New Books in British Studies
Episodes
John Nathaniel Clarke, “British Media and the Rwandan Genocide” (Routledge Press, 2018)
04 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It seems safe to assume that media coverage changes the behavior of politicians and voters. And it seems safe to assume this happens in cases of hum...
Leah Bassel and Akwugo Emejulu, “Minority Women and Austerity: Survival and Resistance in France and Britain” (Policy Press, 2017)
27 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What is the impact of austerity on minority women? How has this impacted on already long standing forms of social inequality across England, France an...
Catherine Layton, “The Life and Times of Mary, Dowager Duchess of Sutherland” (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2018)
26 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As the thrice-married widow of one of the richest dukes in Victorian Britain, Mary Mitchell lived a life often at variance with the expectations of pr...
Aidan Forth, “Barbed-Wire Imperialism: Britain’s Empire of Camps, 1876-1903” (U California Press, 2017)
24 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, Barbed-Wire Imperialism: Britain’s Empire of Camps, 1876-1903 (University of California Press, 2017), Aidan Forth employs a compar...
Lisa Ze Winters, “The Mulatta Concubine: Terror, Intimacy, Freedom, and Desire in the Black Transatlantic” (U Georgia Press, 2016)
20 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Popular and academic representations of the free mulatta concubine repeatedly depict women of mixed black African and white racial descent as defined ...
David Atkinson, “The Burden of White Supremacy: Containing Asian Migration in the British Empire and the United States” (UNC Press, 2016)
19 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Recent historical scholarship stresses the transnational linkages between movements to restrict Asian migration in the Anglophone world. David Atkinso...
Karen Teoh, “Schooling Diaspora: Women, Education, and the Overseas Chinese in British Malaya and Singapore, 1850s to 1960s” (Oxford UP, 2018)
17 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Schooling Diaspora: Women, Education, and the Overseas Chinese in British Malaya and Singapore, 1850s to 1960s (Oxford University Press, 2018), Kar...
Steven Gray, “Steam Power and Sea Power: Coal, the Royal Navy, and the British Empire, c. 1870-1914” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)
10 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Steam Power and Sea Power: Coal, the Royal Navy, and the British Empire, c. 1870-1914 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), Steven Gray examines the pivotal ...
Carolyn Day, “Consumptive Chic: A History of Beauty, Fashion, and Disease” (Bloomsbury, 2017)
10 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, Consumptive Chic: A History of Beauty, Fashion, and Disease (Bloomsbury, 2017), Carolyn Day tracks the relationship between dress, ap...
June Purvis, “Christabel Pankhurst: A Biography” (Routledge, 2018)
03 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Despite her prominent role in the women’s suffrage movement in Great Britain, Christabel Pankhurst has not received the same degree of attention fro...
Alex Wade, “Playback: A Genealogy of 1980s British Videogames” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018)
23 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In his book Playback: A Genealogy of 1980s British Videogames (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), Alex Wade examines the culture of bedroom coding, arcades, ...
Marcus Rediker, “The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became The First Revolutionary Abolitionist” (Beacon Press, 2017)
20 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the annals of abolitionist history, names like William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, the Grimke sisters, and Harriet Tubman are well known. D...
Antony G. Hopkins, “American Empire: A Global History” (Princeton UP, 2018)
19 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In an expansive, engrossing, voluminously in depth analysis of the subject, Professor A. G. Hopkins, Professor Emeritus of Commonwealth History at the...
Daniel Livesay, “Children of Uncertain Fortune: Mixed-Race Jamaicans in Britain and the Atlantic Family, 1733-1833” (UNC Press, 2018)
16 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Many were wealthy, but others were destitute. Many traveled to Britain to be educated, some returned to Jamaica, others went to India to seek careers ...
Sadek Hamid, “Sufis, Salafis and Islamists: The Contested Grounds of British Islamic Activism” (I.B. Tauris, 2016)
08 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Sufis, Salafis and Islamists: The Contested Grounds of British Islamic Activism (I.B. Tauris, 2016), Sadek Hamid explores the contours of “Islami...
Jean R. Freedman, “Peggy Seeger: A Life of Music, Love, and Politics” (U Illinois Press, 2017)
08 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When folklorist Jean Freedman first met Peggy Seeger in 1979, Freedman was an undergraduate on her junior year abroad in London, while her American co...
