New Books in British Studies
Episodes
Joanne Paul, "Counsel and Command in Early Modern English Thought" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
11 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
While it has often been recognized that counsel formed an essential part of the political discourse in early modern England, the precise role that it ...
Niklas Frykman, "The Bloody Flag: Mutiny in the Age of Atlantic Revolution" (U California Press, 2020)
09 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The 1790s were a decade of turmoil and strife across the West. With the French Revolution, a new era of wars began that invoked the language of equal ...
Caroline Starkey, "Women in British Buddhism: Commitment, Connection, Community" (Routledge, 2019)
06 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Based on detailed ethnographic research, this book explores the varied experiences of women who have converted to Buddhism in contemporary Britain and...
Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy, "Between Fitness and Death: Disability and Slavery in the Caribbean" (U Illinois Press, 2020)
06 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Long before the English became involved in the African slave trade, they imagined Africans as monstrous and deformed beings. The English drew on pre-e...
Billy Coleman, "Harnessing Harmony: Music, Power, and Politics in the United States, 1788-1865" (UNC Press, 2020)
06 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
CAN you hear the people sing? Political music is often understood as the property of the common people, used as a potent (and noisy) weapon against th...
Agnès Delahaye, "Settling the Good Land: Governance and Promotion in John Winthrop’s New England" (Brill, 2020)
04 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Agnès Delahaye’s new book, Settling the Good Land: Governance and Promotion in John Winthrop’s New England (Brill, 2020), is the story of John Wi...
Sarah Longair, "Cracks in the Dome: Fractured Histories of Empire in the Zanzibar Museum, 1897-1964" (Routledge, 2015)
02 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As one of the most monumental and recognisable landmarks from Zanzibar’s years as a British Protectorate, the distinctive domed building of the Zanz...
Chima J. Korieh, "Nigeria and World War II: Colonialism, Empire, and Global Conflict" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
02 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Reading the petitions that resident of colonial Nigeria submitted to the government during World War II, Marquette University historian, Prof. Chima J...
Erin A. McCarthy, "Doubtful Readers: Print, Poetry and the Reading Public in Early Modern England" (Oxford UP, 2020)
02 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Erin McCarthy, who teaches digital humanities at Newcastle University, Australia, has just published a fabulous new book about the ways in which the p...
Ian Buruma, "The Churchill Complex" (Penguin Press, 2020)
30 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
From one of its keenest observers, The Churchill Complex: The Curse of Being Special, from Winston and FDR to Trump and Brexit (Penguin Press) is a br...
Jonathan Schneer, "The Lockhart Plot: Love Betrayal, Assassination and Counter-Revolution in Lenin's Russia" (Oxford UP, 2020)
30 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
History in the making can be messy. As a tale told years later by historians, it is usually a clean narrative, with a beginning, a middle, and a most...
M. Sobolewska and R. Ford, "Brexitland: Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of British Politics" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
28 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What are the identity conflicts that define contemporary society? In Brexitland: Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of British Politics (Cambridge ...
Hayden J. Bellenoit, "The Formation of the Colonial State in India: Scribes, Paper and Taxes, 1760-1860" (Routledge, 2017)
28 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When he appeared before the British House of Commons in the wake of the Stamp Act crisis, Benjamin Franklin reminded his audience that the American co...
Lissette Lopez Szwydky, "Transmedia Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century" (Ohio State UP, 2020)
26 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of New Books in Literary Studies we speak with Lissette Lopez Szwydky, author of the new book Transmedia Adaptation in the Nineteenth ...
Margrit Pernau, "Emotions and Colonial Modernity in Colonial India: From Balance to Fervor" (Oxford UP, 2020)
23 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In her stunning and conceptually adventurous new book Emotions and Colonial Modernity in Colonial India: From Balance to Fervor (Oxford University Pre...
Francesca Sobande, "The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain" (Palgrave, 2020)
21 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What are the possibilities and what are the inequalities of the digital world? In The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain (Palgrave, 2020), Franc...
