New Books in Eastern European Studies
846 episodes - English - Latest episode: 4 months ago - ★★★★ - 22 ratingsInterviews with Scholars of Eastern Europe about their New Books
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Episodes
Till Hilmar, "Deserved: Economic Memories After the Fall of the Iron Curtain" (Columbia UP, 2023)
January 10, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourAfter the fall of the Iron Curtain, people across the former socialist world saw their lives transformed. In just a few years, labor markets were completely disrupted, and the meanings attached to work were drastically altered. How did people who found themselves living under state socialism one day and capitalist democracy the next adjust to the changing social order and its new system of values? Till Hilmar examines memories of the postsocialist transition in East Germany and the Czech Repu...
Yaroslav Trofimov, "Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence" (Penguin, 2023)
January 09, 2024 09:00 - 43 minutesSince February 2022, a string of books have been published about the war in Ukraine but, for the most part, these have been histories and political studies. Only now are the “first drafts of history” from war reporters starting to emerge. Christopher Miller and Andrew Harding published last summer and they will be followed, in late January, by Simon Shuster’s inside account of Volodymyr Zelensky’s war. But, beating Shuster by a fortnight, is Yaroslav Trofimov’s Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Ru...
Kateryna Malaia, "Taking the Soviet Union Apart Room by Room: Domestic Architecture before and after 1991" (Northern Illinois UP, 2023)
January 07, 2024 09:00 - 44 minutesIn Taking the Soviet Union Apart Room by Room: Domestic Architecture Before and After 1991 (Northern Illinois UP, 2023) Kateryna Malaia examines the transformation of domestic spaces and architecture during the period of perestroika (1985-1991) and the first post-Soviet decades. In analysing how Soviet and post-Soviet city dwellers altered their homes amidst a period of profound socio-cultural change, Malaia provides unique insight into the relationship between the transformation of domestic ...
Bryan Mark Rigg, "The Rabbi Saved by Hitler's Soldiers: Rebbe Joseph Isaac Schneersohn and His Astonishing Rescue" (UP of Kansas, 2016)
January 07, 2024 09:00 - 55 minutesWhen Hitler invaded Warsaw in the fall of 1939, hundreds of thousands of civilians were trapped in the besieged city. The Rebbe Joseph Schneersohn, the leader of the ultra-orthodox Lubavitcher Jews, was among them. When word of his plight went out, a group of American Jews initiated what would ultimately become one of the strangest—and most miraculous—rescues of World War II. And this is the incredible but true story that Bryan Mark Rigg tells in The Rabbi Saved by Hitler's Soldiers: Rebbe Jo...
Pavel Khazanov, "The Russia that We Have Lost: Pre-Soviet Past as Anti-Soviet Discourse" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)
January 06, 2024 09:00 - 34 minutesIn 1917, Bolshevik revolutionaries overthrew the tsar of Russia and established a new, communist government, one that viewed the Imperial Russia of old as a righteously vanquished enemy. And yet, as Pavel Khazanov shows in The Russia that We Have Lost: Pre-Soviet Past as Anti-Soviet Discourse (U Wisconsin Press, 2023), after the collapse of Stalinism, a reconfiguration of Imperial Russia slowly began to emerge, recalling the culture of tsarist Russia not as a disgrace but as a glory, a past t...
Klaus Buchenau, "From Grand Estates to Grand Corruption: The Battle Over the Possessions of Prince Albert of Thurn and Taxis in Interwar Yugoslavia" (Brill, 2023)
January 06, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourToday I talked to Klaus Buchenau about his new book From Grand Estates to Grand Corruption: The Battle Over the Possessions of Prince Albert of Thurn and Taxis in Interwar Yugoslavia (Brill, 2023). When Yugoslavia was created in 1918, noble landowners still possessed vast parts of its territory especially in the northwestern half of the country which had formerly belonged to the Habsburg Monarchy. With approximately 38,000 hectares, Prince Albert of Thurn and Taxis was the largest private ow...
