Articles

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Gerald Steinacher, “Nazis on the Run: How Hitler’s Henchmen Fled Justice” (with Gerald Steinacher), New Books in History (2011)

When I was a kid I loved movies about Nazis who had escaped justice after...

 

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Kariann Akemi Yokota, “Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America Became a Postcolonial Nation” (with Kariann Akemi Yokota), New Books in History (2011)

The founding fathers--and mothers, sons and daughters--were British. Sort of. It's true that they were...

 

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Jay Rubenstein, “Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse” (with Jay Rubenstein), New Books in History (2011)

You've got to be pretty creative to get anything like "holy war" out of the...

 

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David Ciarlo, “Advertising Empire: Race and Visual Culture in Imperial Germany” (with David Ciarlo), New Books in History (2011)

If you're a native-born American, you're probably familiar with Aunt Jemima (pancake syrup), Uncle Ben...

 

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Colin Woodard, “American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America” (with Colin Woodard), New Books in History (2011)

Europeans like to say that "America" (aka the "United States") is not a nation. They...

 

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Rosamund Bartlett, “Tolstoy: A Russian Life” (with Rosamund Bartlett), New Books in History (2011)

I vividly recall a time in my life--especially my late teens and early twenties--when I...

 

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David Potter, “The Victor’s Crown: A History of Ancient Sport from Homer to Byzantium” (with David Potter), New Books in History (2011)

[Cross-posted from New Books in Sports] Modern sports carry the DNA of the games of...

 

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Sally Ninham, “A Cohort of Pioneers: Australian Postgraduate Students and American Postgraduate Degrees, 1949-1964″ (with Sally Ninham), New Books in History (2011)

[Cross-posted from New Books in History] Despite its focus on education, Sally Ninham's recent book,...

 

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Edith Sheffer, “Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain” (with Edith Sheffer), New Books in History (2011)

If Edith Sheffer's excellent Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain...

 

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Andrew Curran, “The Anatomy of Blackness: Science and Slavery in an Age of Enlightenment” (with Andrew Curran), New Books in History (2011)

We've dealt with the question of how racial categories and conceptions evolve on New Books...

 

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Steven Barnes, “Death and Redemption: The Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society” (with Steven Barnes), New Books in History (2011)

[Cross-posted from New Books in Russian and Eurasian Studies] Most Westerners know about the Gulag...

 

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Sandy Zipp, “Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York” (with Sandy Zipp), New Books in History (2011)

If you've ever lived in New York City, you know exactly what a "pre-war building"...

 

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Charles McKinney, Jr., “Greater Freedom: The Evolution of the Civil Rights Struggle in Wilson, North Carolina” (with Charles McKinney), New Books in History (2011)

When I was an undergraduate, I noticed that there were certain books that seemed to...

 

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Mikaila Lemonik Arthur, “Student Activism and Curricular Change in Higher Education” (with Mikaila Lemonik Arthur), New Books in History (2011)

Colleges and universities have a reputation for being radical places where tenured radicals teach radical...

 

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Elizabeth Heineman, “Before Porn Was Legal: The Erotica Empire of Beate Uhse” (with Elizabeth Heineman), New Books in History (2011)

When I was in college in the 1980s, I liked to listen to Iggy Pop...

 

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Rodric Braithwaite, “Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan, 1979-89″ (with Rodric Braithwaite), New Books in History (2011)

I was still in high school the year the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, 1979. I...

 

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Keith Pomakoy, “Helping Humanity: American Policy and Genocide Rescue” (with Keith Pomakoy), New Books in History (2011)

It's safe to say that nobody but genocidaires likes genocide. It's also safe to say...

 

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Robert Thurston, “Lynching: American Mob Murder in Global Perspective” (with Robert Thurston), New Books in History (2011)

It takes a brave historian to take on the orthodoxy regarding the rise and fall...

 

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Anthony Penna, “The Human Footprint: A Global Environmental History” (with Anthony Penna), New Books in History (2011)

One of the most disturbing insights made by practitioners of "Big History" is that the...

 

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Christopher Krebs, “A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus’s Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich” (with Christopher Krebs), New Books in History (2011)

Being a historian is a bit of a slog: years in graduate school, more years...

 

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Eric Schneider, “Smack: Heroin and the American City” (with Eric Schneider), New Books in History (2011)

When I arrived at college in the early 1980s, drugs were cool, music was cool,...

 

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Elizabeth Abel, “Signs of the Times: The Visual Politics of Jim Crow” (with Elizabeth Abel), New Books in History (2011)

I think this is really interesting. Among the thousands of iconic and easily recognizable photographs...

 

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Adam Hochschild, “To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918″ (with Adam Hochschild), New Books in History (2011)

Today is Memorial Day here in the United States, the day on which we remember...

 

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Jonathan Steinberg, “Bismarck: A Life” (with Jonathan Steinberg), New Books in History (2011)

What is the role of personality in shaping history? Shortly before the beginning of the...

 

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Blair Ruble, “Washington’s U Street: A Biography” (with Blair Ruble), New Books in History (2011)

I used to live in Washington DC, not far from a place I learned to...

 

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Ricardo Duchesne, “The Uniqueness of Western Civilization” (with Ricardo Duchesne), New Books in History (2011)

One of the standard assumptions of modern Western social science (history included) is that material...

 

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Francis Fukuyama, “The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution” (with Francis Fukuyama), New Books in History (2011)

When I was an undergraduate, I fell in love with Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws....

