Military Historians are People, Too!

Today's guest is the highly intellectual and equally highly satirical Philipp Stelzel. Philipp is an Associate Professor of History and Graduate Director for History at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Before finding his academic home at Duquesne, Philipp taught at Duke University and Boston College, and also served as a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Munich. He earned his BA in History from Ludwig-Maximilians Universität in Munich, an MA in History from Columbia University, and a PhD in Modern European Transnational and Global History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Philipp is the author of History after Hitler: A Transatlantic Enterprise (Penn) and has published articles in History Compass and Central European History. He has worked with the American-German Institute and the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies. Philipp is also the author of the brilliant tongue-in-cheek cocktail commentary on academia titled The Faculty Lounge: A Cocktail Guide for Academics (Indiana). Philipp has received funding from the German Historical Institute, the Fulbright Foundation, and the American Historical Association, among others.

Join us for a deep dive into German history, Shirley Horn, lederhosen, Birkenstocks, and, yes, cocktails.

Shoutout to Q Shack in Durham, North Carolina!

Rec.: 10/25/2023

Our guest to the generous and brilliant Andrew A. Wiest. Andy is a Distinguished Professor of History and Founding Director of the Dale Center for the Study of War and Society at the University of Southern Mississippi. He is also the current General Buford "Buff" Blount Professor of Military History from 2023-2025 at USM. He served as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Warfighting Strategy at the United States Air Force Air War College and a Visiting Senior Lecturer in the War Studies Department at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst, England. Andy received his BS and MA degrees in History from Southern Mississippi and earned his Ph. from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Andy is the author of seventeen books (that's right - seventeen!), including two best-sellers: Boys of 67: Charlie Company's War in Vietnam (Osprey) and Vietnam's Forgotten Army: Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN (NYU Press). The Boys of 67 was also released as Brothers in War, a documentary film by Lou Reda Productions for National Geographic Television, which received an Emmy nomination. Vietnam's Forgotten Army won the Society for Military History's Distinguished Book Award. Andy also authored Charlie Company's Journey Home: The Boys of '67 and the War They Left Behind; The Forgotten Impact on the Wives of Vietnam Veterans (Osprey/Bloomsbury), and he has published books on the First and Second World Wars, edited or co-edited several volumes, and published more than a dozen articles and book chapters. He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and many other news publications.

Andy has twice received the University of Southern Mississippi Excellence in Teaching Award and was awarded the Mississippi Humanities Council Teacher of the Year Award in 2002. In 2021, he was inducted into the Hattiesburg Publish School District's Hall of Fame. He leads an annual WWII study abroad program to London and Normandy and has developed an award-winning Vietnam Study Abroad Program.

Join us for a remarkable and enjoyable chat with Andy Wiest. We'll talk growing up in the South, working and traveling with Vietnam veterans, founding a major center for the study of war and society, Dirty Manhattans, Electric Light Orchestra, and the sad naps from being a lifelong Minnesota Vikings fan. This is why we do this podcast.

Shoutout to Leatha's BBQ in Petal, Mississippi!

Rec.: 10/13/2023

Today's guest is the in-demand Radical War guy, Matthew Ford! Matthew Ford is a Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor specializing in war and security at the Swedish Defence University (the Försvarshögskolan) in Stockholm. A former West Point fellow and visiting scholar at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, Matthew is an Honorary Historical Consultant for the Royal Armouries Museum. He was a Strategic Analyst for the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at the UK Ministry of Defence and served as Deputy Head and Director of Teaching and Learning at the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex. Matthew received his BA in Philosophy at the University of Reading and an MA and PhD in War Studies from King's College, London.

Matthew is the author of Weapon of Choice: Small Arms and the Culture of Military Innovation (Oxford) and, with Andrew Hoskins of the University of Glasgow, Radical War: Data Attention and Control in the Twenty-First Century (Oxford). His current book project is tentatively titled "War in the Age of the Smartphone" and is set to be published by Oxford in 2025. Matthew has published in many of the top journals in the field, including the Journal of International Security, International History Review, the Journal of Strategic Studies, and War in History. He is the founding editor of the British Journal for Military History.

Join us for a fun but intense chat with Matthew Ford. We'll talk attending job fairs, the pros and cons of being a bureaucrat and an academic, warfare in the 21st century, moving to Sweden, the Rugby World Cup, Stanley Tucci, and The Smiths, among many other topics. Strap yourself in for this one!

Rec.: 10/20/2023

Today's guest is the energetic and enthusiastic Jason Herbert. Jason is a Tribal Liaison with the United States Forest Service in Colorado. He is also the creator and host of Historians at the Movies, a podcast that features historians talking about movies ranging from Pretty Woman to Con Air. Jason is an experienced high-school teacher, having taught US History, World History, and economics at the Pine School and the Highlands Career Institute in Florida. He also served as an ethnographer for the Seminole Tribe of Florida. Jason received his PhD in History from the University of Minnesota, where he completed a dissertation titled "Beast of Many Names: Cattle, Conflict, and the Transformation of Indigenous Florida, 1519- 1858." He took his MA and BA in History from Wichita State University and an AA in General Studies from Tallahassee Community College.

Jason has published articles in the Florida Historical Quarterly, Ohio Valley History, and Chronicles of Oklahoma. He has also published in the American Historian and Smithsonian magazine. His scholarship has been supported by Florida Atlantic University and the Huntington Library, the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, the American Historical Association, the Agricultural History Society, and the Newberry Renaissance Consortium. Jason excels in front of a classroom - he's won teaching awards at the University of Minnesota, Wichita State University, and the Highlands Career Institute. Additionally, he was nominated for the Gilder Lehrman National History Teacher of the Year Award.

Join us for a fast and furious chat with Jason Herbert. We'll talk undergraduate woes, Kentucky and Indiana, Lyle Lovett, Black Sails, Whataburger, and a little Hemingway.

Shoutout to Front Range BBQ in Colorado Springs!

Rec.: 10/11/2023

Whether this is your first Military Historians are People, Too, or you are a long-time listener, you are in for an amazing story with today's guest, Robert K. Brigham. Bob is Shirley Ecker Boskey Professor of History and International Relations and Faculty Director of the Institute for the Liberal Arts at Vassar College. Bob also taught at Southern Vermont College and the University of Kentucky. He earned his BA from SUNY College at Brockport, an MA from the University of Rhode Island, and his PhD from the University of Kentucky, directed by the late George Herring.

Bob has authored or co-authored ten books, including Reckless: Henry Kissinger and the Tragedy of Vietnam (PublicAffairs), Is Iraq Another Vietnam? (PublicAffairs), Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy (PublicNLF'srs), and Guerilla Diplomacy: The NLF's Foreign Relations and the Vietnam War (Cornell). His forthcomingAdoptee'sThis is a True War Story: An Adoptee's Bob'sr (University of Chicago Press). Bob's research has been funded by the Rockefeller, Mellon, Ford, and Smith Richardson foundations and the National Endowment for Humanities. He has held endowed lectureships and visiting professorships at Johns Hopkins University, Cambridge University (Clare College), Brown University, and University College Dublin.

Bob is an accomplished teacher and has received teaching awards at the University of Kentucky, Southern Vermont College, and the Semester at Sea Program. Vassar College's Alumnae/i Association presented Bob with its Outstanding Faculty Award in 2019. The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations recognized his dedication to the profession earlier this year when the organization awarded him the Peter L. Hahn Distinguished Service Award.

Join us for a truly remarkable chat with Bob Brigham. We'll talk discovering birth parents, the serendipity of being interested in Vietnam, how so many of us had no idea how to become a history professor, teaching at sea, Beamish Stout, Bruce Springsteen, Hallberg-Rassy sailboats, Korean BBQ, and other essential matters.

Shoutout to Korpot Korean Food & Drink in Poughkeepsie, New York!

Rec.: 09/29/2023

Our guest today is Sarah Parry Myers, author of the new book Earning Their Wings: The WASPS of World War II and the Fight for Veteran Recognition (UNC Press). Sarah is an Associate Professor of History at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. She joined the faculty at Messiah after spending three years at St. Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania, where she also served as the director of the Keirn Family World War II Museum. She received her BA in History Education at the University of Missouri-Rolla and an MA in History at Missouri State. Sarah completed her PhD at Texas Tech University.

A specialist in gender and the military, Sarah is the author of “‘The Women Behind the Men Behind the Gun’: Gendered Identities and Militarization in the Second World War” in The Routledge Handbook of Gender, War, and the U.S. Military, ed. Kara Dixon Vuic (Routledge) and “Battling Contested Air Spaces: The American Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II,” in Gender and the Second World War: The Lessons of War, edited by Corinna Peniston-Bird and Emma Vickers (Palgrave). Her first book, Earning Their Wings: The WASPs of World War II and the Fight for Veteran Recognition was published in Sept. 2023 with UNC Press.

In 2020, Sarah was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Dialogues on the Experience of War Grant for her project “We are Veterans Too: Women’s Experiences in the U.S. Military.” She is active in the Society for Military History, the American Historical Association, and The Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, among other professional associations.

Join us for a delightful chat with the delightful Sarah Myers. We'll talk WASPs, financial exigency in higher ed, growing up in Missouri, being a Swiftie, not taking a class from Friend of the Pod John McManus, and yes, washing feet!

Shoutout to Borough BBQ in Gettysburg!

Rec.: 09/15/2023

Today's guest is the delightful Joy Porter. Joy is Professor of Indigenous and Environmental History at the University of Hull. She is a principal investigator of the Treatied Spaces Research Group and a Leverhulme Major Research Fellow. Joy is also the principal investigator for the Arts and Humanities Research Council's project "Brightening the Covenant Chain: Revealing Cultures of Diplomacy Between the Iroquois and the British Crown." Joy was a Fulbright Scholar at Dartmouth College and has also held visiting professorships at Paris Diderot University and The Clinton Institute, Dublin. She started her career as a Senior Lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University, and she also spent eight years as a Senior Lecturer and Associate Dean at Swansea University. Joy was educated at the University of Nottingham, where she received her MA and PhD.