Noel Malcolm, "Useful Enemies: Islam and the Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450-1750" (Oxford UP, 2019)
January 03, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourSir Noel Malcolm’s captivating new book, Useful Enemies: Islam and the Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450-1750 (Oxford University Press, 2019), tells the story of Western European fascination with the Ottoman empire and Islam between the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the latter half of the 18th century. This beautifully argued, erudite monograph traces a textured encounter between two civilizational complexes and exposes the dynamic role that the Ottomans played in intra-E...
Lenny A. Ureña Valerio, "Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840-1920" (Ohio UP, 2019
January 02, 2024 09:00 - 53 minutesIn Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840-1920 (Ohio University Press, 2019), Lenny Ureña Valerio offers a transnational approach to Polish-German relations and nineteenth-century colonial subjectivities. She investigates key cultural dynamics in the history of medicine, colonialism, and migration that bring Germany and Prussian Poland closer to the colonial and postcolonial worlds in Africa and Latin America...
Jelena Subotić, "Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism" (Cornell UP, 2019)
January 01, 2024 09:00 - 50 minutesIn her new book Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism (Cornell University Press, 2019) Jelena Subotić asks why Holocaust memory continues to be so deeply troubled―ignored, appropriated, and obfuscated―throughout Eastern Europe, even though it was in those lands that most of the extermination campaign occurred. As part of accession to the European Union, Subotić shows, East European states were required to adopt, participate in, and contribute to the established Western ...
Christine E. Evans, “Between Truth and Time: A History of Soviet Central Television” (Yale UP, 2016)
December 29, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourIn Between Truth and Time: A History of Soviet Central Television (Yale University Press, 2016), Christine E. Evans reveals that Soviet television in the Brezhnev era was anything but boring. Whether producing music shows such as Little Blue Flame, game shows like Let's Go Girls or dramatic mini-series, the creators of Soviet programming in the 1950s through 1970s sought to produce television that was festive. Evans demonstrates that television programmers conducted audience research and audi...
Ilkay Yilmaz, "Ottoman Passports: Security and Geographic Mobility, 1876-1908" (Syracuse UP, 2023)
December 24, 2023 09:00 - 55 minutesIn Ottoman Passports: Security and Geographic Mobility, 1876-1908 (Syracuse University Press, 2023), İlkay Yılmaz reconsiders the history of two political issues, the Armenian and Macedonian questions, approaching both through the lens of mobility restrictions during the late Ottoman Empire from 1876 to 1908. Yılmaz investigates how Ottoman security perceptions and travel regulations were directly linked to transnational security regimes battling against anarchism. The Hamidian government tar...
Brian Jeffrey Maxson, "Early Modern Europe: Facts and Fictions" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
December 21, 2023 09:00 - 50 minutesToday I talked to Brian Maxson about his new book Early Modern Europe: Facts and Fictions (Bloomsbury, 2023). Through the exploration of nine common myths about the history and culture of early modern Europe, roughly 1350-1700, this book uses common assumptions to introduce newcomers to the period and its key figures, developments, and events. Many myths about early modern Europe originated in the 19th and 20th centuries and continue to appear today across popular media. In recent years, suc...
Magda Stroińska, "My Life in Propaganda: A Memoir about Language and Totalitarian Regimes" (Durvile, 2023)
December 21, 2023 05:00 - 1 hourMy Life in Propaganda: A Memoir about Language and Totalitarian Regimes (Durvile, 2023) is Magda Stroińska’s personal account of growing up with communist propaganda in Eastern Europe. She looks at the influence of her family history that contradicted what she was taught at school; the cognitive and emotional effects of compulsory school readings; socialist realist art and film; and Radio Free Europe and Voice of America and their role in shaping her generation’s collective view of the world....
Is Poland Back on Track? The Challenges for the New Government
December 18, 2023 09:00 - 46 minutesIn this episode of International Horizons, RBI's Director John Torpey interviews Grzegorz Ekiert, Chair of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, a propós of the recent election in Poland that installed a centrist government led by former prime minister and president of the European Council Donald Tusk. Ekiert starts by discussing the paradoxes behind the support of Putin and the antiliberalism in Eastern Europe given the imperialism these countries faced from the Russians his...
