IR Talk: Recent Episodes
Elan Kluger
IR Talk is a podcast on the history, theory, and practice of international relations. Each week, Elan Kluger, a high school student passionate about international relations interviews a historian, lawyer, ambassador, political scientist, or someone else somehow involved in international relations. Listen along for inside look into the way international relations actually works.
Professor Jeremi Suri holds the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of numerous books including Henry Kissinger and the American Century, The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America's Highest Office and many other excellent works. The following are books and articles pertinent to our conversation today:
Henry Kissinger and the American Century
The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America's Highest Office
Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente
Liberty's Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building from the Founders to Obama
Note: This episode was recorded on March 3, 2022 so any reference to political events are from that time.
Professor Jeffrey is distinguished professor of history at the University of Maryland. He is the author of numerous books on Germany as well as Israel, including Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left 1967-1989, and his latest Israel’s Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945-1949 which was published on April 14th, the release date of this episode. The following are books and articles pertinent to our conversation today:
Israel's Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945–1949
Putin’s Continuities: From ‘Israelis as Nazis’ to ‘Denazifying’ Ukraine (Times of Israel)
Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World
Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich
Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left, 1967–1989
Professor Sargent is an Associate Professor of History at the University of California at Berkeley, where he holds a dual appointment with the history department and the Goldman School of Public Policy. Professor Sargent is the author of the brilliant A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s. The following are books and articles pertinent to our conversation today:
Forum on the Importance of the Scholarship of Ernest May
A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s
Pax Americana: Sketches for an Undiplomatic History
Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition
The Origins of Alliances
Rebecca Herman
Professor Lawrence is the Director of the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum in Austin, Texas, as well an Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author and editor of numerous books including The Vietnam War: A Concise International History, and The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era which is the subject of our conversation this week. The following are books and articles pertinent to our conversation today:
The End of Ambition
The Vietnam War: A Concise International History
Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam
Mission Intolerable: Harrison Salisbury's Trip to Hanoi and the Limits of Dissent against the Vietnam War
Too Late or Too Soon? Debating the Withdrawal from Vietnam in the Age of Iraq
This is the finale for Season 2 of IR Talk. Tune in for every answer to the question of "Did Athenians Students in the time of the Peloponnesian War know more than current students?"
Make sure to look out for a few bonus episodes that will be released during the next few weeks!
Professor Lorena De Vita is an Assistant Professor in the History of International Relations at the University of Utrecht. She is the author of Israelpolitik: German-Israeli Relations, 1949-1969. The following are books and articles pertinent to our conversation today:
Israelpolitik: German–Israeli Relations, 1949-69
New Bottles for New Wine: A Pericentric Framework for the Study of the Cold War
Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice
After the Berlin Wall: Memory and the Making of the New Germany, 1989 to the Present
Jena Center for 20th Century History
The Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History
Dr. Diane Kunz is the Executive Director of the Center for Adoption Policy. She has also taught diplomatic history at Yale, Columbia, and Duke. Prior to her diplomatic history work, Dr. Kunz was a corporate lawyer, working at White & Case and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. She is the author of numerous books including Butter and Guns: The Economic Diplomacy of the Cold War and a forthcoming work on the diplomatic, economic, and social history of US international adoption. The following are books and articles pertinent to our conversation today:
Butter and Guns: America's Cold War Economic Diplomacy
The Economic Diplomacy of the Suez Crisis
The Battle for Britain's Gold Standard in 1931
Center for Adoption Policy
Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography
The Republic of Vietnam, 1955–1975: Vietnamese Perspectives on Nation Building
Professor Amy Greenberg is the George Winfree Professor of History and Women's Studies at Pennsylvania State University. She is the author of numerous books including A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico and Lady First: The World of First Lady Sarah Polk. The following are books and articles pertinent to our conversation:
Lady First: The World of First Lady Sarah Polk
A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico
James K. Polk, Vol. 1: Jacksonian, 1795-1843
James K. Polk, Volume II: Continentalist, 1843-1846
Our Sister Republics: The United States in an Age of American Revolutions
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789
Met His Every Goal? James K. Polk and the Legends of Manifest Destiny
Professor Bartholomew Sparrow is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of numerous books including The Strategist: Brent Scowcroft and the Call of National Security which is the subject of our conversation this week. The following are books and articles pertinent to our conversation today:
The Strategist: Brent Scowcroft and the Call of National Security
The National Security Council
Jacob Burckhardt
Uncertain Guardians: The News Media as a Political Institution
Professor Michael Morgan is an Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of The Final Act: The Helsinki Accords and the Transformation and the Cold War. The following are books and articles pertinent to our conversation today:
The Final Act: The Helsinki Accords and the Transformation and the Cold War
S1 E7: John Lewis Gaddis
Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan
A Diplomatic Revolution by Matthew Connelly
Power and Protest by Jeremi Suri
The Sino-Soviet Split by Lorenz Luthi
Robert Bothwell
Strategies of Containment by John Lewis Gaddis
The Rise and Fall of Great Powers by Paul Kennedy
Brutality in an Age of Human Rights British Empire by Brian Drohan
The Regime Change Consensus by Joseph Stieb
Professor Megan Black is an Associate Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the author of The Global Interior: Mineral Frontiers and American Power. The following are books and articles pertinent to our conversation today:
