New Books in French Studies
Episodes
Megan Moore, "The Erotics of Grief: Emotions and the Construction of Privilege in the Medieval Mediterranean" (Cornell UP, 2021)
24 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Erotics of Grief: Emotions and the Construction of Privilege in the Medieval Mediterranean (Cornell UP, 2021) considers how emotions propagate po...
Brenna Moore, "Kindred Spirits: Friendship and Resistance at the Edges of Modern Catholicism" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
20 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Kindred Spirits: Friendship and Resistance at the Edges of Modern Catholicism (University of Chicago Press, 2021), Brenna Moore takes us inside a...
Julie Kleinman, "Adventure Capital: Migration and the Making of an African Hub in Paris" (U California Press, 2019)
14 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Every day, hundreds of thousands of people move through the Gare du Nord train station in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, the largest train station...
Martin Conway, "Western Europe’s Democratic Age: 1945-1968" (Princeton UP, 2021)
03 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What happened in the years following World War II to create a democratic revolution in the western half of Europe? In Western Europe’s Democratic A...
Aro Velmet, "Pasteur's Empire: Bacteriology and Politics in France, Its Colonies, and the World" (Oxford UP, 2020)
31 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Aro Velmet's Pasteur's Empire: Bacteriology in France, Its Colonies, and the World (Oxford UP, 2020) is a complex history of the Pasteur Institut...
Diana S. Kim, "Empires of Vice: The Rise of Opium Prohibition Across Southeast Asia" (Princeton UP, 2020)
30 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Empires of Vice: The Rise of Opium Prohibition across Southeast Asia (Princeton University Press, 2020) Diana Kim situates the regulation of vi...
Michel Foucault, "Intolerable: Writings from Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group (1970-1980)" (U of Minnesota Press, 2021)
20 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Intolerable: Writings from Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group (1970-1980) (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), edited by Kevin Thomp...
Jennifer Ferng and Lauren R. Cannady, "Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal Histories and Transnational Networks" (Voltaire Foundation, 2021)
08 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A ground-breaking volume examining the transnational conditions of the European Enlightenment, Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal Histories and Transn...
Philip Larratt-Smith and Juliet Mitchell, "Louise Bourgeois, Freud's Daughter" (Yale UP, 2021)
08 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From 1952 to 1985, Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) underwent extensive Freudian analysis that probed her family history, marriage, motherhood, and artist...
Michael S. Neiberg, "When France Fell: The Vichy Crisis and the Fate of the Anglo-American Alliance" (Harvard UP, 2021)
03 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
According to US Secretary of War Henry Stimson, the "most shocking single event" of World War II was not the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but rath...
Devin J. Vartija, "The Color of Equality: Race and Common Humanity in Enlightenment Thought" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2021)
02 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Enlightenment is often either praised as the wellspring of modern egalitarianism or condemned as the cradle of scientific racism. How should we ma...
Shawn F. McHale, "The First Vietnam War: Violence, Sovereignty, and the Fracture of the South, 1945-1956" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
01 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When people think of the “Vietnam War” they usually think of the hugely devastating and divisive conflict between North Vietnam and a United State...
Daniel Lee, "The Right of Sovereignty: Jean Bodin on the Sovereign State and the Law of Nations" (Oxford UP, 2021)
24 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Sovereignty is the vital organizing principle of modern international law. Daniel Lee's book The Right of Sovereignty: Jean Bodin on the Sovereign St...
Ambrogio A. Caiani, "To Kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII" (Yale UP, 2021)
17 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of France, and Pope Pius VII shared a common goal: to reconcile the Catholic ch...
Emile Chabal, "France" (Polity, 2020)
12 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
An accessible and compelling read, Emile Chabal's France (Polity, 2020) is an overview of the nation's political history from 1940 right up to the e...
Susan Mokhberi, "The Persian Mirror: French Reflections of the Safavid Empire in Early Modern France" (Oxford UP, 2019)
28 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When I/we think about the early modern relationship between France and Persia, Montesquieu's 1721 Lettres persanes is a text that comes to mind imme...
Ethan Kleinberg, "Emmanuel Levinas's Talmudic Turn: Philosophy and Jewish Thought" (Stanford UP, 2021)
25 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I interview Ethan Kleinberg, professor of history and letters at Wesleyan University, about his new book, Emmanuel Levinas’s Talmu...
Andrea E. Duffy, "Nomad's Land: Pastoralism and French Environmental Policy in the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean World" (U Nebraska Press, 2019)
25 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Chronicling the retreat of mobile pastoralization from Mediterranean coastlines, Andrea Duffy's Nomad's Land: Pastoralism and French Environmental Po...
