Best State Library Victoria Podcasts (2025)

1
Filip Kovacevic, "KGB Literati: Spy Fiction and State Security in the Soviet Union" (U Toronto Press, 2025) 51:57

Play Pause

2d ago51:57

51:57

KGB Literati: Spy Fiction and State Security in the Soviet Union (University of Toronto Press, 2025) offers a first-ever glimpse into the mysterious and long-ignored world and work of Soviet spies- and counterspies-turned-writers. Once out of active service, many former spies have turned to writing spy fiction. They drop the dagger and pick up the …

1
Samuel Helfont, "The Iraq Wars: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2025) 1:02:15

3d ago1:02:15

1:02:15

American wars in Iraq were a defining feature of global politics for almost thirty years. The Gulf War of 1991, the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the campaign against the Islamic State beginning in 2014 each had their own logic. Each occurrence was a distinct conflict; however they must not only be considered in isolation. The United State…

1
Erik Lin-Greenberg, "The Remote Revolution: Drones and Modern Statecraft" (Cornell UP, 2025) 25:13

6d ago25:13

25:13

In The Remote Revolution: Drones and Modern Statecraft (Cornell UP, 2025), Erik Lin-Greenberg shows that drones are rewriting the rules of international security, but not in ways one would expect. Emerging technologies like drones are often believed to increase the likelihood of crises and war. By lowering the potential risks and human costs of mil…

1
Tim Bouverie, "Allies at War: How the Struggles Between the Allied Powers Shaped the War and the World" (Crown, 2025) 47:10

6d ago47:10

47:10

Historian Tim Bouverie, the renowned author of the very well received Appeasement, gives us another brilliant history Allies at War: How the Struggles Between the Allied Powers Shaped the War and the World (Crown, 2025). This time exploring the diplomatic history of the Allied Powers during the Second World War. This being the second in a planned t…

1
Jeff Roche, "The Conservative Frontier: Texas and the Origins of the New Right" (U Texas Press, 2025) 1:20:52

7d ago1:20:52

1:20:52

American conservatism as we know it today is a West Texas export, argues College of Wooster professor Jeff Roche in The Conservative Frontier: Texas and the Origins of the New Right (U Texas Press, 2025). Tracing the roots of the state's conservative movement back to the giant cattle ranches and tycoons of the nineteenth century, Roche argues that …

1
David Nasaw, "The Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II" (Penguin, 2025) 55:22

11d ago55:22

55:22

In its duration, geographical reach, and ferocity, World War II was unprecedented, and the effects on those who fought it and their loved ones at home, immeasurable. The heroism of the men and women who won the war may be well documented, but we know too little about the pain and hardships the veterans endured upon their return home. As historian D…

1
Matthew A. Tattar, "Innovation and Adaptation in War" (MIT Press, 2025) 1:00:04

10d ago1:00:04

1:00:04

An analysis of advances in military technology that illustrates the importance of organizational flexibility in both an attacker’s innovations and an opponent’s adaptations. How important is military innovation in determining outcomes during armed conflict? In Innovation and Adaptation in War, Matthew Tattar questions the conventional wisdom that, …

1
Charlotte Macdonald, "Garrison World: Redcoat Soldiers in New Zealand and across the British Empire" (Bridget Williams Books, 2025) 1:12:08

16d ago1:12:08

1:12:08

The pivotal year of 1870 brought down the curtain on the redcoat garrison world at both the metropolitan and colonial ends of the empire . . . In fewer than forty years, less than a lifetime, Aotearoa had gone from being a Māori world in which rangatira dominated, to a colony in which the settler state was in control of the economy, politics and pe…

1
David Silkenat, "Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South" (Oxford UP, 2022) 1:04:47

19d ago1:04:47

1:04:47

They worked Virginia's tobacco fields, South Carolina's rice marshes, and the Black Belt's cotton plantations. Wherever they lived, enslaved people found their lives indelibly shaped by the Southern environment. By day, they plucked worms and insects from the crops, trod barefoot in the mud as they hoed rice fields, and endured the sun and humidity…

1
Sylvia D. Hoffert, "Wagging Tongues and Tittle Tattle: Gossip, Rumor, and Reputation in a Small Southern Town" (U Georgia Press, 2025) 46:21

19d ago46:21

46:21

In Wagging Tongues and Tittle Tattle: Gossip, Rumor, and Reputation in a Small Southern Town (University of Georgia Press, 2025), Dr. Sylvia Hoffert calls on a particularly rich collection of primary sources, including diaries, letters, oral histories, census data, court documents, church records, and psychiatric hospital logs, all relating to Hill…