The Global Interior
William Appleman Williams
Ian Tyrell
Kurk Dorsey Bernath Lecture
Melanie McAlister
Monica Kim
Stuart Schrader
Amy Offner
Genevieve Clutario
Professor Peter J. Spiro is the Charles R. Weiner Professor of Law at the Beasley School of Law at Temple University. He is the author of numerous books on citizenship and international law including At Home in Two Countries, the subject of our conversation today. The following are books and articles pertinent to our conversation today:
At Home in Two Countries
The New Sovereigntists: American Exceptionalism and Its False Prophets
Citizenship by Dimitry Kochenov
Morton Halperin
Charles Maier
Robert Keohane
Professor Richard Aldous is the Eugene Meyer Professor of British History at Bard College. Prior to that, he taught for 15 years at University College Dublin, where he was the chair of the history department. He's the author of numerous books including works on Reagan and Thatcher's relationship, a dual biography of Disraeli and Gladstone and the subject of our conversation Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian. The following are books and articles pertinent to our conversation today:
Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian
Journals: 1952-2000
The Age of Jackson
Orestes Brownson: A Pilgrim's Progress
The Age of Roosevelt
A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House
Perils of the Court Historian
Patrick Geoghegan
The Secret Life of the Savoy: and the D'Oyly Carte family
Operation Moonglow: A Political History of Project Apollo
The Fiume Crisis: Life in the Wake of the Habsburg Empire
A Question of Leadership
Professor David Brown is the Horace E. Raffensperger professor of history at Elizabethtown College. The following books and people are pertinent to this episode:
Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography
The Idea of the Two Party System
The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It
Everyman His Own Historian
The Last American Aristocrat: The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams
The History of United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison
The Education of Henry Adams
Mont Saint Michel and Chartres
The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma
The Law of Civilization and Decay
James Finley
Professor Luke Nichter is a Professor of History and James H. Cavanaugh Endowed Chair in Presidential Studies at Chapman University. The following books and articles are pertinent to this episode:
The Last Brahmin: Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. and the Making of the Cold War
White House Years by Henry Kissinger
IR Talk Episode with Professor Thomas Schwartz
Richard Nixon and Europe: The Reshaping of the Postwar Atlantic World
Thank you for listening!
To leave a 5 star rating on Apple Podcasts here is the link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ir-talk/id1566057626
My email address is: elankluger@gmail.com
The video for the "Daisy" Ad can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riDypP1KfOU
This is the final of season 1. Make sure to leave a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts and see you in mid August 2021 for the beginning of season 2.
Professor John Lewis Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett chair of Naval and Military History at Yale University. He has received the Bancroft Prize, Pulitzer Prize, and National Humanities Medal. The following are his books and articles mentioned and alluded to in the podcast:
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past
George F. Kennan: An American Life
On Grand Strategy
Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War
The United States and the Origins of the Cold War 1941-1947
Expanding the Data Base: Historians, Political Scientists, and the Enrichment of Security Studies
The Long Peace: Elements of Stability in the Postwar International System
International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War
Dr. William Bernstein is a trained neurologist and writes and advises on finance. He is the author of numerous books including A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World which is the subject of our conversation.
Professor Thomas A. Schwartz is a distinguished professor of history at Vanderbilt University. He also holds appointments as professor of political science and professor of European studies at that institution. He is the author most recently of Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography, which is the subject of our conversation.
For further information on Henry Kissinger see this Encyclopedia Britannica entry: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Kissinger
Professor John Wilsey teaches church history at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of three books, One Nation Under God: An Evangelical Critique of Christian America, American Exceptionalism and Civil Religion: Reassessing the History of an Idea and God's Cold Warrior: The Life and Faith of John Foster Dulles which is the subject of our conversation.
Professor Molly Worthen of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researches and teaches American religious history. She is the author of two books, Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism and The Man on Whom Nothing was Lost: The Grand Strategy of Charles Hill.
In the podcast we discuss the life of the subject of Professor Worthen's biography, Charles Hill.
Important Links:
The Death of a Grand Strategist
The Man on Whom Nothing Was Lost: The Grand Strategy of Charles Hill
Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order
Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism
Professor Mark Bell teaches researches international relations at the University of Minnesota focusing on nuclear weapons, American and British foreign policy and international relations theory.
He was previously a graduate student at MIT where he got his PhD. And before that received a master's in public policy from the Kennedy School at Harvard as a Frank Knox fellow, prior to that, graduated with a first class degree in politics, philosophy and economics from St. Anne's College, Oxford.
He has a new book out titled Nuclear Reactions: How Nuclear Armed States Behave from Cornell University Press which can downloaded for free due to an open access grant from the University of Minnesota here: https://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-Reactions-Nuclear-Armed-Cornell-Security-ebook/dp/B08LMCS8KK/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1620501196&sr=8-1
Today on the podcast we have Wenchi Yu. Wenchi Yu is a fellow at the Ash Center at the Kennedy School at Harvard. Before that she was Head of Corporate Engagement for Goldman Sachs in Asia. Prior to that she worked at the US Department of State in the Secretary of State's Office, as a senior adviser on global women’s issues.
IR Talk is a podcast about international relations theory and practice. Elan Kluger will be interviewing guests involved with both the theory and the practice of international relations. The show will launch the first week in May, 2021.