New Books in History
Episodes
The Library of Lost Maps: An Archive of a World in Progress
01 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At the heart of University College London lies a long-forgotten map library packed with thousands of maps and atlases. Professor James Cheshire stumbl...
Carolyn J. Eichner, "Feminism's Empire" (Cornell UP, 2022)
01 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Feminism's Empire (Cornell UP, 2022) investigates the complex relationships between imperialisms and feminisms in the late nineteenth century and dem...
Darcie Fontaine, "Modern France and the World" (Routledge, 2023)
30 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As she taught university-level courses on modern French history, Darcie Fontaine felt like she could not find a textbook that provided an up-to-date n...
Patricia Anne Simpson, "Early Modern Women's Work: Kinship, Community, and Social Justice" (Routledge, 2025)
30 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Patricia Anne Simpson joins Jana Byars to talk about Early Modern Women's Work: Kinship, Community, and Social Justice (Routledge, 2025). The book e...
Marc Sommers, "We the Young Fighters: Pop Culture, Terror, and War in Sierra Leone" (U Georgia Press, 2023)
30 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We the Young Fighters: Pop Culture, Terror, and War in Sierra Leone (U Georgia Press, 2023) by Dr. Marc Sommers is at once a history of a nation, the...
Jonathan Eig, "King: A Life" (FSG, 2023)
29 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig's King: A Life (FSG, 2023) is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights ico...
Allison Christine Meier, "Grave" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
28 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Grave (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Allison C. Meier takes a ground-level view of how burial sites have transformed over time and how they continue to change...
Natalie Porter, "Girl Gangs, Zines, and Powerslides: A History of Badass Women Skateboarders" (ECW Press, 2025)
27 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A vibrant, meticulously researched celebration of the women and non-binary skateboarders who defied a hostile industry and redefined skateboarding aro...
Jenny Linford, "Repast: The Story of Food" (Thames & Hudson, 2025)
27 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Our insatiable appetite for creativity in the kitchen – or around the open fire – is reflected in the fascinating array of objects explored in thi...
Maia Kotrosits, "After Transformation: Rewriting Time, Christian Late Antiquity, and the Present" (Duke UP, 2025)
26 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In After Transformation, Maia Kotrosits offers a lyrical history of Christian late antiquity as it lives on in and with the present. Recasting the...
Erika Pani, "Torn Asunder: Republican Crises and Civil Wars in the United States and Mexico, 1848-1867" (UNC Press, 2025)
26 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Between the late 1840s and the late 1860s, the United States and Mexico had quite a bit in common. Both suffered from reactionary succession movements...
Renata Keller, "The Fate of the Americas: The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Hemispheric Cold War" (UNC Press, 2025)
25 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Despite twenty-first-century fears of nuclear conflagrations with North Korea, Russia, and Iran, the Cuban Missile Crisis is the closest the United St...
Jochen Hellbeck, "World Enemy No. 1: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews" (Penguin Group, 2025)
25 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the West, World War II is commonly understood as the Allies’ struggle against Nazism. Often elided, if not simply forgotten, is the Soviet Union’...
Jim Cullen, "1980: America's Pivotal Year" (Rutgers UP, 2022)
24 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
1980 was a turning point in American history. When the year began, it was still very much the 1970s, with Jimmy Carter in the White House, a sluggish ...
Adam Jones, "Sites of Genocide" (Routledge, 2022)
23 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Jones will be familiar to anyone interested in the field of genocide studies. He's published one of the leading textbooks in the field. He's bee...
Faisal Devji, "Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam" (Yale UP, 2025)
22 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Faisal Devji's Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam (Yale UP, 2025) is a compelling examination of the rise of Islam as a global his...
Shatema Threadcraft, "Labors of Resurrection: Black Women, Necromancy, and Morrisonian Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2025)
22 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Western democracies are haunted. Michael Hanchard suggests that the specter of race is what haunts our democracies, but it may be more accurate to sug...
Carol Lilly, "Death and Burial in Socialist Yugoslavia: The Politicization of Cemeteries and Ethnic Conflict in the Balkans" (Bloomsbury, 2024).
21 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Across the globe, memorial and grave sites are being increasingly weaponized in conflicts and politicized by parties to advance agendas. Here, Carol S...
