New Books in National Security
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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676
N. M. Sambaluk, “The Other Space Race: Eisenhow...
Many people place the beginning of the American space program at 7:28pm, October 4, 1957 – the moment the Soviet Union launched the first satellite, Sputnik I, into orbit. This event prompted the United States to open up its own crash program to put f...
85 min
677
Robert Kagan, “The Jungle Grows Back: America a...
Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a columnist for The Washington Post. He is also the author of The Return of History and the End of Dreams, Dangerous Nation, Of Paradise and Power, and A Twilight Struggle.
46 min
678
Ching Kwan Lee, “The Specter of Global China: P...
Today we talked with Ching Kwan Lee, professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has just published The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa (University of Chicago Press, 2018),
47 min
679
Roland Philipps, “A Spy Named Orphan: the Enigm...
Donald Maclean was one of the most treacherous and productive – for Moscow spies of the Cold War era and a key member of the infamous “Cambridge Five” spy ring, yet the complete extent of this shy, intelligent,
58 min
680
Gill Bennett, “The Zinoviev Letter: The Conspir...
The Zinoviev Affair is a story of one of the most long-lasting and enduring conspiracy theories in modern British politics, an intrigue that still resonates nearly one-hundred years after it was written. Almost certainly a forgery,
51 min
681
Jeffrey D. Sachs, "A New Foreign Policy: Beyond...
An interview with Jeffrey D. Sachs
56 min
682
Brian VanDeMark, “The Road to Disaster: A New H...
Many books have been written on the tragic decisions regarding Vietnam made by the young stars of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Yet despite millions of words of analysis and reflection, no historian has been able to explain why such decent,
26 min
683
Thomas Schmidinger, “Rojava: Revolution, War an...
Thomas Schmidinger‘s Rojava: Revolution, War and the Future of Syria’s Kurds (Pluto Press, 2018) is an exploration of the history and present of Syrian Kurdistan. It is an excellent introduction to a fraught topic, one drawn from extensive,
57 min
684
P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, “LikeWar: ...
LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), by P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, outlines the history of social media platforms and their use in popular culture and modern conflict.
48 min
685
Megan Black, “The Global Interior: Mineral Fron...
Of all of the departments of the U.S. government you might expect to be implicated in the exercise of imperialism, the Department of the Interior might not be the first one that you would think of. Of course,
70 min
686
Samuel Helfont, “Compulsion in Religion: Saddam...
Samuel Helfont‘s Compulsion in Religion: Saddam Hussein, Islam and the Roots of Insurgencies in Iraq (Oxford University Press, 2018) makes an invaluable contribution to an understanding of Iraqi strongman’s Saddam Hussein harnessing of Islam in support...
57 min
687
James M. Dorsey, “China and the Middle East: Ve...
For all that China’s twenty-first-century ‘rise’ is a much-discussed notion both within the country and globally, it is an increasingly difficult concept to grasp or keep pace with. As a result, books which dissect and analyse developments from a regio...
59 min
688
Nick Kapur, “Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict ...
Nick Kapur’s Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo (Harvard University Press, 2018) is an ambitious look at the transformations of Japanese society after the massive protests against renewal of the US-Japan Security Treaty (abbrev...
64 min
689
N.A.J. Taylor and R. Jacobs, eds., “Reimagining...
N.A.J. Taylor and Robert Jacobs,’s edited volume Reimagining Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Nuclear Humanities in the Post-Cold War (Routledge, 2017) developed out of a special journal issue of Critical Military Studies organized on the occasion of the 70th a...
120 min
690
Madiha Afzal, “Pakistan Under Siege: Extremism,...
Pakistan Under Siege: Extremism, Society, and the State (Brookings, 2018) provides a unique insight into Pakistan’s complex and multi-layered relationship with militancy and the role of the state in Islamicizing society in a way that Pakistanis may in ...
67 min
691
Stephen Tankel, “With Us and Against Us: How Am...
With Us and Against Us: How America’s Partners Help and Hinder the War on Terror (Columbia University Press, 2018) offers readers a fresh, insightful and new perspective on US counterterrorism cooperation with complex countries like Saudi Arabia,
59 min
692
John M. Curatola, “Bigger Bombs for a Brighter ...
Conventional wisdom has long held the position that between 1945 and 1949, not only did the United States enjoy a monopoly on atomic weapons, but that it was prepared to use them if necessary against an increasingly hostile Soviet Union.
50 min
693
Craig Symonds, “World War II at Sea: A Global H...
Though there are numerous books about the naval history of the Second World War, very few of them attempt to cover the span of the conflict within the confines of a single volume. Craig Symonds undertakes this challenge in his book World War II at Sea:...
53 min
694
Sarah Snyder, “From Selma to Moscow: How Human ...
Human rights as a concern in U.S. foreign policy and international politics has been well-documented, particularly in studies of the Carter Administration. However, how human rights emerged as an issue in U.S.
55 min
695
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham and Jeffrey N. Wasse...
“Knowing about China,” Maura Elizabeth Cunningham and Jeffrey Wasserstrom note in the preface to China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2018), is today “an essential part of being an engaged citizen” (p.
59 min
696
Joy Rohde, “Armed with Expertise: The Militariz...
In Armed with Expertise: The Militarization of American Social Research During the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2013), Joy Rohde discusses the relationship between the social sciences, academia, and national security institutions.
47 min
697
Guy Burton, “Rising Powers and the Arab-Israeli...
In Rising Powers and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Since 1947 (Lexington Books, 2018), Guy Burton, who teaches politics and international relations at the Mohammed bin Rashid School of Government, studies how five rising powers—Brazil, Russia, India,
30 min
698
Odd Arne Westad, “The Cold War: A World History...
There have been many histories and treatments of the Cold War, few however have the breath, range and definitiveness of Harvard Professor Odd Arne Westad’s new take on the subject: The Cold War: A World History (Basic Books, 2017).
65 min
699
Jacob N. Shapiro, “Small Wars, Big Data: The In...
Small Wars, Big Data: The Information Revolution in Modern Conflict (Princeton University Press, 2018), Eli Berman, Joseph H. Felter, and Jacob N. Shapiro, takes a data-based approach to examine how actions can affect violence in asymmetric conflicts.
53 min
700
Nancy Mitchell, “Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race a...
Today we talked with Nancy Mitchell about her book Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War, published by Stanford University Press in 2016 as part of the Cold War International History Project Series.
47 min