Gary Saul Morson, "Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter" (Harvard UP, 2023)
December 17, 2023 09:00 - 49 minutesSince the age of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov, Russian literature has posed questions about good and evil, moral responsibility, and human freedom with a clarity and intensity found nowhere else. In Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter (Harvard University Press, 2023), Dr. Gary Saul Morson delineates intellectual debates that have coursed through two centuries of Russian writing, as the greatest thinkers of the empire and then ...
Cristina A. Pop, "The Cancer Within: Reproduction, Cultural Transformation, and Health Care in Romania" (Rutgers UP, 2022)
December 17, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourIn The Cancer Within: Reproduction, Cultural Transformation, and Health Care in Romania (Rutgers UP, 2022), Cristina Pop examines cervical cancer in Romania as a point of entry into an anthropological reflection on contemporary health care, especially in the post-communist context. Cervical cancer prevention reveals the inner workings of emerging post-communist medicine, which aligns the state and the market, public and private health care providers, policy makers, and ordinary women. Fashion...
Mario Baghos, "From the Ancient Near East to Christian Byzantium: Kings, Symbols, and Cities" (Cambridge Scholars, 2021)
December 16, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourMario Baghos's book From the Ancient Near East to Christian Byzantium: Kings, Symbols, and Cities (Cambridge Scholars, 2021) combines concepts from the history of religions with Byzantine studies in its assessments of kings, symbols, and cities in a diachronic and cross-cultural analysis. The work attests, firstly, that the symbolic art and architecture of ancient cities—commissioned by their monarchs expressing their relationship with their gods—show us that religiosity was inherent to such ...
Jonathan Daly and Leonid Trofimov, "Seven Myths of the Russian Revolution" (Hackett, 2023)
December 15, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour"This fascinating volume is a major contribution to our understanding of the Russian Revolution, from World War I to consolidation of the Bolshevik regime. The seven myths include the exaggeration of Rasputin's influence; a purported conspiracy behind the February Revolution; the treasonous Bolshevik dependence on German support; the multiple Anastasia pretenders to the royal inheritance; the antisemitic claims about 'Judeo-Bolsheviks'; distortions about America’s intervention in the civil wa...
Louis-Alexandre Berg, "Governing Security After War: The Politics of Institutional Change in the Security Sector" (Oxford UP, 2022)
December 14, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourSecurity assistance has become the largest component of international peacebuilding and stabilisation efforts, and a primary tool for responding to civil war and insurgency. Donors and peacekeepers not only train and equip military and police forces, they also seek to overhaul their structure, management, and oversight. Yet, we know little about why these efforts succeed or fail. Efforts to restructure security forces in Iraq, Libya, South Sudan, Timor-Leste, and the Democratic Republic of Co...
Christian Raffensperger and Donald Ostrowski, "The Ruling Families of Rus: Clan, Family and Kingdom" (Reaktion Books, 2023)
December 12, 2023 05:00 - 1 hourIn the current context, where Vladimir Putin justifies his war against Ukraine by insisting on an inevitable, unbroken teleology that binds Kyiv to Moscow, he need to critically reexamine such interpretations is painfully evident. Christian Raffensperger and Donald Ostrowski's book The Ruling Families of Rus: Clan, Family and Kingdom (Reaktion Books, 2023) takes a brave and important step in that direction by charting a history of Kyivan Rus’ through the framework of a history of families. T...
Martin C. Dean, "Investigating Babyn Yar: Shadows from the Valley of Death" (Lexington Books, 2023)
December 11, 2023 09:00 - 36 minutesInvestigating Babyn Yar: Shadows from the Valley of Death (Lexington Books, 2023) pieces together the story of the destruction of Kyiv's Jews using history's shattered fragments. Martin Dean traces their journey out of the city, using discarded clothing and distinctive terrain as a trail of breadcrumbs to identify the killing site in the ravine. Shadowy figures in photographs and escape stories from the mass grave reveal the suffering of many that is documented by the survival of just a few. ...
