New Books in Military History

At the Battle of Saratoga, the tide of the Revolutionary War turned in favor of unlikely victors: the American patriots.  What were the major strategy elements at play in the Saratoga Campaign, and why did it prove so crucial? Where did England misstep, and what did the Americans get right? To find out, we chat with Kevin Weddle *03, Professor of Military Theory and Strategy at the Army War College. A graduate of West Point and veteran of operations Desert Storm and Enduring Freedom, Dr. Weddle received his PhD here at Princeton, and was the 2019 William L. Garwood visiting professor with the Madison Program. He is the author of The Compleat Victory: Saratoga and the American Revolution, winner of the 2021 Gilder Lehrman Military History Prize. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Episode 4 of the CEU Press Podcast Series introduces one of the Press’s new series, entitled Perpetrators of Organized Violence: Eastern, Central and South-Eastern Europe. The series editors, Waitman Wade Beorn, Weronika Grzebalska and Iva Vukušić talk about the aims of the series, ethical considerations when researching perpetrators of organized violence, and about the book proposals they are interested in. This new series aims to publish work contributing to the burgeoning field of Perpetrator Studies, with a focus specifically on the East, Central and Southeast Europe region. You can read more about the series on the CEU Press’s website here. If you have a book or edited volume proposal that you think would fit the series, or you would like to have a chat about your project, get in touch with either the series editors or with Jen McCall (McCallJ@press.ceu.edu), who is our acquisitions editor for the series. The series editors can be reached at: ·    Waitman Beorn: waitman.beorn@northumbria.ac.uk ·    Weronika Grzebalska: w.grzebalska@politic.edu.pl  ·    Iva Vukušić: I.Vukusic@uu.nl  The CEU Press Podcast Series delves into various aspects of the publishing process: from crafting a book proposal, finding a publisher, responding to peer review feedback on the manuscript, to the subsequent distribution, promotion and marketing of academic books. We will also talk to series editors and authors, who will share their experiences of getting published and talk about their series or books. Interested in the CEU Press’s publications? Click here to find out more. Stay tuned for future episodes and subscribe to our podcast to be the first to be notified. You can find us on Apple Podcast, Spotify and all other major podcast apps.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

David Geisser was a Swiss Guard protecting Pope Francis and the Apostolic Palace between 2013 and 2015. He was following the footsteps of his father who had been in the service a generation earlier under Pope John Paul II, including on the dark day (May 13, 1981) when a would-be assassin shot the Holy Father. I ask him about his experiences in one of the oldest (est. 1506) and smallest (135 men) military organizations in history. David Geisser’s YouTube channel, It’s Cooking Time National Geographic, “Inside the Vatican,” 2021: Episode 1 and Episode 2 A Swiss public television documentary on the Swiss Guards (in German) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Utilizing Strategic Theory as a framework for warfare and incorporating the testimonies and experiences of eight genocide survivors as well as military personnel, Jonathan R. Beloff's The Strategy to End the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda: Understanding the War in Kigali (Lexington Books, 2025) examines the various tactics and operations used by the Rwandan Patriotic Army to provide critical insights into decision-making during the Rwandan Civil War and genocide. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Gervase Phillips' book Persecution and Genocide: A History (Routledge, 2024) offers an unparalleled range of comparative studies considering both persecution and genocide across two thousand years of history from Rome to Nazi Germany, and spanning Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Topics covered include the persecution of religious minorities in the ancient world and late antiquity, the medieval roots of modern antisemitism, the early modern witch-hunts, the emergence of racial ideologies and their relationship to slavery, colonialism, Russian and Soviet mass deportations, the Armenian genocide, and the Holocaust. It also introduces students to significant, but less well known, episodes, such as the Albigensian Crusade and the massacres and forced expulsions suffered by the Circassians at the hands of imperial Russia in the 1860s, as the world entered an 'age of genocide'.  By exploring the ideological motivations of the perpetrators, the book invites students to engage with the moral complexities of the past and to reflect upon our own situation today as the 'legatees of two thousand years of persecution'. Gervase Phillips's book is the ideal introduction to the subject for anyone interested in the long and complex history of human persecution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

