New Books in Military History

From busting drug lords to leading the Pentagon task force charged with bringing the 9/11 terrorists to justice, Mark Fallon has spent his career on the front lines of U.S. national security. My first guest is one of the most fascinating people I've interviewed. Former NCIS Special Agent in Charge Mark Fallon is a national security consultant, scholar, and expert in counterintelligence and counterterrorism who's been involved in some of the most significant terrorism investigations in U.S. history. Mark served more than thirty years in government—twenty-seven with the NCIS and two as a Senior Executive within the Department of Homeland Security. He received numerous awards and medals for his service, including the Department of Defense Counterintelligence Award for Outstanding Achievement and the U.S. Secret Service Director Honors Award. As an NCIS Special Agent, Mark operated undercover in some of the most dangerous places in the world—from infiltrating drug rings in Thailand to capturing poachers in Kenya. He takes us inside his undercover operations and describes his strategy for a successful mission. We talked about the interview and interrogation techniques that actually work (hint: they involve rapport and, occasionally, French fries), and the moment his wife discovered details of an undercover operation. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Mark was appointed Deputy Commander and Special Agent in Charge of the Pentagon task force, responsible for investigating terrorists for possible trials before military commissions. His critically acclaimed book, Unjustifiable Means: The Inside Story of How the CIA, Pentagon, and US Government Conspired to Torture (Regan Arts, 2017) offers a gripping account of the leadership challenges he faced while trying to bring terrorists to justice without compromising his oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Mark opens up about what it takes to lead under pressure, the duty to disobey an unlawful order, and why interrogators make the best first dates He shares leadership lessons that extend far beyond national security—tools for navigating crisis, conflict, and high-stakes decisions in any field. Today, as founder of ClubFed, Mark serves as an international security consultant and continues his mission for improving the practice of interviews and interrogations. Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter Bill Dedman calls Mark Fallon "the Serpico in the war on terror," and high-ranking officials call him an American hero who’s made the world safer. Listen to the podcast—and you'll understand why. Pamela Hamilton is the award-winning author of Lady Be Good: The Life and Times of Dorothy Hale, Kirkus Best Book of the Year and Publishers Weekly Editor's Pick. As a producer with NBC News for nearly 15 years, she interviewed prominent figures in business, entertainment, lifestyle, and the arts. Visit www.pamelalhamilton.com to learn more — and sign up to be notified when new episodes are released. Connect on Instagram and Facebook @pamelahamiltonauthor.                  "We told them 'You may not, you must not—you have a duty not to obey an unlawful order." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

The Chelmno Death Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance (Ibidem Press, 2019) is a comprehensive account of the Chelmno death camp. Chelmno was not only the first Nazi death camp, it also set a horrific example in establishing gas vans as the first mass use of poison gas to kill Jews. Chris Webb and Artur Hojan cover the construction and the development of the mass murder process as perfected by the Nazis. The story is painstakingly told from all sides, the Jewish inmates, some who survived the Holocaust, the perpetrators, the Polish Arbeitskommando, and others. A major part of this work is the Jewish Roll of Remembrance, which includes the few survivors and the Jews deported from the Reich, via the Litzmannstadt ghetto, to their deaths in the gas vans. The book is richly illustrated with historical and contemporary photographs and documents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

