New Books in Military History

Despite all we know about the Civil War, its causes, battles, characters, issues, impacts, and legacy, few books have explored Canada’s role in the bloody conflict that claimed more than 600,000 lives. Until From Underground Railroad to Rebel Refuge: Canada and the Civil War (ECW Press, 2022) by Brian Martin. A surpris

Emma Mordecai lived an unusual life. She was Jewish when Jews comprised less than 1 percent of the population of the Old South, and unmarried in a culture that offered women few options other than marriage. She was American born when most American Jews were immigrants. She affirmed and maintained her dedication to Jewi

By the 1970s, World War II had all but disappeared from US popular culture. But beginning in the mid-eighties it reemerged with a vengeance, and for nearly fifteen years World War II was ubiquitous across US popular and political culture. In Reinventing World War II: Popular Memory in the Rise of the Ethnonationalist S

Death in war matters. It matters to the individual, threatened with their own death, or the death of loved ones. It matters to groups and communities who have to find ways to manage death, to support the bereaved and to dispose of bodies amidst the confusion of conflict. It matters to the state, which has to find ways

Today I talked to Mie Nakachi about Replacing the Dead: The Politics of Reproduction in the Postwar Soviet Union (Oxford UP, 2021) In 1920, the Soviet Union became the first country in the world to legalize abortion on demand. But in 1936, the Soviet leadership criminalized abortion: the collectivization of the early 1

War forced millions of Syrians from their homes. It also forced them to rethink the meaning of home itself. In 2011, Syrians took to the streets demanding freedom. Brutal government repression transformed peaceful protests into one of the most devastating conflicts of our times, killing hundreds of thousands and displa