Anthimos Tsirigotis, “Cybernetics, Warfare, and Discourse” Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
06 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode, we will be talking to Anthimos Alexandros Tsirigotis about his book Cybernetics, Warfare, and Discourse: The Cybernetisation of Warfa...
John Broich, “Squadron: Ending the African Slave Trade” (Overlook Duckworth Press, 2017)
01 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Despite the British being early abolitionists, a significant slave trade remained in the western Indian Ocean through the mid-1800s, even after the ce...
Taisu Zhang, “The Laws and Economics of Confucianism: Kinship Property in Preindustrial China and England” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
27 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Taisu Zhang ties together cultural history, legal history, and institutional economics in The Laws and Economics of Confucianism: Kinship and Property...
David Narrett, “Adventurism and Empire” (UNC Press, 2015)
23 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1762-1803 (University of North Carolina Press,...
Timothy J. Shannon, “Indian Captive, Indian King: Peter Williamson in America and Britain” (Harvard UP, 2018)
20 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1758, Peter Williamson appeared on the streets of Aberdeen, Scotland, dressed as a Native American and telling a remarkable tale. He claimed that a...
Mark G. Hanna, “Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570 to 1740” (UNC Press, 2015)
19 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Mark G. Hanna offers a unique perspective on the roles played by piracy in the formation of the British colonial project. In Pirate Nests and the Rise...
James Delbourgo, “Collecting the World: The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane” (Allen Lane, 2017)
09 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
James Delbourgo‘s new book Collecting the World: The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane (Allen Lane, 2017) tells the fascinatingly complex and contro...
Brian Jenkins, “Lord Lyons: A Diplomat in an Age of Nationalism and War” (McGill-Queens UP, 2014)
08 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Described upon his death in 1887 as the ideal diplomatist, Richard Lyons served Great Britain in a variety of roles over the course of a long and dist...
Sasha Turner, “Contested Bodies: Pregnancy, Child-Rearing, and Slavery in Jamaica” (Penn Press, 2017)
08 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Sasha Turner’s Contested Bodies: Pregnancy, Child-Rearing, and Slavery in Jamaica (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017) reveals enslaved women’...
Emily C. Nacol, “An Age of Risk: Politics and Economy in Early Modern Britain” (Princeton UP, 2016)
29 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Emily C. Nacol has written a fascinating interrogation of the idea of risk, the concept of vulnerability, and the evolution of probabilistic thinking ...
David Cannadine, “Victorious Century: The United Kingdom, 1800-1906” (Viking, 2018)
26 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Sir David Cannadine, Professor of History at Princeton University, president of the British Academy, and the general editor of the Oxford Dictionary o...
Angus McLaren, “Playboys and Mayfair Men: Crime, Class, Masculinity, and Fascism in 1930s London” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2017).
23 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In December of 1937, four men robbed a representative of the diamond company Cartier of eight diamond rings in the Hyde Park Hotel. What made this cri...
Monica Mattfeld, “Becoming Centaur: Eighteenth-Century Masculinity and English Horsemanship” (Penn State UP, 2017)
19 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Monica Mattfeld’s Becoming Centaur: Eighteenth-Century Masculinity and English Horsemanship (Penn State University Press, 2017) explores the complex...
Ray Cashman, “Packy Jim: Folklore and Worldview on the Irish Border” (U Wisconsin Press, 2016)
17 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How do individuals on national or societal peripheries make use of tradition and to what ends? How can narratives discursively construct a complex wor...
Randy M. Browne, “Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean” (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2017)
08 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Randy M. Browne in Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017) uses the overlooked archives of the fiscal, a l...
Crawford Gribben, “John Owen and English Puritanism: Experiences of Defeat” (Oxford UP, 2017)
05 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Though the preeminent English theologian of the 17th century, there is much about John Owen’s life which remains obscured to us today. One of the ac...
Sheshalatha Reddy, “British Empire and the Literature of Rebellion: Revolting Bodies, Laboring Subjects” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
08 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Sheshalatha Reddy’s British Empire and the Literature of Rebellion: Revolting Bodies, Laboring Subjects (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) examines historic...