James Simpson, "Permanent Revolution: The Reformation and the Illiberal Roots of Liberalism" (Harvard UP, 2019)
20 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Protestant Reformation looms large in our cultural imagination. In the standard telling, it’s the moment the world went modern. Casting off the ...
Bernice Lerner, "All the Horrors of War: A Jewish Girl, a British Doctor, and the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)
16 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
One was a teenage Jewish girl, forcibly transported from her home in Hungary to a Nazi concentration camp. The other was a British doctor, whose exper...
Stephen Wall, "Reluctant European: Britain and the European Union from 1945 to Brexit" (Oxford UP, 2020)
09 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In January 2020, the UK became the first country to leave the European Union after a troubled 47-year membership. What was at the core of the country’...
Matthew S. Hopper, "Slaves of One Master: Globalization and Slavery in Arabia in the Age of Empire” (Yale UP, 2015)
08 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this wide-ranging history of the African diaspora and slavery in Arabia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Matthew S. Hopper examines...
Thomas Levenson "Money for Nothing" (Random House, 2020)
06 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Modern finance isn't really all that modern. Three centuries ago, Great Britain's need for money to fight its wars, the appearance of joint stock comp...
Harrison Perkins, "Catholicity and the Covenant of Works: James Ussher and the Reformed Tradition" (Oxford UP, 2020)
06 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Historians of early modern religion recognise the importance of the development of covenant theology in the formation of Calvinism. Harrison Perkins, ...
Stephen C. Kepher, "COSSAC: Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick Morgan and the Genesis of Operation OVERLORD" (Naval Institute Press, 2020)
05 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
D-Day, June 6, 1944, looms large in both popular and historical imaginations as the sin qua non, or single defining moment, of the Second World War. T...
Ian Kumekawa, "The First Serious Optimist: A. C. Pigou and the Birth of Welfare Economics" (Princeton UP, 2017)
05 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The work of Alfred Charles Pigou may not be as well known to people today as that of his contemporary John Maynard Keynes, but as Ian Kumekawa details...
D. Benge and N. Pickowicz, "The American Puritans" (Reformation Heritage Books, 2020)
02 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On the four hundredth anniversary of the arrival in the new world of the Mayflower, Dustin Benge and Nate Pickowicz have written a lively and accessib...
Jessica Martell, "Farm to Form: Modernist Literature and Ecologies of Food in the British Empire" (U Nevada Press, 2020)
01 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this this interview, Carrie Tippen talks with Jessica Martell about her new book, Farm to Form: Modernist Literature and Ecologies of Food in the B...
Alison Games, "Inventing the English Massacre: Amboyna in History and Memory" (Oxford UP, 2020
24 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
My Lai, Wounded Knee, Sandy Hook: the place names evoke grief and horror, each the site of a massacre. Massacres-the mass slaughter of people-might se...
Justin Q. Olmstead, "The United States' Entry into the First World War: The Role of British and German Diplomacy" (Boydell Press, 2019)
22 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The complicated situation which led to the American entry into the First World War in 1917 is often explained from the perspective of public opinion, ...
Debjani Bhattacharyya, "Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
21 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Debjani Bhattacharyya’s Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta (Cambridge University Press) asks: What happens when a distan...
Zachary Dorner, "Merchants of Medicine: The Commerce and Coercion of Health in Britain’s Long 18th Century" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
18 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Merchants of Medicine: The Commerce and Coercion of Health in Britain’s Long Eighteenth Century (The University of Chicago Press), medicines embo...
Thomas R. Metcalf, "Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860-1920" (University of California Press, 2008)
14 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Thomas R. Metcalf’s Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860-1920 (University of California Press) is an innovative remapping of ...
S. J. Potter, "Wireless Internationalism and Distant Listening: Britain, Propaganda, and the Invention of Global Radio, 1920-1939" (Oxford UP, 2020)
11 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the aftermath of the First World War, many people sought to use the new mass medium of radio as a tool for world peace, believing that it could pro...
Jeremy Black, "A History of Britain: 1945 to Brexit" (Indiana UP, 2017)
08 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
According to the influential French commentator and scholar, Raymond Aron, one the great un-answered questions of the post-1945 period is how and why ...