1
Michal A. Piegzik, "Gamble in the Coral Sea: Japan's Offensive, the Carrier Battle, and the Road to Midway" (Naval Institute Press, 2025) 53:34

20d ago53:34

53:34

Driven by extensive Japanese primary sources, Gamble in the Coral Sea: Japan's Offensive, the Carrier Battle, and the Road to Midway (Naval Institute Press, 2025) offers an operational analysis of the first clash of aircraft carriers at the pivotal Battle of the Coral Sea from the Japanese perspective, including leadership, tactics, and errors that…

1
Beau Cleland, "Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria: How Pirates, Smugglers, and Scoundrels Almost Saved the Confederacy" (U Georgia Press, 2025) 1:03:38

20d ago1:03:38

1:03:38

Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria: How Pirates, Smugglers, and Scoundrels Almost Saved the Confederacy (U Georgia Press, 2025) by Dr. Beau Cleland recenters our understanding of the Civil War by framing it as a hemispheric affair, deeply influenced by the actions of a network of private parties and minor officials in the Confederacy and Britis…

1
Beau Cleland, "Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria: How Pirates, Smugglers, and Scoundrels Almost Saved the Confederacy" (U Georgia Press, 2025) 1:03:38

20d ago1:03:38

1:03:38

Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria: How Pirates, Smugglers, and Scoundrels Almost Saved the Confederacy (U Georgia Press, 2025) by Dr. Beau Cleland recenters our understanding of the Civil War by framing it as a hemispheric affair, deeply influenced by the actions of a network of private parties and minor officials in the Confederacy and Britis…

1
Gregory S. Wilson, "Poison Powder: The Kepone Disaster in Virginia and Its Legacy" (U Georgia Press, 2023) 1:09:48

20d ago1:09:48

1:09:48

In 1975 workers at Life Science Products, a small makeshift pesticide factory in Hopewell, Virginia, became ill after exposure to Kepone, the brand name for the pesticide chlordecone. They made the poison under contract for a much larger Hopewell company, Allied Chemical. Life Science workers had been breathing in the dust for more than a year. Ing…

51
Henry Rausch, "Submerged: Life on a Fast Attack Submarine in the Last Days of the Cold War" (Independently Published, 2024) 56:44

20d ago56:44

56:44

In Submerged: Life on a Fast Attack Submarine in the Last Days of the Cold War (Independently Published, 2024), the author graduates from an elite university and enters the submarine service in the mid-1980s when rhetoric between the US and USSR threatens to turn the Cold War hot. He encounters an unforgiving world where submarines hunt each other …

1
Gwyneth Mellinger, "Racializing Objectivity: How the White Southern Press Used Journalism Standards to Defend Jim Crow" (U Massachusetts Press, 2024) 24:46

21d ago24:46

24:46

“When the civil rights movement began to challenge Jim Crow laws, the white southern press reframed the coverage of racism and segregation as a debate over journalism standards. Many white southern editors, for instance, designated Black Americans as “Negro” in news stories, claiming it was necessary for accuracy and “objectivity,” even as white su…

1
Steve Tibble, "Assassins and Templars: A Battle in Myth and Blood" (Yale UP, 2025) 47:52

23d ago47:52

47:52

The Assassins and the Templars. Two groups that are now part of popular legend–and not just because of Assassin’s Creed, the massive video game franchise starring the former as its heroes, and the latter as its villains. Steve Tibble takes on both these groups in his new book Assassins and Templars: A Battle in Myth and Blood (Yale UP, 2025). Steve…

1
Jonathan S. Jones, "Opium Slavery: Civil War Veterans and America's First Opioid Crisis" (UNC Press, 2025) 38:11

25d ago38:11

38:11

During the Civil War, the utility and widespread availability of opium and morphine made opiates essential to wartime medicine. After the war ended, thousands of ailing soldiers became addicted, or “enslaved,” as nineteenth-century Americans phrased it. Veterans, their families, and communities struggled to cope with addiction’s health and social c…

1
Marc Sommers, "We the Young Fighters: Pop Culture, Terror, and War in Sierra Leone" (U Georgia Press, 2023) 1:18:50

27d ago1:18:50

1:18:50

We the Young Fighters: Pop Culture, Terror, and War in Sierra Leone (U Georgia Press, 2023) by Dr. Marc Sommers is at once a history of a nation, the story of a war, and the saga of downtrodden young people and three pop culture superstars. Reggae idol Bob Marley, rap legend Tupac Shakur, and the John Rambo movie character all portrayed an upside-d…