Everyday Life Behind the Berlin Wall
December 11, 2023 09:00 - 34 minutesIn this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey interviews historian and journalist Katja Hoyer about her book Beyond the Wall: A History of East Germany (Basic Books, 2023). The conversation begins with a discussion of the personal reasons that the author, herself born in the GDR, wanted to cover the untold stories of her native country – which can no longer be found on a map. Hoyer also discusses the rationale behind the relative gender parity that existed in the GDR as ...
Ramona Dima, "Queer Culture in Romania, 1920–2018" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)
December 08, 2023 09:00 - 49 minutesRamona Dima's book Queer Culture in Romania, 1920–2018 (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023) is an in depth, extensive study of Romanian queer cultural products. It brings an essential contribution to the literature on Central and South Eastern European gender studies, post-communism studies, media, and cultural studies, as well as transnational queer studies. The book looks at Romanian queer culture ”from inside”, and from the acknowledgment that the research process is guided by the sensitivity of the...
Anna M. Grzymała-Busse, "Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State" (Princeton UP, 2023)
December 03, 2023 09:00 - 55 minutesIn Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State (Princeton University Press, 2023), political scientist Anna Grzymała-Busse corrects a long-standing distortion in the study of state formation in Europe, writing religion back into the story and examining, at once pithily and methodically, the multiple contributions of the Roman Church to the emergence of modern practices of secular statehood. Sacred Foundations expands the conventional geography of medieval Europe...
Empires of the Steppes: A History of the Nomadic Tribes Who Shaped Civilisation
December 02, 2023 09:00 - 58 minutesThe “barbarian” nomads of the Eurasian steppes have played a decisive role in world history, but their achievements have gone largely unnoticed. These nomadic tribes have produced some of the world’s greatest conquerors: Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, among others. Their deeds still resonate today. Indeed, these nomads built long-lasting empires, facilitated the first global trade of the Silk Road and disseminated religions, technology, knowledge and goods of every description th...
Peter Samsonov, "IS-2: Development, Design, and Production of Stalin's Warhammer" (Military History Group, 2022)
November 26, 2023 09:00 - 37 minutesThe IS-2 is the quintessential Soviet heavy tank from World War 2. Heavily armored and boasting a fearsome 122mm gun, this tank matched the German panzers on the Eastern front by more than just its fierce appearance. In Peter Samsonov's book IS-2: Development, Design, and Production of Stalin's Warhammer (Military History Group, 2022), this tank's history is told from the beginning of the Soviet heavy tank programme until the very end of World War 2, in the most detailed and complete account...
Katerina Lagos, "The Fourth of August Regime and Greek Jewry, 1936-1941" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)
November 26, 2023 05:00 - 1 hourDelving into a traditionally underexplored period, this book focuses on the treatment of Greek Jews under the dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas in the years leading up to the Second World War. Almost 86% of Greek Jews died in the Holocaust, leading many to think this was because of Metaxas and his fascist ideology. However, the situation in Greece was much more complicated; in fact, Metaxas in his policies often attempted to quash anti-Semitism. The Fourth of August Regime and Greek Jewry, 193...
Maria Popova and Oxana Shevel, "Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States" (Polity, 2023)
November 24, 2023 09:00 - 56 minutesRussia and Ukraine have alternative histories and alternative destinies. After the Soviet Union collapsed - depending on who you spoke to – they were either a single people artificially divided and destined for reunification, or one nation with a distinct history, culture, and language serially repressed by a dominant neighbour. In Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States (Polity, 2023), Maria Popova and Oxana Shevel argue that: "The root of the difficult Russia–Ukraine relat...
The Idea of "Central Europe" from Naumann to Kundera
November 24, 2023 09:00 - 44 minutesCentral Europe has long been infamous as a region beset by war, a place where empires clashed and world wars began. In The Middle Kingdoms: A New History of Central Europe (Basic Books, 2023) Martyn Rady offers the definitive history of the region, demonstrating that Central Europe has always been more than merely the fault line between West and East. Even as Central European powers warred with their neighbors, the region developed its own cohesive identity and produced tremendous accomplishm...