Joy has more than 38 publications to her credit, including her fascinating recent monograph Trauma, Primitivism, and the First World War: The Making of Frank Prewett (Bloomsbury). Her other monographs include Native American Environmentalism (Nebraska), Native American Indian Freemasonry: Associationalism & Performance in America, (Nebraska) and To Be Indian: The Life of Seneca-Iroquois Arthur Caswell Parker (Oklahoma), which won a Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award. Joy also won the 2006 Writer of the Year Award from the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers for the Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature. Her forthcoming book is titled Canada's Green Challenge (McGill-Queen's). Joy is a lead editor of the Cambridge University Press book series, Elements in Indigenous Environmental Research. She is also a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a National Teaching Fellow.

Join us for a fun, quirky, and very interesting chat with Joy Porter. We'll talk growing up in Derry during The Troubles, interdisciplinary approaches to military history, the compulsion to write, John Prine, soldier trauma in the First World War, and fish tacos, among other topics!

Shoutout to Deckhand Dave's in Juneau, Alaska!

Rec.: 09/08/2023

Our guest today is the introspective yet outgoing Samuel Fury Childs Daly. Sam is an Associate Professor of African and African American Studies, History, and International Comparative Studies at Duke University. From 2016-17, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Historical Analysis at Rutgers University. Sam earned his BA in African Studies and History at Columbia University, an MA in Historical Research Methods from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and an M Phil in African Studies from King’s College, University of Cambridge. He returned to the US to complete his PhD in History at Columbia University.

Sam is the author of A History of the Republic of Biafra: Law, Crime, and the Nigerian Civil War (Cambridge). The book has won several awards, including the 2020 Law and Society Association’s J. Willard Hurst Book Prize for the best book in legal history in any region or time period and the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom’s Fage & Oliver Prize for the best book on Africa published in 2020 or 2021. Sam’s articles have appeared in Law & History Review, Past & Present, Journal of African History, African Studies Review, and many others. His research has been funded by, among others, the Mellon Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, and the American Historical Association.

Sam’s current book projects include “Soldier’s Paradise: Militarism in Africa After Empire,” which is under contract with Duke University Press, and “The Good Soldier: A History of Military Desertion.”

Join us for a very interesting chat with Sam Daly. We’ll talk doing research in Nigeria, growing up in a family of extroverted performers, the intersections of war, legal studies, and military history, Bjork (a first for The Pod!), and a host of other topics!

Shoutout to the Q Shack in Durham, NC!

Rec.: 09/01/2023

Our guest today is Netherlander ⁠Thijs Brocades Zaalberg⁠! Thijs is a University Lecturer at the Universiteit Leiden and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Military Sciences at the Netherlands Defense Academy in Breda. Before moving to Leiden, Thijs worked at the Netherlands Insitute of Military History in The Hague. He is currently the coordinator for the project Comparing Extreme Violence in the Wars of Decolonization, 1945-1962, at the Netherlands Insitute of Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Thijs earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Groningen, spent a year at Trinity College, Dublin, and then took his PhD at the University of Amsterdam. Thijs also spent ten years as an officer in the Reserve of the Royal Netherlands Army.

Thijs is a specialist in colonial warfare, counterinsurgency, and peace operations. He is the editor, with Bart Luttikhuis, of Empire's Violent End: Comparing Dutch, British, and French Wars of Decolonization, 1945-1962 (Cornell), and is author of Soldiers and Civil Power: Supporting or Substituting Civil Authorities in Modern Peace Operations (Amsterdam), coauthor with Arthur ten Cate of A Gentle Occupation Dutch Military Operations in Iraq, 2003-2005 (Leiden), and coauthor with Frances Gouda of American Visions of the Netherlands East Indies/Indonesia: US Foreign Policy and Indonesian Nationalism (Amsterdam). He has also published over a dozen essays and articles in English and Dutch journals.

Join us for a fascinating chat with Thijs Zaalberg. We'll talk about his parents and grandparents' experience in the Second World War, his rebellious turn toward history as a career path, the Dutch military experience, Beck, The Bear, being a war diarist in Afghanistan, Grolsch, and some BBQ basics. We're on a roll with Season 4!

Rec.: 08/09/2023

Our guest today is First World War gas mask aficionado Susan R. Grayzel. Sue is Professor of History at Utah State University. Before joining the faculty at USU, Sue was Professor of History at the University of Mississippi, where she also served as the Director of the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies. Sue received her BA in History and Literature from Harvard University and earned an MA and PhD in History at the University of California at Berkeley. She has spent time Across the Pond as the UK Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the University of Leeds, the Ireland Fulbright Inter-Country Lecturer at Maynooth University, and a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, University of Oxford.

Sue's first book, Women's Identities At War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War (Unversity of North Carolina Press), won the British Council Prize from the North American Conference on British Studies. Sue is also the author of Women and the First World War (Longman), The First World War: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford St. Martin's), and At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz (Cambridge). She has co-edited two volumes: Gender, Labour, War and Empire: Essays on Modern Britain, with Philippa Levine (Palgrave), and Gender and the Great War, with Tammy Proctor (Oxford). Sue's most recent monograph is The Age of the Gas Mask: How British Civilians Faced the Terrors of Total War (Cambridge). In addition to her monographs and edited volumes, Sue's articles have appeared in the Journal of British Studies, the Journal of Modern History, and the Journal of Women's History, to name a few, and she has written or co-written more than 20 book chapters.

Sue's research has been funded by the American Historical Association, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the American Council of Learned Societies, and she is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She is equally active in service, serving as General Editor for Women, War, and Society: The Women's Work Collection of the Imperial War Museum and as an Advisory Editor for The Encyclopedia of War. She is a former member of the Editorial Board for the Netherlands Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Amsterdam University Press's NIOD Series.

Sue is truly a force in our profession and is one of the most generous and approachable scholars you'll ever meet. Join us for a fascinating chat about attending Harvard at age 17, Joni Mitchell's Blue album, gas masks, a prize-winning first book, "Hotty Totty," and other seemingly random subjects! Check it out!

Rec.: 08/08/2023

To kick off Season 4, we welcome to The Pod Paul Huddie of University College, Dublin. Paul is a European Research Council Project Manager at University College, Dublin, for European Research Council initiatives, including the Age of Civil Wars project. He is also a member of the UCD Centre for War Studies. He previously served as Research Programmes Administrator at UCD and was a lecturer at the University of West London. Paul received his BA and MA degrees at University College Dublin and his PhD at Queen’s University, Belfast. 

Paul is the author of The Crimean War and Irish Society (Liverpool) and the forthcoming Military Charities in Victorian and Edwardian Britain & Ireland: A New Directory (Pen & Sword). He has published articles in British Journal for Military History, Mariner’s Mirror, Women’s History Review, and Irish Economic and Social History. Paul is at the forefront of military welfare history, and in 2023 he co-edited a special edition of War & Society on the subject with Amy Carney. He is working on an edited volume with Amy Rutenberg and Anndal Narayanan, titled Military Welfare History: The Third Field of Warfare History. Paul’s work has been supported by the Dublin City Council, the Royal Historical Society, and the British Association for Victorian Studies. In 2013, he was awarded the Crimean War Research Society’s President’s Trophy.

A former Irish Defense Forces Reservist, Paul is an Executive Member of the Irish Association of Professional Historians and the coordinator of the International Network for Crimean War Studies and the new Military Welfare History Network. 

Join us for a rainy-day-in-Dublin chat with Paul Huddie - we’ll talk attending a rugby school in Dublin, being a bookie runner as a kid, the field of military welfare history studies, Fun Lovin’ Criminals, Dermott Kennedy, among other pertinent issues!

Rec.: 07/26/2023

As we prepare to kick off Season 4, by popular demand and return of the favor today Brian interviews Bill! Bill Allison is Professor of History and former chair of the Department of History at Georgia Southern University. He started his academic career as an assistant professor at the University of St. Francis (Indiana) and then spent several years at Weber State University. Bill earned a BA and MA in History at East Texas State University and took his PhD at Bowling Green State University, where he started as a diplomatic historian before embracing military history. He has done several stints in professional military education, first as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Strategy and International Security at the USAF Air War Colle,ge followed by a Distinguished Professorship in Military History at the USAF School for Advanced Air and Space Studies. From 2012-2014, he was General Harold K. Johnson Visiting Chair in Military History at the US Army War College.

Bill is the author of several books, including My Lai: An American Atrocity in the Vietnam War (Johns Hopkins), Military Justice in Vietnam: The Rule of Law in an American War (University Press of Kansas), and The Gulf War, 1990-1991 (Palgrave). His first book, American Diplomats in Russia: Case Studies in Orphan Diplomacy, 1916-1919 (Praeger) was published in 1997. He is co-author with Janet Valentine and the late Jeffrey Grey of American Military History: A Survey from Colonial Times to the Present (Routledge), which is now in its third edition.

Bill's professional service is a sign of his dedication to our profession. He is a former Trustee and Vice-President of the Society for Military History and was awarded the Society's Edwin Simmons Award for Distinguished Service in 2019. He has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Military History and is series editor for Routledge's Critical Moments in American History Series and Modern War Studies at the University Press of Kansas. In 2014, he was awarded the Department of the Army's Meritorious Public Service Medal. In June 2023, Bill served as the Program Director at the Society for Military History Summer Seminar in Military History, held at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, and he is a current member of the Department of the Army's Historical Advisory Subcommittee.

Join us for a fun and interesting chat with one of the co-hosts of Military Historians are People, Too! We'll talk growing up in East Texas, Vietnam, music, guitars, blocked algebra memories, reinventing yourself, and Rudy's BBQ in Texas!

Rec.: 08/18/2023

To close out Season 3 (and our 75th overall episode!), our guest today is retired US Army colonel Charles R. Bowery, Jr. Charles, the Executive Director of the US Army Center of Military History and Chief of Military History at Ft. McNair in Washington, DC. He oversees all historical matters in the Department of the Army and the twenty-nine Army museums, including the National Museum of the United States Army. He also advises the Secretary and Chief of Staff of the Army and other Army Senior Leaders on historical background relevant to events and projected actions affecting the Army. This included advising the recent Naming Commission.

Charles earned a BA in History at the College of William and Mary and his MA in History at North Carolina State University. He is currently finishing his PhD in History at George Washington University, with a dissertation titled “Black Officers in Army Green: African American Officers in the All-Volunteer Army, 1973-2020.” Charles is the author of The Richmond-Petersburg Campaign, 1864-1865 (Praeger) and Lee and Grant: Profiles in Leadership From the Battlefields of Virginia (American Management Association). He is also the co-editor with Ethan S. Rafuse of The Army War College Guide to the Richmond-Petersburg Campaign (University Press of Kansas).