Gregory Jones-Katz, "Deconstruction: An American Institution" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
01 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The basic story of the rise, reign, and fall of deconstruction as a literary and philosophical groundswell is well known among scholars. In this intel...
John Shovlin, "Trading with the Enemy: Britain, France, and the 18th-Century Quest for a Peaceful World Order" (Yale UP, 2021)
29 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Britain and France waged war eight times in the century following the Glorious Revolution, a mutual antagonism long regarded as a "Second Hundred Year...
Jessica Namakkal, "Unsettling Utopia: The Making and Unmaking of French India" (Columbia UP, 2021)
14 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
After India achieved independence from the British in 1947, there remained five scattered territories governed by the French imperial state. It was no...
Katherine Dauge-Roth, "Signing the Body: Marks on Skin in Early Modern France" (Routledge, 2019)
24 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Contemporary historians and other scholars of the body frequently use "writing" and "inscription as metaphors. Katherine Dauge-Roth's Signing the ...
Sarah J. Zimmerman, "Militarizing Marriage: West African Soldiers' Conjugal Traditions in Modern French Empire" (Ohio UP, 2021)
20 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Following tirailleurs sénégalais’ deployments in West Africa, Congo, Madagascar, North Africa, Syria-Lebanon, Vietnam, and Algeria from the 1880s ...
Alex Csiszar, "The Scientific Journal: Authorship and the Politics of Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
04 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Listen to this interview of Alex Csiszar, professor in the Department of the History of Science, Harvard University and author of The Scientific Jour...
Jeremy Black, "France: A Short History" (Thames & Hudson, 2021)
30 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A short and entertaining narrative of France from prehistory to the present, recounting the great events and personalities that helped create France’...
Meryl Altman, "Beauvoir in Time" (Brill, 2020)
23 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Meryl Altman's new book Beauvoir in Time, published by Brill Rodopi Press (2020), situates Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949) in its histo...
Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall, "Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)
22 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Michel-Rolph Trouillot wrote that “the silencing of the Haitian Revolution is only a chapter within a narrative of global domination. It is part of ...
Richard Scholar, "Émigrés: French Words That Turned English" (Princeton UP, 2020)
15 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
English has borrowed more words from French than from any other modern foreign language. French words and phrases—such as à la mode, ennui, naï...
Nicholas Harrison, "Our Civilizing Mission: The Lessons of Colonial Education" (Liverpool UP, 2019)
13 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Nicholas Harrison's Our Civilizing Mission: The Lessons of Colonial Education (Liverpool UP, 2019) is a fascinating examination of colonial educati...
Diana Seave Greenwald, "Painting by Numbers: Data-Driven Histories of Nineteenth-Century Art" (Princeton UP, 2021)
09 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Painting by Numbers: Data-Driven Histories of Nineteenth-Century Art (Princeton UP, 2021) presents a groundbreaking blend of art historical and socia...
Nick Lloyd, "The Western Front: A History of the Great War, 1914-1918" (Liveright, 2021)
09 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Western Front evokes images of mud-spattered men in waterlogged trenches, shielded from artillery blasts and machine-gun fire by a few feet of dir...
Rod Phillips, "French Wine: A History" (U California Press, 2016)
08 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today on New Books in History, Rod Phillips, Professor of History at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, talks about his book, French Wine: A Hist...
B. Storey and J. Silber Storey, "Why We Are Restless: On the Modern Quest for Contentment" (Princeton UP, 2021)
30 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What makes us happy? What keeps us from being happy? Is restlessness the same thing as unhappiness? Is happiness something we should value or assume w...
Camille Robcis, "Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
28 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode, J.J. Mull interviews scholar and historian Camille Robcis. In her most recent book, Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical...
Philip Zelikow, "The Road Less Traveled: The Secret Battle to End the Great War, 1916-1917" (PublicAffairs, 2021)
24 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
During a pivotal few months in the middle of the First World War all sides-Germany, Britain, and America-believed the war could be concluded. Peace at...
Stephen Murray, "Notre-Dame of Amiens: Life of the Gothic Cathedral" (Columbia UP, 2020)
22 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Notre-Dame of Amiens is one of the great Gothic cathedrals. Its construction began in 1220, and artistic production in the Gothic mode lasted well int...
