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New Books in Military History

New Books in Military History

By: Marshall Poe
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 Interviews with Scholars of Military History about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-historyNew Books Network Social Sciences World
Episodes
  • Geoffrey Wawro, "The Vietnam War: A Military History" (Basic Books, 2024)

    Geoffrey Wawro, "The Vietnam War: A Military History" (Basic Books, 2024)
    Jun 6 2025
    The Vietnam War cast a shadow over the American psyche from the moment it began. In its time it sparked budget deficits, campus protests, and an erosion of US influence around the world. Long after the last helicopter evacuated Saigon, Americans have continued to battle over whether it was ever a winnable war. Based on thousands of pages of military, diplomatic, and intelligence documents, Geoffrey Wawro's The Vietnam War offers a definitive account of a war of choice that was doomed from its inception. In devastating detail, Wawro narrates campaigns where US troops struggled even to find the enemy in the South Vietnamese wilderness, let alone kill sufficient numbers to turn the tide in their favor. Yet the war dragged on, prolonged by presidents and military leaders who feared the political consequences of accepting defeat. In the end, no number of young lives lost or bombs dropped could prevent America's ally, the corrupt South Vietnamese regime, from collapsing the moment US troops retreated. Broad, definitive, and illuminating, The Vietnam War: A Military History offers an unsettling, resonant story of the limitations of American power. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history
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    1 hr and 13 mins
  • James Graham Wilson, "America's Cold Warrior: Paul Nitze and National Security from Roosevelt to Reagan" (Cornell UP, 2024)

    James Graham Wilson, "America's Cold Warrior: Paul Nitze and National Security from Roosevelt to Reagan" (Cornell UP, 2024)
    Jun 5 2025
    In America's Cold Warrior, James Graham Wilson traces Paul Nitze's career path in national security after World War II, a time when many of his mentors and peers returned to civilian life. Serving in eight presidential administrations, Nitze commanded White House attention even when he was out of government, especially with his withering criticism of Jimmy Carter during Carter's presidency. While Nitze is perhaps best known for leading the formulation of NSC-68, which Harry Truman signed in 1950, Wilson contends that Nitze's most significant contribution to American peace and security came in the painstaking work done in the 1980s to negotiate successful treaties with the Soviets to reduce nuclear weapons while simultaneously deflecting skeptics surrounding Ronald Reagan. America's Cold Warrior connects Nitze's career and concerns about strategic vulnerability to the post-9/11 era and the challenges of the 2020s, where the United States finds itself locked in geopolitical competition with the People's Republic of China and Russia. Short Bio: James Graham Wilson is a Supervisory Historian in the Office of the Historian at the Department of State. He has compiled 11 volumes in the Foreign Relations of the United States series, including the sequence of National Security Policy volumes covering 1977–1992. He is the author of America’s Cold Warrior: Paul Nitze and National Security from Roosevelt to Reagan (Cornell Press, 2024) and The Triumph of Improvisation: Gorbachev’s Adaptability, Reagan’s Engagement, and the End of the Cold War (Cornell Press, 2014). He received his PhD from the University of Virginia in 2011, where he studied with Melvyn Leffler. Mentioned: Susan Colbourn, Euromissiles: The Nuclear Weapons That Nearly Destroyed NATO (2022). Robert F. Kennedy, Thirteen Days (1969). Nicholas Thompson, The Hawk and the Dove (2010). Also mentioned: Foreign Relations of the United States Volumes, here. The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection, here. Luca Trenta is an Associate Professor in International Relations at Swansea University, in Wales (UK). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history
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    1 hr and 15 mins
  • Roger Chickering, "The German Empire, 1871–1918" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

    Roger Chickering, "The German Empire, 1871–1918" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
    Jun 4 2025
    Furious economic growth and social change resulted in pervasive civic conflict in Imperial Germany. Roger Chickering presents a wide-ranging history of this fractious period, from German national unification to the close of the First World War. Throughout this time, national unity remained an acute issue. It appeared to be resolved momentarily in the summer of 1914, only to dissolve in the war that followed. This volume examines the impact of rapid industrialization and urban growth on Catholics and Protestants, farmers and city dwellers, industrial workers and the middle classes. Focusing on its religious, regional, and ethnic reverberations, Chickering also examines the social, cultural, and political dimensions of domestic conflict. Providing multiple lenses with which to view the German Empire, Chickering's survey examines local and domestic experiences as well as global ramifications. The German Empire, 1871-1918 provides the most comprehensive survey of this restless era available in the English language. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history
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    57 mins
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