Yanqiu Zheng, "In Search of Admiration and Respect: Chinese Cultural Diplomacy in the United States, 1875–1974" (U Michigan Press, 2024)
21 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean for a country to seek admiration — and what kinds of institutions try to make that admiration possible? Yanqiu Zheng’s In Sear...
Emily Callaci, "Wages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid Labor" (Seal Press, 2025)
20 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Across the globe in the 1970s, a network of feminists distilled their struggles into a single demand: Wages for Housework! Today, it remains a provo...
Karen Auman, "The Good Forest: The Salzburgers, Success, and the Plan for Georgia" (U Georgia Press, 2024)
20 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Good Forest: The Salzburgers, Success, and the Plan for Georgia (U Georgia Press, 2024) explores some of Georgia’s earliest settlers, the Sal...
John Goodall, "The Castle: A History" (Yale UP, 2022)
19 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In The Castle: A History (Yale University Press, 2022) Dr. John Goodall presents a vibrant history of the castle in Britain, from the early Middle A...
David Boyk, "Provincial Metropolis: Intellectuals and the Hinterland in Colonial India" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
19 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Provincial Metropolis: Intellectuals and the Hinterland in Colonial India (Cambridge UP, 2025) tells the story of Patna, in the north Indian region...
Thomas Piketty, "A Brief History of Equality" (Harvard UP, 2022)
18 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It's easy to be pessimistic about inequality. We know it has increased dramatically in many parts of the world over the past two generations. No one h...
Philip Nash, "Clare Boothe Luce: American Renaissance Woman" (Routledge, 2022)
17 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Philip Nash's book Clare Boothe Luce: American Renaissance Woman (Routledge, 2022) is a concise and highly readable political biography that examine...
Ethan W. Ris, "Other People's Colleges: The Origins of American Higher Education Reform" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
17 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For well over one hundred years, people have been attempting to make American colleges and universities more efficient and more accountable. Indeed, E...
Joe Allen, "The Package King: A Rank and File History of UPS" (Haymarket Books, 2020)
16 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If the 20th Century was the American Century, it was also UPS's Century. Joe Allen's The Package King: A Rank and File History of UPS (Haymarket ...
Susanna Rabow-Edling, "The First Russian Revolution: The Decembrist Revolt Of 1825" (Reaktion Books, 2025)
16 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On the 200th anniversary of the Decembrist Revolt, Susanna Rabow-Edling published The First Russian Revolution: The Decembrist Revolt Of 1825 ...
Jessica Catherine Reuther, "The Bonds of Kinship in Dahomey: Portraits of West African Girlhood, 1720–1940" (Indiana UP, 2025)
15 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From the 1720s to the 1940s, parents in the kingdom and later colony of Dahomey (now the Republic of Benin) developed and sustained the common practic...
Carolyn T. Adams et. al, "Greater Philadelphia: A New History for the Twenty-First Century" (Penn Press, 2025)
14 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Informed by current scholarship and richly illustrated with full-color photographs and maps, Greater Philadelphia: A New History for the Twenty-First...
Mila Burns, "Dictatorship Across Borders: Brazil, Chile, and the South American Cold War" (UNC Press, 2025)
14 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dictatorship Across Borders: Brazil, Chile, and the South American Cold War (UNC Press, 2025) offers a groundbreaking perspective on the 1973 Chilea...
Eric Halsey, "State Builders from the Steppe: A History of The First Bulgarian Empire" (This is RETHINK, 2025)
13 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
State Builders from the Steppe: A History of the First Bulgarian Empire (This is RETHINK, 2025) explores how the Proto-Bulgarians were able to build...
Ronald Angelo Johnson, "Entangled Alliances: Racialized Freedom and Atlantic Diplomacy During the American Revolution" (Cornell UP, 2025)
13 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Entangled Alliances is a reinterpretation of the American Revolution through analysis of diplomacy in the emerging United States during decades of he...
Eric H. Cline, "Love, War, and Diplomacy: The Discovery of the Amarna Letters and the Bronze Age World They Revealed" (Princeton UP, 2025)
12 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From the acclaimed author of 1177 B.C., a spellbinding account of the archaeological find that opened a window onto the vibrant diplomatic world of th...