What to do when a victorious soldier lusts for the beautiful woman he’s just taken captive in an overseas war. In fact, her body already belongs to him as war booty. If they’re alone in an alley, no one will find out what he does to her. That’s the incendiary situation to which the Bible responds with the Beautiful Captive Law. The Bible’s first step was to stop battlefield rape and protect the vulnerable woman from the powerful soldier. More than that, the Bible has strategies to get the soldier to control himself, even when no one is looking. Then the Bible brings the soldier to care for her, as the person she is. The Jewish tradition’s next major step was in the 12th century when it empowered the captive to decide for herself what direction she wants her life to take, including going free without marrying him. Empowered or Abused: The Bible's Plan to Stop Battlefield Rape and Reduce Sexual Abuse (BfoT, 2025) shows how these strategies can work in our communities today, to reduce all kinds of sexual abuse. Tales of passion, martyrdom and a rare man who can “Just say no” to a rape he could have gotten away with -- can help us educate our youth toward a more respectful future for all gender relations, not just war-time rape. Surprises await both Bible-believers and Bible-skeptics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Women's wars are not men's wars. This is the first lesson of Cynthias Enloe’s Twelve Feminist Lessons of War (U California Press, 2023): the lack of attention paid to women during war not only obscures their experiences but also prevents a full understanding of war and its effects. Wartime shapes women's lives and also the gendered politics of issues such as domestic relationships and childcare, labor and economic mobility, political rights and participation, violence, and much more. By paying attention to the lives of women during war, Enloe shows what women can teach us about war. And in Twelve Feminists Lessons of War it's not just the lessons about war themselves are feminist.  This book also tells lessons from feminist activists and how they have responded to war, whether it is being fought in their backyard or by their state's military tens of thousands of miles away. Drawn from insights gained during her long career researching and writing about women during war and the gendered politics of war, Enloe presents a dozen lessons to be learned about women's lives during war and how we can shorten or even prevent wars by paying attention to women's experiences. Cynthia Enloe is Research Professor in the Department of International Development, Community and Environment at Clark University where she also has affiliations in the Women's and Gender Studies and Political Science departments. Professor Enloe researches, writes, and teaches about the politics of gender in the US and globally. Resources mentioned during the episode: Brown University's “Costs of War” Project No Job for a Woman: The Women Who Fought to Cover WWII Sudanese Feminist Reading List Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Michael David Fox's Crucibles of Power: Smolensk under Stalinist and Nazi Rule (Harvard UP, 2025) provides a local, close-up look at the everyday workings of Nazi and Soviet power, in a particular region. It discusses such themes as the Soviet Terror of the late 1930's and the trauma of the collectivization of agriculture, earlier in the decade, as well as the further traumas of Nazi occupation. Especially interesting is its focus on life-trajectories of specific individuals who had daily to navigate the intricate workings of power, in brutalized, violent circumstances. Aaron Weinacht is Professor of History at the University of Montana Western, in Dillon, MT. He teaches courses on Russian and Soviet History, World History, and Philosophy of History. His research interests include the sociological theorist Philip Rieff and the influence of Russian nihilism on American libertarianism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

The future battlespace promises to be complex, unpredictable, and multifaceted. To answer its challenges, military professionals must think deeply and innovatively about warfare’s evolving character and how to gain decisive advantage across a hotly contested global landscape. Evolution on Demand: The Changing Roles of the U.S. Marine Corps in Twenty-first Century Conflicts and Beyond (Marine Corps University Press, 2025) edited by Dr. Joanna Siekiera features the work of nonresident fellows of the Brute Krulak Center for Innovation and Future Warfare, offers critical insights into the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. Drawing on a range of perspectives and areas of expertise, they explore the strategic, operational, and technological factors that will shape military conflict in the years to come. Each chapter not only provides an in-depth analysis of specific challenges but also offers practical recommendations for how the Marine Corps and its allies can prepare to win the future fight. The contributions in this volume underscore the need for militaries, particularly the U.S. Marine Corps, to adapt to these changes and remain at the cutting edge of innovation and strategy Dr. Joanna Siekiera is an international lawyer, doctor of public policy, and an assistant professor at the War Studies University in Warsaw, Poland, and a fellow at Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia. She supports various military institutions, primarily NATO, as a legal advisor, consultant, course facilitator, and book editor. Dr. Siekiera has been cooperating with the NATO Stability Policing Center of Excellence since 2021. She did her postdoctoral research at the Faculty of Law, University of Bergen, Norway, and PhD studies at the Faculty of Law, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Dr. Siekiera is an author of many scientific publications in several languages, legal opinions, and international monographs on international law, international relations, and security. Her areas of expertise are the law of armed conflict (lawfare, legal culture in armed conflict, NATO legal framework) and the Indo-Pacific region, Pacific law, and maritime security.Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar whose research areas are related to Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, military history, War studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, as well as Russian and East European history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Empires, until recently, were everywhere. They shaped borders, stirred conflicts, and set the terms of international politics. With the collapse of empire came a fundamental reorganization of our world. Decolonization unfolded across territories as well as within them. Its struggles became internationalized and transnational, as much global campaigns of moral disarmament against colonial injustice as local contests of arms. In this expansive history, Martin Thomas tells the story of decolonization and its intrinsic link to globalization. He traces the connections between these two transformative processes: the end of formal empire and the acceleration of global integration, market reorganization, cultural exchange, and migration. The End of Empires and a World Remade: A Global History of Decolonization (Princeton UP, 2024) shows how profoundly decolonization shaped the process of globalization in the wake of empire collapse. In the second half of the twentieth century, decolonization catalyzed new international coalitions; it triggered partitions and wars; and it reshaped North-South dynamics. Globalization promised the decolonized greater access to essential resources, to wider networks of influence, and to worldwide audiences, but its neoliberal variant has reinforced economic inequalities and imperial forms of political and cultural influences. In surveying these two codependent histories across the world, from Latin America to Asia, Thomas explains why the deck was so heavily stacked against newly independent nations.Decolonization stands alongside the great world wars as the most transformative event of twentieth-century history. In The End of Empires and a World Remade, Thomas offers a masterful analysis of the greatest process of state-making (and empire-unmaking) in modern history. Martin Thomas is professor of imperial history and director of the Centre for Histories of Violence and Conflict at the University of Exeter. A fellow of the Leverhulme Trust and the Independent Social Research Foundation, he is the author of Violence and Colonial Order: Police, Workers and Protest in the European Colonial Empires, 1918–1940; Fight or Flight: Britain, France, and the Roads from Empire; and other books. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

