Historian Alexander Mikaberidze reframes the Louisiana Purchase as part of a global story of empire, revolution, and political ambition. He discusses archival discoveries, Napoleonic history, and why the Purchase still matters today. OUPblog - Academic ...
In his most recent work, historian and OUP author Alexander Mikaberidze turns his expansive, globally minded lens to one of the most familiar episodes in American history—the Louisiana Purchase—and reveals just how far its story reaches beyond a simple land deal. Best known for his work on the Napoleonic Wars, Mikaberidze brings the same cross-border, deeply archival approach to this project, tracing the Purchase through the tangled currents of empire, revolution, and political ambition that connected Europe, the Caribbean, and North America. Here, he reflects on the enduring pull of Napoleonic history, the serendipity of research, and why the Louisiana Purchase still has urgent meaning today.
1. You’ve spent much of your career immersed in the world of the Napoleonic Wars. What was the moment when this period first caught your imagination—and what keeps pulling you back to it?
As a kid, I was very susceptible to the romance of the past. The decisive moment came at the start of middle school when I stumbled across a biography of Napoleon Bonaparte. I was, quite simply, swept away. Here was this improbable figure—a provincial outsider from a small island—who seemed to bend an entire continent to his will. It read like a romantic saga, the kind that makes you forget about your own problems (and in the turbulent 1990s, there were many problems in the former Soviet republics!). The Napoleonic legend has a way of doing that, as it doesn’t just inform; it recruits. And I responded.
What keeps me returning is the complexity of the past. The closer you get, the more it fractures into competing perspectives, new narratives, and additional layers. It’s an inexhaustible subject, and after over two decades studying the Napoleonic Era, I am only just starting to get a good grasp of it.
2. Your work often crosses borders, languages, and archives. When you’re deep in research, what does a good working day actually look like for you—and where do you most often get pleasantly stuck?
A good research day begins, as all respectable obsessions do, with a cup of coffee and a false sense of control. When I’m in the archives, I arrive with a plan—a list of dossiers to order, documents to peruse, and old leads to follow up—and within an hour that plan is usually in ruins. Some obscure document opens onto a new set of questions, which leads to a detour into entirely unfamiliar territory. At home, my working day is really a working night. Once lectures are finished, papers graded, and family attended to, I turn to reading and writing, usually well after ten o’clock. So, I tend to work past midnight, when everything has gone quiet and the world, for a few hours at least, stops making demands. I surround myself with piles of books and documents and slowly read through them all, taking notes and creating outlines. I’ve always had a particular fondness for tracing details, especially those included in footnotes. More often than not, those are the threads that unravel something larger. I recall one such instance when an innocent inquiry into a single footnote sent me chasing leads across European archives and auction houses. The trail eventually led me to the Lilly Library, where I found a rare Georgian illuminated manuscript long thought lost.
3. How different did it feel to write about the Louisiana Purchase compared with Napoleon’s Europe? Were there habits you had to unlearn—or new ones you picked up along the way?
In some ways, it felt less like a departure than a continuation under a different name. The story of the Louisiana Purchase is so closely intertwined with subjects I had already spent years studying—European colonial empires, the Haitian Revolution, and, of course, Napoleon—that the transition was more seamless than I initially expected. If anything, the shift was one of emphasis rather than method. My earlier focus of tracing connections across borders—which led to the writing of The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History—proved just as essential here. The Purchase only really makes sense when placed within those overlapping imperial and revolutionary contexts; taken in isolation, it risks losing a lot of important details.
4. After years of writing big, interconnected histories, what part of the process do you enjoy most now—and what part still gives you pause every time you start a new book?
What I enjoy most is the moment when the material begins to “talk back.” After years of research, there comes a point when the documents stop feeling like scattered fragments and begin to form a kind of chorus. Shaping that into a cohesive story feels less like construction and more like listening closely enough to catch the underlying rhythm. What still gives me pause is the beginning… There’s a particular sense of terror of realizing the depth of the subject that you will have to explore and then staring at the blank page knowing how many lives and complexities you’re bound to compress into prose. It’s a useful anxiety, though—it keeps you honest about the challenge, and more importantly, keeps you striving for a deeper understanding of what actually transpired.