Tracy Borman, "The Stolen Crown: Treachery, Deceit and the Death of the Tudor Dynasty" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2025)
12 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the long and dramatic annals of British history, no transition from one monarch to another has been as fraught and consequential as that which ende...
Ellen Muehlberger, "Things Unseen: Essays on Evidence, Knowledge, and the Late Ancient World" (U California Press, 2025)
11 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do you know the nature of another person: who she is, or what she is capable of? In four exploratory essays, a seasoned historian examines the ...
Eric Lee, "The August Uprising, 1924: The Georgian Anti-Soviet Revolt and the Birth of Democratic Socialism" (McFarland, 2025)
11 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For three years following the Russian Revolution, the small South Caucasian country of Georgia was a democracy, but Stalin later ordered the Red Army ...
How Government Made the U.S. into a Manufacturing Powerhouse
10 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Colleen Dunlavy, Emeritus Professor of History at University of Wisconsin-Madison, about her recent book...
Clint Smith, "How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America" (Little, Brown and Company, 2021)
09 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do we narrate history, both the troubling past and what we chose to remember? Clint Smith sets out to wrestle with this question and its relations...
Michelle Christine Smith, "Utopian Genderscapes: Rhetorics of Women's Work in the Early Industrial Age" (Southern Illinois UP, 2021)
09 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Utopian Genderscapes: Rhetorics of Women's Work in the Early Industrial Age (Southern Illinois UP, 2021) focuses on three prominent yet understudied ...
Martha Biondi, "We Are Internationalists: Prexy Nesbitt and the Fight for African Liberation" (U California Press, 2025)
08 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Explores forgotten solidarity with African liberation struggles through the life of Black Chicagoan Prexy Nesbitt. For many civil rights activists, t...
Vanesa Rodríguez-Galindo, "Madrid on the Move: Feeling Modern and Visually Aware in the Nineteenth Century" (Manchester UP, 2021)
08 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book Madrid on the Move: Feeling Modern and Visually Aware in the Nineteenth Century (Manchester UP, 2021), Vanesa Rodríguez-Galindo exp...
Georgios Giannakopoulos, "The Interpreters: British Internationalism and Empire in Southeastern Europe, 1870-1930" (Manchester UP, 2025)
07 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Georgios Giannakopoulos, Lecturer in Modern History at City St. George's, University of London, is the author of The Interpreters: British Intern...
David T. Beito, "FDR: A New Political Life" (Open Universe, 2025)
07 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David Beito's new book brings to bear the latest historical scholarship to shed light on the life and achievements of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Profe...
Diane T. Feldman, "Borrowed Land, Stolen Labor, and the Holy Spirit: The Struggle for Power and Equality in Holmes County, Mississippi" (UP of Mississippi, 2025)
06 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Borrowed Land, Stolen Labor, and the Holy Spirit: The Struggle for Power and Equality in Holmes County, Mississippi (UP Mississippi, 2025) chronicles...
Fang Yu Hu, "Good Wife, Wise Mother: Educating Han Taiwanese Girls Under Japanese Rule" (U Washington Press, 2024)
06 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Good Wife, Wise Mother: Educating Han Taiwanese Girls Under Japanese Rule (U Washington Press, 2024), female education and citizenship serve...
Anastasija Ropa, "The Medieval Horse" (Reaktion Books, 2025)
05 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Anastasija Ropa joins Jana Byars to talk about The Medieval Horse (Reaktion, 2025), a book that explores the role of horses across the medieval wor...
Charles Watkins, "Trees Ancient and Modern: Woodland Cultures and Conservation" (Reaktion, 2025)
05 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Charles Watkins joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, Trees Ancient and Modern (Reaktion, 2025). This delightful new book explores the relati...
Mimi Abramovitz, "Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present" (Routledge, 2025)
04 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the fourth edition of Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present, drawing on important feminist concep...
Elizabeth R. Hyman, "The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto: The True Story of Five Courageous Young Women Who Sparked an Uprising" (Harper, 2025)
03 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is one of the most storied events of the Holocaust, yet previous accounts of have almost entirely focused on its male parti...