1
James Lacey, "Rome: Strategy of Empire" (Oxford UP, 2022) 59:33

28d ago59:33

59:33

From Octavian's victory at Actium (31 B.C.) to its traditional endpoint in the West (476), the Roman Empire lasted a solid 500 years -- an impressive number by any standard, and fully one-fifth of all recorded history. In fact, the decline and final collapse of the Roman Empire took longer than most other empires even existed. Any historian trying …

1
Erika Pani, "Torn Asunder: Republican Crises and Civil Wars in the United States and Mexico, 1848-1867" (UNC Press, 2025) 57:37

1M ago57:37

57:37

Between the late 1840s and the late 1860s, the United States and Mexico had quite a bit in common. Both suffered from reactionary succession movements, both faced brutal civil wars, and both had to figure out a method of reconstructing broken nations in their aftermath. In Torn Asunder: Republican Crises and Civil Wars in the United States and Mexi…

1
Jochen Hellbeck, "World Enemy No. 1: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews" (Penguin Group, 2025) 1:27:51

1M ago1:27:51

1:27:51

In the West, World War II is commonly understood as the Allies’ struggle against Nazism. Often elided, if not simply forgotten, is the Soviet Union’s crucial role in that fight. With this book, acclaimed historian Jochen Hellbeck rectifies this omission by relocating the ideological core of the conflict. It was not the Western powers but Communist …

1
Nina Wilen, "Securitizing the Sahel: Analyzing External Interventions and Their Consequences" (Oxford UP, 2025) 52:01

1M ago52:01

52:01

The Sahel has become a focal point of international security interventions, with external actors providing extensive security force assistance (SFA) to local military, police, and paramilitary forces. Securitizing the Sahel: Analyzing External Interventions and Their Consequences (Oxford UP, 2025) by Dr. Nina Wilen critically examines the rationale…

1
Marek Kohn, "The Stories Old Towns Tell: A Journey Through Cities at the Heart of Europe" (Yale UP, 2023) 59:34

1M ago59:34

59:34

Historic quarters in cities and towns across the middle of Europe were devastated during the Second World War—some, like those of Warsaw and Frankfurt, had to be rebuilt almost completely. They are now centers of peace and civility that attract millions of tourists, but the stories they tell about places, peoples, and nations are selective. They ar…

151
John Bodnar, "Divided by Terror: American Patriotism after 9/11" (UNC Press, 2021) 1:08:06

1M ago1:08:06

1:08:06

September 11th, 2001 marked the beginning of the so-called war on terror, but the attacks of that day also re-ignited battles over the nature of American patriotism. In Divided by Terror: American Patriotism after 9/11 (UNC Press, 2021), Professor John Bodnar argues that the nature of patriotism as being war-based or empathetic divided the nation a…

1
Tim Woodall (Faber & Faber) on what the arts can learn from publishing (and vice-versa), the reality that your audience is not “everyone” (and that’s fine), and the value of brand-building 38:27

1M ago38:27

38:27

A conversation with Tim Woodall, the former Director of Marketing at The Philharmonia, and the current Head of Direct to Consumer Marketing at independent publishing house, Faber and Faber. It was interesting to hear Tim's reflections on what the publishing world could learn from the arts, and vice-versa, the value of clear priorities, the lessons …

1
Karen Auman, "The Good Forest: The Salzburgers, Success, and the Plan for Georgia" (U Georgia Press, 2024) 50:12

1M ago50:12

50:12

The Good Forest: The Salzburgers, Success, and the Plan for Georgia (U Georgia Press, 2024) explores some of Georgia’s earliest settlers, the Salzburgers. Georgia, the last of Britain’s American mainland colonies, began with high aspirations to create a morally sound society based on small family farms with no enslaved workers. But those goals were…

1
Tim Seiter, "Wrangling Pelicans: Military Life in Texas Presidios" (U Texas Press, 2025) 39:50

1M ago39:50

39:50

A richly detailed history of daily life for colonial Spanish soldiers surviving on the eighteenth-century Texas Gulf Coast. In 1775, Spanish King Carlos III ordered the capture of American pelicans for his wildlife park in Madrid. The command went to the only Spanish fort on the Texas coast—Presidio Nuestra Señora de Loreto de la Bahía in present-d…

1
Doug MacCash, "Mardi Gras Beads" (Louisiana UP, 2022) 38:56

1M ago38:56

38:56

The first in a new LSU Press series exploring facets of Louisiana’s iconic culture, Mardi Gras Beads (2022) delves into the history of this celebrated New Orleans artifact, explaining how Mardi Gras beads came to be in the first place and how they grew to have such an outsize presence in New Orleans celebrations. It explores their origins before Wo…