 

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David Shneer, “Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust” (with David Shneer), New Books in History (2011)

We should be skeptical of what is sometimes called "Jew counting" and all it implies....

 

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Michael A. Reynolds, “Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908-1918″ (Cambridge UP, 2011) (with Michael A. Reynolds), New Books in History (2011)

Most of us live in a world of nations. If you were born and live...

 

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Megan Marshall, “The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism” (Houghton Mifflin, 2005) (with Megan Marshall), New Books in History (2011)

[This interview is re-posted with permission from Jenny Attiyeh's ThoughtCast.] Author Megan Marshall has recently...

 

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Carol Bundy, “The Nature of Sacrifice: A Biography of Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., 1835-64″ (FSG, 2005) (with Carol Bundy), New Books in History (2011)

[This interview is re-posted with permission from Jenny Attiyeh's ThoughtCast] At a time when the...

 

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Erik Jensen, “Body by Weimar: Athletes, Gender, and German Modernity” (Oxford UP, 2010) (with Erik Jensen), New Books in History (2011)

Here's a simple--or should we say simplistic?--line of political reasoning: communities are made of people;...

 

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Daniel Sidorick, “Condensed Capitalism: Campbell Soup and the Pursuit of Cheap Production in the Twentieth Century” (Cornell UP, 2009) (with Daniel Sidorick), New Books in History (2011)

When I was in college I had a summer job once working in an aircraft...

 

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Giancarlo Casale, “The Ottoman Age of Exploration” (Oxford UP, 2010) (with Giancarlo Casale), New Books in History (2011)

You've probably heard of the "Age of Exploration." You know, Henry the Navigator, Vasco da...

 

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Hans Kundnani, “Utopia or Auschwitz: Germany’s 1968 Generation and the Holocaust” (Columbia UP, 2010) (with Hans Kundnani), New Books in History (2011)

It's pretty common in American political discourse to call someone a "fascist." Everyone knows, however,...

 

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Louis Hyman, “Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink” (Princeton UP, 2011) (with Louis Hyman), New Books in History (2011)

I remember clearly the day I was offered my first credit card. It was in...

 

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Lesley Hazleton, “After the Prophet: the Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split” (Doubleday, 2009) (with Lesley Hazleton), New Books in History (2011)

Sometimes a shallow explanation, the kind you read in newspapers and hear on television, is...

 

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J. E. Lendon, “Song of Wrath: The Peloponnesian War Begins” (Basic, 2010) (with J. E. Lendon), New Books in History (2011)

Reading J. E. Lendon's writerly Song of Wrath: The Peloponnesian War Begins (Basic Books, 2010)...

 

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Virginia Scharff, “The Women Jefferson Loved” (HarperCollins, 2010) (with Virginia Scharff), New Books in History (2011)

Most Americans could tell you who George Washington's wife was. (Martha, right?) Most Americans probably...

 

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Joyce Appleby, “The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism” (Norton, 2010) (with Joyce Appleby), New Books in History (2011)

Today everybody wants to be a capitalist, even Chinese communists. It would be easy to...

 

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Catherine Epstein, “Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland” (Oxford UP, 2010) (with Catherine Epstein), New Books in History (2011)

The term "totalitarian" is useful as it well describes the aspirations of polities such as...

 

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Joyce Salisbury, “The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages” (Routledge, 2011) (with Joyce Salisbury), New Books in History (2011)

I have three cats. They have names (Fatty, Mini, and Koshka). They live in my...

 

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Ian Sample, “Massive: The Missing Particle that Sparked the Greatest Hunt in Science” (Basic Books, 2010) (with Ian Sample), New Books in History (2011)

You've probably read about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It's the largest (17 miles around!),...

 

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Nell Irvin Painter, “The History of White People” (Norton, 2010) (with Nell Irvin Painter), New Books in History (2011)

We in the West tend to classify people by the color of their skin, or...

 

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Ann Fabian, “The Skull Collectors: Race, Science and America’s Unburied Dead” (with Ann Fabian), New Books in History (2010)

What should we study? The eighteenth-century luminary and poet Alexander Pope had this to say...

 

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David Shearer, “Policing Stalin’s Socialism: Repression and Social Order in the Soviet Union, 1924-1953″ (with David Shearer), New Books in History (2010)

The question as to why the leaders of the Soviet Union murdered hundreds of thousands...

 

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Thomas Weber, “Hitler’s First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War” (with Thomas Weber), New Books in History (2010)

Here's something interesting. If you search Google Books for "Hitler," you'll get 3,090,000 results. What's...

 

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Deborah Kaple, “Gulag Boss: A Soviet Memoir” (with Deborah Kaple), New Books in History (2010)

Here's something remarkable: at some point in the future, something you believe to be just...

 

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Kyra Hicks, “This I Accomplish: Harriet Powers’ Bible Quilt and Other Pieces” (with Kyra Hicks), New Books in History (2010)

I'll tell you something I've never really understood: the difference between "art" and "craft." Yes,...

 

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Joe Maiolo, “Cry Havoc: How the Arms Race Drove the World to War, 1931–1941″ (with Joe Maiolo), New Books in History (2010)

In Cry Havoc: How the Arms Race Drove the World to War, 1931–1941 (Basic Books,...

 

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David Farber, “The Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism” (with David Farber), New Books in History (2010)

I think that many smart people, particularly on the Left, make a really ill-considered assumption,...

 

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Abbott Gleason, “A Liberal Education” (with Abbott Gleason), New Books in History (2010)

I fear that most people think that "history" is "the past" and that the one...