From the collapse of the Soviet Union until late 2023, Armenia and Azerbaijan were fighting unrelenting hot and cold wars over Nagorno-Karabakh - a tiny 4,400-square-kilometre breakaway republic with a population under 150,000. That 30-year crisis ended within 24 hours in September 2023 when Azerbaijan attacked, Russian peacekeepers withdrew, and the last Karabakh Armenians left the enclave. While equivalent ethnic cleansings (deliberate or neglectful) have commanded Western diplomatic and media attention for decades, Nagorno-Karabakh has never captured attention outside the region. With Ashes of Our Fathers: Inside the Fall of Nagorno-Karabakh (Hurst, 2025), Gabriel Gavin is determined to redress that imbalance. Mixing history and reportage, Gavin explores this long-simmering ethnic conflict, how it has corrupted the politics and cultures of Armenia and Azerbaijan, and what it tells us about the decline of Russian external power and the failures of the West. *The author's book recommendations were High Caucasus: A Mountain Quest in Russia’s Haunted Hinterland by Tom Parfitt (Headline, 2023) and Minor Detail by Adania Shibli (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2020 — translated by Elisabeth Jaquette). Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes and podcasts at twenty4two on Substack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

How can states use military force to achieve their political aims without triggering a catastrophic nuclear war? Among the states facing this dilemma of fighting limited wars, only China has given information-age weapons such a prominent role. While other countries have preferred the traditional options of threatening to use nuclear weapons or fielding capabilities for decisive conventional military victories, China has instead chosen to rely on offensive cyber operations, counter-space capabilities, and precision conventional missiles to coerce its adversaries.  In Under the Nuclear Shadow: China's Information-Age Weapons in International Security (Princeton UP, 2024), Fiona Cunningham examines this distinctive aspect of China’s post–Cold War deterrence strategy, developing an original theory of “strategic substitution.” When crises with the United States highlighted the inadequacy of China’s existing military capabilities, Cunningham argues, China pursued information-age weapons that promised to provide credible leverage against adversaries rapidly. Drawing on hundreds of original Chinese-language sources and interviews with security experts in China, Cunningham provides a rare and candid glimpse from Beijing into the information-age technologies that are reshaping how states gain leverage in the twenty-first century. She offers unprecedented insights into China’s military modernization trajectory as she details the strengths and weaknesses of China’s strategic substitution approach. Under the Nuclear Shadow also looks ahead at the uncertain future of China’s strategic substitution approach and briefly explores too how other states might seize upon the promise of emerging technologies to address weaknesses in their own military strategies. Our guest today is Fiona S. Cunningham, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

When Nazi Germany launched the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, its leadership made clear to the Wehrmacht that it was waging a "war of extermination" against Germany's enemies. This meant that normal military conduct in war was to be dispensed with and soldiers would act more in accordance with the precepts of Nazi ideology. During the brutal fighting on the Eastern Front, how did average German soldiers interpret the war they were fighting? David A. Harrisville seeks to answer this question in his book The Virtuous Wehrmacht: Crafting the Myth of the German Soldier on the Eastern Front, 1941-1944 (Cornell University Press, 2021). Through letters, diaries, and other primary documents written during the war itself, German soldiers portrayed themselves as "noble" warriors undertaking a "righteous" mission to rid the world of the evils of Soviet Communism. This would later form the basis of the "clean Wehrmacht" myth that prevailed in postwar German society.  David A. Harrisville is an independent scholar. He has held various academic positions, including, most recently, Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Furman University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