Wendy Moore, "No Man’s Land: The Trailblazing Women Who Ran Britain's Most Extraordinary Military Hospital During World War I (Basic Books, 2020)
07 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest is journalist and author, Wendy Moore. Her new book, No Man’s Land: The Trailblazing Women Who Ran Britain's Most Extraordinary Mili...
Charles Allan McCoy, "Diseased States: Epidemic Control in Britain and the United States" (U Massachusetts Press, 2020)
04 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Outbreaks of Ebola, SARS, MERS, and pandemic influenza are brutal reminders of the dangers of infectious disease. Comparing the development of disease...
Eryn M. White, "The Welsh Methodist Society: The Early Societies in South-West Wales 1737-1750" (U Wales Press, 2020)
02 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Eryn White, who is Reader in Welsh history at Aberystwyth University, Wales, has written an outstanding new book on the beginnings of Welsh evangelica...
Marion Bower, "The Life and Work of Joan Riviere: Freud, Klein and Female Sexuality" (Routledge, 2018)
02 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Joan Riviere (1883-1962) is best known for her role in promoting the ideas of others. She came to prominence in the world of psychoanalysis as Freud’...
Crawford Gribben, "An Introduction to John Owen: A Christian Vision for Every Stage of Life" (Crossway, 2020)
01 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Though theology is often regarded as dealing primarily with abstract issues of belief, the prolific 17th-century English Puritan John Owen focused muc...
Alicia Turner, "The Irish Buddhist: The Forgotten Monk Who Faced Down the British Empire" (Oxford UP, 2020)
31 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Buddhism has always been a world religion, but its popularity in the West really dates only from the late nineteenth century, when much of the Buddhis...
Paul Moyer, "Detestable and Wicked Arts: New England and Witchcraft in the Early Modern Atlantic World" (Cornell UP, 2020)
28 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and caldron bubble.” These famous lines from Shakespeare’s Macbeth elicit popular images of sinister...
Hideaki Suzuki, "Slave Trade Profiteers in the Western Indian Ocean: Suppression and Resistance in the 19th Century" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
27 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Hideaki Suzuki’s book Slave Trade Profiteers in the Western Indian Ocean: Suppression and Resistance in the Nineteenth Century (Palgrave Macmillan,...
Andrew S. Ballitch, "The Gloss and the Text: William Perkins on Interpreting Scripture with Scripture" (Lexham Press, 2020)
27 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout the seventeenth century, and on both sides of the Atlantic, William Perkins exercised enormous influence on the ways in which protestants a...
Matthew Romaniello, "Enterprising Empires: Russia and Britain in Eighteenth-Century Eurasia" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
24 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book Enterprising Empires: Russia and Britain in Eighteenth-Century Eurasia (Cambridge University Press), Matthew Romaniello examines the w...
Valerie Wayne, "Women’s Labour and the History of the Book in Early Modern England" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
20 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Women’s Labour and the History of the Book in Early Modern England (Bloomsbury, 2020) reveals the valuable work that women achieved in publishing, p...
Sasha Abramsky, "Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World’s First Female Sports Superstar" (Akashic Books, 2020)
12 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Sasha Abramsky, author of Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World’s First Female Sports Superstar (Akashic...
A Very Square Peg: A Podcast Series about Polymath Robert Eisler. Episode 9: Vanity of Vanities
04 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I look at Eisler’s last days in England, where he found that the Oxford readership he had been promised before being sent to Dachau...
Nicholas B. Miller, "John Millar and the Scottish Enlightenment: Family Lfe and World History" (Voltaire Foundation, 2017)
03 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
During the long eighteenth century the moral and socio-political dimensions of family life and gender were hotly debated by intellectuals across Europ...
Martin James, "State of Base: The Origins of Jungle/Drum and Bass" (Velocity Press, 2020)
31 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The reissue and revision of Martin James’ State of Bass: The Origins of Jungle/Drum & Bass (Velocity Press, 2020) examines the origins and progressi...