 

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James Fleming, “Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control” (with James Fleming), New Books in History (2010)

In the summer of 2008 the Chinese were worried about rain. They were set to...

 

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Aram Goudsouzian, “King of the Court: Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution” (with Aram Goudsouzian), New Books in History (2010)

I imagine the guys who first faced Bill Russell felt like I did when I...

 

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David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, “Russian Orientalism” (with David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye), New Books in History (2010)

There's a saying, sometimes attributed to Napoleon, "Scratch a Russian and you find a Tatar."...

 

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Fred Spier, “Big History and the Future of Humanity” (with Fred Spier), New Books in History (2010)

My son Isaiah likes to play the "why" game. Isaiah: "Why is my ice cream...

 

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Norman Naimark, “Stalin’s Genocides” (with Norman Naimark), New Books in History (2010)

Absolutely no one doubts that Stalin murdered millions of people in the 1920s, 1930s and...

 

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Thomas Kessner, “The Flight of the Century: Charles Lindbergh & the Rise of American Aviation” (with Thomas Kessner), New Books in History (2010)

Try to imagine having never seen an airplane. It’s hard. Aircraft are an ordinary part...

 

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Kip Kosek, “Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy” (with Kip Kosek), New Books in History (2010)

There’s a quip that goes “Christianity is probably a great religion. Someone should really try...

 

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Elaine Tyler May, “America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation” (with Elaine Tyler May), New Books in History (2010)

Don’t you find it a bit curious that there are literally thousands of pills that...

 

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Valerie Hébert, “Hitler’s Generals on Trial: The Last War Crimes Tribunal at Nuremberg” (with Valerie Hébert), New Books in History (2010)

Clausewitz famously said war was the “continuation of politics by other means.” Had he been...

 

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Amanda Podany, “Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East” (with Amanda Podany), New Books in History (2010)

I have a (much beloved) colleague who calls all history about things before AD 1900...

 

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Jeffrey H. Jackson, “Paris Under Water: How the City of Light Survived the Great Flood of 1910″ (with Jeffrey H. Jackson), New Books in History (2010)

In the late 19th century, French sociologist Émile Durkheim warned the world about spreading “normlessness”...

 

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Gary Bruce, “The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi” (with Gary Bruce), New Books in History (2010)

I have a good friend who grew up in East Germany in the bad old...

 

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Todd Moye, “Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II” (with Todd Moye), New Books in History (2010)

In the 1940s, the United States military performed an “experiment,” the substance of which was...

 

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Azar Gat, “War in Human Civilization” (with Azar Gat), New Books in History (2010)

Historians don't generally like the idea of "human nature". We tend to believe that people...

 

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John Steinberg, “All the Tsar’s Men: Russia’s General Staff and the Fate of the Empire, 1898-1914″ (with John Steinberg), New Books in History (2010)

The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was the most important political event of the twentieth century...

 

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Michael Kranish, “Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War” (with Michael Kranish), New Books in History (2010)

The past is always with us, but it's really always with politicians. Once you put...

 

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Jerry Muller, “Capitalism and the Jews” (with Jerry Muller), New Books in History (2010)

I confess I was attracted to this book by the title: Capitalism and the Jews...

 

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Ruth Harris, “Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion, and the Scandal of the Century” (with Ruth Harris), New Books in History (2010)

If you're like me (and I hope you aren't), the "Trial of the Century" involved...

 

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Joanna Levin, “Bohemia in America, 1858-1920″ (with Joanna Levin), New Books in History (2010)

You've probably heard of hipsters. Heck, you may even be a hipster. If you don't...

 

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Heather Cox Richardson, “Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre” (with Heather Cox Richardson), New Books in History (2010)

Of all the events in American history, two are far and away the most troubling:...

 

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Audrey Kurth Cronin, “How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns” (with Audrey Kurth Cronin), New Books in History (2010)

It's one thing to say that the study of history is "relevant" to contemporary problems;...

 

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Fearghal McGarry, “The Rising: Ireland, Easter 1916″ (with Fearghal McGarry), New Books in History (2010)

Sometimes when you win you lose. That's called a Pyrrhic victory. But sometimes when you...

 

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Jeffrey Reznick, “John Galsworthy and the Disabled Soldiers of the Great War” (with Jeffrey Reznick), New Books in History (2010)

You may not know who John Galsworthy is, but you probably know his work. Who...

 

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Greg Castillo, “Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design” (with Greg Castillo), New Books in History (2010)

If you grew up in the 1960s or 1970s in suburbia, you probably lived in...

 

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P. Bingham and J. Souza, “Death From a Distance and the Birth of a Humane Universe” (with Paul Bingham and Joanne Souza), New Books in History (2010)

Long ago, historians more or less gave up on "theories of history." They determined that...

 

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Andrew Donson, “Youth in the Fatherless Land: War Pedagogy, Nationalism, and Authority in Germany, 1914-1918″ (with Andrew Donson), New Books in History (2010)

I was a little kid during the Vietnam War. It was on the news all...

 

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Amy Bass, “Those About Him Remained Silent: The Battle Over W. E. B. Du Bois” (with Amy Bass), New Books in History (2010)

I asked my wife if she knew who W. E. B. Du Bois was. She...

 

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Patrick Manning, “The African Diaspora: A History Through Culture” (with Patrick Manning), New Books in History (2010)

Africans were the first migrants because they were the first people. Some 60,000 years ago...

 

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David Laskin, “The Long Way Home. An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War” (with David Laskin), New Books in History (2010)

One night my wife and I were on the road, staying in a hotel in...

