New Books In World Affairs

Historians are by their nature public intellectuals because they are intellectuals who write about, well, the public. Alas, many historians seem to forget the “public” part and concentrate on the “intellectual” part. Our guest today–sponsored by the National History Center–is not among them. Julian Zelizer has used his historical research and writing to inform the public and public debate in a great variety of fora: magazines, newspapers, online outlets, radio, TV–and now New Books in History. Today we’ll be talking about his efforts to bring the historian’s voice to the public and his most recent book Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security From WWII to the War on Terrorism (Basic Books, 2010) (which itself is a contribution to that effort). The book proves that in the U.S. politics does not “stop at the water’s edge”–not now, not ever. From the very beginning of the Republic, American foreign policy has been informed by a subtle mix of electoral politics, ideology, and institutional infighti

Why the heck is “America” called “America” and not, say, “Columbia?” You’ll find the answer to that question and many more in Toby Lester‘s fascinating and terrifically readable new book 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 (Free Press, 2009). As Toby points out, medieval Europeans thought the earth had three parts–Europe, Asia and Africa, with Jerusalem at the dead center and water all around. (And no, they didn’t think the earth was flat…). But in 1507 a peculiar item appeared–the Waldseemuller map— that outlined a fourth part of the world called “America,” with the Atlantic Ocean on the one side and an unnamed ocean on the other. Here’s the really curious thing though: at that time no European had ever seen what we now call the “Pacific Ocean.” Balboa was the first to see it, and he didn’t do so until 1513. So where did Waldseemuller and his colleagues get the idea that there was a continent between Europe and Asia and tha

This is the first in a series of podcasts that New Books in History is offering in conjunction with the National History Center. The NHC and Oxford University Press have initiated a book series called “Reinterpreting History.”The volumes in the series aim to convey to readers how and why historians revise and reinterpret their understanding of the past, and they do so by focusing on a particular historical topic, event, or idea that has long gained the attention of historians. The first contribution to the “Reinterpreting History” series is Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal (Oxford University Press, 2008). Today we’ll be talking to the editors of the volume, Jack P. Greene and Philip D. Morgan. You may think that historians normally study states or nations, like France and China. But they also study areas of international or imperial interaction. The most famous example of this sort of “international” history is Fernand Braudel’s The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (1949

In 1983, when I was in college, I participated in something called a “Die-In.” A group of us set up crosses on the commons and threw ourselves on the ground as if we were dead. The idea, such as it was, was to suggest that nuclear weapons were bad and should be done away with. Quite honestly, I didn’t really think it would work (to put it mildly). But as Larry Wittner shows in his compelling Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford, 2009), I was wrong, or at least partially wrong. Larry demonstrates that the nuclear disarmament movement had an impact on government policy. Politicians, not just here in the US but also in unlikely places like the USSR, actually listened to the protesters. But they sensed that a lot of people–like Einstein and me–were very uncomfortable with mutually assured destruction and wanted something done about it. Ronald Reagan listened. And so did Mikhail Gorbachev. After reading Larry’s book, I’m thinking I may organize another “Die-In.”

It’s the classic historical question: Why did the Roman Empire fall? There are doubtless lots of reasons. One historian has noted 210 of them. No wonder Gibbon said that we should stop “inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed,” but rather “be surprised that it lasted so long.” Indeed. But 210 reasons do not amount to a satisfying explanation. Historical events are complex, but historical writing must be parsimonious if it is to achieve its primary aim, that is, to make the past clear to us. Happily, Adrian Goldsworthy‘s How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower (Yale UP, 2009) does a marvelous job of boiling it all down. He proposes that structural explanations–governmental inefficiency, economic decline, imperial overstretch and the 207 others–are fine, but they really won’t do the job in this case. The late Roman Empire was ill, but it was hardly on its death bed in the third and fourth centuries. Moreover, even at its weakest moments, the Empire was hugely more powerful than any of its competitors. In orde