Charles has conducted staff rides at American Revolution, Civil War, and American World War I & II battlefields. He has been awarded the Meritorious Civilian Service Award, the Legion of Merit, the General Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award, and the General George C. Marshall Award. Charles is also a retired colonel in the United States Army, where he taught history at West Point but spent much of his career as a Master Army Aviator (helicopters!) and Parachutist. His deployments included Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He has earned numerous commendations, including three Bronze Star medals.

This is a very interesting and informative episode. Join us as we chat with Charles about growing up in rural Virginia near the Seven Days battlefields, making career choices, flying helicopters, the Tom Glavine, INXS, and the myriad challenges facing Army historians today.

75 episodes! Thanks, everyone, for the support and for listening!

Rec.: 07/28/2023

Huw has written two books. The first, Fighting the Mau Mau: the British Army and Counter-Insurgency in the Kenya Emergency, was published by Cambridge in 2012, and his most recent book, Uncivil War: The British Army and the Troubles, 1966-1975, will be released by Cambridge in October 2023. Huw also co-edited The Kenya Papers of General Sir George Erskine, June 1953 to May 1955, with David French (The History Press for the Army Records Society, 2013). Huw’s articles have been published in War in History, the Journal of Strategic Studies, the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, and Defense and Security Analysis, to name a few. His work has been supported by the British Academy, The Leverhulme Trust, the Irish Research Council, and the Economic and Social Research Council.

Huw’s involvement in the profession is considerable. He is an editorial board member at The British Journal for Military History, Studies in Contemporary Warfare, and War and the British Empire. He is also the Co-Editor in Chief of Critical Military Studies. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and The Higher Education Academy and has appeared on BBC World News, Good Evening Wales, Radio France International, and many others.

Join us for a fun but, at times, deep chat with Huw Bennett. We’ll talk growing up half-Welsh in Surrey, living in Wales, the emotional toll of writing about atrocity, reading War and Peace, the delights of Spaghetti Ice, Barbi, Nirvana, and more!

Shoutout to Joe’s Ice Cream and Coco Gellato in Cardiff!

Rec.: 07/20/2023

Today’s guest is the delightful historian of the military welfare state Jennifer Mittelstadt. Jen is Professor of History at Rutgers University. She completed her BA in History at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and her MA and PhD in History at the University of Michigan. Before joining the faculty at Rutgers, she was an Assistant Professor of History and Women’s Studies at Penn State University and a Visiting Assistant Professor at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. In 2017-2018, Jen was the Harold K. Johnson Chair in Military History at the US Army War College.

Jen is the author of From Welfare to Workfare: The Unintended Consequences of Liberal Reform, 1945-1964 (North Carolina) and The Rise of the Military Welfare State⁠⁠ (Harvard). With Premilla Nadasen and Marisa Chappell, she is the co-author of Welfare in the United States: A History with Documents (Routledge) and also The Military and the Market (Penn), co-edited with Mark R. Wilson. Her articles have been published in the Journal of Women’s History, Journal of Policy History, and International Labor and Working-Class History, and she has contributed to numerous edited volumes. In addition, Jen has written for Jacobin, War on the Rocks, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and Vox.

Jen’s research has been supported by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars. Her Guggenheim funding supported her current research project, examining grassroots right-wing participation in US foreign policy. Jen is a member of the Coordinating Council on Women’s History, and she is an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer.

In addition to her academic scholarship, Jennifer has co-produced at least four documentary films, including The War and Peace of Tim O’Brien, an official selection of the Sarasota Film Festival, Newport Beach Film Fest, and the St. Louis International Film Festival.

Join us for a whirlwind chat with Jen Mittelstadt. We’ll talk Milwaukee, writing Muppets books, the fate of getting into history, Stevie Wonder, amicus briefs, and even our first mention of the Italian edition of Vogue magazine! Thanks for listening!

Rec.: 07/25/2023

Our guest today is the fun and brilliant Alison Fell. Alison is Dean of the School of Histories, Languages and Cultures at the University of Liverpool. Before taking on the role of Dean at Liverpool, she was Professor of French Cultural History and Director of the Leeds Humanities Research Institute at the University of Leeds. She has also taught at Oxford and Lancaster, and in 2014-15 she was Visiting Professor at the Institute for Historical Research, Université de Lille in France. Alison earned her BA and MA in French Studies at the University of Birmingham, then took her PhD in French Historical/Cultural Studies there as well.

Alison has been a major part of the resurgence in First World War Studies. She is the author of two monographs: Women as Veterans in Britain and France after the First World War (Cambridge: 2018) and Women Warriors: The Cultural Politics of Armed Women, 1870-1945 (Cambridge 2023). She is also the co-editor of four volumes, including First World War Nursing, The Women's Movement in Wartime: International Perspectives, 1914-1919, and Making Waves: French Feminisms and Their Legacies 1975-2015. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of War and Culture Studies and the European Journal of Nursing History, and she has contributed widely to other edited volumes. Her current project is a collaboration with Mark Connelly and Stefan Goebel that examines transnational responses to the memory of the Battle of the Somme.

Alison has been part of seven Arts and Humanities Research Council projects, and her work on Belgian refugees in the UK during and after the First World War was featured in the 2020-2021 Imperial War Museum exhibition "Refugees: Forced to Flee." She received the University of Leeds Vice Chancellor’s Award for Impact and was also recognized as a Woman of Achievement at Leeds. She has consulted and appeared on radio and television programs on the BBC, IRC, and Radio 4. Finally, she is active in the International Society for First World War Studies, a committee member for the Society for the History of War, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

We are thrilled to end our summer hiatus with a delightful chat with Alison Fell. We'll talk farming, women as veterans, walking the Somme battlefield, Dolly Parton, Atomic Kitten, being a dean, and the mystery novels of Caimh McDonnell, among other topics!

Don't forget to get your MHPTPodcast Swag!

Rec.: 07/14/2023

Our guest today is Napoleonic Era naval historian Evan Wilson! Evan is an associate professor in the John B. Hattendorf Center for Maritime Historical Research at the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, where he also co-directs the Graduate Certificate in Maritime History. He was previously the Associate Director of International Security Studies at Yale University and a Caird Senior Research Fellow at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut. He earned a BA in History at Yale University, an MPhil in Modern European History from Cambridge, and a PhD in History from the University of Oxford.

Evan is the author of The Horrible Peace: British Veterans and the End of the Napoleonic Wars (University of Massachusetts Press - use promo code MAS073!) and A Social History of British Naval Officers, 1775–1815 (The Boydell Press). He is also the co-editor of numerous volumes, including Navies in Multipolar Worlds: From the Age of Sail to the Present (Routledge) with Paul Kennedy, Eighteenth-Century Naval Officers: A Transnational Perspective (Palgrave), with Jakob Seerup and AnnaSara Hammar, and Strategy and the Sea: Essays in Honour of John B. Hattendorf (The Boydell Press) with N.A.M. Rodger, J. Ross Dancy, and Benjamin Darnell. His articles have appeared in The Mariner’s Mirror, the Journal of Military History, the English Historical Review, and the Journal for Maritime Research, among others. In 2018, Evan was awarded the Sir Julian Corbett Prize in Modern Naval History by the Institute of Historical Research. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and sits on the Editorial Board of the University of Massachusetts Press's monograph series Veterans.

Finally, we're showing some more love for naval history and the Napoleonic Era! Join us for a very interesting chat with Evan - we'll talk Partick O'Brian novels, veterans of the Napoleonic wars, teaching at a prep school then at a senior-level professional military education institution, Radiohead, and other topics, all while Bill and Brian can't seem to get their Rapid Fire questions straight!

Shoutout to Ralph's BBQ in Weldon, North Carolina, located just off I-95 at exit 173!

Rec. 05/16/2023

What a treat today! Our guest is Second World War historian and author James Holland. James is a prolific author of both fiction and non-fiction, a media personality, and an occasional battlefield tour guide. James earned a BA in History at St. Chad’s College, Durham, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Research Fellow at Swansea University. He has authored fourteen books on the Second World War, including Brothers in Arms: One Legendary Tank Regiment's Bloody War from D-Day to VE-Day (Bantam Press) and Normandy '44: D-Day and the Battle for France (Bantam Press), which was a Military History Matters Book of the Year in 2020. James' first history book was Fortress Malta: An Island Under Siege 1940–43 (Orion). Additionally, he has written books on the Second World War and Burma, the Battle of Britain, the Dam Busters, North Africa, and the Sicily/Italy campaigns. His forthcoming book is The Savage Storm: The Brutal Battle for Italy, 1943 (Atlantic Monthly Press). Additionally, he has written eight books on the Second World War for children and nine novels, many of which are part of the popular Jack Tanner series.

He is co-founder and program director of the Chalke Valley History Festival and he has his own collection at the Imperial War Museum. He also worked with the National Army Museum to develop an exhibit based on Brothers in Arms. James has presented and written programs for the BBC, National Geographic, The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, and the PBS documentary series Pritzker Military Presents. A few of the documentaries James has been part of were short-listed for BAFTAs! He is the co-host with Al Murray of the incredibly popular ⁠We Have Ways of Making You Talk⁠ podcast (600 episodes strong!), which if you have any interest in the Second World War you should check out.

James is dedicated to bringing the history of the Second World War to as wide an audience as possible. We'll talk about doing the work of a historian, the process of writing, "Chik Lit," Ian Botham, podcasting, the Italian Campaign, the Beatles . . . What didn't we talk about? Join us for a wonderful chat with the energetic and prolific James Holland!

Shoutout to the Horseshoe Inn in Ebbesbourne Wake, Wiltshire!