 

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Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, “The Anti-Imperial Choice: The Making of the Ukrainian Jew” (with Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern), New Books in History (2010)

I've got a name for you: Robert Zimmerman (aka Shabtai Zisel ben Avraham). You've heard...

 

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Joel Wolfe, “Autos and Progress: The Brazilian Search for Modernity” (with Joel Wolfe), New Books in History (2010)

Here's something I learned by reading Joel Wolfe's terrific Autos and Progress: The Brazilian Search...

 

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David Aaronovitch, “Voodoo Histories: The Role of Conspiracy Theory in the Shaping of Modern History” (with David Aaronovitch), New Books in History (2010)

In preparation for this interview I watched the documentary (that's what the producers call it,...

 

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Charles King, “The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus” (with Charles King), New Books in History (2010)

There's a concept I find myself coming back to again and again—"speciation." It's drawn from...

 

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Hilary Earl, “The Nuremberg SS-Einsatzgruppen Trial, 1945-1958: Atrocity, Law, and History” (with Hilary Earl), New Books in History (2010)

Hitler caused the Holocaust, that much we know (no Hitler, no Holocaust). But did he...

 

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Nicholas Thompson, “The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War” (with Nicholas Thompson), New Books in History (2010)

I met George Kennan twice, once in 1982 and again in about 1998. On both...

 

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Ben Kiernan, “Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur” (with Ben Kiernan), New Books in History (2010)

Chimps, our closest relatives, kill each other. But chimps do not engage in anything close...

 

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Brian Balogh, “A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in 19th-Century America” (with Brian Balogh), New Books in History (2010)

Americans don't like "big government" right? Not exactly. In the Early Republic (1789 to the...

 

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Kenneth Moss, “Jewish Renaissance in the Russian Revolution” (with Kenneth Moss), New Books in History (2010)

For us, every "nation" has and has always had a "culture," meaning a defining set...

 

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Alan E. Steinweis, “Kristallnacht 1938″ (with Alan E. Steinweis), New Books in History (2010)

One of the most fundamental—and vexing—questions in all of modern history is whether cultures make...

 

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Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson, “Natural Experiments of History” (with Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson), New Books in History (2010)

I remember telling my wife, the mathematician, that historians typically work on one time and...

 

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Julian E. Zelizer interview, "Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security From WWII to the War on Terrorism" (with Julian E. Zelizer), New Books in History (2010)

Historians are by their nature public intellectuals because they are intellectuals who write about, well,...

 

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Toby Lester interview, "The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America its Name" (with Toby Lester), New Books in History (2010)

Why the heck is "America" called "America" and not, say, "Columbia?" You'll find the answer...

 

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Stephen Kotkin interview, "Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment" (with Stephen Kotkin), New Books in History (2009)

Why did communism collapse so rapidly in Eastern Europe in 1989? The answer commonly given...

 

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Harvey Schwartz interview, "Solidarity Stories: An Oral History of the ILWU" (with Harvey Schwartz), New Books in History (2009)

One of my favorite bumper stickers reads "Unions: the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend."...

 

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Sarah Ross interview, "The Birth of Feminism. Woman as Intellect in Renaissance Italy and England" (with Sarah Ross), New Books in History (2009)

I'll be honest: I have a Ph.D. in early modern European history from a big...

 

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Benjamin Binstock interview, "Vermeer's Family Secrets: Genius, Discovery, and the Unknown Apprentice" (with Benjamin Binstock), New Books in History (2009)

Ben Binstock's Vermeer's Family Secrets: Genius, Discovery, and the Unknown Apprentice (Routledge, 2009) is...

 

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Michaela Hoenicke interview, "Know Your Enemy. American Debate on Nazism, 1933-1945" (with Michaela Hoenicke), New Books in History (2009)

To Americans, Hitler et al. were a confusing bunch. The National Socialists were Germans, and...

 

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Rebecca Manley interview, "To the Tashkent Station. Evacuation and Survival in the Soviet Union at War" (with Rebecca Manley), New Books in History (2009)

By the time the Nazi's invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the Bolshevik...

 

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Mark Bradley and Marilyn Young interview, "Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars: Transnational and International Perspectives" (with Mark Bradley and Marilyn Young), New Books in History (2009)

What to think about the Vietnam War? A righteous struggle against global Communist tyranny? An...

 

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Padraic Kenney interview, "1989: Democratic Revolutions at the Cold War's End" (with Padraic Kenney), New Books in History (2009)

There are certain dates that every European historian knows. Among them are 1348 (The Black...

 

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Stevan Allen interview, "Roaming Ghostland: The Final Days of East Germany." (with Stevan Allen), New Books in History (2009)

We like to think of countries as permanent fixtures. They aren't. They come and go....

 

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Sally G. McMillen interview, "Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women's Rights Movement" (with Sally G. McMillen), New Books in History (2009)

Think of this. From the origins of civilization roughly 5000 years ago to around 1900...

 

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Steve Gillon interview, "The Kennedy Assassination-24 Hours After: Lyndon B: Johnson's Pivotal First Day as President" (with Steve Gillon), New Books in History (2009)

You could fill a large library with books about JFK's assassination. We've even touched on...

 

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Jennifer Burns interview, "Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right" (with Jennifer Burns), New Books in History (2009)

When I was in high school I had several friends who went to Wichita's only...

 

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Jack Greene and Philip Morgan interview, "Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal" (with Jack Greene and Philip Morgan), New Books in History (2009)

This is the first in a series of podcasts that New Books in History is...

