Ep 19 - Bloodlands: Beyond Thunderdome

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 WarDave – Gross, Neighbors; Gross, Fear Matt – Von Ryan’s Express (1965); Lazare, “Timothy Snyder’s Lies”