5. If readers take away one big idea from The Louisiana Purchase that reframes how they think about global history, what do you hope it will be?
If there’s one idea, I’d hope readers carry away, it’s that the Louisiana Purchase was not a neat bilateral transaction—the familiar “greatest real estate deal,” measured out in a few cents per acre. It was (and in many ways, remains) a hinge in a much larger story of imperial rivalry and global entanglement, stretching across both space and time. It is a story that continues to ask something of us—serving as a striking historical precedent, for instance, when the United States recently revisited the idea of acquiring Greenland. I hope the Louisiana Purchase would compel readers to confront the past with candor and to reckon with the tangled complexities of our national story.
I think all historians, whether they admit it or not, are engaged in an ongoing conversation, sometimes amicable, sometimes argumentative. In approaching the Louisiana Purchase as a longue durée history, I found myself naturally echoing Fernand Braudel, with his expansive sense of time and structure. He has a way of reminding you that events are only ever the visible surface of much deeper currents. At the same time, scholars like William Dalrymple, Simon Schama, Gordon Wood, and Alan Taylor bring a narrative vitality that makes you want to match their energy, if not quite their eloquence. This book also owes a great deal to recent Louisiana Purchase studies, too many to mention all, but I will highlight a few: to Robert Lee on long-term consequences; to Mark Edward Hay and Larry Neal, whose economic histories of the Purchase have helped shape my own thinking; and to Peter J. Kastor, whose scholarship on the Purchase’s impact on the American identity has influenced many of my conclusions.
To the modern eye, this man in his dark suit probably looks perfectly normal—perhaps even boring. But what if this ubiquitous uniform is actually one of the most powerful and heavily engineered political institutions in Western history?
Before the nineteenth century, elite men across the Western world dressed in vibrant silks, rich velvets, and sparkling embroidery, using fashion to display their social rank just as much as women did. However, in the wake of the American Revolution, a massive cultural shift occurred—the “Sartorial Revolution.” Between the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, men renounced decorative fashion in favor of plain, dark, woolen suits.
The Founding Fathers used clothing to enact a new political reality. Men like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson purposefully adopted sober, unadorned suits to visually reject aristocratic luxury and the tyranny of European monarchies. Their new uniform was designed to reflect republican ideals of democracy, equality, and industry. But this equality was an illusion. The suit functioned as a visual boundary that granted civic authority and political power exclusively to white men, while using the language of fashion to cast women, Indigenous men, and Black men as feminine, primitive, or uncivilized, and therefore unfit for political power.
Click on the different elements of the suit below to uncover the hidden histories woven into its fabric. From the exploitation of land and labor required to produce its dark dyes and crisp white linens, to the mathematical tailoring that secretly sculpted an idealized male body, you will see how these seemingly mundane garments served as tools of social control. The history of the suit is the history of power, democracy, and the fashioning of modern men.
Perhaps the most striking thing about the modern suit is how boring it seems. That is exactly its power. By the mid-19th century, the suit became so plain, uniform, and ubiquitous that it practically turned invisible. It functioned as a “civic uniform” that united white men in a visual brotherhood of democratic equality. But this uniformity was exclusive. By defining serious, rational masculinity through the dark suit, society simultaneously codified anyone who didn’t wear it—women, Indigenous men, and Black men—as frivolous, savage, or unfit for political power. The suit didn’t just reflect social hierarchies; it actively enforced them.
Jon Parshall has spent his career asking big questions about how wars are remembered, argued over, and ultimately understood. Best known for his meticulous work on the Pacific front of World War II, Parshall has long been drawn to the structural questions of how wars are fought and won. His upcoming, highly illustrated book marks the most ambitious project of his career so far, distilling years of research into a single, sweeping year. In the conversation that follows, Parshall reflects on the historians who shaped him, the challenges of thinking on a global scale, and what surprised him most along the way.
1. You’ve spent decades studying World War II. What first drew you to this period, and what continues to hold your curiosity after all these years?
