New Books in British Studies
Episodes
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...
Jamie L. H. Goodall, "Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay: From the Colonial Era to the Oyster Wars" (The History Press, 2020)
11 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The story of Chesapeake pirates and patriots begins with a land dispute and ends with the untimely death of an oyster dredger at the hands of the Mary...
Adrian Wisnicki, "Fieldwork of Empire, 1840-1900: Intercultural Dynamics in the Production of British Expeditionary Literature" (Routledge, 2019)
06 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Adrian Wisnicki talks about the British expeditionary literature of the late 1800s. Reading between the lines of Victorian travel accounts, Wisnicki s...
Jonathan Hopkin, "Anti-System Politics: The Crisis of Market Liberalism in Rich Democracies" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
06 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Should we understand the rise of Trump or the success of Brexit in terms of populism? Culture? Xenophobia? Do the same political forces produce Sander...
Aimee Fox, "Learning to Fight: Military Innovation and Change in the British Army, 1914-1918" (Cambridge UP, 2017)
05 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Learning, innovation and adaptation are not concepts that we necessarily associate with the British Army of the First World War. Yet the need to learn...
Phillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020)
25 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Philli...
Sarah Stockwell, "The British End of the British Empire" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
20 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How did de-colonialization impact the United Kingdom itself? That is a topic that Professor of Imperial & Commonwealth History at King’s College, Lo...
Abigail Shinn, "Conversion Narratives in Early Modern England: Tales of Turning" (Palgrave, 2018)
17 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Why did early modern people change their religious affiliation? And how did they represent that change in writing? In this outstanding new book, Conve...
Alistair Sponsel, "Darwin’s Evolving Identity: Adventure, Ambition, and the Sin of Speculation" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
14 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Alistair Sponsel talks about Darwin’s experiences on HMS Beagle and his early career as a naturalist. His close reading of Darwin’s journals a...
S. Bergès, E. Hunt Botting, A. Coffee, "The Wollstonecraftian Mind" (Routledge, 2019)
14 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Wollstonecraftian Mind (Routledge, 2019) is an extensive compendium of Mary Wollstonecraft as a writer, as an interlocutor, as a philosopher and p...
Carol Zaleski, "The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings" (FSG, 2016)
13 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Starting in the early 1930s, a small group of academics and writers met weekly in a pub in Oxford, England to discuss literature, religion, and ideas....
Julie MacArthur, "Dedan Kimathi on Trial: Colonial Justice and Popular Memory in Kenya’s Mau Mau Rebellion" (Ohio UP, 2017)
11 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 2015, University of Toronto professor Julie MacArthur decided to follow a couple more leads in the search for the long-missing, feared-lost transcr...
Alan Gallay, "Walter Ralegh: Architect of Empire" (Basic Books, 2019)
10 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Sir Walter Ralegh was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth. She showered him with estates and political appointments. He envisioned her becoming empress of a...
Timothy Barnard, "Imperial Creatures: Humans and Other Animals in Colonial Singapore, 1819-1942" (NUS Press, 2019)
07 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Imperial Creature: Humans and Other Animals in Colonial Singapore, 1819-1942 (National University of Singapore Press, 2019), Timothy Barnard explor...
Christian J. Koot, "A Biography of a Map in Motion: Augustine Herrman’s Chesapeake" (NYU Press, 2017)
06 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Labels on a map: Surrey. Lower Norfolk. The Isle of Wight. Northumberland. Middlesex. Not a map England, but of the British colonies of Virginia and M...
Christopher Frank, "Workers, Unions and Payments in Kind: The Fight for Real Wages in Britain, 1820-1914" (Routledge, 2020)
05 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The passage of the 1831 Truck Act was intended to end throughout the United Kingdom the practice of paying employees in truck, or goods, rather than i...
D. J. Taylor, "The Lost Girls: Love and Literature in Wartime London" (Pegasus Books, 2020)
04 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Who were the Lost Girls? All coming from broken or failed Upper-middle Class families; the Lost Girls were all chic, glamorous, and bohemian, as likel...
Penny Sinanoglou, "Partitioning Palestine: British Policymaking at the End of Empire" (U Chicago Press, 2019)
03 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Partitioning Palestine: British Policymaking at the End of the Empire (University of Chicago Press, 2019) is the first history of the ideological and...
Paul Lay, "Providence Lost: The Rise and Fall of Cromwell’s Protectorate" (Head of Zeus, 2020)
03 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In today’s episode, we catch up with Paul Lay, editor of the leading journal History Today, and a senior research fellow in early modern history at ...
K. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020)
30 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. How...
Gerald Dawe, "The Sound of the Shuttle: Essays on Cultural Belonging and Protestantism in Northern Ireland" (Irish Academic Press, 2020)
30 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
One of the leading poets of his generation, Gerald Dawe is also a fellow emeritus and professor of English at Trinity College Dublin. Throughout his l...
