New Books In World Affairs

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