I’ve always been interested in ships, and building a kit of a Japanese heavy cruiser as a fifth-grader was sort of the entry point to World War II for me. What remains endlessly fascinating about it is that our understanding is constantly changing. I’m very much of the belief that history is a journey; it’s always dynamic, always evolving. That’s what keeps it fresh and engaging.
2. You’ve written extensively about the Pacific War, including the award-winning Shattered Sword. What drew you to 1942 as a standalone subject, and why do you see it as the pivotal year that defined the global trajectory of World War II?
I came out of Shattered Sword mulling the nature of “turning points” and “decisive battles” within the war and wanting to educate myself regarding the larger structure of 1942. The year begins with a global Allied dumpster fire, yet ends with the Allies on the offensive basically everywhere. How did that happen? What was going on “under the hood,” so to speak? It turns out: a LOT. There’s no simple answer. That’s what the book addresses.
3. 1942 is a year in which the balance of power shifted across multiple theaters—Pacific, Eastern Front, North Africa, and the Atlantic. Which theater or campaign did you find most challenging to narrate in a way that made sense as part of a single worldwide story?
Without question, the Eastern Front. There are two fundamental problems, the first being a lack of sympathetic characters, as we watch the minions of one horrid despot battling the minions of another horrid despot. Moreover, the enormity of the theater often means reaching for unsatisfying narrative generalities—like one army “slicing” through another army. It’s difficult to construct a story that feels personal or relatable. The solution lies in providing enough micro-views of the situation on the ground to make conveying the larger events comprehensible.
4. 1942 includes hundreds of your own maps and timelines—a rare level of visual narrative in military history. Why was it important for you to build the story of the war year with this kind of granular, visual clarity?
I’ve always loved maps. I’m a visual learner. Shaded-relief maps help to convey, even if only subliminally, things like, “Oh, yeah, the Japanese couldn’t advance this way, now could they, because there are some hella big hills over here!” Likewise, the monthly timelines help readers understand not only chronology but also the connection points between different theaters. The war was vast—it was happening everywhere all at once. Seeing events laid out temporally helps create a framework for understanding their relationships.
5. What was your motivation for making such a comprehensive account? At over 1,200 pages, do you not have concerns about inflicting muscle strain on your readers?
The fundamental problem is one of creating an engaging narrative. If you do this story at too high a level, it becomes abstract, generalized, and boring. I wanted to dedicate an appropriate level of detail to the battles. But doing that for every major battle worldwide during the year inexorably leads to more page count than I had originally hoped for! If you’re going to do that to a reader, you have to give them lively dialog, lots of maps and pictures, bits of humor (I hope!), and other Easter eggs. There’s a pertinent quote from Pink Floyd in the book, another from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and a third from J. R. R. Tolkien. Can you find them?
6. Are there historians, past or present, whose work you feel especially in conversation with in 1942?
The two that have most influenced my thinking this year are Richard Overy and my friend Richard Frank. Overy and I have similar views regarding the necessity of describing the war in its totality in order to understand its outcome. One theater or battle won’t do. You must look at the whole enchilada. Rich and I share a common understanding, forged over many years and beers, regarding the importance of the Asia-Pacific theater to the overall trajectory of the war, particularly early on when the USSR was on the ropes.
7. If readers take away one big reframing of how to think about World War II from 1942, what do you hope it will be?
Allied victory was neither inevitable nor obvious at the beginning of the year. Likewise, there was no single turning point, but rather dozens of inflection points that ultimately reshaped the war’s trajectory from one of Allied ruin to Allied triumph.
8. What kinds of books—historical or otherwise—do you find yourself returning to for inspiration, whether for craft, perspective, or sheer pleasure?
Great question! I still re-read The Lord of the Rings almost yearly. I love a good fantasy novel. Other than that, though, it’ll probably be something World War II-related—the “Need-to-Read” pile never seems to get smaller!
When one reads thousands of pages of transcripts of Henry Kissinger’s phone conversations from his time in the Nixon and Ford administrations, as I did, one gets a pretty good sense of his personality, temperament, and character. The man had an appealing sense of humor and a quick wit, which he sometimes used to break tension. One can even see his humor on display during pressure-packed crises (of which there were many). He could be charming and self-deprecating, and he was an inveterate flatterer. He heaped praise on President Nixon, who was aware that it was often phony and doubted Kissinger’s loyalty. He was invariably deferential to Nixon, always addressing him formally as “Mr. President.” His standing with Nixon was always a paramount concern.