David G. Morgan-Owen, “The Fear of Invasion: Strategy, Politics, and British War Planning, 1880-1914” (Oxford University Press, 2017)
05 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
David Morgan-Owen‘s The Fear of Invasion: Strategy, Politics, and British War Planning, 1880-1914 (Oxford University Press, 2017) tells a complex st...
Padraic Scanlan, “Freedom’s Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolutions” (Yale UP, 2017)
04 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What was the British abolition of the slave trade like in practice? Padraic Scanlan, in his beautifully-written first book, Freedom’s Debtors: Briti...
Jenny Natasha and Tom Boniface-Webb, “I Was Britpopped: The A-Z of Britpop” (Valley Press, 2017)
30 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
I Was Britpopped: The A-Z of Britpop (Valley Press, 2017) is a comprehensive guide to the people, the bands, the places, and the events that shaped Br...
Jack Greene, “Settler Jamaica in the 1750s: A Social Portrait” (UVA Press, 2016)
29 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Settler Jamaica in the 1750s: A Social Portrait (University of Virginia Press, 2016) is the most recent work from distinguished historian Jack Greene....
Richard Power Sayeed, “1997: The Future that Never Happened (Zed Books, 2017)
25 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Power Sayeed’s book, 1997: The Future that Never Happened (Zed Books, 2017), is a brilliant and exhaustively researched account of the late...
Amanda Bidnall, “The West Indian Generation: Remaking British Culture in London, 1945-1965” (Liverpool UP, 2017)
24 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Just after World War II, West Indians began moving to London in large numbers. The artists, writers, and musicians among them found a place to create,...
Candace Ward, “Crossing the Line: Early Creole Novels and Anglophone Caribbean Culture in the Age of Emancipation” (UVA Press, 2017)
07 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Candace Ward’s Crossing the Line: Early Creole Novels and Anglophone Caribbean Culture in the Age of Emancipation (University of Virginia Press, 201...
Rebecca Fraser, “The Mayflower: The Families, the Voyage, and the Founding of America” (St. Martin’s Press, 2017)
07 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Rebecca Fraser is a writer, journalist, and broadcaster whose work has been published in Tatler, Vogue, The Times, and The Spectator. President of the...
Katherine Paugh, “The Politics of Reproduction: Race, Medicine, and Fertility in the Age of Abolition” (Oxford UP, 2017)
30 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Katherine Paugh‘s new book The Politics of Reproduction: Race, Medicine, and Fertility in the Age of Abolition (Oxford University Press, 2017) exami...
Laura Lee, “Oscar’s Ghost: The Battle for Oscar Wilde’s Legacy” (Amberley, 2017)
24 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Laura Lee’s Oscar’s Ghost: The Battle for Oscar Wilde’s Legacy (Amberley Publishing, 2017) offers a detailed investigation of a conflict involvi...
Julia Fawcett, “Spectacular Disappearances: Celebrity and Privacy, 1696-1801” (U. Michigan Press, 2016)
09 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
“How can the modern individual maintain control over his or her self-representation when the whole world seems to be watching?” This is the questi...
Linda Simon, “Lost Girls: The Invention of the Flapper” (Reaktion Books, 2017)
02 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What are your impressions when you think of the flapper? Who is she in your mind? When and where does she exist? In her new book Lost Girls: The Inve...
Jane McCabe, “Race, Tea and Colonial Resettlement: Imperial Families, Interrupted” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017)
29 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, Race, Tea and Colonial Resettlement: Imperial Families, Interrupted (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), Jane McCabe, Lecturer in the Departm...
Harry Bennett, “The Royal Navy in the Age of Austerity, 1919-1922: Naval and Foreign Policy under Lloyd George” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016)
27 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Great Britain’s victory in the First World War brought with it the competing challenges of defending an expanded empire while reducing military expe...
Andrea L. Stanton, “This is Jerusalem Calling: State Radio in Mandate Palestine” (U of Texas Press, 2013)
14 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Despite the recent booms in the study of the Middle East and North Africa, technology studies still remain scarce: one of the recent attempts to fill ...
Aled Davies, “The City of London and Social Democracy: The Political Economy of Finance in Post-war Britain” (Oxford UP, 2017)
12 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the decades following the end of the Second World War, the British economy evolved from a manufacturing-based economy to one driven by service indu...