 

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Peter Fritzsche interview, "Life and Death in the Third Reich" (with Peter Fritzsche), New Books in History (2009)

Germans and Nazis. They were different things, right? I mean some Germans were members of...

 

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Brett Whalen interview, "Dominion of God: Christendom and Apocalypse in the Middle Ages" (with Brett Whalen), New Books in History (2009)

In the Gospels, the disciples come to Jesus and ask him about the End of...

 

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Lawrence Wittner interview, "Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement" (with Lawrence Wittner), New Books in History (2009)

In 1983, when I was in college, I participated in something called a "Die-In." A...

 

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Peter Mancall interview, "Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson" (with Peter Mancall), New Books in History (2009)

You've probably heard of the Hudson River, and you may have even heard of Hudson...

 

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Kevin Kenny interview, "Peaceable Kingdom Lost: The Paxton Boys and the Destruction of William Penn's Holy Experiment" (with Kevin Kenny), New Books in History (2009)

It's hard to be a Christian. It's even harder to be a good Christian. But...

 

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Nick Reding interview, "Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town" (with Nick Reding), New Books in History (2009)

In 1980 I left Kansas to go to college in Iowa. A lot of things...

 

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Alexander Watson interview, "Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914-1918" (with Alexander Watson), New Books in History (2009)

It’s a question I’ve long asked myself: Why and how did common soldiers fight for...

 

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Leslie Schwalm interview, "Emancipation's Diaspora: Race and Reconstruction in the Upper Midwest" (with Leslie Schwalm), New Books in History (2009)

You’ve heard of “Reconstruction,” that is, the reform of the South after the Civil War....

 

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Charles Postel interview, "The Populist Vision" (with Charles Postel), New Books in History (2009)

Ever wonder where the term “populist” came from? It came from “Populism,” a nineteenth/early twentieth-century...

 

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Susan Brewer interview, "Why America Fights: Patriotism and War Propaganda from the Philippines to Iraq" (with Susan Brewer), New Books in History (2009)

Like it or not, governments need to mobilize their populations in times of crisis and...

 

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Mark Bradley interview, "Vietnam at War" (with Mark Bradley), New Books in History (2009)

My uncle fought in Vietnam. He flew F-105 Thundercheifs, or "Thuds." He bombed the heck...

 

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Giles MacDonogh interview, "After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation" (with Giles MacDonogh), New Books in History (2009)

Many years ago I had the opportunity to spend a summer in Germany, more specifically...

 

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Thomas Wheatland interview, "The Frankfurt School in Exile" (with Thomas Wheatland), New Books in History (2009)

I have a friend who, as a young child, happened to meet Herbert Marcuse, by...

 

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Benjamin Carp interview, "Rebels Rising: Cities in the American Revolution" (with Benjamin Carp), New Books in History (2009)

When I was in college about a million years ago, we used to sit in...

 

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James Banner, Jr. and John Gillis interview, "Becoming Historians" (with James Banner, Jr. and John Gillis), New Books in History (2009)

When I was young, I remember going to my high school library (not to study,...

 

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Matthew Algeo interview, "Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip" (with Matthew Algeo), New Books in History (2009)

Memorial day is coming up, and maybe you are going to take a little car...

 

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Norman Stone interview, "World War One: A Short History" (with Norman Stone), New Books in History (2009)

When I was in high school, I really didn't go in for reading. Until, that...

 

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William Beezley interview, "Mexicans in Revolution, 1910-1946" (with William Beezley), New Books in History (2009)

It's shocking and embarrassing how little I, as an American, know about Mexican history. Mexico...

 

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Adrian Goldsworthy interview, "How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower" (with Adrian Goldsworthy), New Books in History (2009)

It's the classic historical question: Why did the Roman Empire fall? There are doubtless lots...

 

File

Godfrey Hodgson interview, "The Myth of American Exceptionalism" (with Godfrey Hodgson), New Books in History (2009)

How different is the United States from other nations? American leaders and common folk have...

 

File

Joel Lewis interview, "Youth Against Fascism: Young Communists in Britain and the United States, 1919-1939" (with Joel Lewis), New Books in History (2009)

Most people know what "appeasement" is. You know, the Spanish Civil War, the Nazi Anschluss...

 

File

Tony Michels interview, "Fire in their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York" (with Tony Michels), New Books in History (2009)

I always assumed that the Jews who emigrated from Eastern Europe to New York and...

 

File

Yuma Totani interview, "The Tokyo War Crimes Trials: The Pursuit of Justice in the Wake of World War II" (with Yuma Totani), New Books in History (2009)

Most everyone has heard of the Nuremberg Trials. Popular books have been written about them....

 

File

Kristin Celello interview, "Making Marriage Work: A History of Marriage and Divorce in the Twentieth-Century United States" (with Kristin Celello), New Books in History (2009)

When did Americans begin to think of marriage as "work," as in, "If you want...

 

File

James Mann interview, "The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War" (with James Mann), New Books in History (2009)

Ronald Reagan was a odd fellow. Nobody seems to know what to make of him....

 

File

Robert Hendershot interview, "Family Spats: Perception, Illusion and Sentimentality in the Anglo-American Special Relationship" (with Robert Hendershot), New Books in History (2009)

Gordon Brown, the British PM, came calling to Washington recently. He jumped the pond, of...

 

File

Gregory Cochran interview, "The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution" (with Gregory Cochran), New Books in History (2009)

First, the conventional wisdom. Because Homo sapiens are a young species and haven't had time...