Kissinger often affected intimacy with people (“I’m talking to you as a friend”), particularly with journalists, as if he were taking them into his confidence, which was one way he seduced them. Journalists tended to be deferential to him, and many sought his “guidance.” He had considerable powers of seduction through his charm, flattery, humor, feigned forthrightness, and sharing of intimacies. He was prone to flirting with female journalists, including Barbara Walters, who was upset by false news stories linking them, and he enjoyed his playboy reputation. Of course, his famously powerful and quick mind is evident in his phone transcripts.
Also evident is his impressive capacity to handle an enormous workload and withstand an endless series of headaches while working long hours. Kissinger seemed to have boundless stamina and to require little sleep. He was an extraordinarily hard worker. His days were long. He had superior diplomatic skills, aided by, among other things, his people skills, fortitude, brilliance, grasp of every conceivable issue, and bargaining acumen—not to mention his duplicity and double-dealing. And he was an adept bureaucratic infighter in Washington.
Kissinger could be impatient, sarcastic, and derisive with his aides, highly demanding and even abusive. He threatened firings when particularly upset. He was often arrogant, caustic about the “morons” and “lightweights” in the Nixon administration that he had to put up with, and contemptuous of them. He repeatedly threatened to resign, mainly over his difficulties with Secretary of State William Rogers, who he thought was an idiot and disliked intensely, and over his treatment by Nixon.
He was deceitful and a habitual liar; he appeared to have little hesitation about lying. Kissinger lied frequently to colleagues and journalists. A master, serial leaker, he told the journalist Mary McGrory “he does not leak anything,” and he might denounce to a colleague a news story that bore his fingerprints as “a disgrace.” And he lied repeatedly about his involvement in the Nixon administration’s secret wiretaps of officials and journalists, false-reporting system for the secret Cambodia bombing, and internal discussions about Watergate, and about his knowledge of the Plumbers extralegal investigations unit and his former aide David Young’s participation in it.
Kissinger was also a backstabber and two-faced. Not many colleagues escaped his barbed tongue behind their backs. And he was secretive and conspiratorial. It was not unusual for him to complain about people conspiring and waging campaigns against him. Like Nixon, he could appear paranoid about enemies. (He once remarked to his assistant Alexander Haig, half joking, that acute paranoia in Washington would be diagnosed as excessive complacency.)
He was strikingly callous to the deaths and suffering inflicted by his and Nixon’s policies in Vietnam. He can be found in his phone conversations exulting over all the dead Vietnamese bodies piled up following U.S. bombing strikes. He once threatened not to airlift imperiled and retreating South Vietnamese soldiers out of Laos during the disastrous 1971 invasion of Laos.
He placed great value on being “tough” and “strong,” and being willing to act “brutally” (he expressed disdain for “pansy” language). He could be ruthless and seemingly unimpeded by morality, secondary as it was to both America’s interests as he saw them and to his own interests.
Kissinger never intended for the transcripts of his phone conversations to be released publicly. He had claimed that they were his personal papers and donated them to the Library of Congress under an agreement that gave him control over them. But after the National Security Archive, an organization that fights to limit government secrecy and increase the public’s access to government records, contested Kissinger’s control of the transcripts with the National Archives and State Department and exerted legal pressure on them to recover them, the two agencies asked Kissinger to turn over the transcripts to them. Based on legal advice, Kissinger ultimately complied. It was a crowning achievement of the National Security Archive.
Kissinger was surely nervous about releasing his phone transcripts. He’d been worried about the release of Nixon’s own tapes, aware that they could be damaging to him; he had advised destroying them. But while he said that the tapes of his phone conversations had been destroyed after being transcribed, the transcripts were now out in the world, a great gift to history.
In honor of Women’s History Month, we’re celebrating trailblazing paths taken by women whose courage and vision transformed societies. This reading list features five biographies that highlight women who resisted systemic barriers, confronted entrenched hierarchies, and fought for the dignity and safety of others. From activists and reformers to scientists and cultural leaders, these stories reveal how women—often overlooked or silenced—have pushed boundaries, protected the vulnerable, and inspired movements for justice. Together, they remind us that progress toward gender equality has always been driven by those who refused to accept the limits imposed on them.
