Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchWriting the History of Money and Monetary Policy
Episode 86
What do the histories of currency and monetary policy tell us about societies at large, political structures, and cultures? Ekaterina Pravilova and R…
2 years, 10 months ago
Valerie Kivelson et al., "Picturing Russian Empire" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Episode 254
Picturing Russian Empire (Oxford UP, 2023) appears as Russia’s imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine grinds on. The stakes could not be highe…
2 years, 10 months ago
Roger R. Reese, "Russia's Army: A History from the Napoleonic Wars to the War in Ukraine" (U Oklahoma Press, 2023)
Episode 253
Czar 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 im…
2 years, 10 months ago
On Wars: A Discussion with Michael Mann
Episode 6
“Irrationality rules” in war, Michael Mann writes in his magisterial 2023 book, On Wars (Yale UP, 2023), a history that begins with the Roman Republi…
2 years, 10 months ago
Marat Grinberg, "The Soviet Jewish Bookshelf: Jewish Culture and Identity Between the Lines" (Brandeis UP, 2023)
Episode 450
In The Soviet Jewish Bookshelf: Jewish Culture and Identity Between the Lines (Brandeis UP, 2023), Marat Grinberg argues that in an environment where…
2 years, 10 months ago
Owen Matthews, "Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin's War Against Ukraine" (Mudlark, 2022)
Episode 200
An 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 …
2 years, 10 months ago
Immo Rebitschek and Aaron B. Retish, "Social Control under Stalin and Khrushchev: The Phantom of a Well-Ordered State" (U Toronto Press, 2023)
Episode 252
How did the Soviet Union control the behaviour of its people? How did the people themselves engage with the official rules and the threat of violence…
2 years, 11 months ago
The Family in History, History in the Family: National Identity in Nineteenth-century Kyiv and Immigration Politics in West Germany after 1955
Episode 1373
In two new books, Fabian Baumann and Lauren Stokes examine the past through the lens of family structures and relations. In Dynasty Divided: A Family…
2 years, 11 months ago
C. J. Wagevier, "Fighting for Napoleon's Army in Russia: A POW's Memoir" (Pen and Sword, 2023)
Episode 197
In 1812 the French emperor Napoleon decided to invade Russia. For this purpose, he gathered an army of half a million men and women, consisting of so…
2 years, 11 months ago
Rory Finnin, "Blood of Others: Stalin's Crimean Atrocity and the Poetics of Solidarity" (U Toronto Press, 2022)
Episode 28
Blood of Others: Stalin's Crimean Atrocity and the Poetics of Solidarity (U Toronto Press, 2022) offers a cultural history of Crimea and the Black Se…
2 years, 11 months ago