Aug 2, 2016
In Episode 4, I mentioned I used
the book Bloodlands by Timothy (not Zack) Snyder when teaching WWII
in my world history survey. Our guest Andrew Behrendt was
underwhelmed with that choice. Today, Andrew and I enter the
Thunderdome and strap into our bungee harnesses as we debate
whether this book is useful for world historians. Needless to say,
there is some bad blood as he grabs a chainsaw (claiming Snyder
poorly defines his geographical space!), I swing a hammer
(suggesting that Snyder’s top-down approach may be a necessary
corrective to the historiographical turn towards local
understandings of violence!), and Matt frantically tries to blow
his bosun’s whistle (Snyder’s synthesis does not contain an
explicit argument!). Yeah, this one gets nerdy, so nerdy Stathis
Kalyvas gets name checked. There are even two Simpson’s references
in here! Recommendations are:
Andrew – Prusin, The Lands Between; Collingham,
The Taste of War
Dave
– Gross, Neighbors; Gross, Fear
Matt – Von Ryan’s Express (1965); Lazare,
“Timothy Snyder’s Lies”