 

File

Kees Boterbloem interview, "The Fiction and Reality of Jan Struys: A Seventeenth-Century Dutch Globetrotter" (with Kees Boterbloem), New Books in History (2009)

When we speak of the "Age of Discovery," we usually mean the later fifteenth and...

 

File

Simon Morrison interview, "The People's Artist: Prokofiev's Soviet Years" (with Simon Morrison), New Books in History (2009)

In the Soviet Union, artists lived lives that were at once charmed and cursed. Though...

 

File

Carl Bon Tempo interview, "Americans at the Gates: The United States and Refugees during the Cold War" (with Carl Bon Tempo), New Books in History (2009)

My Midwestern high school was pretty typical. There were freaks, geeks, jocks, drama-types. Some were...

 

File

Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern interview, "Jews in the Russian Army, 1827-1917" (with Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern), New Books in History (2009)

Every Jew knows the story. The evil tsarist authorities ride into the Shtetl. They demand...

 

File

Samuel Kassow interview, "Who Will Write Our History? Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archive" (with Samuel Kassow), New Books in History (2009)

Scholars argue about whether the Holocaust was unprecedented. It's a difficult question. On the one...

 

File

Matthew Goodman interview, "The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York" (with Matthew Goodman), New Books in History (2009)

The modern newspaper is not as old as you think. Until the early nineteenth century,...

 

File

Kathleen Johnson, Laura Turner O'Hara and Matt Wasniewski interview, "Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007" (with Kathleen Johnson, Laura Turner O'Hara, and Matt Wasniewski), New Books in History (2009)

In just a few days, the United States will inaugurate its first black president, Senator...

 

File

John H. Summers interview, "Every Fury on Earth" (with John H. Summers), New Books in History (2008)

The vast majority of historians write history. Perhaps that's good, as one should stick to...

 

File

Vicki Ruiz interview, "From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America" (with Vicki Ruiz), New Books in History (2008)

There was a time when "history" was the history of powerful people. Shakespeare captures this...

 

File

Donald Worster interview, "A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir" (with Donald Worster), New Books in History (2008)

If you study pre-modern history in any depth, one of the most startling things you...

 

File

Katherine Jellison interview, "It's Our Day: America's Love Affair with the White Wedding" (with Katherine Jellison), New Books in History (2008)

If you ask me, the "white wedding" is the oddest thing. I'm a modern guy...

 

File

Edwin Burrows interview, "Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners During the Revolutionary War" (with Edwin Burrows), New Books in History (2008)

While researching his Pulitzer-Prize-winning Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (with Mike...

 

File

Laura Wittern-Keller interview, "The Miracle Case: Film Censorship and the Supreme Court" (with Laura Wittern-Keller), New Books in History (2008)

Did you ever wonder how we got from a moment in which almost everything on...

 

File

Richard Fogarty interview, "Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914-1918" (with Richard Fogarty), New Books in History (2008)

The thing about empire building is that when you're done building one, you've got to...

 

File

Ray Boomhower interview, "Robert F: Kennedy and the 1968 Indiana Primary" (with Ray Boomhower), New Books in History (2008)

As some of you may be aware, there's a big election coming up. Yes, it's...

 

File

W. Taylor Fain interview, "American Ascendance and British Retreat in the Persian Gulf Region" (with W. Taylor Fain), New Books in History (2008)

If you ask most Americans when the U.S. became heavily involved in the Persian Gulf,...

 

File

David Kaiser interview, "The Road to Dallas: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy" (with David Kaiser), New Books in History (2008)

There are some topics that historians know not to touch. They are just too hot...

 

File

Mark Mazower interview, "Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe" (with Mark Mazower), New Books in History (2008)

It's curious how historical images become stereotyped over time. One hears the word "Nazi," and...

 

File

Andrew Gentes interview, "Exile to Siberia, 1590-1822" (with Andrew Gentes), New Books in History (2008)

Being "sent to Siberia" is practically a synonym for exile even in English-speaking countries. Why...

 

File

James Willbanks interview, "Abandoning Vietnam: How America Left and South Vietnam Lost Its War" (with James Willbanks), New Books in History (2008)

U.S. forces invade a distant country in order to disarm an international threat to American...

 

File

Alex Rabinowitch interview, "The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd" (with Alex Rabinowitch), New Books in History (2008)

It's hard to know what to think about the Russian Revolution of 1917. Was it...

 

File

Joyce Tyldesley interview, "Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt" (with Joyce Tyldesley), New Books in History (2008)

"Swords and Sandals" movies always amaze me. You know the ones I'm talking about: "Spartacus,"...

 

File

Howard Jones interview, "The Bay of Pigs" (with Howard Jones), New Books in History (2008)

There is just something about Fidel Castro that American presidents don't like very much. Maybe...

 

File

Ian McNeely interview, "Reinventing Knowledge: From Alexandria to the Internet" (with Ian McNeely), New Books in History (2008)

We don't think much about institutions. They just seem to "be there." But they have...

 

File

Heather Prescott interview, "Student Bodies: The Influence of Student Health Services in American Society & Medicine" (with Heather Prescott), New Books in History (2008)

When you were in college, did you visit the health center? I did, several times....

 

File

Charles Lane interview, "The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction" (with Charles Lane), New Books in History (2008)

Why did Reconstruction fail? Why didn't the post-war Federal government protect the civil rights of...

 

File

William Beezley interview, "Mexican National Identity: Memory, Innuendo and Popular Culture" (with William Beezley), New Books in History (2008)

The question of how we come to understand who we are--nationality-wise--is a thorny one. In...