Olivia Weisser, "ll Composed: Sickness, Gender, and Belief in Early Modern England" (Yale UP, 2015)
31 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of New Books in History, Jana Byars talks with Olivia Weisser, Associate Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts – B...
Nadine El-Enany, "Bordering Britain: Law, Race and Empire" (Manchester UP, 2020)
30 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How can we understand the legacy of colonialism within contemporary society? In Bordering Britain Law, Race and Empire (Manchester University Press, 2...
Pritipuspa Mishra, "Language and the Making of Modern India: Nationalism and the Vernacular in Colonial Odisha, 1803-1953" (Oxford UP, 2020)
29 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The province of Odisha, previously “Orissa,” was the first linguistically organized province of India. In Language and the Making of Modern India:...
Junior Tomlin, "Junior Tomlin: Flyer and Cover Art" (Velocity Press, 2020)
28 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Junior Tomlin: Flyer & Cover Art (Velocity Press, 2020) showcases the artwork of Junior Tomlin. Featuring flyers and record covers Tomlin has created...
Lakshmi Subramanian, "The Sovereign and the Pirate: Ordering Maritime Subjects in India's Western Littoral" (Oxford UP, 2016)
27 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Lakshmi Subramanian’s The Sovereign and the Pirate: Ordering Maritime Subjects in India's Western Littoral (Oxford University Press, 2016) offers an...
Philip Reid, "The Merchant Ship in the British Atlantic, 1600-1800" (Brill, 2020)
20 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
To the average landlubber, the merchant ships that crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1800 seem little different from their counterparts two centuries befo...
Peter Naldrett, “Around the Coast in 80 Days" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
07 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Naldrett, author of Around the Coast in 80 Days: A Guide to Britain’s Best Coastal Towns, Beaches, Cliffs, & Headlands (Bloomsbury) begins his...
Kara Moskowitz, "Seeing Like A Citizen" (Ohio UP, 2019)
07 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Kara Moskowitz, Assistant Professor of African History as the University of Missouri-St. Louis. has written a terrific book, Seeing Like A Citizen: De...
Jeremy Black, "Mapping Shakespeare: An Exploration of Shakespeare’s World through Maps" (Bloomsbury, 2018)
03 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jeremy Black, the prolific professor of history at Exeter University, has published a stunningly attractive volume entitled, Mapping Shakespeare: An E...
Evan Smith, "No Platform: A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech" (Routledge, 2020)
02 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
No Platform: A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech (Routledge, 2020) is the first to outline the history of the tactic...
Ali Meghji, "Black Middle-Class Britannia: Identities, Repertoires, Cultural Consumption" (Manchester UP, 2019)
01 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Who are the Black middle-class in Britain? In Black Middle-Class Britannia: Identities, Repertoires, Cultural Consumption (Manchester University Press...
Archie Brown, "The Human Factor: Gorbachev, Reagan, and Thatcher, and the End of the Cold War" (Oxford UP, 2020)
01 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What brought about an end to the Cold War has long been a subject of speculation and mythology. One prominent argument is that the United States simpl...
Zachary Carter, "Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes" (Random House, 2020)
30 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Keynes was not only an economist but the preeminent anti-authoritarian thinker of the 20th century, one who devoted his life to the belief that art an...
Alanna O’Malley, "The Diplomacy of Decolonisation: America, Britain, and the United Nations during the Congo Crisis, 1960-1964" (Manchester UP, 2020)
26 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the summer of 1960, the Republic of the Congo won its independence from Belgium. Only one week later, however, Belgium had already dispatched parat...
Oded Y. Steinberg, "Anglo-German Thought in the Victorian Era" (U Penn Press, 2019)
25 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Oded Y. Steinberg (DPhil Oxford) is a fellow at the Center for the Study of Conversion and Inter-Religious Encounters, Ben-Gurion University of the ...
Jeremy Black, "The World of James Bond: The Lives and Times of 007" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017)
18 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This book by renowned Professor of History Jeremy Black presents an insightful and hugely entertaining exploration of the political and cultural conte...
