New Books in History By cover art

New Books in History

By: Marshall Poe
Listen for free

  • Summary

  • Interviews with Historians about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
    New Books Network
    Show more Show less
activate_primeday_promo_in_buybox_DT
Episodes
  • Benjamin Nathans, "To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement" (Princeton UP, 2024)

    Benjamin Nathans, "To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement" (Princeton UP, 2024)
    Jul 30 2024
    A gripping history of the Soviet dissident movement, which hastened the end of the USSR--and still provides a model of opposition in Putin's Russia. Beginning in the 1960s, the Soviet Union was unexpectedly confronted by a dissident movement that captured the world's imagination. Demanding that the Kremlin obey its own laws, an improbable band of Soviet citizens held unauthorized public gatherings, petitioned in support of arrested intellectuals, and circulated banned samizdat texts. Soviet authorities arrested dissidents, subjected them to bogus trials and vicious press campaigns, sentenced them to psychiatric hospitals and labor camps, sent them into exile--and transformed them into martyred heroes. Against all odds, the dissident movement undermined the Soviet system and unexpectedly hastened its collapse. Taking its title from a toast made at dissident gatherings, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement (Princeton UP, 2024) is a definitive history of a remarkable group of people who helped change the twentieth century. Benjamin Nathans's vivid narrative tells the dramatic story of the men and women who became dissidents--from Nobel laureates Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn to many others who are virtually unknown today. Drawing on diaries, memoirs, personal letters, interviews, and KGB interrogation records, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause reveals how dissidents decided to use Soviet law to contain the power of the Soviet state. This strategy, as one of them put it, was "simple to the point of genius: in an unfree country, they began to conduct themselves like free people." An extraordinary account of the Soviet dissident movement, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause shows how dissidents spearheaded the struggle to break free of the USSR's totalitarian past, a struggle that continues in Putin's Russia--and that illuminates other struggles between hopelessness and perseverance today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
    Show more Show less
    1 hr and 15 mins
  • Tim Cooper, "When Christians Disagree: Lessons from the Fractured Relationship of John Owen and Richard Baxter" (Crossway, 2024)

    Tim Cooper, "When Christians Disagree: Lessons from the Fractured Relationship of John Owen and Richard Baxter" (Crossway, 2024)
    Jul 30 2024
    Our current culture seems to be increasingly divided on countless issues, including those affecting the church. But for centuries, theological disagreements, political differences, and issues relating to church leadership have made it challenging for Christians to foster unity and love for one another. In When Christians Disagree: Lessons from the Fractured Relationship of John Owen and Richard Baxter (Crossway, 2024), author Tim Cooper explores this polarization through the lives of two oppositional figures in church history: John Owen and Richard Baxter. Cooper highlights their individual stories while showing how their contrasting life experiences, personalities, and temperaments led to their inability to work together. After exploring these lessons from the past, readers will gain insights into their own relationships, ultimately learning how to love and live in harmony with their fellow believers despite their disagreements. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
    Show more Show less
    36 mins
  • Stephen J. Pyne, "Pyrocene Park: A Journey Into the Fire History of Yosemite National Park" (U Arizona Press, 2023)

    Stephen J. Pyne, "Pyrocene Park: A Journey Into the Fire History of Yosemite National Park" (U Arizona Press, 2023)
    Jul 30 2024
    How is Yosemite National Park a microcosm for our warming, fire-driven, world? Arizona State University emeritus professor Stephen Pyne answers that question in Pyrocene Park: A Journey Into the Fire History of Yosemite National Park (U Arizona Press, 2023). Pyne frames the fire history of Yosemite National Park around a three day hike he and a team of researchers took into the park's backcountry as part of a program examining the effects of changing fire regimes over the last several decades. In the process, Pyne explains how and why the human abolition - and reignition - of fires in the park have had dramatic effects on a place which is 95% wilderness. People, Pyne argues, have a strange relationship with fire, at once keeping the elemental process at arm's length while simultaneously being intertwined culturally and even physically with fire and its effects. As fires grow and the planet warms, Pyne asks readers to consider Yosemite as both a warning about the dangers of misunderstanding fire, and an example of how to respect fire as the ecological necessity it has always been. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
    Show more Show less
    1 hr and 10 mins
World Social Sciences
Show more Show less

What listeners say about New Books in History

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.com reviews

Amazon reviews
No Reviews are Available