Gareth M. Thomas, “Down’s Syndrome Screening and Reproductive Politics: Care, Choice, and Disability in the Prenatal Clinic” (Routledge, 2017)
15 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Drawing on an ethnography of Down’s syndrome screening in two UK clinics, Gareth M. Thomas‘ Down’s Syndrome and Reproductive Politics: Care, Cho...
Carla Pestana, “The English Conquest of Jamaica: Oliver Cromwell’s Bid for Empire” (Harvard UP, 2017)
12 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Carla Pestana’s new book The English Conquest of Jamaica: Oliver Cromwell’s Bid for Empire (Harvard University Press, 2017) is a rousing look at a...
Eric Ash, “The Draining of the Fens: Projectors, Popular Politics, and State Building in Early Modern England” (Johns Hopkins, 2017)
02 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Today “The Fens” is largely a misnomer, as the area of eastern England is now largely flat, dry farmland. Until the early modern era, however, it ...
Jatinder Mann, “The Search for a New National Identity: The Rise of Multiculturalism in Canada and Australia, 1890s-1970s” (Peter Lang, 2016)
30 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, The Search for a New National Identity: The Rise of Multiculturalism in Canada and Australia, 1890s-1970s (Peter Lang Publishing, 201...
Justin Gest, “The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality” (Oxford UP, 2016)
28 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In our era of economic instability, rising inequality, and widespread immigration, complaints about fairness and life chances are coming from an inter...
Kief Hillsbery, “Empire Made: My Search for an Outlaw Uncle Who Vanished in British India” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017)
26 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Kief Hillsbery‘s Empire Made: My Search for an Outlaw Uncle Who Vanished in British India (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) follows the career of Ni...
Brexit, Trump, & Democracy with Thom Brooks
13 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Thom Brooks is Dean of Durham Law School, Professor of Law and Government, and Associate in the Department of Philosophy in the School of Government ...
David Matthews, “Medievalism: A Critical History” (Boydell and Brewer, 2017)
06 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
A revealing exploration of representative modes of medievalism, Medievalism: A Critical History (Boydell & Brewer; hardcover 2015, paperback 2017), by...
Peter Marshall, “Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation” (Yale UP, 2017)
19 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Few events in English history are as familiar to people today as the English Reformation, yet the vast amount of attention it has received can distort...
Andrew Boyd, “The Royal Navy in Eastern Waters: The Linchpin of Victory, 1935-1942” (Seaforth Publishing, 2017)
14 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1930s the Royal Navy faced the problem of defending its empire in eastern Asia and Australia against the formidable naval power of Japan. How t...
Michael J. Turner” Radicalism and Reputation: The Career of Bronterre O’Brien” (Michigan State UP, 2017)
31 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
From humble beginnings James Bronterre O’Brien became one of the leading figures in British radical politics in the first half of the 19th century, ...
Marilyn Palmer and Ian West, “Technology and the Country House” (Historic England Publishing/U.Chicago, 2016)
26 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
For the aristocracy in Britain and Ireland, country house living was dependent upon the labors of men and women who performed innumerable chores invol...
Julie Gottlieb, “‘Guilty Women’: Foreign Policy and Appeasement in Inter-War Britain” (Palgrave Macmilan, 2015)
18 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Historically, foreign policy has been seen as a sphere shaped and determined by the concerns of men alone. In ‘Guilty Women’: Foreign Policy and A...
Steve Dunn, “Securing the Narrow Sea: The Dover Patrol, 1914-1918” (Seaforth/US Naval Institute, 2017)
15 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Most accounts about the naval battles of the First World War focus upon the stalemate between the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet, ...
Marie Hicks, “Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing” (MIT Press, 2017)
28 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
How did gender relations change in the computing industry? And how did the UK go from leading the world to having an all but extinct computer industry...
Kate Murphy, “Behind the Wireless: A History of Early Women at the BBC” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)
22 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
From the early days of the BBC in 1922, women were everywhere in the broadcasting company’s offices. They were absent, however, argues Dr. Kate Murp...
Tony Collins, “The Oval World: A Global History of Rugby” (Bloomsbury, 2015)
19 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The 2017 Six Nations rugby tournament concluded this weekend. England successfully defended its championship, despite losing the last match against a ...