 

File

Christopher Capozzola interview, "Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of The Modern American Citizen" (with Christopher Capozzola), New Books in History (2008)

I confess I sometimes wonder where we got in the habit of proclaiming, usually with...

 

File

John Lukacs interview, "Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: The Dire Warning" (with John Lukacs), New Books in History (2008)

Much has been written about Winston Churchill recently. Some love him, some hate him. But...

 

File

David Day interview, "Conquest: How Societies Overwhelm Others" (with David Day), New Books in History (2008)

People will often say that "this land"--wherever this land happens to be--is theirs because their...

 

File

Tim Snyder interview, "The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of A Habsburg Archduke" (with Tim Snyder), New Books in History (2008)

Tim Snyder has written a great book. It's called The Red Prince: The Secret Lives...

 

File

James Zug interview, "The Guardian: The History of South Africa's Extraordinary Anti-Apartheid Newspaper" (with James Zug), New Books in History (2008)

Every so often I read a book that reminds me that things weren't at all...

 

File

Walter Moss interview, "An Age of Progress? Clashing Twentieth Century Global Forces" (with Walter Moss), New Books in History (2008)

Today I'm very pleased to have Professor Walter Moss of Eastern Michigan University on the...

 

File

Colin Grant interview, "Negro With A Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey" (with Colin Grant), New Books in History (2008)

Today we are happy to have Colin Grant on the show. Colin is that rare...

 

File

Katy Turton interview, "Forgotten Lives: The Role of Lenin's Sisters in the Russian Revolution, 1864-1937" (with Katy Turton), New Books in History (2008)

A number of years ago I read Robert Service's excellent biography of Lenin and came...

 

File

Kimberly Jensen interview, "Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War" (with Kimberly Jensen), New Books in History (2008)

Today we have Professor Kimberly Jensen on the show. She teaches in the Department of...

 

File

John Randolph interview, "The House in the Garden: The Bakunin Family and the Romance of Russian Idealism" (with John Randolph), New Books in History (2008)

John Randolph, assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is our guest on...

 

File

Colin Gordon interview, "Mapping Decline: St: Louis and the Fate of the American City" (with Colin Gordon), New Books in History (2008)

This week we have Professor Colin Gordon of the University of Iowa on the show...

 

File

Donald A. Ritchie interview, "Electing FDR: The New Deal Campaign of 1932" (with Donald A. Ritchie), New Books in History (2008)

This week on New Books in History we interviewed Donald Ritchie about his new book...

 

File

Robert Gellately interview, "Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe" (with Robert Gellately), New Books in History (2008)

Today we're pleased to feature an interview with Robert Gellately of Florida State University. Professor...

 

File

Eric Gardner interview, "Jennie Carter: A Black Journalist of the Early West" (with Eric Gardner), New Books in History (2008)

Today we talked with Eric Gardner, who is chair and professor of English at Saginaw...

 

File

Laura Wittern-Keller interview, "Freedom of the Screen: Legal Challenges to Film Censorship 1915-1981" (with Laura Wittern-Keller), New Books in History (2008)

This week we interviewed Laura Wittern-Keller about her new book, Freedom of the Screen:...

 

File

J. D. Bowers interview, "Joseph Priestley and English Unitarianism in America" (with J. D. Bowers), New Books in History (2008)

Today we talk to J. D. Bowers of Northern Illinois University about his book ...

 

File

Matt Wasniewski interview, "Women in Congress, 1917-2006" (with Matt Wasniewski), New Books in History (2008)

This week we talk to Matt Wasniewski. Matt is the historian and publications manager in...

 

File

Abigail Foerstner interview, "James Van Allen: The First Eight Billion Miles" (with Abigail Foerstner), New Books in History (2008)

This week we feature an interview with Abigail Foerstner about her new book, James Van...

 

File

Kevin Mumford interview, "Newark: A History of Race, Rights and Riots in America" (with Kevin Mumford), New Books in History (2008)

Today we feature an interview with Kevin Mumford about his new book Newark. A...

 

File

Malcolm Rohrbough interview, "The Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775-1850" (with Malcolm Rohrbough), New Books in History (2008)

Welcome to New Books in History. In this, our inaugural podcast, we're honored to have...

 

PDF

The Public Face of Private Life: the Family-Presentation Ritual in Muscovite Russia, Everyday Life in Old Russia (2008)

This essay concerns a common rite of conviviality among the seventeenth-century Muscovite elite — the...

 

PDF

The Sexual Life of Muscovites: Evidence from the Foreign Accounts, Russian History/Histoire Russe (2008)
 

OpenURL

Was Ivan the Terrible Really ‘Terrible’? (or, Why We Should Build an Memory Archive), Kuro5hin (2005)
 

PDF

Absolutism and the New Men of Seventeenth-Century Russia, Modernizing Muscovy: Reform and Social Change in Seventeenth-Century Russia (2004)
 

PDF

Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich and the Demise of the Romanov Political Settlement, The Russian Review (2003)
 

PDF

A Distant World: Russian Relations with Europe Before Peter the Great, The World Engages Russia (2003)
 

PDF

The Muscovite State and its Personnel, Cambridge History of Russia. Volume 1, From Early Rus' to 1689 (2003)
 

OpenURL

Vybor Puty: Pochemu Moskovia ne stala Europoj, Rodina: Rossijskij istoricheskij zhurnal (2003)
 

OpenURL

Epublish or Perish, The Chronicle of Higher Education (2002)
 

OpenURL

A New Publishing Model for Academic History, Perspectives: The Newsletter of the American Historical Association (2002)
 