Paul Le Blanc, "Lenin: Responding to Catastrophe, Forging Revolution" (Pluto Press, 2023)
November 23, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourReturning to the New Books Network today is Paul Le Blanc, here to discuss his new book Lenin: Responding to Catastrophe, Forging Revolution (Pluto Press, 2023). The book deals with Lenin’s life and thought, looking at his ideas in their original context. Starting from his early development and thoughts on the importance of the vanguard, through the revolutions of 1917 and to his political mistakes and attempt at course-correction in the final years of his life, Le Blanc’s study is an accessi...
David K. Zimmerman, "Ensnared Between Hitler and Stalin: Refugee Scientists in the USSR" (U Toronto Press, 2023)
November 22, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourIn the 1930s, hundreds of scientists and scholars fled Hitler’s Germany. Many found safety, but some made the disastrous decision to seek refuge in Stalin’s Soviet Union. The vast majority of these refugee scholars were arrested, murdered, or forced to flee the Soviet Union during the Great Terror. Many of the survivors then found themselves embroiled in the Holocaust. Ensnared Between Hitler and Stalin: Refugee Scientists in the USSR (U Toronto Press, 2023) explores the forced migration of t...
Andrew Monaghan and Richard Connolly. "The Sea in Russian Strategy" (Manchester UP, 2023)
November 22, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourThe common perception of Russia's status as a great power is often portrayed as being based largely on land power. Being the largest country in the world and fielding massively large field armies, there is some considerable truth to this perception. By contrast, when concerning Russian capabilities as a naval power, the picture is different. Common references to the Battle of Tsushima during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), the Kursk submarine incident of 2000, and more recently the sinking ...
Antonis Klapsis et al., "The Greek Junta and the International System: A Case Study of Southern European Dictatorships, 1967-74" (Routledge, 2020)
November 20, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourThe Greek Junta and the International System: A Case Study of Southern European Dictatorships, 1967-74 (Routledge, 2020) examines the international dimensions of the Greek military dictatorship of 1967 to 1974 and uses it as a case study to evaluate the major shifts occurring in the international system during a period of rapid change. The policies of the major nation-states in both East and West were determined by realistic Cold War considerations. At the same time, the Greek junta, a profou...
Maxim Shrayer, "I Saw It: Ilya Selvinsky and the Legacy of Bearing Witness to the Shoah" (Academic Studies Press, 2013)
November 19, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourIn I Saw It: Ilya Selvinsky and the Legacy of Bearing Witness to the Shoah (Academic Studies Press, 2013), based on archival and field research and previously unknown historical evidence, Maxim D. Shrayer introduces the work of Ilya Selvinsky, the first Jewish-Russian poet to depict the Holocaust (Shoah) in the occupied Soviet territories. In January 1942, while serving as a military journalist, Selvinsky witnessed the immediate aftermath of the massacre of thousands of Jews outside the Crime...
Nicole Eaton, "German Blood, Slavic Soil: How Nazi Königsberg Became Soviet Kaliningrad" (Cornell UP, 2023)
November 18, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourGerman Blood, Slavic Soil: How Nazi Königsberg Became Soviet Kaliningrad (Cornell UP, 2023) reveals how Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, twentieth-century Europe's two most violent revolutionary regimes, transformed a single city and the people who lived there. During World War II, this single city became an epicenter in the apocalyptic battle between their two regimes. Drawing on sources and perspectives from both sides, Nicole Eaton explores not only what Germans and Soviets thought about...
Anthony Tucker-Jones, "Battle of the Cities: Urban Warfare on the Eastern Front" (Pen & Sword Military, 2023)
November 17, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourThe common image of World War II (1939-1945) is that of swift armored maneuver advances supported by combined arms, especially overwhelming air support. What often is neglected is that the difficult and often brutal task of urban combat was a common feature of the conflict as well. Although a few famous examples such as Stalingrad, Leningrad, and later Berlin receive considerable attention, this is too often a neglected aspect of historical examination of the Eastern Front. In response to thi...