How different is the United States from other nations? American leaders and common folk have often said it’s very different. The Founding Fathers said it, Abraham Lincoln said it, Woodrow Wilson said it, Franklin Roosevelt said it, Bill Clinton said it, and George W. Bush said it–and they were hardly the only ones. It certainly seems that the history and nature of United States are quite different from other comparable nations. Americans often say that the U.S., almost uniquely, has been and remains ‘a nation of immigrants,’ the ‘land of opportunity,’ and the ‘arsenal of democracy.’ But how much of it is true? In his provocative new book The Myth of American Exceptionalism (Yale UP, 2009), Godfrey Hodgson attempts to answer this important question. He’s the right man to do so. Though British, he has observed the U.S. professionally for nearly half a century. Thus he has both the perspective of the detached outsider and the knowledge of the native insider. He challenges Americans to look at themselves as other

First, the conventional wisdom. Because Homo sapiens are a young species and haven’t had time to genetically differentiate, we modern humans are all basically genetically identical. Because Homo sapiens figured out ways to use culture to overcome natural selection, human genetic evolution ceased ages ago. Because Homo sapiens are genetically very similar and not subject to natural selection, the differences that we see today among modern human groups are the result of cultural processes, not genes. Not so say Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending in their challenging and sure-to-be-controversial new book The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution (Basic Books, 2009). We are extraordinarily similar genetically, but the minor differences occasionally had very important consequences: a difference of one or two nucleotides–among billions–could mean life or death for entire populations.These minor differences, where advantageous, were selected for and spread in the ordinary natural sel

My Midwestern high school was pretty typical. There were freaks, geeks, jocks, drama-types. Some were white. And some were black. All were recognizably “American.” The only unusual thing about Wichita Southeast was the presence of a reasonably large number of Vietnamese. That’s right, Vietnamese. We didn’t know what to think of them. We didn’t mingle with them nor they with us. They had their own classes in their own language. And they had come from someplace that we knew about from the news, or perhaps from a father who had served in “the War.” In hindsight, Southeast wasn’t that unusual in this regard. As Carl Bon Tempo shows in his engaging Americans at the Gates: The United States and Refugees during the Cold War (Princeton UP, 2008), communities throughout the U.S. were destination points for refugees from all over the world during the Cold War. Some of them fled war, as in the case of the Vietnamese. Others fled oppression, as in the case of the Cubans. Still others were opportunists. But all of them w

We don’t think much about institutions. They just seem to “be there.” But they have a history, as Ian McNeely and Lisa Wolverton show in their important new book Reinventing Knowledge. From Alexandria to the Internet (W.W. Norton, 2008). The book deals specifically with institutions in which knowledge has been created, preserved, and transmitted: the library, the monastery, the university, the Republic of Letters, the academic disciplines, and the laboratory. In clear, readable and spicy prose, McNeely and Wolverton show how each of these institutions was created, how they developed, and how they have been molded to novel purposes in successive ages. Reading Reinventing Knowledge is especially enlightening in that it demonstrates an important fact about history: the present is always assimilating and transforming the past. As McNeely and Wolverton show, our beloved “ancient” institutions are actually quite modern in their form and function, if not name. What we call a “university” would be unrecognizable to

Today I’m very pleased to have Professor Walter Moss of Eastern Michigan University on the program. Walt and I have known each others for years, and I’ve long admired him. Walt is best known for his many works on Russian history, though his new book–the topic of our discussion today–is nothing less than an interpretation of the entire twentieth century. An Age of Progress? Clashing Twentieth Century Global Forces (Anthem Press, 2008) is a remarkable book. Readable yet scholarly, balanced yet challenging, expansive yet detailed, the book is a sort of model for the way “big” history should be written. If you seek insight into the meaning of the twentieth century for the twenty first, you should read this book. I’m glad I did. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Today we’re pleased to feature an interview with Robert Gellately of Florida State University. Professor Gellately is a distinguished and widely read historian of Germany, with a particular focus on the Nazi period. He’s the author of a number of path-breaking books, including The Politics of Economic Despair: Shopkeepers and German Politics, 1890-1914 (Sage Publications, 1974), The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933-1945 (Oxford University Press, 1990), and Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945 (Oxford University Press, 2001). Today we’ll be discussing his most recent work Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007). Richard Pipes says of the book: “A most impressive account of the tragedies that befell the world during the first half of the twentieth century. Not the least merit of the book is that, unlike most historians who treat Lenin as a well-meaning idealist, he places him along side Stalin and Hitler as a founder of