Philip A. Craig, "The Bond of Grace and Duty in the Soteriology of John Owen" (Founders Press, 2020)
18 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Philip A. Craig’s new book on John Owen, the premier puritan theologian, demonstrates how carefully his subject tracked the influence of antinomiani...
Joy White, "Terraformed: Young Black Lives in the Inner City" (Repeater Books, 2020)
17 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How are black lives lived in the contemporary city? In Terraformed: Young Black Lives in the Inner City, Dr Joy White, a sociologist and ethnographer ...
Why Did the Allies Win World War One?
11 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Great War was perhaps the greatest single upheaval of the 20th century. While World War II saw more lives lost, in terms of the shock to European/...
Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir, "Valkyrie: The Women of the Viking World" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
11 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Fascination with the Viking Age seems to be at an all-time high, though it has never really gone out of fashion. There is something irresistible about...
Kenneth Womack, "Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and The End of The Beatles" (Cornell UP, 2019)
04 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
To what degree did each of The Beatles exhibit emotional intelligence in the band’s final year? You'll find out in the discussion I had with Kenneth...
Brian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020)
02 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Brian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for S...
Amy Harris, "Siblinghood and Social Relations in Georgian England: Share and Share Alike" (Manchester UP, 2016)
02 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Siblinghood and Social Relations in Georgian England: Share and Share Alike (Manchester University Press, 2016), by Amy Harris, examines the impact si...
Coryne Hall, "Queen Victoria and the Romanovs: 60 Years of Mutual Distrust" (Amberley, 2020)
27 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The balance of power in nineteenth-century Europe was anchored on one end by the redoubtable Queen Victoria (1819 -1901), the doyenne of sovereigns, a...
Manuel Barcia, "The Yellow Demon of Fever: Fighting Disease in the 19th-Century Transatlantic Slave Trade" (Yale UP, 2020)
27 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As we now know, epidemics and pandemics are not new phenomena. In her new book The Yellow Demon of Fever: Fighting Disease in the 19th-Century Transat...
Mary Fraser, "Policing the Home Front, 1914-1918: The Control of the British Population at War" (Routledge, 2018)
26 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When Britain went to war in 1914, policemen throughout Great Britain found themselves called upon to perform an ever-increasing range of new tasks tha...
Stanley D. M. Carpenter, "Southern Gambit: Cornwallis and the British March to Yorktown" (U Oklahoma Press, 2019)
22 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Charles Lord Cornwallis’s campaign through the southern American colonies came to an ignominious close on October 19, 1781, on an open field outside...
Natasha J. Lightfoot, "Troubling Freedom: Antigua and the Aftermath of British Emancipation" (Duke UP, 2015)
14 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Troubling Freedom: Antigua and the Aftermath of British Emancipation (Duke University Press, 2015), Natasha J. Lightfoot traces the ways Antiguans ...
Sheetal Chhabria, "Making the Modern Slum: The Power of Capital in Colonial Bombay" (U Washington Press, 2019)
08 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1870s, as colonial India witnessed some of the worst famines in its history where 6-10 million perished, observers watched in astonishment as f...
Alexander Rocklin, "The Regulation of Religion and the Making of Hinduism in Colonial Trinidad" (UNC Press, 2019)
08 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The history of the Caribbean Island of Trinidad bears witness to an important interplay between the religious practices of peoples of South Asian and ...
Alexander Zevin, "Liberalism at Large: The World According to the Economist" (Verso, 2019)
06 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Economist is a curious publication. It always takes a point of view (as opposed to the all-the-news-that’s-fit-to-print approach). It maintains ...
David A. Bateman, "Disenfranchising Democracy: Constructing the Electorate in the US, the UK, and France" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
05 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
David A. Bateman’s fascinating new book opens with a puzzle. In 19th-century America, why was mass democratization – abolishing property and tax q...
Julia Stephens, “Governing Islam: Law, Empire, and Secularism in Modern South Asia” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
01 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As British colonial rulers expanded their control in South Asia legal resolutions were increasingly shaped by the English classification of social lif...
Leslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019)
28 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. B...
Caspar Melville, "It's a London Thing: How Rare Groove, Acid House and Jungle Remapped the City" (Manchester UP, 2019)
24 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How does music help us to understand the contemporary city? In It's a London Thing: How Rare Groove, Acid House and Jungle Remapped the City (Manchest...
Susan Newcombe, "Yoga in Britain: Stretching Spirituality and Educating Yogis" (Equinox, 2019)
21 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Paying special attention to sociocultural threads form the period 1945-1980, Susan Newcombe's new book Yoga in Britain: Stretching Spirituality and Ed...
Great Books: Maureen McLane on Wordsworth's Poetry
21 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The British romantic poet William Wordsworth is best known for his moving evocations of nature, his celebration of childhood, and his quest to find a ...
Robert Elmer, "Piercing Heaven: Prayers of the Puritans" (Lexham Press, 2020)
21 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Elmer, who is a communications specialist at Seattle Pacific University, a prolific writer of historical fiction, and the author of over fifty ...
David Swift, "A Left for Itself: Left-Wing Hobbyists and Performative Radicalism" (Zero Books, 2019)
16 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Why has the recent crisis of capitalism benefitted the nationalist right rather than the left? Is there a tension between socio-economic realities and...
David Block, "Pastime Lost: The Humble, Original and Now Completely Forgotten Game of English Baseball" (U Nebraska Press, 2019)
15 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by David Block, author of Pastime Lost: The Humble, Original and Now Completely Forgotten Game of English Baseball (University of ...
Asa McKercher, "Canada and the World since 1867" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019)
10 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
If you haven’t been able to tell by the way I pronounce the word “about,” I should probably let you know that I’m from Canada. And I have to m...
Vincent Brown, "Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War" (Harvard UP, 2020)
07 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the second half of the eighteenth century, as European imperial conflicts extended the domain of capitalist agriculture, warring African factions f...
Tom Chaffin, "Revolutionary Brothers: Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Friendship that Helped Forge Two Nations" (St. Martins, 2019)
07 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Of the many thousands who participated in the American and French revolutions in the late 18th century, only a handful played roles in both events. Am...
Anna Bull, "Class, Control, and Classical Music" (Oxford UP, 2019)
07 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What is the relationship between inequality and classical music? In Class, Control, and Classical Music (Oxford University Press, 2019), Anna Bull, a ...
Kate Imy, "Faithful Fighters: Identity and Power in the British Indian Army" (Stanford UP, 2019)
03 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In her fascinating and remarkable new book Faithful Fighters: Identity and Power in the British Indian Army (Stanford University Press, 2019), Kate I...
Sir John Redwood, "We Don't Believe You: Why Populists and the Establishment See the World Differently" (Bite-Sized Books, 2019)
31 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In We Don't Believe You: Why Populists and the Establishment See the World Differently (Bite-Sized Book, 2019), Sir John Redwood gives us fresh insigh...
Matt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020)
30 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat....
Great Books: Julie Carlson on Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein"
24 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley wrote Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus when she was nineteen years old on a bet. The novel spawned two centur...
Mathias Haeussler, "Helmut Schmidt and British-German Relations: A European Misunderstanding" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
19 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The former West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt grew up as a devout Anglophile, yet he clashed heavily and repeatedly with his British counterparts W...
Christopher J. Lee, "Unreasonable Histories: Nativism, Multiracial Lives, and the Genealogical Imagination in British Africa" (Duke UP, 2014)
19 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Unreasonable Histories: Nativism, Multiracial Lives, and the Genealogical Imagination in British Africa (Duke University Press, 2014), Christopher ...
The Origins of World War One
12 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Who or what originated and/or caused the Great War from breaking out in July 1914? Was it Serbia with its expansionist and aggressive designs on Austr...
Elizabeth Goldring, "Nicholas Hilliard: Life of an Artist" (Yale UP, 2019)
12 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Limning – the painting of miniature portraits – was an important art form in 16th-century Europe. Among its greatest practitioners was Nicholas Hi...