Phoebe Chow, “Britain’s Imperial Retreat from China, 1900-1931” (Routledge, 2016)
07 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
At the start of the twentieth century Britain’s relationship with China was defined by the economic and political dominance Britain exerted in the c...
Glyne Griffith, “The BBC and the Development of Anglophone Caribbean Literature, 1943-1958” (Palgrave MacMillan, 2016)
07 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The BBC radio program “Caribbean Voices” aired for fifteen years and introduced writers like George Lamming, Louise Bennett, Sam Selvon and others...
Ryan Vieira, “Time and Politics: Parliament and the Culture of Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the British World” (Oxford UP, 2015)
24 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
How did the idea of time change during the nineteenth century? In Time and Politics: Parliament and the Culture of Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Bri...
Harris Beider, “White Working-Class Voices: Multiculturalism, Community-Building, and Change” (Policy Press, 2015)
20 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Harris Beider is the author of White Working-Class Voices: Multiculturalism, Community-Building, and Change (Policy Press, 2015). Beider is chair in C...
Helen Glew, “Gender, Rhetoric and Regulation: Women’s Work in the Civil Service and the London County Council, 1900-1955” (Manchester UP, 2016)
18 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What role has gender played in government institutions? In Gender, Rhetoric and Regulation: Women’s Work in the Civil Service and the London County ...
Nancy Weiss Malkiel, ‘Keep the Damned Women Out’: The Struggle for Coeducation” (Princeton UP, 2016)
13 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Within the context of the social upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s, elite institutions of higher education began to feel pressure to open their doors to...
Dave Gosse, “Abolition and Plantation Management in Jamaica, 1807-1838” (U. of the West Indies Press, 2012)
30 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Dave Gosse’s recent book Abolition and Plantation Management in Jamaica, 1807-1838 (University of the West Indies Press, 2012), looks at a crucial p...
Helen Rappaport, “Victoria: The Heart and Mind of a Young Queen” (Harper Design, 2017)
10 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The term historical fiction covers a wide range from what the mystery writer Josephine Tey once dubbed “history with conversation” to outright inv...
Owen McGee, “Arthur Griffith” (Merrion Press, 2015)
23 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
As the founder of Sinn Fin and a leading architect of Irish independence, Arthur Griffith ranks as one of the founding fathers of modern Ireland. In h...
David B. Goldstein and Amy L. Tigner, eds. “Culinary Shakespeare: Staging Food and Drink in Early Modern England” (Duquesne UP, 2016)
19 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Culinary Shakespeare: Staging Food and Drink in Early Modern England (Duquesne University Press, 2016) is a collection of essays that offers new dimen...
Matt Houlbrook, “Prince of Tricksters: The Incredible True Story of Netley Lucas, Gentleman Crook” (U. of Chicago Press 2016)
19 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
How should we understand the interwar years in Britain? In Prince of Tricksters: The Incredible True Story of Netley Lucas, Gentleman Crook (Universit...
Richard Griffiths, “What Did You Do During the War? The Last Throes of British Pro-Nazi Right, 1940-1945” (Routledge, 2016)
18 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
During the mid- to late 1930s, a small but socially prominent group of right-wing Britons took a public stance in support of the Nazi regime in German...
Michael Brown, “The Irish Enlightenment” (Harvard UP, 2015)
13 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Traditionally histories of the Enlightenment era exclude Ireland in the belief that the movement left little impression on developments. In The Irish ...
Julie Holcomb, “Moral Commerce: Quakers and the Transatlantic Boycott of the Slave Labor Economy” (Cornell UP, 2016)
13 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The question of how we should act when facing something gravely immoral is a difficult one. This is particularly true when that immorality touches upo...
Tom Mills, “The BBC: Myth of a Public Service” (Verso, 2016)
02 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The BBC is often thought to be a great, impartial, defender of British values and society. In The BBC: Myth of a Public Service (Verso, 2016), Tom Mil...
Coll Thrush, “Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire” (Yale UP, 2016)
23 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Coll Thrush’s new book is an imaginative and beautifully-written history of London framed by the experiences of indigenous travelers since early mod...