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Rec.: 05/22/2023

Our guest today is James J. Kimble. Jim is Professor of Communication & the Arts at Seton Hall University and is a scholar of war rhetoric and propaganda. From 1997-2005, he was Visiting Assistant Professor of Communication at George Mason University, where he was the Director of Forensics and Speech. He completed his BSEd in Communication & Political Science at the University of Nebraska and an MA, in Rhetoric & Communication at Kansas State University enroute to a PhD in Rhetoric & Political Culture at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Jim is the author of two books, Mobilizing the Home Front: War Bonds and Domestic Propaganda (Texas A&M University Press) and Prairie Forge: The Extraordinary Story of the Nebraska Scrap Metal Drive of World War II (University of Nebraska). The latter won the Nonfiction Book of the Year Award from the Nebraska Center for the Book. He has co-edited two books, Enduring Ideals: Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms (Abbeville Press) with Stephanie Plunkett, and The 10¢ war: Comic Books, Propaganda, and World War II, with Trischa Goodnow. Jim has also written three documentaries for the Norman Rockwell Museum, and Produced/Directed/Written another, titled Scrappers: How the Heartland Won World War II (with T.R. Rondinella). He has authored more than two dozen articles and chapters, and he is the founding editor of the journal Home Front Studies. Finally, Jim served as a guest curator for the Norman Rockwell Museum international traveling exhibition.

Jim is a Senior Fellow at the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies, a Fulbright Scholar, and the recipient of the National Communication Association’s Karl R. Wallace Memorial Award. His research has reached academic and popular audiences. Jim's work on the identity of Rosie the Riveter appeared in People magazine, the New York Times, and on the television show Mysteries at the Museum, ultimately hitting over 1.3 billion media hits worldwide.

Join us for a fun and very interesting chat with Jim Kimble. We'll talk Rosie the Riveter, war propaganda art, starting an academic journal, Mrs. Maisel, and the Alan Parson's Project! Shoutout to Taco John's!

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Rec.: 05/22/2023

Our guest today is the brilliant and entertaining Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy. Andrew is Professor of History at the University of Virginia and the former Saunders Director of the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello. From 2015-2022 he was the Vice President of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. Andrew also spent thirteen years at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, where he served as the Chair of the Department of History and held the Rosebush Professorship. Andrew attended Columbia University before earning a BA, MA, and PhD in History from Oriel College at Oxford University.

Andrew is the author of The Illimitable Freedom of the Human Mind: Thomas Jefferson’s Idea of a University (University of Virginia Press), and is the co-editor with John Ragosta and Peter Onuf of The Founding of Thomas Jefferson’s University (University of Virginia Press) and European Friends of the American Revolution with John A. Ragosta and Marie-Jeanne Rossignol (forthcoming, University of Virginia Press). Andrew is perhaps best known for The Men Who Lost America:  British Leadership, the Revolutionary War and the Fate of Empire (Yale University Press), which won numerous awards, including the George Washington Book Prize, The Society for Military History’s Distinguished Book Award in US History, the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution’s Excellence in American History Book Award, and the New-York Historical Society Annual American History Book Prize. His first book, An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and the British Caribbean (University of Pennsylvania), has now gone through its third printing. In addition, Andrew is widely published in many of the top journals in the field.

Andrew is an award-winning teacher and he has held numerous visiting professorships and fellowships. Most recently, he was a Visiting International Fellow at the Wilberforce Institute at Hull University. In 2016-17, he was the Sons of the American Revolution Visiting Professor at King’s College, London. Andrew is a fellow of the American Antiquarian Society and, of course, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Andrew first researched in an archive when he was only 15, and has never looked back. Join us as we chat about growing up in the US and the UK, the American War for Independence, the Grenadier Guards band, hosting Presidents at Monticello, and Virginia wines!

Our guest today is the dapper, copiously quaffed, and brilliant Ian Andrew Isherwood. Ian is Associate Professor of War and Memory Studies in the Interdisciplinary Studies Program at Gettysburg College. He previously served as the Assistant Director of the Civil War Institute and chair of the Civil War Era Studies program. He is currently the Harold Keith Johnson Chair of Military History at the US Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. Ian earned his BA at Gettysburg College, his MA at Dartmouth College, and his PhD from the University of Glasgow’s Scottish Centre for War Studies. 

Ian is the author of Remembering the Great War  (Bloomsbury) and the co-editor, with Steve Trout, of  Serpents of War: An American Officer's Story of World War I Combat and Captivity (forthcoming, University Press of Kansas). His articles have been published in War and Society, First World War Studies, War, Literature and the Arts, The Journal of Military History, and War in History. He is currently working on a book titled The Battalion: Citizen Soldiers on the Western Front, which is a history of a Kitchener volunteer battalion in the Great War. Ian is a member of the International Society for First World War Studies and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

He is also the creator and co-lead of The First World War Letters of H.J.C. Peirs, a centennial First World War digital history project. Ian is beyond dedicated to his students. In 2019, he was recognized as the outstanding faculty mentor of undergraduate research in the humanities at Gettysburg, and he has taken his students to Europe for field research on several occasions. 

Join us for a really fun and interesting chat with Ian Isherwood. We'll talk beer can collections, First World War memoirs and diaries, teaching at a liberal arts college and a major PME institution, life writing, Tom Waits, C. S. Lewis, and wearing t-shirts in public - that's a lot of ground!

Shoutout to Chubby's BBQ!

Rec.: 05/04/2023

Our guest today is retired British Army Major General Ashley Truluck. Ashley brings together his military experience and lover for military history in a variety of ways, including being active in the Society for Army Historical Research and battlefield tourism. He attended the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and holds a BA in International Studies, History, and Procurement. His many assignments and commands included time with the Royal Corps of Signals, The Brigade of Gurkhas, the 3rd Armoured Divisional Signal Regiment, and the General Staff. Ashley’s military service took him around the world, and he retired at the rank of Major General. He was awarded Companion of the Order of the Bath and Commander of the Order of the British Empire (both firsts for Military Historians are People, Too!). From 2020-2021, he served as the High Sheriff of Wiltshire (also a first!), a position he used to promote the Wiltshire Community Foundation.

Ashley is an experienced sailor and traveler, and avid hill walker. Since his retirement from the military, he has held numerous administrative posts in the private sector. He is chairman of the Society for Army Historical Research, which awards the prestigious Templar Medals, and frequently serves as a battlefield tour guide for The Cultural Experience, a UK-based historical tour company. He has led tours in Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain, and Malta. Finally, Ashley is involved with the Chalke Valley History Festival, which is the largest festival dedicated to history in the world.

Join us for a fascinating chat about the British Army, Wellington, having James Holland for a neighbor, Napoleonic battlefields in Spain, Ed Sheeran, curry, and command and control! You can follow Ashley on Twitter @Truluck_Wilts.

Shout-out to the Queen's Head in Broad Chalke, Wiltshire!

Rec.: 04/20/2023

We're going nuclear today with Jayita Sarkar! Jay is a Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow. Before settling down in Scotland, she was an Assistant Professor at Boston University and a Niehaus Fellow at Dartmouth College. She was also a Fellow with Harvard University’s Weatherhead Initiative in Global History, an Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy, and a Stanton Postdoctoral Fellow, all also at Harvard. She received her Ph.D. in History from the Graduate Institute Geneva, an MA at the University of Paris IV, Sorbonne, and a BA and MA in Political Science and International Relations at Jadavpur University.

Jay is the author of Ploughshares and Swords: India’s Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War (Cornell), which was a 2023 Honourable Mention for the Best Book Award of ISA Global Development Studies Section. Her articles have appeared in Cold War History, the Journal of Cold War Studies, the Journal of Strategic Studies, and the Journal of Global Security Studies, among others. Her 2018 article in Nonproliferation Review entitled “U.S. Technological Collaboration for Nonproliferation: Key Evidence from the Cold War”  (With J. Krige) won the 2018 Doreen and Jim McElvany Nonproliferation Award. Her second book, Atomic Capitalism: A Global History, is under contract with Princeton University Press.

Jay has received grants from the Stanton Foundation, The Hoover Institution, The Swiss National Science Foundation, and the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, to name just a few. She was recently granted a British Academy Award to support “Partition Machine,” an upcoming conference she has organized on territorial partitions. Jayita sits on the Editorial Board of Cold War History, the Editorial Advisory Board of Global Nuclear Histories Book Series at McGill-Queen’s University Press, and the Board of Directors of the Arms Control Association. She is a member of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. On top of all that, she’s a polyglot who speaks Bengali, English, and French fluently with a little German, Hindu and Urdu thrown in for good measure.

Join us for a delightful and really interesting chat with Jay Sarkar - we'll talk India's nuclear policy, Glasgow v. Edinburgh, Scottish Straight Cats, Diego Maradona, and Pink Martini, among many other topics!

Rec.: 04/21/2023

Our guest today is Andrew J. Huebner, who clearly didn't think through the idea of recording live in the Odysea Waterfront Lounge at the Hilton Bayfront in San Diego, in the middle of the Annual Meeting of the Society for Military History! Thankfully, most military historians avoid bars, pubs, etc. (NOT!). But we had a great chat and the sound turned out ok, so thanks for your patience with the sound quality on this one!

Andrew is Professor of History at the University of Alabama. He earned his undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and his PhD from Brown University. Andrew was a visiting professor at Brown from 2004-2006 and a lecturer in History and English at Harvard during the same span. Since 2017, he has been an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer.

He is the author of Love and Death in the Great War (Oxford), which won the President’s Book Prize from the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, and The Warrior Image: Soldiers in American Culture from the Second World War to the Vietnam Era (UNC), a Nota Bene selection of Chronicle of Higher Education. He is co-editor with John Giggie of Dixie’s Great War (Alabama), and forthcoming titles The Cambridge History of War and Society in America (with Jennifer Keene), and Race and Gender at War (Alabama) with Friend-of-the-Pod Lesley Gordon. Andrew is also the co-author with Alan Brinkley and John Giggey of a popular American history textbook, The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People. In addition, his work has appeared in the Journal of American History, Film and History, The Sixties, American Studies, and Journalism History. His current project, Buffalo Soldiers and the Making of the United States Empire, s under contract with Liveright/W.W. Norton.

Andrew has given talks all over the United States, is a frequent guest on history podcasts, and contributor and advisor to public history projects. He's a busy guy, but one of the most humble and enjoyable historians you'll come across. Join us for our chat with Andrew, as we discuss New Jersey, gender theory (or not), Modest Mouse, and even presidential aspirations, all while Andrew multi-tasks talking with us, enjoying a beer, AND watching the Alabama-San Diego State Sweet 16 match-up over our shoulders on the big bar TV (spoiler - the game didn't end well for Andrew)!

