New Books in Diplomatic History

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This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork

  1. 1d ago

    Kennedy’s Only Hero: How JFK’s Obsession with Winston Churchill Defined His Presidency with Joel Nelson (Public Affairs, 2026)

    President John F. Kennedy and Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill remain two of the most iconic figures of the twentieth century and Joel Nelson’s new book, Kennedy’s Only Hero: How JFK’s Obsession with Winston Churchill Defined His Presidency (Public Affairs, 2026), reveals the unexpected influence that Churchill had on Kennedy’s political career. Winston Churchill remains one of the modern age’s most revered leaders. His life has been the subject of decades of mythmaking and scrutiny, and yet few know the powerful sway he had over another twentieth-century political icon―John F. Kennedy. Drawing on deep wells of unpublished archival material, Kennedy's Only Hero uncovers Kennedy’s obsession with Churchill, whose career, policies, writings, and even daily habits profoundly shaped the future president. Kennedy discovered Churchill’s books as a teenager and by his early twenties had become an unswerving believer in his brilliance. Under Churchill’s influence, Kennedy rejected his own youthful isolationism and adopted the approach to national and international politics that propelled him to the presidency. Although they would not meet until late in their lives, Churchill’s influence on Kennedy’s campaign tactics, speeches, and worldview was overwhelming. Kennedy’s conviction in the power of peace through strength, his faith in summits, his understanding of the importance of rhetoric, and his deep commitment to service and global engagement―all came from Churchill. Kennedy's Only Hero is an enlightening and deeply human story of an admiration and aspiration that changed the course of history.   Andrew O. Pace is a Senior Historian at SNA International in support of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA). Dr. Pace is not an employee of DPAA, he supports DPAA through a partnership. The views presented are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of DPAA, DoD or its components.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  2. 2d ago

    Operation Sparrow: The Incredible True Story of the North American Spies Who Tricked Hitler and Won the War with Jason Bell (Hanover Square Press, 2026)

    Historians have always known that the success of the Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day in June 1944 depended on deceiving the Germans about where the invasion would take place. Jason Bell’s book, Operation Sparrow: The Incredible True Story of the Spies Who Tricked Hitler and Won the War (Hanover Square Press, 2026), tells the story of how three secret agents got themselves captured in Hungary to convince the Third Reich that the Allied invasion was taking place a thousand miles away. March 16, 1944. Colonel Duke jumped into Hitler's Europe to lead Operation Sparrow, an OSS mission authorized by the president. Duke was forty-eight, twice the age of most paratroopers. He had played pro football for the New York Giants, flown fighter planes, and made his fortune in advertising before World War II made him a spy behind enemy lines. Within days, the three Sparrows were captured in Hungary. It wasn’t a failure. It was the plan. Under brutal Gestapo interrogation, Duke and his men set out to convince the Third Reich that the D-Day invasion would strike the Balkans, far from France. Survive torture while making a lie sound true—it was either genius or suicidal. Probably both. If the ruse held, Axis divisions would defend the wrong coast. If it broke, three Americans would be shot as spies—and the Wehrmacht would be poised to win D-Day. Of the tens of millions who fought in the war, the Sparrows were the only ones whose mission required capture by the Nazis. Drawing on recently declassified OSS files, Jason Bell brings their story to life. Operation Sparrow reveals: The American heroes who turned their own capture into a weaponThe Gestapo interrogation rooms that became a secret Allied battlefieldThe top-secret deception that kept Hitler's divisions away from NormandyMeticulously researched and told at the pace of a thriller, Operation Sparrow is narrative history for readers of Operation Mincemeat and Unbroken.   Andrew O. Pace is a Senior Historian at SNA International in support of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA). Dr. Pace is not an employee of DPAA, he supports DPAA through a partnership. The views presented are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of DPAA, DoW or its components.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  3. 3d ago

    Great Power Diplomacy: The Skill of Statecraft from Attila the Hun to Kissinger with A. Wess Mitchell (Princeton UP, 2025)