Kirsty Sedgman, “Locating the Audience: How People Found Value in National Theatre Wales” (Intellect Books 2016)
19 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The value of the arts is a constant and vital question in contemporary culture. In Locating the Audience: How People Found Value in National Theatre W...
Colin Holmes, “Searching for Lord Haw-Haw: The Political Lives of William Joyce” (Routledge, 2016)
18 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
During the Second World War millions of Britons tuned in nightly to hear the broadcasts of Lord Haw-Haw coming from Nazi Germany. Though the label was...
Coll Thrush, “Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire” (Yale UP, 2016)
18 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Scholars have long treated cities as spaces in which indigenous people have little presence and less significance. This notion that urbanity and indig...
Marc Steinberg, “England’s Great Transformation: Law, Labor, and the Industrial Revolution” (U. of Chicago Press, 2016)
14 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Marc Steinberg is a professor of sociology at Smith College. His latest book, England’s Great Transformation: Law, Labor, and the Industrial Revolut...
John Bew, “Clement Attlee: The Man Who Made Modern Britain” (Oxford UP, 2017)
28 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
As Labour Party leader, member of Winston Churchill’s governing coalition during the Second World War, and prime minister of the epochal postwar gov...
Jack Hamilton, “Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination” (Harvard UP, 2016)
11 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination (Harvard University Press, 2016), Jack Hamilton examines major American and British ...
Carina E. Ray, “Crossing the Color Line: Race, Sex, and the Contested Politics of Colonialism in Ghana” (Ohio UP, 2015)
07 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In Crossing the Color Line: Race, Sex, and the Contested Politics of Colonialism in Ghana (Ohio University Press, 2015), Carina E. Ray interrogates th...
Christopher Woolgar, “The Culture of Food in England, 1200-1500” (Yale UP, 2016)
30 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Food was central to the lives of people in England during the Middle Ages in ways different than it is today. As Christopher Woolgar reveals in his bo...
Jon Stobart and Mark Rothery, “Consumption and the Country House” (Oxford UP, 2016)
11 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
During the 18th century English country houses served an important function in their society as stages for the display of the status and power of the ...
Marc-William Palen, “The ‘Conspiracy’ of Free Trade: The Anglo-American Struggle over Empire and Economic Globalization, 1846-1896” (Cambridge UP, 2016)
30 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Accounts of late-nineteenth-century US expansionism commonly refer to an open-door empire and an imperialism spurred by belief in free trade. In his n...
William Cavert, “The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City” (Cambridge UP, 2016)
29 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Air pollution may seem to be a problem uniquely of the modern age, but in fact it is one that has bedeviled people throughout history. In his book The...
Anne Mac Lellan, “Dorothy Stopford Price: Rebel Doctor” (Irish Academic Press, 2014)
25 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Among the achievements of Irish medicine in the twentieth century was ending the persistent epidemic of tuberculosis throughout the island, and one of...
Anders Ingram, “Writing the Ottomans: Turkish History in Early Modern England” (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2015)
22 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
You read a lot about “Orientalism,” that is, the often odd ways in which Westerners tried to understand predominantly Middle Eastern peoples and c...
Robert O’Kell, “Disraeli: The Romance of Politics” (U. of Toronto Press, 2014)
11 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Benjamin Disraeli was unique among British prime ministers in the 19th century in many ways, but perhaps none more so than for his career as a novelis...
Patricia McCarthy, “Life in the Country House in Georgian Ireland” (Paul Mellon Centre, 2016)
16 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 18th century, country houses in Ireland underwent a dramatic physical transformation. In her book Life in the Country House in Georgian I...
Dermot Meleady, “John Redmond: The National Leader” (Merrion Press, 2014)
08 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Though in many ways the forgotten man of Irish politics, John Redmond came closer to achieving the long-sought goal of Home Rule for Ireland than had ...
Adam Mendelsohn, “The Rag Race” (NYU Press, 2015)
05 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In The Rag Race: How Jews Sewed Their Way to Success in America and the British Empire (New York University Press, 2015), Adam Mendelsohn, Associate P...
Les Back, “Academic Diary: Or Why Higher Education Still Matters” (Goldsmiths Press, 2016)
23 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Why does higher education still matter? In Academic Diary: Or Why Higher Education Still Matters, Les Back, a professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths’...