Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchAlexandra Popoff, "Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century" (Yale UP, 2019)
Episode 93
Memory and truth are malleable and nowhere more so than in the Soviet Union. To be a writer in that country was to face an ongoing dilemma: conform …
1 year, 6 months ago
Reider Payne, "War and Diplomacy in the Napoleonic Era" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019)
Episode 158
Though Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh remains well known today for his role in shaping the post-Napoleonic peace settlement in Europe, his half…
1 year, 6 months ago
Geoffrey Roberts, "Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books" (Yale UP, 2022)
Episode 222
In this engaging life of the twentieth century’s most self-consciously learned dictator, Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read, how he read…
1 year, 6 months ago
Ignat Solzhenitsyn, ed., "We Have Ceased to See the Purpose: Essential Speeches of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn" (U Notre Dame Press, 2025)
Episode 299
We Have Ceased to See the Purpose: Essential Speeches of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (U Notre Dame Press, 2025) brings together ten of Nobel Prize–winner …
1 year, 6 months ago
Kayla E.'s "Precious Rubbish" (Fantagraphics Books, 2025)
Episode 281
Kayla E.’s Precious Rubbish (Fantagraphics, 2025), is an experimental graphic memoir drawn in a style that references the aesthetics of mid-century c…
1 year, 6 months ago
Erica Stern, "Frontier: A Memoir and a Ghost Story" (Barrelhouse Inc., 2025)
Episode 280
Frontier: A Memoir and a Ghost Story (Barrelhouse Inc., 2025) is a genre-bending expedition into childbirth. Seamlessly blending memoir, fiction, and…
1 year, 6 months ago
Martha A. Sandweiss, "The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Episode 117
A haunting image of an unnamed Native child and a recovered story of the American West In 1868, celebrated Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner t…
1 year, 6 months ago
Ulf Zander, "Raoul Wallenberg: Life and Legacy" (Lund UP, 2024)
Episode 276
Raoul Wallenberg: Life and Legacy (Lund UP, 2024) examines important events in the life of the Swedish diplomat, but this is not a traditional biogra…
1 year, 6 months ago
Mark Doyle, "John Cale's Paris 1919" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Episode 277
John Cale's enigmatic masterpiece, Paris 1919, appeared at a time when the artist and his world were changing forever. It was 1973, the year of the W…
1 year, 6 months ago
Karen A. Frenkel, "Family Treasures: Lost & Found" (Post Hill Press, 2025)
Episode 632
In this captivating memoir, journalist Karen A. Frenkel unravels her parents' and sole surviving grandparent's secret, riveting stories of survival d…
1 year, 6 months ago