As always, thanks for listening, please subscribe on whatever podcast service you use to Military Historians are People, Too, and all podcasts you enjoy, and don't forget to check out our Swag Store on Zazzle! Rec.: 03/24/2023

Our guest today is the artsy, funny, and brilliant Kate Clarke Lemay. Kate is a historian at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. She was the lead historian for the signature exhibitions America’s Presidents and Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence. and is currently curating a major exhibition titled 1898: American Imperial Visions and Revisions, which will open on April 28, 2023! Kate also serves as director of PORTAL, the National Portrait Gallery's Scholarly Center. She was Assistant Professor of Art History at Auburn University at Montgomery and Visiting Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at Brigham Young University. Kate earned a BA in Art History and French from Syracuse University and a PhD in Art History and American Studies from Indiana University.

Kate's publications include Triumph of the Dead: American WWII Cemeteries, Monuments and Diplomacy in France (Alabama, 2018), which was awarded a Terra Foundation in American Art publication. In 2019, she published the eponymous catalog for the Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence exhibit with Princeton University Press. The book received the 2021 Smithsonian Secretary’s Prize for Excellence in Research as well as the 2020 Amelia Bloomer Book Award from the American Library Association. Kate was a guest editor for a special issue on transatlantic diplomacy and war cemeteries for The International Journal of Military History and Historiography. 

Kate is a Fulbright Scholar and her work has been supported by the Terra Foundation in American Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center, and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique at the Caen Mémorial Museum in France. She is a Presidential Counselor to the National WWII Museum, an advisor to the National Women's Suffrage Monument Foundation, and sits on the Advisory Board of the Association of Historians of American Art’s Panorama Journal.

Join us for a fun and interesting chat with Kate Lemay. We'll talk Delaware, boarding school, researching at the American Battlefield Monuments Commission offices in France, suffering Friend-of-the-Pod Brian Linn's critique of Imperial Visions and Revisions, Foo Fighters, and being BBQ-adjacent. Speaking of which, shout out to Dinosaur BBQ in Syracuse, New York!

As always, subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your pods, and check out the Swag Store on Zazzle! Rec.: 04/14/2023

Our guest today is the guitar-playing, hiking, marathon-running, American Studies guy-turned-historian David Kieran! Dave is an Associate Professor and the Colonel Richard R. Hallock Distinguished Chair in Military History at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia. Before coming to Columbus State, he was associate professor and chair of the history department at Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, PA, where he also served as coordinator for the American Studies program. Dave was also a visiting assistant professor in the American Studies Department at Franklin & Marshall College and in the History Department at Skidmore College. He earned a BA in English from Connecticut College and a PhD in American Studies from George Washington University.

A scholar of the post-Vietnam American military, Dave is the author of Signature Wounds: The Untold Story of the Military’s Mental Health Crisis (NYU Press) and Forever Vietnam: How A Divisive War Changed American Public Memory (University of Massachusetts Press). He has also edited or co-edited several volumes, including The War of My Generation: Youth Culture and the War on Terror (Rutgers University Press) and At War: The Military and American Culture in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (Rutgers University Press), with Edwin A. Martini. David’s articles have been published in War & Society, the Journal of American Studies, and the Journal of War and Culture Studies, and he has contributed to numerous edited volumes. Finally, he has written for the Washington Post, Psychology Today, and Slate. His new project is tentatively titled How the Army Saved Itself: Maxwell R. Thurman and the Army’s Post-Vietnam Metamorphosis.

Dave has two awesome dogs, has run over a dozen marathons, and has more guitars than Bill, which is a sore point with Bill. Join us for a great chat about interdisciplinary approaches to doing history, interviewing retired generals, running marathons, mental health issues in the American military, Bruce Springsteen, Alabama white sauce, acoustic viz electric guitars - and more!

And forgive Bill's kitchen renovation noise! Military Historians have kitchens, too!

Shoutout to Smoke Bourbon and BBQ in Columbus!

Rec.: 04/06/2023

Our guest today is Civil War scholar Lesley Gordon. Lesley is the Charles G. Summersell Chair of Southern History at the University of Alabama. Prior to moving to Tuscaloosa, she was a professor of history at the University of Akron, and she started her academic career at Murray State University. Lesley received her BA from the College of William and Mary, and her M.A. and PhD from the University of Georgia.

Lesley’s first book General George E. Pickett in Life and Legend (UNC Press) was a History Book Club Selection. She published “This Terrible War”: The Civil War and its Aftermath with Daniel E. Sutherland and Michael Fellman in 2003 and the book is now in its third edition. In 2014, Lesley published A Broken Regiment: The 16th Connecticut’s Civil War (LSU Press). She has also co-edited four volumes, including Intimate Strategies of the Civil War: Military Commanders and Their Wives, with Carol K. Bleser (Oxford), and Race and Gender at War: Writing American Military History, with Friend-of-the-Pod Andrew Huebner, which is forthcoming with the University of Alabama Press. She has also written more than a dozen essays and articles.

Lesley is extremely active in her field and she is currently the president of the Society of Civil War Historians. She chairs the editorial board at the University of Alabama Press and served on the editorial board of The Journal of the Civil War Era. She is a current member of the advisory board for Civil War Times. Since 2009, Lesley has been an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer.

Join us for a fun and fascinating chat with Lesley Gordon. We'll talk girls drawing Civil War soldiers in middle school, being a tour guide at Mark Twain's home, sports bandwagons, Noah Wyle, writing biography, a little Alison Krause, and Daisy Joines & The Six, so tune in!

Check out the MHPTPodcast Swag Store on Zazzle!

Rec.: 03/14/2023

Today's guest is Martin Thomas. Martin is Professor of History and Director of the Centre for Histories of Violence and Conflict at the University of Exeter in the UK. He was also the first director of Exeter's Centre for the Study of War, State, and Society. Before joining the faculty at Exeter, Martin taught at the University of the West of England in Bristol for eleven years. He has held visiting professorships and fellowships at Sciences Po. Saint-Germain-en-Laye and the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies. Martin received his BA and PhD from Oxford University.

Martin is the author of ten books and dozens of articles and book chapters. His many publications include The Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire with co-author Andrew Thompson, Arguing about Empire: Imperial Rhetoric in Britain and France, 1882-1956 (Oxford) with co-author Richard Toye in 2017, and The Civilianization of War: The Changing Civil–Military Divide, 1914–2014, with Andrew Barros (Cambridge). Martin's solo publications include Fight or Flight: Britain, France, and their Roads from Empire (Oxford), Violence and Colonial Order: Police, Workers, and Protest in the European Colonial Empires, 1918-40 (Cambridge), and The French Empire at War, 1940-45 (Manchester).

Martin was awarded the Philip Leverhulme prize for outstanding research in 2002 and currently holds a three-year Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship. He has also been a fellow of the Independent Social Research Foundation. Martin has been a member of the editorial boards of the International History Review, Intelligence and National Security, Diplomacy & Statecraft, War & Society, French Historical Studies, and Cambridge’s Studies in the Social & Cultural History of Modern Warfare.

Join us for a really interesting chat with Martin Thomas. We'll talk teaching global history, the nature of colonial violence, old French ladies with baskets of hand grenades, League One football, and Little Feat! 

Be sure to check out the MHPTPodcast Swag Store on Zazzle! 

Rec.: 03/13/2023

Brian K. Feltman, not to be confused with the notorious other Brian Feltman from Georgia, is Professor of History (newly promoted!) at Georgia Southern University. He is a scholar of Modern Germany and the First World War and teaches courses on the same at Georgia Southern. He earned his BA and MA from Clemson University and his PhD from The Ohio State University.

Brian is the author of The Stigma of Surrender: German Prisoners, British Captors, and Manhood in the Great War and Beyond (University of North Carolina), which won the Society for Military History’s Coffman Prize, and with Matthias Reiss co-edited Prisoners of War and Local Women in Europe and the United States, 1914-1956: Consorting with the Enemy (London: Palgrave, 2022). He has several essays in edited collections as well as articles in Gender & History, the Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, and War in History. He is currently working on a book-length project titled Sacrifice on Display: The Culture of Everyday Remembrance in Germany, 1914-1933.

Brian is active in the German Studies Association and the Society for Military History, and is a Fellow of the Society for First World War Studies. He has held several fellowships and grants, including the Thyssen-Heideking Postdoctoral Fellowship at the German Historical Institute & Universität zu Köln, an Albert’s Researcher Reunion Grant also at the Universität zu Köln, a Deutscher Akademischer Austaush Dienst (DAAD) Grant at the Free University of Berlin, and several research support grants from Georgia Southern University.

Join us for what you asked for! We'll talk growing up in rural Upstate South Carolina, discovering German history, networking as a graduate student, and BBQ in Valdosta, Georgia, and we even let students ask some questions!

Rec.: 03/22/2023

Vanya is the author of Marie von Clausewitz: The Woman Behind the Making of On War (Oxford University Press). Her Journal of Military History article, “The Other Clausewitz: Findings from the Newly Discovered Correspondence between Marie and Carl von Clausewitz’” was awarded the Society for Military History’s Moncado Prize. She recently published “Lieber and Clausewitz: The Understanding of Modern War and the Theoretical Origins of General Orders No. 100” in the Journal of Civil War Era and “When Resources Drive Strategy: Understanding Clausewitz/Corbett’s War Limited by Contingent” in Military Strategy Magazine. Vanya sits on the Military Strategy Magazine’s Editorial Advisory Panel and frequently contributes to War on the Rocks and The Strategy Bridge. 

Vanya’s journalism experience makes her an energetic go-getter. We’ll talk about growing up with ‘technical intelligentsia” parents in Bulgaria, the fame of being on a Bulgarian Sunday morning news program, working in the German archives, Bulgarian moussaka, and the band Ostava, plus a little Clausewitz. Join us for a fun and fascinating chat with Vanya Bellinger!

And Check out our new @MHPTPodcast Swag Store!