PDF

The Truth about Muscovy, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History (2002)
 

OpenURL

Do We Need the UP? A New Model for Scholarly Publishing in History, Journal of the Association of History and Computing (2001)
 

PDF

Herberstein and Origin of the European Image of Muscovite Government, 1549-1999. 450 Jahre Sigismund von Herbersteins Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii (2001)
 

PDF

Moscow, the Third Rome: The Origins and Transformations of a “Pivotal Moment”, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas (2001)
 

Link

Note to Self: UP Dead, Invent New Publishing Model, Journal of Electronic Publishing (2001)
 

OpenURL

Scholarly Publishing in Slavic Studies: An Emerging Model, Newsnet: The Newsletter of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (2001)
 

PDF

The Medieval Origins of the Modern Russian Crisis, History Publications (2001)
 

PDF

The Use of Foreign Descriptions of Russia as Sources for Muscovite History: A Methodological Guide, History Publications (2001)
 

OpenURL

AAASS Awards for Excellence on the Web, Newsnet. The Newsletter of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (2000)
 

OpenURL

Izobretenie kontseptsii “Moskva—Tretii Rim, Ab Imperio. Teoriia i istoriia natsional’nostei i natsionalizma v postsovetskom prostranstve (2000)
 

OpenURL

Russian History on the Internet: A Guide to Resources, Kritika. Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History (2000)
 

OpenURL

Slavic Studies on the Web: A Wish List, Newsnet. The Newsletter of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (2000)
 

OpenURL

The Future of the Past: Academic and Popular History in the Age of the Internet, Historically Speaking: The Newsletter of the Historical Society (2000)
 

OpenURL

Russian History on the Web: A Brief Introduction, Newsnet. The Newsletter of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (1999)
 

OpenURL

Sochineniia inostrantsev o Moskovii: metodoligicheskie rekomendatsii k rabote s nimi, Vestnik Universiteta Rossiiskoi Akademii Obrazovania (1999)
 

PDF

Muscovy in European Cosmographies, 1517-1544, Russian History/Histoire Russe (1998)
 

PDF

The Imaginary World of Semen Koltovskii: Genealogical Anxiety and Falsification in Late Seventeenth-Century Russia, Cahiers du monde russe (1998)

The later seventeenth century was an era of unprecedented social mobility in the upper reaches...

 

PDF

The Military Revolution, Administrative Development, and Cultural Change in Early Modern Russia, Journal of Early Modern History (1998)

Among Western historians it is generally agreed that the "military revolution" spurred bureaucratization, and that...

 

PDF

What did Russians Mean When They Called Themselves "Slaves of the Tsar"?, History Publications (1998)
 

PDF

Muscovite Personnel Records, 1475-1550: New Light on the Early Evolution of Russian Bureaucracy, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas (1997)
 

PDF

The Consequences of the Military Revolution in Muscovy in Comparative Perspective, Comparative Studies in Society and History (1996)

What has been called the early modern military revolution may be described most simply as...

 

PDF

The Zaporozhian Cossacks in Western Print to 1600, Harvard Ukrainian Studies (1995)
 

PDF

Elite Service Registry in Muscovy, 1500-1700, Russian History (1994)
 

Books

Everyone Knows Everything The Rise of Wikiworld and the Democratization of Knowledge (2008)
 

PDF

Foreign Descriptions of Muscovy: An Analytic Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources, History Publications (2008)
 

PDF

The Russian Elite in the Seventeenth Century. Volume 1: The Consular and Ceremonial Ranks of the Russian “Sovereign’s Court,” 1613-1713, History Publications (2004)
 

PDF

The Russian Elite in the Seventeenth Century. Volume 2: A Quantitative Analysis of the "Duma Ranks" 1613-1713, History Publications (2004)
 

The Russian Moment in World History (2003)
 

A People Born to Slavery’: Russia in Early Modern European Ethnography, 1476-1748 (2000)
 

Contributions to Books

Modernization in the Early Modern Context: The Case of Muscovy (with Jarmo Kotilaine), Modernizing Muscovy: Reform and Social Change in Seventeenth-Century Russia (2004)
 

Popular Press

A House Divided, Aladdin (2009)

A graphic novel for young people on the election of Abraham Lincoln.

 

Little Rock Nine, Aladdin (2008)

A graphic novel for young people on the integration of the Little Rocks schools in...

 

Sons of Liberty, Aladdin (2008)

A graphic novel for young people on the coming of the American Revolution.

 

Link

The Hive, The Atlantic monthly (2006)

Can thousands of Wikipedians be wrong? How an attempt to build an online encyclopedia touched...

 

OpenURL

How to Beat a Drug Test, The Atlantic monthly (2005)
 

OpenURL

Saddam's Fate, The Atlantic monthly (2004)
 

OpenURL

Life on Mars, The Atlantic monthly (2004)
 

OpenURL

The Unfree World: What the Demise of Soviet Communism Can Teach Us About the Prospect for Democracy in Iraq (with Jen Joynt), The Atlantic monthly (2004)
 

OpenURL

The Other Gender Gap: Maybe Boys Just Weren't Meant for the Classroom, The Atlantic monthly (2004)
 

OpenURL

Waterworld: The Global Scarcity of Water is Overblown, The Real Problem is Sanitation (with Jen Joynt), The Atlantic monthly (2003)
 

Other

PDF

The Present State of Russia In a Letter to a Friend at London; Written by an Eminent Person residing at the Great Czars (with Samuel Collins), History Publications (2008)