Closing out What the Hell’s summer book series, we offer a timely reminder of the value of free speech and critical thinking from a time when it wasn’t taken for granted. Charlie English discusses his book, The CIA Book Club: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War with Forbidden Literature (Random House, 2025). Charlie chronicles George Minden’s 1980s covert intelligence operation that smuggled literature into Poland from beyond the Iron Curtain. From its Manhattan headquarters, Minden’s “book club” secretly sent ten million banned titles into the East and combated communist censorship, creating a vibrant culture in Poland that would outlast the toppled Soviet regime. What is the value of printed word in our society? Can ideas beat out on the battlefield? Charlie reminds us they can.
Charlie English is a London-based non-fiction writer and the author of three internationally acclaimed books. He has appeared on NPR, the BBC and Channel 4, written for numerous newspapers and magazines including the New York Times, the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Independent, and given talks at Hay, Jaipur and the Royal Geographical Society, where he is a fellow. Formerly, he was Head of International News at Guardian News and Media.
In the next episode of our annual What the Hell’s summer book series, we are time traveling around the world with experimental archeologist, Sam Kean, who shares with us his latest science narrative novel, Dinner with King Tut: How Rogue Archaeologists Are Re-creating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations (Little Brown and Company, 2025). Sam took us on an adventure of the senses, back through the history of mankind and across the globe, from the Egyptian pyramids to the temples of Mexico. “Above all,” he writes, “I hope this book can reveal what unites us today with people from long ago, and help us understand that they were just people, no different than us.” WTH can we learn from living like those in the past? And WTH do caterpillars taste like?
Sam Kean is the New York Times-bestselling author of seven books that combine history and science. His stories have appeared in The Best American Science and Nature Writing, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Slate, among other places, and his work has been featured on NPR. His books The Disappearing Spoon and The Violinist’s Thumb were national bestsellers, and both were named an Amazon “Top 5” science books of the year.
In this episode of What the Hell’s summer book series, bestselling author, Jonathan Horn, discusses his new book, The Fate of the Generals: MacArthur, Wainwright, and the Epic Battle for the Philippines (Scribner, 2025). In it, Jonathan tells the tale of lesser-known American Pacific Theater hero, General Jonathan Wainwright. General Wainwright’s story is a lesson of the importance of keeping your word and honor. As a leader, he says, “no other course of action would be honorable but to stay with my men and share their fate.” What else came of the man left behind? What led him to his infamous surrender? And beyond the medal they share, how should the two generals be remembered?
Jonathan Horn is the author of Washington’s End and the Robert E. Lee biography The Man Who Would Not Be Washington, which was a Washington Post bestseller. Jonathan has written for outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times Disunion series, New York Post, The Daily Beast, National Review, and POLITICO. A former White House presidential speechwriter, Jonathan served under President George W. Bush.
Kicking off our annual What the Hell’s summer book series, Zach Cooper discusses his new book, Tides of Fortune: The Rise and Decline of Great Militaries (Yale University Press, 2025). How will the United States and China evolve militarily in the years ahead? Many experts believe the answer to this question is largely unknowable. But in his book, Zack Cooper argues that the American and Chinese militaries are following a well-trodden path. For centuries, the world’s most powerful militaries have adhered to a remarkably consistent pattern of behavior, determined largely by their leaders’ perceptions of relative power shifts. WTH is China on this path? And importantly, WTH is the US?
Zack Cooper is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies US strategy in Asia, including alliance dynamics and US-China competition. He also teaches at Princeton University and serves as chair of the board of the Open Technology Fund. Before joining AEI, Dr. Cooper was the senior fellow for Asian security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Find Tides of Fortune: The Rise and Fall of Great Militaries here.
Almost two years after the October 7th attacks, facts about the state of life in Gaza are almost impossible to glean from the daily news. Much of what used to be mainstream journalism has become political activism, and Palestinian allied NGOs, UN organizations, and international press are using selective information as a weapon. Are Palestinians starving? Or is this just another lie in the war on Israel? Matti Friedman joins us to talk about his important piece on Gaza for The Free Press.