In a narrative-redefining approach, Engaging the Evil Empire: Washington, Moscow, and the Beginning of the End of the Cold War (Cornell UP, 2020) dramatically alters how we look at the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Tracking key events in US-Soviet relations across the years between 1980 and 1985, Simon Miles shows that covert engagement gave way to overt conversation as both superpowers determined that open diplomacy was the best means of furthering their own, primarily competitive, goals. Miles narrates the history of these dramatic years, as President Ronald Reagan consistently applied a disciplined carrot-and-stick approach, reaching out to Moscow while at the same time excoriating the Soviet system and building up US military capabilities. The received wisdom in diplomatic circles is that the beginning of the end of the Cold War came from changing policy preferences and that President Reagan in particular opted for a more conciliatory and less bellicose diplomatic approach. In reality, as Miles vividly demonstrates, Reagan and ranking officials in the National Security Council had determined that the United States enjoyed a strategic margin of error that permitted it to engage Moscow overtly. As US grand strategy developed, so did that of the Soviet Union. Engaging the Evil Empire covers five critical years of Cold War history when Soviet leaders tried to reduce tensions between the two nations in order to gain economic breathing room and, to ensure domestic political stability, prioritize expenditures on butter over those on guns. Written with style and verve, Miles's bold narrative shifts the focus of Cold War historians away from exclusive attention on Washington by focusing on the years of back-channel communiqués and internal strategy debates in Moscow as well as Budapest, Prague, and East Berlin. Grant Golub is a PhD candidate in U.S. and international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His research examines the politics of American grand strategy during World War II. Follow him on Twitter @ghgolub. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Signed on September 2, 1945 aboard the American battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay by Japanese and Allied leaders, the instrument of surrender formally ended the war in the Pacific and brought to a close one of the most cataclysmic engagements in history, one that had cost the lives of millions. VJ―Victory over Japan―Day had taken place two weeks or so earlier, in the wake of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the entrance of the Soviet Union into the war. In the end, the surrender itself fulfilled the commitment that Franklin Roosevelt had made that it be "unconditional," as had been the case with Nazi Germany in May, 1945.  Though readily accepted as war policy at the time, after Roosevelt's death in April 1945, popular support for unconditional surrender wavered, particularly when the bloody campaigns on Iwo Jima and Okinawa made clear the cost of military victory against Japan. The ending of the war in Europe spurred calls in Congress, particularly among anti-New Deal Republicans, to shift the American economy to peacetime and bring home troops. Even after the atomic bombs had been dropped, Japan continued to seek a negotiated surrender, further complicating the debate. Though this was the last time Americans would impose surrender unconditionally, questions surrounding it continued at home through the 1950s and 1960s, when liberal and conservative views reversed, and particularly in Vietnam and the definition of "peace with honor." It remained controversial through the ceremonies surrounding the 50th anniversary and the Gulf War, when the subject revived. In Unconditional: The Japanese Surrender in World War II (Oxford UP, 2020), which publishes in time for the 75th anniversary of the surrender, Bancroft Prize co-winner Marc Gallicchio offers a narrative of the surrender in its historical moment, revealing how and why the event unfolded as it did and the principle figures behind it, including George C. Marshall and Douglas MacArthur, who would effectively become the leader of Japan during the American occupation. It also reveals how the policy underlying it remained controversial at the time and in the decades following, shaping our understanding of World War II. Grant Golub is a PhD candidate in the Department of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research focuses on the politics of American grand strategy during World War II. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

When the Great War began, the Russian Empire was home to more than five million Jews, the most densely settled Jewish population anywhere in the world. Thirty years later, only remnants of this civilization remained. The years of war from 1914 to 1918 launched the forces that scattered and destroyed Eastern European Jewry and transformed it in ways that were second only to the Holocaust in their magnitude. Yet little has been written about the experience of Russia's Jews during this time.  A Nation of Refugees: Russia's Jews in World War I (Oxford UP, 2024) uncovers this untold history by revealing the stories of how Jewish civilians experienced the war and its violent epicenter on the Eastern Front. It presents a history of rupture and dispersion at a human level, with accounts of individuals who struggled to survive and the activists who worked to aid them. The stories in this book are drawn from hundreds of documents held in previously inaccessible archives, the Russian and Yiddish press, and the personal accounts of refugees, relief workers, writers, artists, and political leaders. This is a history of the first state violence and military aggression directed at Jewish civilians anywhere in modern Europe. It is a history of refugees, so numerous and scattered across Russia that they represented the fate of the Jewish nation itself. And it is a history of how Russia's Jews formed the largest and most influential humanitarian campaign in their history, and of their leaders and institutions that endured long past the years of war and revolution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

During the Second World War, approximately 1000 Christian chaplains accompanied Wehrmacht forces wherever they went, from Poland to France, Greece, North Africa, and the Soviet Union. Chaplains were witnesses to atrocity and by their presence helped normalize extreme violence and legitimate its perpetrators. Military chaplains played a key role in propagating a narrative of righteousness that erased Germany's victims and transformed the aggressors into noble figures who suffered but triumphed over their foes. Between God and Hitler: Military Chaplains in Nazi Germany (Cambridge UP, 2023) is the first book to examine Protestant and Catholic military chaplains in Germany from Hitler's rise to power, to defeat, collapse, and Allied occupation. Drawing on a wide array of sources - chaplains' letters and memoirs, military reports, Jewish testimonies, photographs, and popular culture - this book offers insight into how Christian clergy served the cause of genocide, sometimes eagerly, sometimes reluctantly, even unknowingly, but always loyally. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Photography emerged in the 1840s in the United States, and it became a visual medium that documents the harsh realities of enslavement. Similarly, the photography culture grew during the Civil War, and it became an important material that archived this unprecedented war. Deborah Willis's The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship (New York University Press, 2021) contains rarely seen letters and diary notes from Black men and women and photographs of Black soldiers who fought and died in this war. These ninety-nine images reshape African American narratives. The Black Civil War Soldier offers an opportunity to experience the war through their perspectives. N'Kosi Oates is a Ph.D. candidate in Africana Studies at Brown University. Find him on Twitter at NKosiOates. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