151
John Goodall, "The Castle: A History" (Yale UP, 2022) 56:49

1M ago56:49

56:49

In The Castle: A History (Yale University Press, 2022) Dr. John Goodall presents a vibrant history of the castle in Britain, from the early Middle Ages to the present day. The castle has long had a pivotal place in British life, associated with lordship, landholding, and military might, and today it remains a powerful symbol of history. But castles…

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1
Filip Kovacevic, "KGB Literati: Spy Fiction and State Security in the Soviet Union" (U Toronto Press, 2025) 51:57

1
Samuel Helfont, "The Iraq Wars: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2025) 1:02:15

1
Erik Lin-Greenberg, "The Remote Revolution: Drones and Modern Statecraft" (Cornell UP, 2025) 25:13

1
Tim Bouverie, "Allies at War: How the Struggles Between the Allied Powers Shaped the War and the World" (Crown, 2025) 47:10

1
Jeff Roche, "The Conservative Frontier: Texas and the Origins of the New Right" (U Texas Press, 2025) 1:20:52

1
David Nasaw, "The Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II" (Penguin, 2025) 55:22

1
Matthew A. Tattar, "Innovation and Adaptation in War" (MIT Press, 2025) 1:00:04

1
Charlotte Macdonald, "Garrison World: Redcoat Soldiers in New Zealand and across the British Empire" (Bridget Williams Books, 2025) 1:12:08

1
David Silkenat, "Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South" (Oxford UP, 2022) 1:04:47

1
Sylvia D. Hoffert, "Wagging Tongues and Tittle Tattle: Gossip, Rumor, and Reputation in a Small Southern Town" (U Georgia Press, 2025) 46:21

1
Michal A. Piegzik, "Gamble in the Coral Sea: Japan's Offensive, the Carrier Battle, and the Road to Midway" (Naval Institute Press, 2025) 53:34

1
Beau Cleland, "Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria: How Pirates, Smugglers, and Scoundrels Almost Saved the Confederacy" (U Georgia Press, 2025) 1:03:38

1
Beau Cleland, "Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria: How Pirates, Smugglers, and Scoundrels Almost Saved the Confederacy" (U Georgia Press, 2025) 1:03:38

1
Gregory S. Wilson, "Poison Powder: The Kepone Disaster in Virginia and Its Legacy" (U Georgia Press, 2023) 1:09:48

51
Henry Rausch, "Submerged: Life on a Fast Attack Submarine in the Last Days of the Cold War" (Independently Published, 2024) 56:44

1
Gwyneth Mellinger, "Racializing Objectivity: How the White Southern Press Used Journalism Standards to Defend Jim Crow" (U Massachusetts Press, 2024) 24:46

1
Steve Tibble, "Assassins and Templars: A Battle in Myth and Blood" (Yale UP, 2025) 47:52

1
Jonathan S. Jones, "Opium Slavery: Civil War Veterans and America's First Opioid Crisis" (UNC Press, 2025) 38:11

1
Marc Sommers, "We the Young Fighters: Pop Culture, Terror, and War in Sierra Leone" (U Georgia Press, 2023) 1:18:50

1
James Lacey, "Rome: Strategy of Empire" (Oxford UP, 2022) 59:33

1
Erika Pani, "Torn Asunder: Republican Crises and Civil Wars in the United States and Mexico, 1848-1867" (UNC Press, 2025) 57:37

1
Jochen Hellbeck, "World Enemy No. 1: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews" (Penguin Group, 2025) 1:27:51

1
Nina Wilen, "Securitizing the Sahel: Analyzing External Interventions and Their Consequences" (Oxford UP, 2025) 52:01

1
Marek Kohn, "The Stories Old Towns Tell: A Journey Through Cities at the Heart of Europe" (Yale UP, 2023) 59:34

151
John Bodnar, "Divided by Terror: American Patriotism after 9/11" (UNC Press, 2021) 1:08:06

1
Tim Woodall (Faber & Faber) on what the arts can learn from publishing (and vice-versa), the reality that your audience is not “everyone” (and that’s fine), and the value of brand-building 38:27

1
Karen Auman, "The Good Forest: The Salzburgers, Success, and the Plan for Georgia" (U Georgia Press, 2024) 50:12

1
Tim Seiter, "Wrangling Pelicans: Military Life in Texas Presidios" (U Texas Press, 2025) 39:50

1
Doug MacCash, "Mardi Gras Beads" (Louisiana UP, 2022) 38:56

151
John Goodall, "The Castle: A History" (Yale UP, 2022) 56:49