Elizabeth Emery, "Reframing Japonisme: Women and the Asian Art Market in Nineteenth-Century France, 1853-1914" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
17 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Erin Duncan O’Neill (Assistant Professor, University of Oklahoma) speaks with Elizabeth Emery (Professor, Montclair State University) about Emery...
Emma Rothschild, "An Infinite History: The Story of a Family in France over Three Centuries" (Princeton UP, 2021)
15 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Emma Rothschild’s new book, An Infinite History: The Story of a Family in France over Three Centuries (Princeton University Press, 2021) (see the ...
Jurgen Martschukat, "The Age of Fitness: How the Body Came to Symbolize Success and Achievement" (Polity, 2021)
31 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today on New Books in History, Juergen Martschukat, professor of North American History at Universitat Erfurt, talks about his new book, The Age of ...
Jeffrey Merrick, "Sodomy in Eighteenth-Century France" (Cambridge Scholars, 2020)
24 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We know more about men who sought and had sex with men in eighteenth-century Paris than in any other city at the time. Police records provide informat...
Diana Souhami, "No Modernism Without Lesbians" (Head of Zeus Book, 2020)
13 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Diana Souhami talks about her new book No Modernism Without Lesbians, out 2020 with Head of Zeus books. A Sunday Times Book of the Year 2020. This ...
Ziad Elmarsafy, "Esoteric Islam in Modern French Thought: Massignon, Corbin, Jambet" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
30 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book Esoteric Islam in Modern French Thought: Massignon, Corbin, Jambet (Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2021) Ziad Elmarsafy maps the intelle...
Ritchie Robertson, "The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790" (Harper, 2021)
27 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790 (Harper, 2021) is a magisterial history that recasts the Enlightenment as a period not solely...
Fatima Shaik, "Economy Hall: The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhood" (HNOC, 2021)
23 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Fatima Shaik's book Economy Hall: The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhood (Historic New Orleans Collections, 2021) tells the story of the Soc...
Roundtable on Medieval Conspiracy Theories
31 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Join us today for a roundtable conversation with three leading medieval scholars about the phenomenon of conspiracy theories in history. Michael T. ...
William Max Nelson, "The Time of Enlightenment: Constructing the Future in France, 1750 to Year One" (U Toronto Press, 2021)
29 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A new idea of the future emerged in eighteenth-century France. With the development of modern biological, economic, and social engineering, the future...
Tyler Sonnichsen, "Capitals of Punk: DC, Paris, and Circulation in the Urban Underground" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019)
29 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This one's personal. Tyler Sonnichsen's Capitals of Punk: DC, Paris, and Circulation in the Urban Underground (Palgrave, 2019) was an amazing book f...
Zach Sell, "Trouble of the World: Slavery and Empire in the Age of Capital" (UNC Press, 2021)
29 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The middle decades of the 19th century witnessed the expansion of slavery and white settlement and dispossession of Indigenous lands west of the Missi...
Chelsea Stieber, "Haiti's Paper War: Post-Independence Writing, Civil War, and the Making of the Republic, 1804-1954" (NYU Press, 2020)
26 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Picking up where most historians conclude, Chelsea Stieber explores the critical internal challenge to Haiti’s post-independence sovereignty: a civi...
Mack P. Holt, "The Politics of Wine in Early Modern France: Religion and Popular Culture in Burgundy, 1477-1630" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
25 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Todays’ guest is Mack P. Holt, Professor Emeritus of History at George Mason University in Virginia, talking about his recent book, The Politics o...
Karl Schlögel, "The Scent of Empire: Chanel No. 5 and Red Moscow" (Polity, 2021)
24 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today New Books in History features Karl Schlögel, Professor Emeritus at the Europa Universitat Viadrina, Frankfort to talk about his new book, Th...
Joshua Cole, "Lethal Provocation: The Constantine Murders and the Politics of French Algeria" (Cornell UP, 2019)
17 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Joshua Cole's Lethal Provocation: The Constantine Murders and the Politics of French Algeria (Cornell University Press, 2019) appeals to a few of th...
S. Palombarin and B. Amable, "The Last Neoliberal: Macron and the Origins of France's Political Crisis" (Verso, 2021)
16 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Emmanuel Macron “has shown a genuine ability to strategize politically, determinedly and clear-sightedly [in] occupying the space of the bourgeois b...
Philip Mansel, "King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV" (U of Chicago Press, 2019).
03 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Philip Mansel, a trustee of the Society for Court Studies and President of the Research Center of the Chateau de Versailles, has written a one-volume ...