As World War II ended, the United States stood as the dominant power on the world stage. In 1947, to support its new global status, it created the CIA to analyze foreign intelligence. But within a few years, the Agency was engaged in other operations: bolstering pro-American governments, overthrowing nationalist leaders, and surveilling anti-imperial dissenters at home. The Cold War was an obvious reason for this transformation--but not the only one. In The CIA, celebrated intelligence historian Hugh Wilford draws on decades of research to show the Agency as part of a larger picture, the history of Western empire. While young CIA officers imagined themselves as British imperial agents like T. E. Lawrence, successive US presidents used the covert powers of the Agency to hide overseas interventions from postcolonial foreigners and anti-imperial Americans alike. Even the CIA's post-9/11 global hunt for terrorists was haunted by the ghosts of empires past. Comprehensive, original, and gripping, The CIA: An Imperial History (Basic Books, 2024) is the story of the birth of a new imperial order in the shadows. It offers the most complete account yet of how America adopted unaccountable power and secrecy abroad and at home. AJ Woodhams hosts the "War Books" podcast. You can subscribe on Apple here and on Spotify here. War Books is on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

A masterful narrative history of the dangerous lives of pirates during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, revealing their unique impact on colonialism and empire. The pirates that exist in our imagination are not just any pirates. Violent sea-raiding has occurred in most parts of the world throughout history, but our popular stereotype of pirates has been defined by one historical moment: the period from the 1660s to the 1730s, the so-called "golden age of piracy." A groundbreaking history of pirates, Enemies of All: The Rise and Fall of the Golden Age of Piracy (Pegasus Books, 2024) combines narrative adventure with deeply researched analysis, engrossing readers in the rise of piracy in the later seventeenth century, the debates about piracy in contemporary law and popular media, as well as the imperial efforts to suppress piracy in the early eighteenth century. The Caribbean and American colonies of Britain, France, Spain, and the Netherlands—where piracy surged across these decades—are the main theater for Enemies of All, but this is a global story. Evoking London, Paris, and Amsterdam, Curaçao, Port Royal, Tortuga, and Charleston, the narrative takes readers, too, from Ireland and the Mediterranean to Madagascar and India, from the Arabian Gulf to the Pacific Ocean. Familiar characters like Drake, Morgan, Blackbeard, Bonny and Read, Henry Every, and Captain Kidd all feature here, but so too will the less well-known figures from the history of piracy, their crew-members, shipmates, and their confederates ashore; the men and women whose transatlantic lives were bound up with the rise and fall of piracy. Transforming how readers understand the history of pirates, Enemies of All presents not only the historical evidence but, more importantly, explains the consequences of piracy's unique influence on colonialism and European imperial ambitions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Central Asia in World War Two: The Impact and Legacy of Fighting for the Soviet Union (Bloomsbury, 2024) is the first book to tackle the subject of minorities fighting for the Soviet Union under Stalin in the Second World War. Based on meticulous archival research, it considers the interactions of the individual citizen and the Soviet state, weaving together the experiences of over three hundred ordinary men and women in Central Asia as they coped with their new roles on the front line or in the rear. Suffering incredible economic and physical hardship, racism and religious oppression, these mainly Muslim citizens were subjected to a forced process of Sovietization under the influence of Stalin's propaganda machine. Davis reveals how, while conscripts were all too often slaughtered or scapegoated in their regiments, the women and children left at home slaved in factories and communal farms to fuel the machinery of a war taking place thousands of kilometres away. She convincingly argues that the impact of forced assimilation, cultural indoctrination, anti-Semitism and re-education on the region were as great as the daily fight for survival in wartime. The legacy of the period is almost as complex, with struggles over the ownership and revision of history continuing even today. Cholpon Ramizova is a London-based writer and researcher. She holds a Master's in Migration, Mobility and Development from SOAS, University of London. Her thematic interests are in migration, displacement, identity, gender, and nationalism - and more specifically on how and which ways these intersect within the Central Asia context. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