A powerful new history detailing the most significant military clashes between Islam and Christendom over the 1,300 years of the Muslim caliphate.  From the taking of the holy city of Jerusalem in the 7th century AD by Caliph Umar, to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following the end of World War I, Christian popes, emperors and kings, and Muslim caliphs and sultans were locked in a 1300-year battle for political, military, ideological, economic and religious supremacy. In this powerful new history of the era, acknowledged expert on the history of the Middle East and the Crusades Simon Mayall focuses on some of the most significant clashes of arms in human history: the taking and retaking of Jerusalem and the collapse of the Crusader states; the fall of Constantinople; the sieges of Rhodes and Malta; the assault on Vienna and the 'high-water mark' of Ottoman advance into Europe; culminating in the Allied capture of Jerusalem in World War I, the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the dissolution of the sultanate and the caliphate, and the formation of modern Europe and the modern Middle East.  The House of War: The Struggle Between Christendom and the Caliphate (Bloomsbury, 2024) offers a wide, sweeping narrative, encompassing the broad historical and religious context of this period, while focussing on some of the key, pivotal sieges and battles, and on the protagonists, political and military, who determined their conclusions and their consequences. Simon Mayall is a former soldier in the British Army, and an acknowledged expert on the history of the Middle East, and of the Crusades. Much of his 40-year professional career was focussed on the Middle East, and he has strong family and academic interests in the region. His last appointments were as the British Government's Defence Senior Adviser for the Middle East, and the Prime Minister's Security Envoy to Iraq and the Kurdish Region. Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

While veterans are often talked about, in Fight to Live, Live to Fight Veteran Activism after War: Veteran Activism after War (SUNY Press, 2019), Dr. Benjamin Schrader flips this this perspective by focusing on veterans telling their own stories. These veterans are not "broken" or "damaged and dangerous" from their experiences in war, rather they are active agents in their own healing and demilitarization. Schrader weaves his own experiences in the US military and then as a member of activist communities with the stories of other activist veterans across the United States. He critically examines US foreign and domestic policy through the narratives of post-9/11 military veterans who have turned to social justice activism after leaving the military. These veterans are involved in a wide array of activism, including antiwar organizing, economic justice, sexual violence prevention, immigration issues, and veteran healing through art. In the process of attempting to demilitarize their communities and themselves, these veterans turned activists remake their understandings of bravery and patriotism. This is an accessible and engaging work that may be read and appreciated not just by scholars, but also students and anyone interested in understanding the lives of veterans and the effects of war. Benjamin Schrader, Ph.D. is the Director of the Adult Learner and Veteran Services at Colorado State University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

When it comes to Confederate monuments, there is no common ground. Polarizing debates over their meaning have intensified into legislative maneuvering to preserve the statues, legal battles to remove them, and rowdy crowds taking matters into their own hands. These conflicts have raged for well over a century—but they've never been as intense as they are today. In No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice (UNC Press, 2021), Dr. Karen L. Cox offers an eye-opening narrative of the efforts to raise, preserve, protest, and remove Confederate monuments. Dr. Cox depicts what these statues meant to those who erected them and how a movement arose to force a reckoning. She shows the forces that drove white southerners to construct beacons of white supremacy, as well as the ways that anti-monument sentiment, largely stifled during the Jim Crow era, returned with the civil rights movement and gathered momentum in the decades after the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Monument defenders responded with gerrymandering and "heritage" laws intended to block efforts to remove these statues, but hard as they worked to preserve the Lost Cause vision of southern history, civil rights activists, Black elected officials, and movements of ordinary people fought harder to take the story back. Timely, accessible, and essential, No Common Ground is the story of the seemingly invincible stone sentinels that are just beginning to fall from their pedestals. Our guest is: Dr. Karen L. Cox, who is professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her other books include Dreaming of Dixie: How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture and Dixie's Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who works as a developmental editor for scholars, and is the producer of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Campus Monuments Researching Racial Injustice A Conversation with Curators from the Smithsonian The Names of All the Flowers What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions Stolen Fragments Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can help support the show by downloading, assigning and sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 250+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history