Augustin Jomier, "Islam, réforme et colonisation: une histoire de l'ibadisme en Algérie (1882-1962)" (Sorbonne, 2020)
17 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Islam, réforme et colonisation: une histoire de l'ibadisme en Algérie (1882-1962) by Augustin Jomier is an important study of colonial North Afric...
Jillian C. Rogers, "Resonant Recoveries: French Music and Trauma Between the World Wars" (Oxford UP, 2021)
08 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Understanding how people cope with large-scale traumatic events has become more urgent as we continue to cope with the effects of the pandemic. In Re...
Steven Press, "Rogue Empires: Contracts and Conmen in Europe's Scramble for Africa" (Harvard UP, 2017)
02 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Steven Press is an Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University. His marvelous first book, Rogue Empires: Contracts and Conmen in Europe’s...
Jason Berry, "City of a Million Dreams: A History of New Orleans at Year 300" (UNC Press, 2018)
19 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In City of a Million Dreams: A History of New Orleans at Year 300 (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), Jason Berry delivers a history of N...
Oliver Gloag, "Albert Camus: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2020)
13 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Albert Camus, one of the most famous French philosophers and novelists, has a diverse fan base. British alternative rockers The Cure sang about The S...
Robin Mitchell, "Vénus Noire: Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century France" (U Georgia Press, 2020)
29 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The preface to Robin Mitchell's new book, Vénus Noire: Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century France (University of Georgia Pres...
Jean Casimir. "The Haitians: A Decolonial History" (UNC Press, 2020)
28 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In The Haitians: A Decolonial History (UNC Press, 2020), leading Haitian intellectual Jean Casimir argues that the story of Haiti should not begin w...
Kiran Klaus Patel, "Project Europe: A History" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
15 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Project Europe made waves when it was published in German in 2018 (CH Beck) and was soon translated into English as Project Europe: A History (Camb...
Nimisha Barton, "Reproductive Citizens: Gender, Immigration, and the State in Modern France, 1880–1945" (Cornell UP, 2020)
08 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On today’s New Books in History, we sit down with Dr. Nimisha Barton to discuss her new book, Reproductive Citizens: Gender, Immigration, and the S...
S. Burrows and G. Roe, "Digitizing Enlightenment: Digital Humanities and the Transformation of 18th-Century Studies" (Liverpool UP, 2020)
24 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Digitizing Enlightenment: Digital Humanities and the Transformation of 18th-Century Studies (Liverpool UP, 2020) explores how a set of inter-related ...
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 ...
Betty Rojtman, "The Fascination with Death in Contemporary French Thought" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020)
09 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Fascination with Death in Contemporary French Thought: A Longing for the Abyss (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020) analyses a cultural phenomenon that goes...
Dónal Hassett, "Mobilizing Memory: The Great War and the Language of Politics in Colonial Algeria, 1918-1939" (Oxford UP, 2019)
27 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Dónal Hassett’s Mobilizing Memory: The Great War and the Language of Politics in Colonial Algeria, 1918-1939 (Oxford UP, 2019) is at once a history...
Judith G. Coffin, "Sex, Love, and Letters: Writing Simone de Beauvoir" (Cornell UP, 2020)
26 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When Judith G. Coffin discovered a virtually unexplored treasure trove of letters to Simone de Beauvoir from Beauvoir's international readers, it insp...
Julie Hardwick, "Sex in an Old Regime City: Young Workers and Intimacy in France, 1660-1789" (Oxford UP, 2020)
13 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Young women and men sought out each other’s company in the workshops, cabarets, and streets of Old Regime Lyon, and evidence of these relationships ...
Patrick Ffrench, "Roland Barthes and Film: Myth, Eroticism and Poetics" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
16 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Roland Barthes and Film: Myth, Eroticism and Poetics (Bloomsbury) is a book by Patrick Ffrench, Professor of French at Kings College. It is a comprehe...
Pernille Røge, "Economistes and the Reinvention of Empire: France in the Americas and Africa c. 1750-1802" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
11 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, Economistes and the Reinvention of Empire: France in the Americas and Africa, c. 1750-1802 (Cambridge UP, 2020), Dr. Pernille Røge c...
Rachel Mesch, "Before Trans: Three Gender Stories from Nineteenth-Century France" (Stanford UP, 2020)
04 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Before Trans: Three Gender Stories from Nineteenth-Century France (Stanford University Press), Rachel Mesch reads the biographies and work of three...
Dan Edelstein, "On the Spirit of Rights" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
28 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
By the end of the eighteenth century, politicians in America and France were invoking the natural rights of man to wrest sovereignty away from kings a...