Rec.: 03/13/2023

Our guest today is the prolific scholar and Arsenal supporter Gary D. Sheffield. Gary is Visiting Professor at the Humanities Research Institute of the University of Buckingham and Professor Emeritus at the University of Wolverhampton, where he set up the First World War Programme. He was previously Chair of War Studies at the University of Birmingham and Professor of Modern History at King's College London. He also served as Land Warfare Historian on the Higher Command and Staff Course at the Joint Services Command and Staff College. Gary earned his undergraduate and MA degrees in History at the University of Leeds and went on to take his PhD at King’s College, London.

Gary’s list of publications is extensive. He is the author or editor of more than 15 books. His book Forgotten Victory: The First World War – Myths and Realities was a bestseller. Gary’s contribution to The British General Staff: Innovation and Reform earned him a share of the Templer Medal in 2003. The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army was selected as a military book of the year by The Times and shortlisted for the Duke of Westminster’s Medal for Military Literature. Among Gary’s numerous other books are Leadership in the Trenches: Officer-Man Relations, Morale and Discipline in The British Army in the Era of the First World War, The Somme: A New History, A Short History of the First World War, and The First World War in 100 Objects. He is currently completing a project titled Civilian Armies: British and Dominions Soldiers’ Experience in the Two World Wars, which will be published by Yale University Press.

Gary is a member of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Arts, he sits on the Advisory Boards of the Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, the Academic Advisory Panel of the National Army Museum, and the Academic Advisory Board of the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Trust. He also served as the President of the International Guild of Battlefield Guides and the Honorary President of the Western Front Association. Finally, Gary frequently appears on television and documentaries, writes for the press, and speaks to podcasters like us.

We can't thank Gary enough for taking the time with us. Join us for a delightful chat about reading military history as a kid, Tony Adams, battlefield tours, curries, and Bob Dylan. You'll enjoy this one.

Check out the @MHPTPodcast Swag Store!

Rec.: 03/03/2023

Today's guest is David Morgan-Owen. Dave is a Reader in the History of War in the Defence Studies Department at King's College, London. From 2019-2021, he served as Academic Programme Director for the Intermediate Command and Staff Course (Land) and the MA in Military and Security Studies. He received all of his degrees from the University of Exeter and has a park bench on campus named in his honor after having spent so many years there (not really, but we could start a campaign?). He has held fellowships at the Modern War Institute at West Point, the National Museum of the Royal Navy, and the National Maritime Museum. Dave is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Higher Education Academy. In 2016, he won the Julian Corbett Prize in Modern Naval History.

Dave's first book The Fear of Invasion: Strategy, Politics, and British War Planning, 1880-1914 (Oxford) was awarded the Templer Medal for best first book from the Society for Army Historical Research in 2017. In 2020, he co-edited with Louis Halewood Economic Warfare and the Sea: Grand Strategies for Maritime Powers (Liverpool). Dave's articles have appeared in the English Historical Review, The Journal of Modern History, War in History, and War & Society, among others. His current project examines how the First World War challenged ideas of Britain as a ‘sea power’, and what these discussions meant for the prosecution of the conflict.

Dave's greatest accomplishment, however, is having convinced Season I guest Aimée Fox to become his partner, and along with Aimée is one of MHPT UK Podcast Dog Freddie's Human Feeding Units. Join us for an interesting and fun chat with David Morgan-Owen. We'll talk about rolling cannonballs on HMS Victory, being Jeremy Black's chauffeur, having tea with Sir Michael Howard, Riddle in the Sands, and Oasis, as well as some good military history. Check it out!

Rec.: 02/17/2023

Our guest today is one of the leading historians of the American soldier John C. McManus. John is Curators’ Distinguished Professor of US Military History at the Missouri University of Science & Technology. He earned a BA in Sports Journalism and an MA in History from the University of Missouri, then received his PhD in History from the University of Tennessee (Bill says UT-Austin has the correct shade of orange; John, not surprisingly, disagrees). While at Tennessee, he served as the Assistant Director of the Center for the Study of War and Society and was also a participant in Tennessee's Normandy Scholars Program. John has taught at Missouri S&T for several years and in 2014 became Missouri S&T’s first Curators’ Distinguished Professor, an honor bestowed by the University of Missouri System. In 2018-2019, John was the Leo A. Shifrin Chair of Naval and Military History at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis.

John is the author of more than a dozen books, including: The Deadly Brotherhood: The American Combat Soldier in World War II; Deadly Sky: The American Combat Airman in World War II; Alamo in the Ardennes: The Untold Story of the American Soldiers who made the Defense of Bastogne Possible; Grunts: The American Infantry Combat Experience: World War II through Iraq; September Hope: The American Side of a Bridge Too Far; The Dead and Those About to Die, D-Day: The Big Red One at Omaha Beach; and Hell Before Their Very Eyes: American Soldiers Liberate Concentration Camps in Germany, April 1945.  Most recently, John has been busy writing a trilogy on the Pacific War. The first book, Fire and Fortitude, won the Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History. It was followed by Island Infernos: The US Army’s Pacific War Odyssey, 1944. The trilogy will end with To the End of the Earth: The US Army and the Downfall of Japan, 1945, which will be published in May 2023. For us podcast nerds, John is a frequent co-host with Al Murray and James Holland on the popular We Have Ways of Making You Talk podcast. Follow John on Twitter @JohnCMcManus3!

Join us for a fascinating chat with John McManus. We'll discuss growing up in St. Louis, U2, writing, and toasted ravioli. Shout-out to Pappy's Smokehouse in St. Louis!

Rec.: 12/19/2022

Allison is the author of Forgotten Veterans, Invisible Memorials: How American Women Commemorated the Great War, 1917-1945, which is part of GFOP Steve Trout’s War, Memory, and Culture Series at the University of Alabama Press. The book won the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference’s 2022 Arline Custer Memorial Award for the best book written in the Mid-Atlantic region. Her articles have been published in Buildings & Landscapes: The Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum and World War I Remembered, the National Park Service’s book of essays on the First World War. Allison and her work have been featured in the Washington Post and the New York Times, and she has appeared on several media outlets.

Join us for a feel-good chat with Allison as we discuss growing up visiting battlefields in Virginia, public history, Gilbert & Sullivan, being in the recent Kennedy Center production of Giselle, and a singer-to-listen-to-for-the-rest-of-your-life choice that caused Brian and Bill to fall out of their chairs! Shoutout to Rocklands BBQ in Alexandria and Pierce's BBQ in Williamsburg!

Rec.: 02/16/2023

Rick is the author of Feeding Washington’s Army: Surviving the Valley Forge Winter of 1778 (University of North Carolina Press). His first book, Liberty and the Republic: The American Citizen as Soldier, 1775-1861, appeared with New York University Press. He is currently editing a collection of letters and a journal tentatively titled A Most Uncommon Soldier: The Letters and Journal of Edward Ashley Bowen Phelps, 1846-1848, which will be published with the University Press of Kansas. In addition, Rick has published numerous book chapters and prize-winning articles.

If you want to know how to apply for research fellowships, ask Rick; he’s received a bucket-full. In 2021-2022, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Maynooth University Arts & Humanities Institute at the National University of Ireland. He was a Residential Research Fellow at The Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington in Mount Vernon, Virginia, from 2016-2017. Rick held a Residential Research Fellowship at the David Library of the American Revolution in 2014-2015 and a Society for the History of the Early American Republic/Mellon Faculty Research Stipend in Early American History in 2005. In 2020, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society - we think that’s a big deal.

Join us for a wonderful chat with Rick about growing up in LA, Woody Strode, George Washington, leading staff rides, The Blasters, and what makes a proper Manhattan! Shoutout to Q39 BBQ in Kansas City!

Rec.: 02/09/2023

Our guest today is Dr. Anna Lois McKay (that's pronounced McKai!). Anna is the Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at the University of Liverpool, where she is working on a project titled "Prisoners’ Progress: Imperial Circulations of War Captives, 1793–1815.” She is a specialist on 18th-Century prison hulks, prisoners of war, and forced migration. In 2021-22, Anna was a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of English at University College Cork. She was the Alan Pearsall Fellow in Naval and Maritime History at the Institute of Historical Research, London in 2020-2021. She earned a BA in English and Related Literature from the University of York in 2012, and an MA in 18th-Century Studies also from the University of York in 2014. Her PhD, awarded in 2020, was an Arts and Humanities Research Council joint project between the University of Leicester and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

Anna is the author of "‘Allowed to die’? Prison Hulks, Convict Corpses and the Inquiry of 1847,” which appeared in Cultural and Social History in May 2021 and won the Royal Historical Society's Alexander Prize in 2022. Her article “Floating Hell” was published in BBC History Magazine in September 2022. Her work has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the European Research Council, the Society for Nautical Research, and the Economic History society. Anna is an Early Career Member of the Royal Historical Society and has been awarded The Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions awarded her a Postdoctoral Fellowship Seal of Excellence. Anna has conducted archival research in the United Kingdom, Australia, Bermuda, and Canada, and her work has allowed her to conduct fieldwork in dockyards, prisoner-of-war depots, and penal colony sites around the world.

We'll discuss prisoner theater, writing a play, the nomad-like existence of post-docs in the UK, chess-boxing, Peaky Blinders, among many other topics. Join us for a fun and fascinating talk with Anna McKay!

Rec.: 12/02/2022

Today's guest is the prolific, experienced, fan of the Rolling Stones and recently announced 2023 Society for Military History Samuel Eliot Morrison awardee Brian McAllister Linn! Brian is Professor of History and Ralph R. Thomas Class of 1921 Professor in Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University. Brian has been at Texas A&M since 1989, but he had visiting positions at Old Dominion and Nebraska before landing in College Station. He attended the University of Hawaii for his BA and earned his MA and PhD at The Ohio State University. 

Brian has held far too many fellowships to mention them all, but here are some of his recent accomplishments: He was a Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences Fellow in 2019, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow in 2018-2019, and a Fulbright Distinguished Professor at the University of Birmingham in the UK in 2016. Brian also held a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, a Woodrow Wilson International Center Fellowship, and a Bosch Fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin. 

