New Books in Military History Marshall Poe

Sixteenth-century Spain was small, poor, disunited and sparsely populated. Yet the Spaniards and their allies built the largest empire the world had ever seen. How did they achieve this?
In How the Spanish Empire Was Built: a 400-year History (Reaktion, 2024) Dr. Felipe Fernández-Armesto and Dr. Manuel Lucena Giraldo argue that Spain’s engineers were critical to this venture. The Spanish invested in infrastructure to the advantage of local power brokers, enhancing the abilities of incumbent elites to grow wealthy on trade and widening the arc of Spanish influence.
Bringing to life stories of engineers, prospectors, soldiers and priests, the authors paint a vivid portrait of Spanish America in the age of conquest. This is a dazzling new history of the Spanish Empire, and a new understanding of empire itself, as a venture marked as much by collaboration as oppression.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
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In this deep and incisive study, General David Petraeus, who commanded the US-led coalitions in both Iraq, during the Surge, and Afghanistan and former CIA director, and the prize-winning historian Andrew Roberts, explore over 70 years of conflict, drawing significant lessons and insights from their fresh analysis of the past. Drawing on their different perspectives and areas of expertise, Petraeus and Roberts show how often critical mistakes have been repeated time and again, and the challenge, for statesmen and generals alike, of learning to adapt to various new weapon systems, theories and strategies. Among the conflicts examined are the Arab-Israeli wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the two Gulf Wars, the Balkan wars in the former Yugoslavia, and both the Soviet and Coalition wars in Afghanistan, as well as guerilla conflicts in Africa and South America. 
Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare From 1945 to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine (Harper, 2023) culminates with a bracing look at Putin’s disastrous invasion of Ukraine, yet another case study in the tragic results when leaders refuse to learn from history, and an assessment of the nature of future warfare. Filled with sharp insight and the wisdom of experience, Conflict is not only a critical assessment of our recent past, but also an essential primer of modern warfare that provides crucial knowledge for waging battle today as well as for understanding what the decades ahead will bring.
General David Petraeus is a retired United States Army general and widely respected as a leading warrior intellectual. He graduated with distinction from the US Military Academy and earned a Ph.D. from Princeton University. He served for 37 years in the US Army, culminating his time in uniform with 6 consecutive commands as a general officer, 5 of which were in combat, including Command of the Surge in Iraq, US Central Command, and the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. He then served as Director of the CIA. He has held academic appointments at six universities and currently is a Senior Fellow and Lecturer at Yale. He is a prominent commentator on contemporary security issues, military developments, and global affairs. He is currently a Partner in a major investment firm and chairs that firm’s Global Institute.
Sam Canter is a strategic planner, a PhD candidate in Politics and International Relations, and an Army Reserve intelligence officer. His views are his own and do not reflect any institution, organization, or entity with which he is affiliated.
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From Afghanistan to Angola, Indonesia to Iran, and Colombia to Congo, violent reactions erupt, states collapse, and militaries relentlessly pursue operations doomed to fail. And yet, no useful theory exists to explain this common tragedy. All over the world, people and states clash violently outside their established political systems, as unfulfilled demands of control and productivity bend the modern state to a breaking point.
Jonathan W. Hackett's Theory of Irregular War (McFarland, 2023) lays out how dysfunctional governments disrupt social orders, make territory insecure, and interfere with political-economic institutions. These give rise to a form of organized violence against the state known as irregular war. Research reveals why this frequent phenomenon is so poorly understood among conventional forces in those conflicts and the states who send their children to die in them.
Jonathan W. Hackett is a U.S. Marine with two decades of experience. He has held positions at the Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Marine Forces Special Operations Command, and the Marine Corps operating forces prior to teaching full spectrum human intelligence operations and security cooperation in Dam Neck, Virginia.
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Country music maintains a special, decades-long relationship to American military life, but these ties didn't just happen. This readable history reveals how country music's Nashville-based business leaders on Music Row created partnerships with the Pentagon to sell their audiences on military service while selling the music to service members. Beginning in the 1950s, the military flooded armed forces airwaves with the music, hosted tour dates at bases around the world, and drew on artists from Johnny Cash to Lee Greenwood to support recruitment programs. 
Over the last half of the twentieth century, the close connections between the Defense Department and Music Row gave an economic boost to the white-dominated sounds of country while marginalizing Black artists and fueling divisions over the meaning of patriotism. This story is filled with familiar stars like Roy Acuff, Elvis Presley, and George Strait, as well as lesser-known figures: industry executives who worked the halls of Congress, country artists who dissented from the stereotypically patriotic trappings of the genre, and more. 
In Cold War Country: How Nashville's Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism (UNC Press, 2024), Joseph M. Thompson argues convincingly that the relationship between Music Row and the Pentagon helped shape not only the evolution of popular music but also race relations, partisanship, and images of the United States abroad.
Joseph M. Thompson is assistant professor of history at Mississippi State University.
Katie Coldiron is the Outreach Program Manager for the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) and PhD student in History at Florida International University.
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From Black Hawk helicopters to the exclamation "Geronimo" used by paratroopers jumping from airplanes, words and images referring to Indians have been indelibly linked with US warfare. 
In Indian Wars Everywhere: Colonial Violence and the Shadow Doctrines of Empire (U California Press, 2023), Stefan Aune shows how these and other recurrent references to the Indian wars signal a deeper history. Indian Wars function as a shadow doctrine that influences US military violence. 
The United States' formative acts of colonial violence persist in the actions, imaginations, and stories that have facilitated the spread of American empire, from the "savage wars" of the nineteenth century to the counterinsurgencies of the Global War on Terror. 
Ranging across centuries and continents, Indian Wars Everywhere considers what it means for the conquest of Native peoples to be deemed a success that can be used as a blueprint for modern warfare.
Stefan B. Aune is a Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies at Williams College. 
Eleonora Mattiacci is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of Volatile States in International Politics (Oxford University Press, 2023). She is on X (formerly known as Twitter) @ProfEMattiacci.
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Why do great powers go to war? Why are non-violent, diplomatic options not prioritised? Nostalgic Virility as a Cause of War: How Leaders of Great Powers Cope with Status Decline (McGill-Queen's Press, 2024) by Dr. Matthieu Grandpierron argues that world leaders react to status decline by going to war, guided by a nostalgic, virile understanding of what it means to be powerful. This nostalgic virility - a system of subjective beliefs about power, bravery, strength, morality, and health - acts as a filter through which leaders articulate glorified interpretations of history and assess their power and their country’s status on the international stage.
In this rigorous study of France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, Dr. Grandpierron tests the theory of nostalgic virility against the two more common theoretical frameworks of realism and the diversionary theory of war. Consulting thousands of newly declassified government documents at the highest levels of decision making, Dr. Grandpierron examines three specific cases - the early years of the Indochina War (1945-47), the British reconquest of the Falklands in 1982, and the US invasion of Grenada in 1983 - convincingly contending that status-seeking behaviour and nostalgic virility are more relevant in explaining why a leader chooses war and conflict over non-violent, diplomatic options than the dominant frameworks.
Looking to the recent past, Nostalgic Virility as a Cause of War considers how this new model can be applied to current conflicts - from the Russian war in Ukraine to Chinese actions in the South China Sea - and provides surprising ways of thinking about the relationship between power, decision makers, and causes of war.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
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Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history