The renowned conductor and Yale music scholar John Mauceri says we have overlooked a major factor—indeed, a force—that recalibrated the composition of classical music throughout the last century: War. His new book, The War on Music: Reclaiming the Twentieth Century, focuses on the impact that W.W. I, W.W. II, and the Cold War had on the art form. At Rizzoli, with the New York Times columnist and Columbia professor John McWhorter, Mauceri discusses the ways politics, nation-building, censorship, and freedom shaped a century of music. —Clara Molot