    Great Power Diplomacy. The Skill of Statecraft from Attila the Hun to Kissinger (Princeton UP, 2025) is a captivating history of diplomacy—and an urgent reminder of why we need to revive its lost arts to survive in a dangerous era of great power competition. From the beginning of time, human societies have found themselves confronted by enemies too numerous or ferocious to defeat solely by force of arms. In these dramatic moments, wise leaders have turned to diplomacy to rearrange the gameboard in their favor and stymie seemingly unstoppable foes. In Great Power Diplomacy, American historian and diplomat A. Wess Mitchell recounts the forgotten story of how history’s most legendary empires have used diplomacy as a tool of grand strategy to outwit, outmaneuver, and outlast militarily superior opponents. Through fifteen centuries of history, Great Power Diplomacy recreates the perilous junctures, colorful personalities, and intricate statecraft that led to some of history’s most stunning diplomatic achievements—and greatest disasters. The protagonists include giants like Richelieu, Metternich, Bismarck, and Kissinger, but also a lesser-known cast of scoundrels, eunuchs, drunkards, and fools. At every turn, fortune favored those great powers with the foresight and dexterity to build winning alliances, splinter enemy coalitions, and, when necessary, make peace with their bitterest foes. Diplomacy of this kind has become a lost art in recent years as Western elites embraced the illusion that globalization and the spread of democracy would create a borderless world where nations would live in harmony and war would be abolished from the human story. But, as Great Power Diplomacy reveals, we will need to rediscover the secrets of skillful statecraft as the world enters an unstable new era in which continent-sized great powers compete for territory, resources, and prestige. By recalling diplomacy’s rich past, we can equip ourselves for a more dangerous future. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  4. 3d ago

    The Return of the Great Powers with Brendan Simms (Basic Books, 2026)

    From the dawn of the modern era to the end of the Cold War, global history was defined by rivalries between Great Powers. In the West, this meant the struggle for supremacy in Europe and the Americas, while in the East, it encompassed those vying for control over the successor states to Genghis Khan’s empire. Between 1989 and the year 2000, Great Power rivalry temporarily gave way to globalization, with liberal democracy on the march and national chauvinism seemingly in retreat. But events of the past decade have made one thing abundantly clear: The Great Powers are back.  In The Return of the Great Powers (Basic Books, 2026), renowned historian Brendan Simms offers a new history of the rise, fall, and return of the Great Powers in our time.  He shows that over the past ten years or so, the major global actors have already resumed making decisions based on geopolitical rather than global economic considerations. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  5. Sep 20

    Stefano Recchia, "Strategies for Approval: Building Support for Military Intervention at the UN Security Council" (Yale UP, 2025)

    When powerful states go to war, why do they bother asking permission? In Strategies for Approval: Building Support for Military Intervention at the UN Security Council (Yale University Press, 2025), Stefano Recchia argues that the answer reveals something surprising about how power actually works.  Drawing on hundreds of declassified documents and more than fifty interviews with senior diplomats, among them Andrei Kozyrev, Brent Scowcroft, and Colin Powell, Recchia shows that money and muscle are rarely enough to move a reluctant Security Council. States that succeed also reassure: they accept time limits, geographic restrictions, and multilateral oversight written directly into the resolutions they seek. Our conversation traces that logic through France's controversial 1994 intervention in Rwanda, the six-week "pause for peace" the United States conceded to Gorbachev and Mitterrand before the First Gulf War, and the very different failure of 2003. Recchia also discusses what his interviews revealed about the real aims behind the 2011 intervention in Libya. The more powerful a state becomes, this book shows, the more its power frightens others, and the more it must bind itself to get anything done. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  6. Sep 6

    Emily Matson, "China’s Date Debate: How Manchurian Scholars Rewrote World War II" (U Michigan Press, 2026)

