In this episode, we welcomed Jennifer Mittelstadt back to the show, joined by Mark Wilson, to discuss their new edited volume, The Military and the Market. Moving beyond familiar topics like defense spending, the volume takes an expansive approach to examining military-market relations in a wide range of contexts–from family business in the Civil War to managing post-World War II housing construction for U.S. soldiers and their families, and much more. Alongside Jennifer and Mark, listeners will hear from Kara Dixon Vuic, whose chapter explores the U.S. military’s management of markets for sex. Taken together, The Military and the Market challenges scholars and military policymakers alike to really grapple with the breadth and complexity of U.S. military-market relations over the course of two centuries.

Check out the episode here!

Jennifer Mittelstadt is a Professor of History at Rutgers University. She is the author or editor of four books, including From Welfare to Workfare: The Unintended Consequences of Liberal Reform, 1945-1964 (University of North Carolina, 2005), The Rise of the Military Welfare State (Harvard University Press, 2015), and The Military and the Market (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022) with Mark Wilson. She is also a series editor of Power, Politics, and the World at Penn Press, and currently writing a book about grassroots right-wing participation in US foreign policy.

Mark Wilson is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. His books include Destructive Creation: American Business and the Winning of World War II (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) and The Business of Civil War: Military Mobilization and the State, 1861-1865 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), which won the Hagley Prize for best book in business history and was a co-winner of the Ralph Gomory Prize honoring historical work on the effects of business enterprises on the economic conditions of the countries in which they operate. He is the co-editor, with Jennifer Mittelstadt, of The Military and the Market (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022). 

Kara Dixon Vuic is the LCpl. Benjamin W. Schmidt Professor of War, Conflict, and Society in 20th-Century America at Texas Christian University, where she teaches courses on war, gender, and American empire. She is the author of The Girls Next Door: Bringing the Home Front to the Front Lines (Harvard University Press, 2019), Officer, Nurse, Woman: The Army Nurse Corps in the Vietnam War (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), and co-editor, with Beth Bailey, Alesha E. Doan, and Shannon Portillo, of Managing Sex in the U.S. Military: Gender, Identity, and Behavior (University of Nebraska Press, 2022), and The Routledge History of Gender, War, and the U.S. Military (Routledge, 2018).