Bálint Madlovics and Bálint Magyar, "The Russia-Ukraine War, Volumes 1-2" (CEU Press, 2023)
November 17, 2023 09:00 - 52 minutesIn this episode of the CEU Press Podcast Series, host Bálint Madlovics sat down for a fascinating discussion on the impact of the war on Ukraine’s patronal democracy, with his co-editor Bálint Magyar and with Oksana Huss, Mikhail Minakov and Kálmán Mizsei, who all contributed to the new volumes from CEU Press on the Russia-Ukraine War. Volume one is entitled Ukraine's Patronal Democracy and the Russian Invasion and volume two Russia's Imperial Endeavor and Its Geopolitical Consequences. Both ...
Natasha Wheatley, "The Life and Death of States: Central Europe and the Transformation of Modern Sovereignty" (Princeton UP, 2023)
November 12, 2023 09:00 - 46 minutesNatasha Wheatley is an Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University. Her bold and riveting debut monograph, The Life and Death of States: Central Europe and the Transformation of Modern Sovereignty (Princeton University Press, 2023), narrates the transition from empire to nation-states in the heartlands of Europe once governed by the Habsburg Empire. The book traces the modern history of sovereignty over one hundred tumultuous years, explaining how a regime of nation-states theoreti...
Writing the History of Money and Monetary Policy
November 08, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourWhat do the histories of currency and monetary policy tell us about societies at large, political structures, and cultures? Ekaterina Pravilova and Rebecca Spang tackle these questions, respectively, in two important books that examine the history of the Russian ruble from the time of Catherine the Great through the Soviet period, and the history of money during the time of time of the French Revolution. Their conversation delves not only into the past, but into the economic theories and assu...
Valerie Kivelson et al., "Picturing Russian Empire" (Oxford UP, 2023)
November 07, 2023 09:00 - 57 minutesPicturing Russian Empire (Oxford UP, 2023) appears as Russia’s imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine grinds on. The stakes could not be higher. It follows that grappling with Russia’s imperial history is inescapable. After all, “[s]elective, exaggerated or patently false reimaginings” of the past “have been central to Russia’s justification of its claims on its neighbor to the southwest,” write today’s guests in the introduction to his new edited volume. Picturing Russian Empire offer...
Jan Selling, "Romani Liberation: A Northern Perspective on Emancipatory Struggles and Progress" (Central European UP, 2022)
November 05, 2023 09:00 - 58 minutesWell-known for his work in Critical Romani Studies, Jan Selling talks with Lavinia Stan about his latest book. Centered on Scandinavia, Romani Liberation: A Northern Perspective on Emancipatory Struggles and Progress (Central European UP, 2022) challenges the stereotype describing Romani as passive and incapable of responsibility and agency. Selling also criticizes benevolent but paternalistic attitudes that center on Romani victimhood. The interview offers an overview of the various chapters...
Roger R. Reese, "Russia's Army: A History from the Napoleonic Wars to the War in Ukraine" (U Oklahoma Press, 2023)
November 05, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourCzar Alexander III (1845-1894) is reported to have stated that "Russia only has two allies: the army and the navy." Military power has always been important to Russia in establishing itself as a great power, especially as the largest country in the world spanning two continents. Beginning with the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars (1789-1815), Russia has been involved in many major military conflicts that have engulfed Europe to the present day - especially the on-going war in Ukraine...
David Alan Parnell, "Belisarius & Antonina: Love and War in the Age of Justinian" (Oxford UP, 2023)
November 04, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourBelisarius and Antonina were titans in the Roman world some 1,500 years ago. Belisarius was the most well-known general of his age, victor over the Persians, conqueror of the Vandals and the Goths, and as if this were not enough, wealthy beyond imagination. His wife, Antonina, was an impressive person in her own right. She made a name for herself by traveling with Belisarius on his military campaigns, deposing a pope, and scheming to disgrace important Roman officials. Together, the pair were...