1. A Slumless America: Mary K. Simkhovitch and the Dream of Affordable Housingby Betty Boyd Caroli
In this biography, Mary K. Simkhovitch emerges as a pioneering force in the settlement house movement and a central architect of American public housing reform. Betty Boyd Caroli traces Simkhovitch’s founding of Greenwich House in 1902 and her influential role in shaping early 20th‑century urban policy, including her leadership in New Deal housing initiatives, the creation of the National Housing Conference, and co‑authoring the landmark 1937 National Housing Act. Balancing an unconventional marriage, family life, and a relentless public mission, Simkhovitch became widely admired—once even depicted as a “Wonder Woman of History”—for her ability to confront urban poverty while advocating fiercely for immigrant communities and affordable housing. This biography, rich with historical insight, positions her as an enduringly relevant figure whose work helped define the federal government’s responsibility to support low‑income families.
2. American Infidelity: The Gilded Age Battle Over Freethought, Free Love, and Feminism by Steven K. Green
American Infidelity traces the dramatic late‑19th‑century clash between a dominant evangelical culture and a rising coalition of freethinkers, feminists, and sexual reformers who sought greater personal liberty and challenged religious authority. Historian Steven K. Green follows this struggle through the activists who fought for birth control, divorce reform, and women’s autonomy, as well as the moral crusaders—including Elizabeth Cady Stanton—who worked to suppress them. Revealing how these “infidels” pushed for a more open, rational, and egalitarian society, Green shows how their movements were ultimately stifled but left a powerful legacy that continues to shape today’s debates over reproductive rights, censorship, and the role of religion in public life.
3. COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War by Edda L. Fields-Black
Winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for History
This book recounts the often‑overlooked story of Harriet Tubman’s 1863 Combahee River Raid, a daring Civil War operation in which she led Union spies, scouts, and two Black regiments up South Carolina’s river to destroy major rice plantations and liberate 730 enslaved people. Drawing on newly examined documents—including Tubman’s pension file and plantation records—historian Edda L. Fields‑Black, a descendant of one of the raiders, brings to life the enslaved families and communities who escaped to freedom that night and later helped shape the Gullah Geechee culture. Through this vivid reconstruction, the book reveals one of Tubman’s most extraordinary military achievements and the enduring legacy of those who fought for liberation.
4. The Things She Carried: A Cultural History of the Purse in America by Kathleen B. Casey
The Things She Carried reveals how purses, bags, and sacks have long been critical tools for women asserting privacy, autonomy, and political power in America. Kathleen Casey shows how these objects—from 19th‑century reticules to the handbags carried by immigrant workers, civil rights activists, and Rosa Parks herself—became symbolic extensions of women’s rights struggles, allowing them to navigate male‑dominated spaces, protect personal dignity, and challenge discriminatory systems. Drawing on sources ranging from vintage purses to photographs, advertisements, and legal archives, Casey uncovers how women of all backgrounds used the bags they carried to assert agency, cross restrictive social boundaries, and shape pivotal moments in the fight for gender and racial equality.
5. Frances Oldham Kelsey, the FDA, and the Battle against Thalidomide by Cheryl Krasnick Warsh
This biography tells the remarkable story of Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey, the FDA medical officer who, in the early 1960s, prevented the dangerous drug thalidomide from being approved in the United States, sparing countless Americans from catastrophic birth defects. A pioneering scientist who earned advanced degrees in an era with few female researchers, Kelsey resisted intense pressure from Merrell Pharmaceutical and spent nineteen months demanding solid evidence of the drug’s safety. Her unwavering stance not only kept thalidomide off the U.S. market but also spurred sweeping reforms in drug regulation through the 1962 Drug Amendment, which established modern clinical trials, informed consent, and stronger FDA oversight. Drawing on archival records and family papers, the book reveals her lifelong commitment to ethical science, her battles against industry hostility and institutional barriers, and her enduring legacy as a vigilant protector of public health.