To say that Brian is a prolific scholar is an understatement. In 2016 he published Elvis’s Army: Cold War GIs and the Atomic Battlefield (Harvard), which won the US Army Historical Foundation's Best Book Award and US Military History Group's Captain Richard Lukaszewicz Memorial Book Award. The Society for Military History has recognized Brian's work with its prestigious Distinguished Book Prize twice: for The Philippine War, 1899-1902 and Guardians of Empire: The U.S. Army and the Pacific, 1902-1940 (which also won the US Army Historical Foundation's Best Book Award). His most recent book, Real Soldiering: The U.S. Army in the Aftermath of War, 1815-1940, will be published by the University Press of Kansas in 2023. Brian has also published more than 40 essays, chapters, and articles, including the just-published “Forty Years On: Master Narratives and US Military History (War & Society, 2022), which includes a shout-out to Military Historians are People, Too!

Brian’s service to the profession has been immense. He currently sits on the editorial boards of Battlegrounds: Cornell Studies in Military History, War and Society, and the Journal of Strategic Studies. Brian is a past president and trustee of the Society for Military History, which recognized his service with its Edwin M. Simmons Memorial Service Award in 2012.

We'll talk Hawaii, the state of military history today, Gaylord Perry, Stones versus Beatles, and Fulbright-ing. Join us for a much-anticipated chat with Brian Linn! And a big shout-out to Carney's Pub in Bryan, Texas!

Rec.: 12/02/2022

Our guest today is Dr. Erin R. McCoy, and we are talking with her live from the campus of the University of South Carolina-Beaufort! Erin is an Associate Professor of English & Interdisciplinary Studies and is a past Director of the Interdisciplinary Studies Program at USC-Beaufort. Erin earned a BA in English from Wingate University, located in the conveniently named town of Wingate, North Carolina. She has an MA in English from Clemson University and a PhD in Humanities from the University of Louisville. Before coming to USC-Beaufort, she held visiting and adjunct positions at USC-Upstate, Indiana University Southeast, and Jefferson Community and Technical College in Louisville. 

Erin is the author of Tour of War: A Cultural Historiography of the Viet Nam War. In addition, she has published more than a dozen peer-reviewed articles and essays and she is a prolific writer of fiction and poetry. Erin has received the USC Research Initiative for Summer Engagement award on several occasions. In 2015 she won the award for “Wounds of War: Healing from the Vietnam War in Southeast Asia, in 2017 “Exploring War: Healing from the Vietnam War in Australia,” and in 2019 “Tours of War: Completing an Introductory Cultural History of the Viet Nam War.” In 2020, she was awarded the James R. Bennett Award for Literature and Peace by the College English Association. Erin is popular with the students here at USC-Beaufort. In 2016 she was recognized as the Faculty Advisor of the Year (SSV/Student Life), in 2015 she was the Professor of the Year, and she also serves as the Faculty Advisor for the Sand Shark Veterans Association on campus. Since coming to USCB, she has advised more than 60 undergraduate theses. 

If you want to know more about the Vietnam War and popular culture, then Erin is your go-to source. We'll talk about traveling in Vietnam, trip tattoos, English viz History, Guess Who, Randy Travis, and much more. We are thrilled to be here at USC-Beaufort to kick off Season 3 of Military Historians are People, Too - join us for a fun chat with the equally fun Erin McCoy!

Rec.: 11/14/2022

Our special 50th-episode guest is Gregory A. Daddis, who has been bugging us for months to be on the show. Greg is the USS Midway Chair in Modern US Military History and the Director of the Center for War and Society at San Diego State University. Before taking the position at Sand Diego State, he spent five years just north up the California coast at Chapman University, where he was Professor of History and Director of the MA Program in War & Society. Greg earned a BS from the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he commissioned armor. While in uniform, Greg earned his MA in History from Villanova University and his PhD from UNC-Chapel Hill, working under the expert guidance of Prof. Dick Kohn. While at UNC, he was also Professor of Military Science and led UNC’s ROTC program.

Greg served for 26 years in the Army, retiring as a colonel. He is a veteran of Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom and was awarded the Bronze Star, the Legion of Merit, and the Meritorious Service Medal during his time in uniform. Greg wrapped up his Army career serving as the Chief of the American History Division in the Department of History at West Point.

Since leaving West Point, Greg has positioned himself as one of the leading historians of the Vietnam War. He is the author of five books, including most recently Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines (Cambridge). He authored a trilogy on the American war in Vietnam with Oxford University Press: No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War, Westmoreland’s War: Reassessing American Strategy in Vietnam, and Withdrawal: Reassessing America’s Final Years in Vietnam. His first book was Fighting in the Great Crusade: An 8th Infantry Artillery Officer in World War II (Louisiana State University Press). Greg’s articles have been published in the major journals in the field, including The Journal of Strategic Studies, The Journal of Cold War Studies, and The Journal of Military History. He has also written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, among other media outlets. Greg was also an adviser to Florentine Films for Ken Burns-Lynn Novick’s documentary, The Vietnam War, which appeared in 2017.

We could go on, and on, and on, and even mention Greg’s upcoming research Fulbright to Oxford University in Spring 2023, but we won’t. You’ll not find a more generous, affable, California-Hipster-dressed scholar in the military history community. We’ll talk New Jersey, a grandfather’s WW2 footlocker, the Beatles, gender theory, Batman (the 1966 TV series!), and much more in between. Also - special 50th-episode guest appearances! Join us for a delightful and thoughtful chat with Greg Daddis!

Rec.: 12/09/2022

Harry is the author of Soldiers of the Nation: Military Service and Modern Puerto Rico, 1868-1952 (University of Nebraska Press), and he has authored numerous essays and articles, including “A New Day Has Dawned for Porto Rico’s Jíbaro’: Manhood, Race, Military Service and Self-Government during WWI” in Latino Studies (2015). Harry is currently working on two book projects, Fighting on Two Fronts: The Experience of the Puerto Rican Soldiers in the Korean War and Patriotism and Resistance: The Puerto Rican Experience during the Vietnam War. He is a frequent contributor to Centro Voices, Latino Rebels, NBC News, and The Huffington Post, and he also frequently appears on Spanish and English-language television and radio. Harry is a Board member and Executive Director of the New York Chapter of the National Puerto Rican Agenda and has served on the Council of the Latin American Studies Association.

Harry has an amazing story - growing up in Puerto Rico, dropping out of school, serving in the military, returning to school, then chasing a girl to Philadelphia, which serendipitously put him in friend-of-the-pod Jay Lockenour's graduate seminar at Temple University. The rest, as they say, is "history." We thoroughly enjoyed our chat with Harry Franqui-Rivera - your day will be better for listening to his story.

Rec.: 11/18/2022

Haley has delivered more than 20 conference papers and is already active in professional service. In 2022, the Society for Military History appointed Hayley as the SMH’s Mark Grimsley Social Media Fellow. You can follow Hayley on Twitter @HayleyHasik.

Join us, especially you graduate students, for an engaging and fun chat with Hayley Hasik - East Texas, Christmas trees, dog parks, Reba McEntire, the job market, and helicopters, and listen as Brian and Bill reveal way too much!

Hayley’s recommendations:

• History: Greg Daddis, No Sure Victory and Susan Brewer, Why America Fights.
• Book from childhood: Harry Potter!
• One band/singer: Reb McEntire
• BBQ: grilling at home with the family (tough to top that)

Rec.: 11/04/2022

Today's guest is the hard-working fellow podcaster Philip Shackelford! Philip is the Director of the College Library at South Arkansas Community College in El Dorado, Arkansas. Before joining South Arkansas Community College, Philip held internships and positions at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland, the University of Akron, and the Twinsburg Public Library in Twinsburg, Ohio. He earned a BA and MA in History and his MLIS from Kent State University at Kent State. 

Philip serves on the Executive Committee of the Arkansas Library Association (ArLA) and was president in 2021. His 2018 article in the ArLA journal Arkansas Libraries won the ArLA LaNell Compton Prize. He also received the ArLA Emerging Leader Award in 2019. Aside from his work as a Library Director, Philip remains an active scholar. He is the author of Rise of the Mavericks: The US Air Force Security Service and the Cold War, which the US Naval Institute Press will publish in April 2023. Amazingly, he has written 30 published book reviews since 2015. Philip is also a podcaster. He is the creator and host of the Modern Scholar Podcast, one of the best academic podcasts out there - we can't recommend Modern Scholar enough!

Join us for a fascinating chat about homeschooling, getting interested in military history, being a musician with a brother who is a Nashville violin/fiddle prodigy known as the Jimi Hendrix of Violin, podcasting, AND (wait for it!) vegan BBQ alternatives! Join us as we are far outside of our comfort zone with the pleasant and enjoyable Philip Shackelford!

• Philip's recent history read: The End of Victory: Prevailing in the Thermonuclear Age, by Edward Kaplan.
• Philip's read-for-fun: The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups, by Daniel Coyle.
• And Philip's local BBQ shout-out: JJ's BBQ!

Follow Philip and Modern Scholar Podcast on Twitter @modscholarpod.

Rec.: 10/28/2022

Today’s guest is environmental historian Tait Keller. Tait is an Associate Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN. He is also the former Director of Environmental Studies and Sciences at Rhodes. Tait received his BA in History from the University of Rochester and earned his MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University and his PhD in History from Georgetown as well. Tait’s first book, Apostles of the Alps: Mountaineering and Nation Building in Germany and Austria, was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2016. In 2018, he co-edited Environmental Histories of the First World War (Cambridge University Press) with Richard P. Tucker, J.R. McNeill, and Martin Schmid. That volume was awarded a Society for Military History Distinguished Book Award in 2019. Tait’s second book, A Global Environmental History of the Great War, is under contract with Cambridge University Press. 

Tait’s work has been supported by a plethora of prestigious grant organizations, including the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research, and the German Academic Exchange Service. Tait has given talks in Africa, India, Turkey, Germany, England, and other sites worldwide. Tait is a nationally certified instructor with Krav Maga Alliance (KMA). When he’s not leading his department or writing the environmental history of conflict, he teaches at Endurance Krav Maga in Memphis. 

Journey, the Incredible Hulk, unexploded WW1 ordnance, management software for higher education (very exciting!), tattoos, and the love we have for our dogs - we cover a lot of ground in this episode. Join us for a delightful chat with Tait Keller! 

Shout-out to the Bar-B-Q Shop and Central BBQ in Midtown Memphis!

