and Archaeology), Shawn McHale examines this earlier conflict, focussing on the complex and diverse society of south Vietnam. Learn more on the podcast ↙

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-first-vietnam-war

14/12/2021

Signed on September 2, 1945 aboard the American battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay by Japanese and Allied leaders, the instrument of surrender formally ended the war in the Pacific and brought to a close one of the most cataclysmic engagements in history, one that had cost the lives of millions.

In UNCONDITIONAL: The Japanese Surrender in World War II (Oxford UP), Marc Gallicchio offers a narrative of the surrender in its historical moment, revealing how and why the event unfolded as it did and the principle figures behind it, including George C. Marshall and Douglas MacArthur, who would effectively become the leader of Japan during the American occupation. It also reveals how the policy underlying it remained controversial at the time and in the decades following, shaping our understanding of World War II. Learn more on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/unconditional