Jeremy Black, "Geographies of an Imperial Power: The British World, 1688-1815" (Indiana UP, 2018)
24 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today we talk to Jeremy Black, professor of history at Exeter University, UK, about two of his most recent book projects, both of which relate to the ...
Lauren Working, "The Making of an Imperial Polity: Civility and America in the Jacobean Metropolis" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
22 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In his Relation of the second voyage to Guiana, published in 1596, George Chapman put the imperial ambitions of England into a telling verse couplet. ...
Daniel Kennefick, "No Shadow of Doubt: The 1919 Eclipse that Confirmed Einstein’s Theory of Relativity" (Princeton UP, 2019)
17 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Kennefick talks about resistance to relativity theory in the early twentieth century and the huge challenges that faced British astronomers who...
Lori Gemeiner-Bihler, "Cities of Refuge: German Jews in London and New York, 1935-1945" (SUNY Press, 2019)
16 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the years following Hitler’s rise to power, German Jews faced increasingly restrictive antisemitic laws, and many responded by fleeing to more to...
Kim A. Wagner, "Amritsar 1919: An Empire of Fear and the Making of a Massacre" (Yale UP, 2019)
15 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
You've probably seen the film Gandhi and you likely think that you know all about the Amritsar Massacre of 1919. After all, Richard Attenborough’s...
Eileen Botting, "The Wollstonecraftian Mind" (Routledge, 2019)
15 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Eileen Hunt Botting is Professor of Political Science at Notre Dame and co-editor with Sandrine Berges and Alan Coffee of the anthology The Wollstonec...
Graham T. Clews, "Churchill’s Phoney War: A Study in Folly and Frustration" (Naval Institute Press, 2019)
13 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Given the overwhelming amount of books printed in the past ten years on various (usually rather obscure) aspects of Sir Winston Churchill’s glorious...
Ingrid Horrocks, "Women Wanderers and the Writing of Mobility, 1784–1814" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
10 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ingrid Horrocks talks about the way women travelers, specifically women wanderers, are represented in late-eighteenth century literature, particularly...
Seán Crosson, "Gaelic Games on Film" (Cork UP, 2019)
30 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Seán Crosson, leader of the Sport and Exercise Research Group at NUI Galway, co-director of the MA in Sports Journalism and Co...
David Head, "A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution" (Pegasus Books, 2019)
30 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In March 1783, George Washington confronted a meeting of disgruntled Continental Army officers at their encampment at Newburgh, New York. In his book ...
The Treaty of Versailles One Hundred Years On
27 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Versailles Treaty of 1919, celebrates its one-hundred anniversary this year. And, yet unlike the more recent centenaries, such as that of the outb...
Reider Payne, "War and Diplomacy in the Napoleonic Era" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019)
26 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Though Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh remains well known today for his role in shaping the post-Napoleonic peace settlement in Europe, his half-...
James M. Vaughn, "The Politics of Empire at the Accession of George III" (Yale UP, 2019)
23 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In his notes for a speech to be delivered in the House of Commons in the wake of American Independence, the MP and imperial reformer Edmund Burke obse...
Sidharthan Maunaguru, "Marrying for a Future: Transnational Sri Lankan Tamil Marriages in the Shadow of War" (U Washington Press 2019)
19 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Sidharthan Maunaguru’s Marrying for a Future: Transnational Sri Lankan Tamil Marriages in the Shadow of War (University of Washington Press 2019) is...
David D. Hall, "The Puritans: A Transatlantic History" (Princeton UP, 2019)
19 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
This book is a sweeping transatlantic history of Puritanism from its emergence out of the religious tumult of Elizabethan England to its founding role...
Julia Neuberger, "Antisemitism: What It Is, What It Isn’t, Why It Matters" (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2019)
16 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Anti-Semitic incidents, ranging from vandalism through murder, are on the rise in Great Britain, and across Europe and North America. Julia Neuberger ...
Richard Whatmore, "Terrorists, Anarchists, and Republicans: The Genevans and the Irish in Time of Revolution" (Princeton UP, 2019)
11 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1798, members of the United Irishmen were massacred by the British amid the crumbling walls of a half-built town near Waterford in Ireland. Many of...
Claire Chambers, “Making Sense of Contemporary British Muslim Novels” (Palgrave, 2019)
06 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
After the Rushdie affair in 1989 there was an important shift in the public life of British Muslims. Their image came under closer scrutiny which led ...
Eleanor Parker, "Dragon Lords: The History and Legends of Viking England" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019)
05 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
For all of their prominence in the popular imagination today, the historical record of the Viking presence in England is limited, with much of what we...