Agata Fijalkowski, "Law, Visual Culture, and the Show Trial" (Routledge, 2023)
October 30, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourAddressing the relationship between law and the visual, this book examines the importance of photography in Central, East, and Southeast European show trials. The dispensation of justice during communist rule in Albania, East Germany, and Poland was reliant on legal propaganda, making the visual a fundamental part of the legitimacy of the law. Analysing photographs of trials, Agata Fijalkowski's Law, Visual Culture, and the Show Trial (Routledge, 2023) examines how this message was conveyed t...
Marat Grinberg, "The Soviet Jewish Bookshelf: Jewish Culture and Identity Between the Lines" (Brandeis UP, 2023)
October 29, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourIn The Soviet Jewish Bookshelf: Jewish Culture and Identity Between the Lines (Brandeis UP, 2023), Marat Grinberg argues that in an environment where Judaism had been all but destroyed, and a public Jewish presence routinely delegitimized, reading uniquely provided many Soviet Jews with an entry to communal memory and identity. The bookshelf was both a depository of selective Jewish knowledge and often the only conspicuously Jewish presence in their homes. The typical Soviet Jewish bookshelf ...
Linda Kinstler, "Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends" (PublicAffairs, 2023)
October 26, 2023 08:00 - 43 minutesIn 1965, five years after the capture of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, one of his Mossad abductors was sent back to South America to kill another fugitive Nazi, the so-called “butcher of Riga,” Latvian Herberts Cukurs. Cukurs was shot. On his corpse, the assassins left pages from the closing speech of the chief British prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg: “After this ordeal to which mankind has been submitted, mankind itself . . . comes to this Court and cries: ‘T...
Owen Matthews, "Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin's War Against Ukraine" (Mudlark, 2022)
October 25, 2023 08:00 - 59 minutesAn astonishing deep dive into the war in Ukraine - from the corridors of the Kremlin to the trenches of Mariupol. The Russo-Ukrainian War is the most serious geopolitical crisis since the Second World War - and yet at the heart of the conflict is a mystery. Vladimir Putin lurched from a calculating, subtle master of opportunity to a reckless gambler, putting his regime - and Russia itself - at risk of destruction. Why? Drawing on over 25 years' experience working in Moscow, journalist Owen M...
Trenton W. Holliday, "Cro-Magnon: The Story of the Last Ice Age People of Europe" (Columbia UP, 2023)
October 23, 2023 08:00 - 42 minutesDuring the Last Ice Age, Europe was a cold, dry place teeming with mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, reindeer, bison, cave bears, cave hyenas, and cave lions. It was also the home of people physically indistinguishable from humans today, commonly known as the Cro-Magnons. Our knowledge of them comes from either their skeletons or the tools, art, and debris they left behind. Cro-Magnon: The Story of the Last Ice Age People of Europe (Columbia UP, 2023) tells the story of these dynamic and resilie...
Philip Jenkins, "A Storm of Images: Iconoclasm and Religious Reformation in the Byzantine World" (Baylor UP, 2023)
October 22, 2023 08:00 - 33 minutesIn the eighth century, the Byzantine Empire began a campaign to remove or suppress sacred images that depicted Christ, the Virgin, or other holy figures, whether in paintings, mosaics, murals, or other media. In some cases, the campaign extended to breaking or wrecking images through what became known as iconoclasm. Over the following years, the emperors' zealous movement involved other acts that closely foreshadowed the Reformation movement that would sweep Western Europe in the sixteenth ce...
Sonja K. Pieck, "Mnemonic Ecologies: Memory and Nature Conservation along the Former Iron Curtain" (MIT Press, 2023)
October 22, 2023 08:00 - 52 minutesThe first book-length scholarly treatment of Germany's largest conservation project, the Green Belt, Mnemonic Ecologies: Memory and Nature Conservation along the Former Iron Curtain (MIT Press, 2023) by Dr. Sonja Pieck presents a new interdisciplinary approach: that effective restoration and conservation of wounded land must merge ecology with memory. Since the Cold War's end in 1989, German conservationists have transformed the once-militarised border between East and West Germany into an ex...