    China’s Date Debate: How Manchurian Scholars Rewrote World War II (U Michigan Press, 2026) by Dr. Emily Matson is an in-depth investigation of the Chinese Communist Party’s remapping of China’s World War II timeline from eight years (1937–1945) to fourteen years (1931–1945). Instead of the previously accepted starting date of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on July 7, 1937, the Chinese Communist Party defined the war’s starting date as the Mukden Incident on September 18, 1931, which triggered the Japanese Kwantung Army’s invasion of Manchuria. Since the 1980s, scholars from Manchuria have demanded a fourteen-year war timeline to encompass the invasion of their homeland. By the 1990s, other scholars took notice and started to counter with claims that the eight-year timeline was the more accurate. Subsequently, a fierce “date debate” emerged between the two sides that was only resolved by the 2017 proclamation from the Ministry of Education. Dr. Matson demonstrates that the decision to set China’s World War II timeline at fourteen years was not merely a top-down decision, but was influenced by decades of Manchurian scholarship on the war. China’s Date Debate recenters Manchuria as a region of critical importance for China’s national identity today and the implications of this “date debate” on the Chinese Communist Party’s domestic legitimacy and international image. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  7. Aug 30

    Tom Trier, "Blue Sea, Black Gold, Red Banner: The South Caucasus and Scandinavia, 1880s–1920s" (Northern Illinois UP, 2026)

    Blue Sea, Black Gold, Red Banner: The South Caucasus and Scandinavia, 1880s–1920s (Northern Illinois University Press, 2026) tells the story of the historical connections between two geographically distant and culturally distinct regions on the edges of Europe: Scandinavia and the South Caucasus. From the late nineteenth century, maritime trade fostered new commercial links and consular relations. Scandinavian merchants, particularly in Batumi and Baku, played key roles. The discovery of oil along the Caspian Sea shores attracted Scandinavian entrepreneurs, notably the Swedish Nobel family, helping to develop Baku into a booming industrial hub. Tom Trier focuses on the years of upheaval surrounding World War I and the collapse of the Russian Empire, when Georgia—along with Armenia and Azerbaijan—briefly emerged as an independent republic. The four-decade relationship ended abruptly during the Bolshevik Red Army's invasion of the South Caucasus from 1920 to 1921. Drawing on both Scandinavian and Georgian perspectives, Blue Sea, Black Gold, Red Banner examines how Nordic merchants, consuls, and diplomats navigated the shifting political landscape and how Georgia's social democratic leadership looked to neutral Scandinavia as a gateway to broader European political, diplomatic, and economic engagement. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  8. Aug 26

    Malcolm Murfett, "Eden's Alternative to Appeasement: The Anglo-American Strategy that Might Have Been, 1937–38" (Tithebarn Press, 2026)

    As Foreign Secretary in Neville Chamberlain's Cabinet in 1937, Eden didn't believe in appeasing the German and Italian dictatorships or the militaristic Japanese regime. Instead, he wanted to confront their aggression head on. Faced with growing Japanese assertiveness, including the launching of an undeclared war on China in July 1937, Eden appealed to the US for help. He believed sending an Anglo-American naval force to the Western Pacific would demonstrate that the democracies were not spineless, but were prepared to stand up for what they believed in. Was this a viable alternative to Chamberlain's appeasement policy, now notorious for its failure in the face of fascism? In Eden's Alternative to Appeasement: The Anglo-American Strategy that Might Have Been, 1937–38 (Tithebarn Press, 2026), historian Malcolm Murfett tells the story, using a wide range of primary sources from the UK and US archives, of Eden's push to persuade Roosevelt's administration to be more assertive in the Pacific. He reveals the diplomatic dance both sides engaged in, each unsure of the other's reliability, of their own ability to commit, and tied up in their own internal struggles for policy dominance. We get a real insight into how two once-and-future allies managed each other's expectations, as well as the wider strategic parameters within which they were operating. With eerie echoes of our own times, Murfett explores the challenges involved in both international diplomacy, and foreign and security policy. How standing up for principles and values can become compromised by the requirements of Realpolitik, and logistical constraints. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork

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