Sally Holloway, "The Game of Love in Georgian England: Courtship, Emotions, and Material Culture" (Oxford UP, 2019)
03 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What was the role of love and courtship in eighteenth-century English culture? In her new book, The Game of Love in Georgian England: Courtship, Emoti...
Alberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019)
03 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, i...
Kathleen Sheppard, "The Life of Margaret Alice Murray: A Woman’s Work in Archaeology" (Lexington, 2017)
29 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
After Napoleon occupied Egypt, Europeans became obsessed with the ancient cultures of the Nile. In Britain, the center of Egyptology research was Univ...
Stephen R. Taaffe, "Washington’s Revolutionary War Generals" (U Oklahoma Press, 2019)
27 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When George Washington led the United States to victory in the American Revolution, he did so in collaboration with seventy-three other men who served...
What Should We Think of the British Empire?
26 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The British Empire at its greatest extent covered approximately twenty-five percent of the surface of the globe with the same percentage of the world ...
Appeasement Eighty Years On
18 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
According to one dictionary definition, the term means: “to yield or concede to the belligerent demands of (a nation, group, person, etc.) in a conc...
David Hayton, "Conservative Revolutionary: The Lives of Lewis Namier" (Manchester UP, 2019)
14 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Acclaimed after the Second World War as England's greatest historian, Sir Lewis Namier was an eastern European immigrant who came to idealise the Engl...
Ian Parker, "Psychoanalysis, Clinic, and Context: Subjectivity, History, and Autobiography" (Routledge, 2019)
13 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
There are many pathways into the world of psychoanalysis. Some arrive from fields like psychiatry and psychology; some from literature, philosophy, an...
Paula McQuade, "Catechisms and Women’s Writing in Seventeenth-Century England" (Cambridge UP, 2017)
08 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Paula McQuade, professor of English literature at DePaul University, is the author of a brilliant new account of Catechisms and Women’s Writing in S...
Trevor Thompson, "Playing for Australia: The First Socceroos, Asia, and World Football" (Fair Play, 2018)
07 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Trevor Thompson, a journalist who has reported on association football in Australia and around the world since the 1980s. He is...
Carlton F. W. Larson, "The Trials of Allegiance: Treason, Juries, and the American Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2019)
06 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Carlton F. W. Larson is the author of The Trials of Allegiance: Treason, Juries, and the American Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2019). The Tria...
Russell Potter, "Finding Franklin: The Untold Story of a 165-year Search" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2016)
01 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1845, two British naval ships left England with 129 men in search of the Northwest Passage. They were never heard from again. The disappearance of ...
Elijah Millgram, "John Stuart Mill and the Meaning of Life" (Oxford UP, 2019)
01 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
According to an intuitive view, lives are meaningful when they manifest a directedness or instantiate a project such that the disparate events and end...
Andrew Hobbs, "A Fleet Street In Every Town: The Provincial Press in England, 1855-1900" (Open Book, 2018)
24 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The dominance of the London press in the British national media has long overshadowed the presence of local newspapers in Great Britain and the roles ...
J. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019)
24 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude t...
Jessica Hinchy, "Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India: The Hijra, c.1850-1900" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
24 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Until Jessica Hinchy’s latest book, Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India: The Hijra, c.1850-1900 (Cambridge University Press, 2019), the...
Maria Nugent, "Captain Cook Was Here" (Cambridge UP, 2009)
11 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Maria Nugent talks about Aboriginal Australians first encounter with Captain Cook at Botany Bay, a violent meeting has come to represent the origin st...
Jorge L. Giovannetti-Torres, "Black British Migrants in Cuba" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
09 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jorge L. Giovannetti-Torres' new book Black British Migrants in Cuba: Race, Labor, and Empire in the Twentieth-Century Caribbean, 1898–1948 (Cambrid...
Kim A. Wagner, "The Skull of Alum Bheg: The Life and Death of a Rebel of 1857" (Oxford UP, 2018)
07 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How did a Danish historian wind up with a human skull from colonial India in his University of London office? Kim A. Wagner’s The Skull of Alum Bheg...
Remi Joseph-Salisbury, "Black Mixed-Race Men: Transatlanticity, Hybridity and 'Post-Racial' Resilience" (Emerald, 2018)
07 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What are the experiences of mixed-race men? In Black Mixed-Race Men: Transatlanticity, Hybridity and 'Post-Racial' Resilience (Emerald Publishing, 201...
Jeremy Black, "England in the Age of Shakespeare" (Indiana UP, 2019)
30 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jeremy Black’s impressive new book offers an enormously wide-ranging account of the social, political and religious cultures in which England’s gr...
Tyson Reeder, "Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots: Free Trade in the Age of Revolution" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2019)
26 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
After emerging victorious from their revolution against the British Empire, many North Americans associated commercial freedom with independence and r...