William G. Pooley, "Body and Tradition in 19th-Century France: Félix Arnaudin and the Moorlands of Gascony, 1870-1914" (Oxford UP, 2019)
25 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The moorlands of Gascony are often considered one of the most dramatic examples of top-down rural modernization in nineteenth-century Europe. From an ...
Annette Joseph-Gabriel, "Reimagining Liberation: How Black Women Transformed Citizenship in the French Empire" (Illinois UP, 2020)
13 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
‘Where were the women?’ was the big question that led Annette Joseph-Gabriel to her new book, Reimagining Liberation: How Black Women Transformed ...
Patrice Gueniffey, "Napoleon and de Gaulle: Heroes and History" (Harvard UP, 2020)
11 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
One of France’s most famous historians compares and contrasts the two most famous French exemplars of political and military leadership of the past ...
Greg Beckett, "There is No More Haiti: Between Life and Death in Port-au-Prince" (U California Press, 2019)
04 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In today’s episode, I talk with Dr. Greg Beckett, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Western University, about his richly grounded book There is...
Linda Goddard, "Savage Tales: The Writings of Paul Gauguin" (Yale UP, 2019)
31 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Savage Tales: The Writings of Paul Gauguin (Yale University Press, 2019), Linda Goddard investigates the role that Paul Gauguin’s writings played...
Sophie White, "Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana" (UNC Press, 2019)
29 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In her prize-winning study Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Colonial Louisiana (Omohundro Institute of Early American Histor...
Laurie M. Wood, "Archipelago of Justice: Law in France’s Early Modern Empire" (Yale UP, 2020)
23 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Historians have long treated the Atlantic and Indian Ocean routes of early modern French empire separately. But, early modern people understood France...
Richard Carswell, "The Fall of France in the Second World War: History and Memory" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
25 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This fascinating book by Richard Carswell looks at how the fall of France in the Second World War has been recorded by historians and remembered withi...
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/...
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...
Kevin Duong, "The Virtues of Violence: Democracy Against Disintegration in Modern France" (Oxford UP, 2020)
26 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Kevin Duong, a political theorist in the Politics Department at the University of Virginia, has written a fascinating analysis of the way that violenc...
Adrian Johnston, "Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism: The Outcome of Contemporary French Philosophy " (Northwestern UP, 2013)
11 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the contemporary philosophical landscape, a variety of materialist ontologies have appeared, all wrestling with various political and philosophical...
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...
Laurence Monnais, "The Colonial Life of Pharmaceuticals: Medicines and Modernity in Vietnam" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
04 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Situated at the crossroads between the history of colonialism, of modern Southeast Asia, and of medical pluralism, this history of medicine and health...
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...
Great Books: Melissa Schwartzberg on Rousseau's "The Social Contract"
28 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." The opening sentence of 18th century philosopher Jean-Jacques Roussau's The Social Contract poses ...
David Lebovitz, "Drinking French" (Ten Speed Press, 2020)
14 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Few experiences can top sitting in a Parisian cafe and watching the world go by, a glass of something at your elbow. But if you've ever gone inside th...
Great Books: Denis Hollier on Lévi-Strauss' "Tristes Tropiques"
07 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Claude Lévi-Strauss' Tristes Tropiques is one of the great books of the 20th century: intellectually bold, morally capacious, and it aims to understa...
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...
Alexander Mikaberidze, "The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History" (Oxford UP, 2020)
03 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Austerlitz, Wagram, Borodino, Trafalgar, Leipzig, Waterloo: these are the battles most closely associated with the Napoleonic Wars. But how did this p...
Arthur Asseraf, "Electric News in Colonial Algeria" (Oxford UP, 2019)
03 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Arthur Asseraf’s Electric News in Colonial Algeria (Oxford University Press, 2019) examines the workings of the “news ecosystem” in Algeria from...
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....
Sophie White, "Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana" (UNC Press, 2019)
12 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In eighteenth-century New Orleans, the legal testimony of some 150 enslaved women and men--like the testimony of free colonists--was meticulously reco...
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...
John Hardman, "Marie-Antoinette: The Making of a French Queen" (Yale UP, 2019)
11 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Who was the real Marie-Antoinette? She was mistrusted and reviled in her own time, and today she is portrayed as a lightweight incapable of understand...
Jeffrey James Byrne, "Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order" (Oxford UP, 2016)
04 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In his brilliant, category-smashing book, Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order (Oxford University Press, 2016), Jef...
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...