Matti Friedman is a Jerusalem-based columnist for The Free Press. He’s an award-winning journalist and author of four nonfiction books, of which the most recent is Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai. A former Associated Press correspondent and essayist for the New York Times opinion section, he previously wrote a monthly feature for Tablet Magazine. His writing has appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, the Atlantic, and elsewhere.
Dominic Green writes, “The war on free speech is about to violate the most sacred recesses of British life—not the home or the workplace, but the pub.” In legislation dubbed the “Banter Bill”, Parliament is attacking the center of British life in a new effort to hold employers accountable for staff’s hurt feelings over third parties “offensive language”. Under the UK’s two-tiered justice system, government is now in the service of a minority to punish perceived miscreants for free speech. How did the UK government arrive here? And how will the British restore freedom and common sense?
Dominic Green is a fellow at the Royal Historical Society, a Wall Street Journal contributor, and a Washington Examiner columnist. He was previously a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and editor-in-chief of The Spectator’s U.S. edition. Dr. Green is the author of five books about British history and society.
Last month, New York City took to the polls for their mayoral primary and the Democratic party has decided that a socialist, communist, terrorist supporting, antisemite, is the best candidate for mayor of New York City. Zohran Mamdani is a radical left “intersectionality salad”. Between his unironic quotation of Marx to raps about the Holy Land Five, we’re left wondering what New Yorkers are thinking and how Mamdani came to these “beliefs”. Is this really the path out of the wilderness for the Democratic party?
Seth Mandel is the Senior editor of Commentary Magazine who frequently writes on Israel, antisemitism, and national politics. Previously, he has worked as executive editor of the Washington Examiner print edition between 2018 and 2023, and worked previously as an op-ed editor at the New York Post.
President Trump has made it clear: whichever nation is the obstacle to peace in ending Russia’s war on Ukraine will face an opponent with the military aid and backing of the United States. Putin has no intention of giving up his objectives in Ukraine and Trump is over the bull. Reversing a Pentagon freeze of critical weapons shipments to Ukraine, Trump announced Monday night that more defensive weapons were on the way. In the wake of Russia’s largest combined drone and missile strike, having Patriot missile systems is paramount to Ukraine’s ability to defend themselves. So, what’s it going to take to bring Putin to the table? How can we sufficiently arm Ukraine on Russia’s dime? And when will this bloody war end?
General Jack Keane is a retired 4-star general and the former Vice Chief of Staff of the US Army. He is also the Chairman of the Institute for the Study of War, a Fox News Senior Strategic Analyst, and a member of the Secretary of Defense Policy Board. General Keane has previously advised four Defense Secretaries and was a member of the 2018 and 2022 Congressional Commission on the National Defense Strategy.
Notwithstanding regular headlines and firm conventional wisdom, the MAGA Movement is not and never has been an isolationist faction of the Republican Party. Neither the American people nor self-identified MAGA Republicans are fundamentally isolationist, and in fact score higher than non-MAGA Republicans on support for U.S. intervention abroad. The numbers don’t lie: this year’s Reagan Foundation Summer Poll found the MAGA coalition strongly support Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Why are these results counterintuitive? And how has a tiny isolationist faction of self-appointed MAGA spokespeople drummed up so much noise?
Roger Zakheim serves as the Washington Director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute. Before joining, he was General Counsel and Deputy Staff Director of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee. In this role, Mr. Zakheim managed the passage of the annual National Defense Authorization Act, the defense policy bill which authorizes the Defense Department’s budget. Mr. Zakheim’s government experience also includes serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense where he supported the department’s policies and programs related to Iraq and Afghanistan coalition affairs.
In the wake of a decisive US strike on Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities, many questions are being asked. Did Donald Trump make the right call? What about the intelligence? Is this the start of US military action in Iran or a one-off? And what are the implications for Gaza, the region, and Iran in the coming months?
Kenneth M. Pollack, PhD., is Vice President for Policy at the Middle East Institute. Previously he was a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he worked on Middle Eastern political-military affairs, focusing in particular on Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf countries. Dr. Pollack has also worked on long-term issues related to Middle Eastern political and military affairs for the Joint Chiefs of Staff when he was a senior research professor at the Institute for National Security Studies at National Defense University.