Matthew Hughes, "Britain's Pacification of Palestine" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
24 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In his splendid military history of Britain's pacification of the Arab revolt in Palestine, Britain's Pacification of Palestine: The British Army, the...
Alexander Rocklin, "The Regulation of Religion and the Making of Hinduism in Colonial Trinidad" (UNC Press, 2019)
23 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Beginning in the mid 19th century, thousands of indentured laborers traveled from India to the Caribbean, and many settled in Trinidad. In The Regulat...
Charlie Laderman, "Sharing the Burden: The Armenian Question, Humanitarian Intervention, and Anglo-American Visions of Global Order" (Oxford UP, 2019)
18 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Sharing the Burden: The Armenian Question, Humanitarian Intervention, and Anglo-American Visions of Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2019), C...
Gregg L. Frazer, "God against the Revolution: The Loyalist Clergy’s Case Against the American Revolution" (UP of Kansas, 2018)
18 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Not everyone was convinced by the arguments of patriots during the American revolution. Among those who retained some degree of loyalty to the British...
Amanda L. Tyler, "Habeas Corpus in Wartime: From the Tower of London to Guantanamo Bay" (Oxford UP, 2017)
09 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Amanda L. Tyler is the author of Habeas Corpus in Wartime: From the Tower of London to Guantanamo Bay, published by Oxford University Press in 2017. H...
Arik Moran, "Kingship and Polity on the Himalayan Borderland" (Amsterdam UP, 2019)
28 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What role did women play in securing power in colonial Himalayan kingdoms? Kingship and Polity on the Himalayan Borderland (Amsterdam UP, 2019) specif...
J. C. D. Clark, "Thomas Paine: Britain, America, and France in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2018)
14 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
There are few better guides to the “long eighteenth century” that J. C. D. Clark, emeritus professor of history at the University of Kansas, whose...
Stephen Alan Bourque, "Beyond the Beach: The Allied War Against France" (Naval Institute Press, 2018)
14 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Did the Allied bombing plan for the liberation of France follow a carefully orchestrated plan, or was it executed on an ad-hoc basis with little conce...
David Philip Miller, "The Life and Legend of James Watt" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2019)
13 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
For all of his fame as one of the seminal figures of the Industrial Revolution, James Watt is a person around whom many misconceptions congregate. In ...
Robert Crowcroft, "The End is Nigh: British Politics, Power, and the Road to the Second World War" (Oxford UP, 2019)
06 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Few decades have given rise to such potent mythologies as the 1930s. Popular impressions of those years prior to the Second World War were shaped by t...
Tita Chico, "The Experimental Imagination: Literary Knowledge and Science in the British Enlightenment" (Stanford UP, 2018)
22 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Can science be seductive? According to Tita Chico, the answer is a resounding yes. In her new book, The Experimental Imagination: Literary Knowledge a...
Hannah Weiss Muller, "Subjects and Sovereign: Bonds of Belonging in the Eighteenth-Century British Empire" (Oxford UP, 2017)
15 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
There is no denying that the public remains fascinated with monarchy. In the United Kingdom, the royal family commands the headlines, but paradoxicall...
Sasha D. Pack, "The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Hispano-African Border" (Stanford UP, 2019)
01 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Hispano-African Border(Stanford, 2019), Sasha D. Pack considers the...
Tim Bouverie, "Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill and the Road to War" (Tim Duggan Books, 2019)
27 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill and the Road to War(Tim Duggan Books, 2019) is a groundbreaking history of the disastrous years of indecis...
Kimberly Alexander, "Treasures Afoot: Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2018)
26 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
“Fashion is universal,” writes my guest Kimberly Alexander in her book Treasures Afoot: Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era (Johns Hopkins UP, 2018...
Edward Vallance, "Loyalty, Memory and Public Opinion in England, 1658-1727" (Manchester UP, 2019)
20 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
People value loyalty. We prize it in our dogs. We loyally carry loyalty cards to claim discounts at our favourite stores and coffee shops. We follow s...
David Green, "The Hundred Years War: A People’s History" (Yale UP, 2014)
19 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The year 1453 marked the end of an intermittent yet seemingly endless series of wars between the Kingdom of France and the Kingdom of England that, so...
Jonathan Fennell, "Fighting the People's War: The British and Commonwealth Armies and the Second World War" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
18 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jonathan Fennell’s new book, Fighting the People's War: The British and Commonwealth Armies and the Second World War (Cambridge University Press, 20...
Mark Peterson, "The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power" (Princeton UP, 2019)
14 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the vaunted annals of America’s founding, Boston has long been held up as an exemplary “city upon a hill” and the “cradle of liberty” for...
Jeremy Black, "The English Press: A History" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
13 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this succinct and brilliantly written one-volume account of the rise and fall of the English press, premier historian Jeremy Black, the most prolif...