Category: interview

Napoleonic Wars history book – “The Invisible Emperor” (Penguin Press, 2018) – Mark Braude interview

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Mark Braude is a historian whose specialty is French history. He’s written a new book on Napoleon Bonaparte’s time on Elba and we discussed the book.

2:30 – Mark talks about his start in French history and how he started writing about Napoleon.

4:06 – Mark talks about the book.

6:45 – Mark talks about ideas on why Napoleon was sent to Elba. We talk about how the smaller characters in the book also become very interesting.

17:45 – We talk about French taverns and their interplay with public opinion.

20:59 – Mark talks about the historical valleys between periods of war.

22:35 – Mark talks about his research materials.

27:00 – Mark talks about a prison he visited on Elba where Napoleon had stayed before it was a prison and how this visit connects to the book.

33:24 – Mark talks about why no one has written on this subject before.

October 16, 2018 515am

43:53 – Mark talks about the women in Napoleon’s life.

49:06 – Mark talks about how he developed his skills in writing good narrative non-fiction.

53:18 – Mark talks about his research into the Michelin company.

55:59 – Mark has a website, markbraude.com

Links of interest

MarkBraude.com

For more “Military History Inside Out” please follow me on Facebook at warscholar, on twitter at Warscholar, on youtube at warscholar1945 and on Instagram @crisalvarezswarscholar

Guests: Mark Braude

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: military, history, military history, conflict, war, interview, non-fiction book, Napoleon, British, French Empire, Elba, Campbell, Navy, Bonaparte

WWI military history book – “Pershing’s Tankers” (The University Press of Kentucky, 2018) – Lawrence Kaplan interview

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Lawrence Kaplan is a military historian who has worked for the US Army and has written numerous books on the subject. Today we spoke about his latest book on the American tank corps during WWI.

1:51 – Larry Kaplan talks about how he got into studying the American tank corps in WWI. He found a number of reports associated with the tank corps that hadn’t been discovered before or had been forgotten. Patton was one of the officers involved with the tank corps.

6:30 – Larry talks about the early development of the US Army tank corps. The French and the British helped the US in this effort. But not a lot was written about this history. Tanks were used for only 7 weeks at the end of the war.

11:20 – George Patton became the commander of the two tank battalions that were to be used in the war.

14:00 – Many of the records of these early tank battalions ended up missing. Larry found them among US Army Field Artillery records.

21:00 – Larry also collected newspaper accounts that were basically the letters home that some tank officers had sent home. He also made some extensive Congressional testimony on the WWI tank corps in WWI readable in a narrative form.

29:30 – Larry talks about what happened to the tank corps after WWI.

31:50 – Larry talks about a scandalous event that occurred during Patton’s time in WWI.

38:48 – The presence of American tanks helped US Army morale and hurt German morale.

39:39 – Larry summarizes how the end of the war went.

53:39 – Larry talks about how the tanks were moved around the theater of war. He also addresses problems with tank maintenance during combat. He gets into how an American officer named Brain was trying to develop requirements for an American-built tank.

58:30 – Larry will be publishing a translated and edited version of a Russian female soldier’s novel about serving in WWI.

For more “Military History Inside Out” please follow me on Facebook at warscholar, on twitter at Warscholar, on youtube at warscholar1945 and on Instagram @crisalvarezswarscholar

Guests: Lawrence Kaplan

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: military, history, military history, conflict, war, interview, non-fiction book, world war one, WWI, tank corps, armored warfare, George Patton, French, british, Germans

20th century military history book – “The Palgrave Handbook of Artistic and Cultural Responses to War since 1914” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) – Margaret Baguley and Martin Kirby interview

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Martin Kirby and Margaret Baguley are two of three Australian academics who have been editing a new book exploring how war since 1914 has been represented in the arts in Australasia, the US, and in the British Isles. I spoke with Margaret and Martin about the book.

1:45 – Martin and Margaret talk about how they got into studying WWI and military history. Martin talks about how the movie Zulu affected him.

5:16 – Margaret talks about how she grew up in a small town and how important ANZAC day was to her community.

10:28 – Martin walks about the book. It started as a look at Australian art but expanded to include other national experiences. It covers the US, the British Isles, and Australasia. They look at official art, movies, photos, poets, and may other artistic responses to conflict and war.

24:45 – Margaret and Martin talk about what artworks commemorate, attack war, or are neutral about war.

33:45 – Martin and Margaret talk about art aimed at children and how they discuss it in their book. They also touch on the part of the book that look at games and digital technology that deal with military history.

53:13 – Margaret was surprised at finding out details of how official war art was created. She was also disturbed to learn that among their artist peers, war artists were sometimes thought of as having sold out.

For more “Military History Inside Out” please follow me on Facebook at warscholar, on twitter at Warscholar, on youtube at warscholar1945 and on Instagram @crisalvarezswarscholar

Guests: Margaret Baguley and Martin Kirby

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: military, history, military history, conflict, war, interview, non-fiction book, Zulu War, WWI, WWII, Australia, US, UK, art, combat art