Rec.: 10/21/2022

Today's guest is BBQ pit master (and military historian), Dr. Robert Wettemann. Bob is an associate professor of History at the United States Air Force Academy. He served as the Director of the Air Force Academy’s Center for Oral History from 2010-2014 and was the Max F. James Distinguished Researcher in Character and Leadership Development at the USAFA Center for Character and Leadership Development. Prior to moving to Colorado Springs, Bob was an associate professor of history at McMurray University (Go Warhawks!), where he served as the director of the public history program. He also worked with the Command Historian’s Office of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command. He is a proud alum of the History Department at Oklahoma State University, and he went on to earn his MA and PhD in History at Texas A&M University.

Bob is the author of Privilege vs. Equality: Civil-Military Relations in the Jacksonian Era, 1815-1845 (Praeger Security International) and has written numerous other essays and articles. He recently completed another manuscript titled The Patriot: An American Golf Odyssey, which was done in cooperation with the Folds of Honor Foundation. He is currently working on a book-length project titled “Rhino Tanks and Sticky Bombs: American Ingenuity in World War Two.”

Bob is dedicated to his students and the profession. His many awards for service include several for mentoring students, including the 2017 Stephen L. Orrison Award for Mentoring Excellence from the Department of History at the USAFA. He is a frequent presenter at meetings of the Society for Military History and remains active in the public history world. 

Join us for a fun chat with Bob Wettemann, recorded just as Hurricane Ian missed our Statesboro Studio and began dumping rain on our Spartanburg Remote Production Facility (all safe), while Bob remains a kid at heart as F-16s buzzed USAFA. We'll cover a whole range of topics, from growing up in Stillwater, Oklahoma to the wonders of the 940s section of the Dewey Decimal System, from watching fire with Aaron Franklin to Bob's work with the Folds of Honor Foundation. Good stuff. Enjoy!

Rec.: 09/30/2022

Today on The Pod we talk with David Silbey! David is the associate director of the Cornell in Washington program and a senior lecturer at Cornell University. He joined Cornell after spending the first decade of his career at Alvernia University in Reading, Pennsylvania, where he reached the rank of associate professor. David received his BA in History from Cornell University and his MA and PhD in History from Duke University.

David has published numerous book chapters and articles, but his ability to produce books and edited volumes is enviable. His work includes The British Working Class and Enthusiasm for War, 1914-1916  (Taylor & Francis), A War of Empire and Frontier: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902  (Hill & Wang), and The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game in China: A History (Hill & Wang). His latest book is The Other Face of Battle: America’s Forgotten Wars and the Experience of Combat, which he co-authored with friend-of-the-pod Wayne E. Lee, Anthony E. Carlson, and David L. Preston (Oxford University Press). In 2023, our friends at the University Press of Kansas will publish Wars Civil and Great: The American Experience in the Civil War and World War I, a volume David edited with Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai. 

David is a TV star! He has appeared on The Science Channel, the BBC, The National Geographic Channel, The History Channel, and A&E. He is also generous in his service to the military history community. He is a Trustee of the Society for Military History and former Chair of the SMH Education Committee and created the SMH mentoring program for graduate students. He was National Security Fellow at The Jamestown Project at Harvard University from 2005-2007. Since 2018, David is the Series Editor for Battlegrounds: Studies in Military History at Cornell University Press, which Bill says is an "awesome" series that complements rather than competes with Modern War Studies at the Univesity Press of Kansas!

Join us for a great chat with the ever-positive David Silbey. We complain about vampire students but then move on to discuss The Police, being an academic brat, the Bedlam reading room at the Imperial War Museum, and being a series editor. Check it out!

Rec.: 10/06/2022

Our guest today is Jay Lockenour. Jay is a Professor of History at Temple University, where he has been on the faculty since July 1996. He served as the Chair of the Department of History from 2014-2020, and the director of the MA program from 1996-2001 and again in 2005. Jay is affiliated with the Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy at Temple and sits on the University’s Advisory Board, Center for the Advancement of Teaching. He started his academic career as a visiting assistant professor at Franklin and Marshall College and he was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the United States Air Force Academy in 2013-2014. Jay received his BA from the University of California, Berkeley and earned his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. 

Jay is the author of two monographs, Soldiers as Citizens: Former Wehrmacht Officers in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945-1955 (University of Nebraska Press, 2001) and Dragonslayer: The Life and Legend of Erich Ludendorff (Cornell, 2021). His articles have been published in the Journal of Military History and The German Studies Review. His article “Black and White Memories of War: Victimization and Violence in West German War Films of the 1950s” won the Society for Military History’s Moncado Prize. Jay’s research has been supported by the German Academic Exchange (DAAD), the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and many others. He is a highly decorated teacher and has won four teaching awards at Temple. 

Jay has been part of the digital scene for decades. He was an editor for H-German back in the list serv’s early days and served as the host of the New Books in Military History podcast from 2009-2019. Join us as we discuss with Jay making career choices, learning German, doing research in Germany, Porsches, and The Clash!

Shout-out, by the way, to the National BBQ and Grilling Association in Douglas, Georgia!

Rec.: 09/15/2022

Today Bill recorded live from a Historical Methods class at Georgia Southern University. For the record, Brian is doing a Huey Lewis - he's "working for a living" teaching a class, so Bill was left without a minder (very dodgy). Apparently, students in this class expressed an interest in history podcasting, so they got in touch with us (which may not have been the best decision). To show how the Military Historians are People, Too! podcast works, Bill is interviewing one of the students in the class - Jahnyiah Davis. Jahnyiah is a McNair Scholar and History Major at Georgia Southern University from Perry, Georgia (also home to Georgia State Fair!). We'll talk about her background, how she came to Georgia Southern, why she decided to major in history, and, of course, her BBQ preference!

Special thanks to Prof. Cathy Skidmore-Hess for inviting Bill to invade her class and to her students for their interest in podcasting! So, enjoy this Bonus Short with an undergraduate history major! We hope the class got something out of it and that you will, too.

Rec.: 10/25/2022

Our guest today is Dr. Stephanie Hinnershitz, a Senior Historian at the Institute for War and Democracy at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. Steph joined the World War II Museum team after serving as the American History and Diversity Studies Fellow at the United States Military Academy at West Point and then Research Advisor for the Air Command and Staff College School of Professional Education at Maxwell AFB in Alabama. She did tenure-track stints at Valdosta State University and Cleveland State University as well. Steph earned her BA in History from Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania, her MA in American and International History at Temple University, and her PhD in American History at the University of Maryland.

She is a prolific scholar. Her first book, Race, Religion, and Civil Rights: Asian Students on the West Coast, 1900-1968 (Rutgers University Press). She followed that monograph with A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South (UNC Press), which won the Silver Nautilus Award for Journalism and Investigative Reporting. Her most recent book is Japanese American Incarceration: The Camps and Coerced Labor in World War II (University of Pennsylvania Press), which won the Philip Taft Labor History Award from the Labor ad Working Class History Association and Cornell University Labor Relations School. Steph’s work has been funded by the Army Heritage and Education Center, the Social Science Research Council, the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, the Office of Diversity at the United States Military Academy at West Point, the Library of Congress, and the American Council of Learned Societies.

Steph has transcended the academic world to the world of public history, has experienced being laid off from a tenure-track position, managed an academic marriage, and recently went to Poland on a WW2 Museum tour, her first trip to Europe! She's a first-generation college graduate as well - we had a blast talking with Steph (a little Beyoncé, too!). You'll enjoy it! And a shout-out to Brenda's Bar-Be-Que Pit in Montgomery, Alabama!

Rec.: 10/07/2022

Today's guest is David R. Stone. Dave is the William E. Odom Professor of Russian Studies in the Strategy and Policy Department at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, RI. Dave joined the Naval War College after spending sixteen years at Kansas State University, where he was the Picket Professor of History from 2008-2015. He was educated at Wabash College (AB in History and Mathematics) and Yale University (PhD in History) and has held Fellowships with the Yale International Security Studies Program and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Dave is a busy scholar. His works include: Hammer and Rifle: The Militarization of the Soviet Union, 1926-1933 (University Press of Kansas), which won the Best First Book Prize of the Historical Society in 2001 and was the co-winner of the Shulman Prize of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies the same year; A Military History of Russia: From Ivan the Terrible to the War in Chechnya (Praeger Security International); and The Russian Army in the Great War: The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 (University Press of Kansas). He has edited or co-edited three additional volumes and his articles have appeared in many of the top journals in his field. His article “Misreading Svechin: Attrition, Annihilation, and Historicism” (Journal of Military History)  won the Society for Military History’s Moncado Prize in 2012.

Dave sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Slavic Military Studies and the Editorial Board of the University of Kansas’ Modern War Studies Series. His recognition for teaching excellence includes the Presidential Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from Kansas State University. Dave is also involved with The Great Courses series, starring in two courses: World War II: Battlefield Europe and War in the Modern World. 

Join us for a very interesting chat about learning Russian, working in Russian archives, the current war in Ukraine, and more mundane topics, such as The Grateful Dead, The Americans, and, of course, BBQ - shout-out to Dave's local favorite The Flatts Smokehouse in South Kingstown, Rhode Island!

Rec.: 09/22/2022

Our guest today is the enthusiastic Dr. Elizabeth Shesko, who is an Associate Professor of History at Oakland University in Oakland County, Michigan. Liz specializes in Latin American History with a special interest in military service and conscription in Bolivia. She received her AB in Spanish and English at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and went on to earn a PhD in History from Duke University. After completing her PhD, Liz was a postdoctoral research associate and Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in History and Latin American Studies at Bowdoin College and also taught at an American School in Guatemala. Her first book, Conscript Nation: Coercion and Consent in the Bolivian Barracks, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Her work has also appeared in edited volumes as well as the Hispanic American Historical Review and International Labor and Working-Class History.

Liz has held numerous Foreign Language and Areas Studies (FLAS) Grants for Spanish, Portuguese, and Aymara. She is a frequent presenter at the meetings of the Latin American Studies Association, and the American Historical Association, among many others. 

Join us for a fascinating chat with our first Latin Americanist! Liz discusses language, working in Bolivian archives, the Chaco War, eating guinea pig, the faux pas question of Butch Cassidy's whereabouts (thanks for that, Bill!), and the future of Post-Coach K Duke basketball! And just for Liz - a shout-out to Woodpile BBQ Shack in Clawson, Michigan!

Rec.: 09/02/2022