We think we know all there is to know about Britain's Second World War. We don't. This radical re-interpretation of British history and British Conservatism between 1939 and 1945 reveals the bold, at times utopian, plans British Conservatives drew up for Britain and the post-war world. From proposals for world government to a more united Empire via dreams of a new Christian elite and a move back-to-the-land, Blue Jerusalem: British Conservatism, Winston Churchill, and the Second World War (Oxford UP, 2024) reveals how Conservatives were every bit as imaginative and courageous as their Labour and left-wing opponents in their wartime plans for a post-war world. Bringing these alternative visions of Britain's post-war future back to life, Blue Jerusalem restores politics to the centre of the story of Britain's war. It demonstrates how everything from the weapons Britain fought with, to the theatres in which the fighting took place and the allies Britain chose were the product of political decisions about the different futures Conservatives wanted to make. Rejecting notions of a 'people's war' that continue to cloud how we think of World War II, it explores how the Tories used their control of the home and battle front to fight a deeply Conservative war and build the martial, imperial, and Christian nation of which many of a conservative disposition had long dreamed. A study of political thinking as well as political manoeuvre, Blue Jerusalem goes beyond an examination of the usual suspects - such as Winston Churchill and Neville Chamberlain - to reveal a hitherto lost world of British Conservativism and a set of forgotten futures that continue to shape our world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Fear was the unacknowledged spectre haunting the streets of London during the Second World War; fear not only of death from the German bombers circling above, but of violence at the hands of fellow Londoners in the streets below. Mass displacement, the anonymity of shelters, and the bomb-scarred landscape offered unprecedented opportunities for violent crime. In this absorbing, sometimes shocking account, titled Under Cover of Darkness: Murders in Blackout London (Yale University Press, 2024) Dr. Amy Helen Bell uncovers the hidden stories of murder and violence that were rife in wartime London. Dr. Bell moves through the city, examining the crimes in their various locations, from domestic violence in the home to robberies in the blacked-out streets and fights in pubs and clubs. She reveals the experiences of women, children, and the elderly, and focuses on the lives of the victims, as well as their deaths. This groundbreaking study transforms our understanding of the ways in which war made people vulnerable—not just to the enemy, but to each other. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/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 surprising 20,000 Canadians went south to take up arms on both sides of the conflict, while thousands of enslaved people, draft dodgers, deserters, recruiters, plotters, and spies fled northward to take shelter in the attic that is Canada. Though many escaped slavery and found safety through the Underground Railroad, they were later joined by KKK members wanted for murder. Confederate President Jefferson Davis along with several of his emissaries and generals found refuge on Canadian soil, and many plantation owners moved north of the border. Award-winning journalist Brian Martin will open eyes in both Canada and the United States to how the two countries and their citizens interacted during the Civil War and the troubled times that surrounded it. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

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 Jewish religious practice and Jewish faith while many family members embraced Christianity. Yet she also lived well within the social parameters established for Southern white women, espoused Southern values, and owned enslaved African Americans. The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai is one of the few surviving Civil War diaries by a Jewish woman in the antebellum South. It charts her daily life and her evolving perspective on Confederate nationalism and Southern identity, Jewishness, women's roles in wartime, gendered domestic roles in slave-owning households, and the centrality of family relationships. While never losing sight of the racist social and political structures that shaped Emma Mordecai's world, the book chronicles her experiences with dislocation and the loss of her home. Bringing to life the hospital visits, food shortages, local sociability, Jewish observances, sounds and sights of nearby battles, and the very personal ramifications of emancipation and its aftermath for her household and family, The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai offers a valuable and distinct look at a unique historical figure from the waning years of the Civil War South. Dianne Ashton was Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and World Religions at Rowan University. She is the author and editor of a number of books, including Hanukkah in America: A History and Rebecca Gratz: Women and Judaism in Antebellum America. Melissa R. Klapper is Professor of History and Director of Women's and Gender Studies at Rowan University. She is the author of Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860-1920; Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women's Activism, 1890-1940; Small Strangers: The Experiences of Immigrant Children in the United States, 1880-1925; and Ballet Class: An American History. Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history