Rebecca L. Davis, "Fierce Desires: A New History of Sex and Sexuality in America" (Norton, 2024)
03 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
One of The New Yorker’s Best Books of the Year A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year From an esteemed sc...
Kalathmika Natarajan, "Coolie Migrants, Indian Diplomacy: Caste, Class and Indenture Abroad, 1914-67" (Oxford UP, 2026)
02 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Over the centuries, millions of migrant labourers sailed from the Indian subcontinent, across the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean, to shape what is now...
Cynthia Paces, "Prague: The Heart of Europe" (Oxford UP, 2025)
02 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of the CEU Review of Books Podcast, I sat down with Cynthia Paces to talk about her new book, Prague: The Heart of Europe (Oxford U...
C. Yamini Krishna, "Film City Urbanism in India: Hyderabad, from Princely City to Global City ,1890-2000" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
01 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Film City Urbanism in India: Hyderabad, from Princely City to Global City ,1890-2000 (Cambridge UP, 2025) is about the reciprocal relationship betwe...
Anthony Tucker-Jones, "The Secret War: Spies, Lies and the Art of Deception in World War II" (Sirius, 2025)
30 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Written by British former intelligence officer, Anthony Tucker-Jones, this fascinating, illustrated guide takes a deep dive into the secret operation...
Elissa Bemporad, "Jews in the Soviet Union: A History: Revolution, Civil War, and New Ways of Life, 1917–1930, Vol. 1" (NYU Press, 2025)
30 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Chronicles the encounter of one of the largest Jewish communities in the world with war, revolution, and Soviet power from 1917 through 1930 At the b...
Paula Oppermann, "Thunder Cross: Fascist Antisemitism in Twentieth-Century Latvia" (U Wisconsin Press, 2025)
29 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Founded in 1932, the Pērkonkrusts ("Thunder Cross") was the largest and most prominent right-wing political party in Latvia in the early twentieth ce...
Amanda Laury Kleintop, "Counting the Cost of Freedom: The Fight Over Compensated Emancipation After the Civil War" (UNC Press, 2025)
29 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
During the Civil War, the U.S. federal government abolished slavery without reimbursing enslavers, diminishing the white South’s wealth by nearly 50...
Joshua Clark Davis, "Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back" (Princeton UP, 2025)
28 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back (Princeton UP, 2025) shatters one of the mo...
Kenneth G. Appold, "Luther and the Peasants: Religion, Ritual, and the Revolt Of 1525" (Oxford UP, 2025)
28 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Kenneth G. Appold joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, Luther and the Peasants: Religion, Ritual, and the Revolt of 1525 (Oxford UP, 2025). ...
Deana Heath, "Colonial Terror: Torture and State Violence in Colonial India" (Oxford UP, 2021)
27 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Focusing on India between the early nineteenth century and the First World War, Colonial Terror explores the centrality of the torture of Indian bod...
Mark Mazower, "On Antisemitism: A Word in History" (Penguin Press, 2025)
26 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What do we mean when we talk about antisemitism? A thoughtful, vital new intervention from the award-winning historian. For most of history, antisemit...
Stephen Fritz, "The First Soldier: Hitler as a Military Leader" (Yale UP, 2018)
26 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, The First Soldier: Hitler as a Military Leader (Yale University Press, 2018), Stephen Fritz professor of history at East Tennessee St...
Ashley D. Farmer, "Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore" (Pantheon, 2025)
25 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the world of Black radical politics, the name Audley Moore commands unquestioned respect. Across the nine decades of her life, Queen Mother Moore d...
Anthony Valerio, "Semmelweis: The Women's Doctor" (Zantedeschi Books, 2019)
25 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Though his advice has saved the lives of millions of people, the name Ignaz Semmelweis is not one commonly known today. In his book Anthony Valerio’...
Selena Daly, "Emigrant Soldiers: Mobilising Italians Abroad in the First World War" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
24 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
During the First World War, over 300,000 Italian emigrants returned to Italy from around the world to perform their conscripted military service, a ma...
Paul Galvez, "Courbet's Landscapes: The Origins of Modern Painting" (Yale UP, 2022)
24 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1862 and 1866 Gustave Courbet embarked on a series of sensuous landscape paintings that would later inspire the likes of Monet, Pissarro, and ...
Danny Orbach, "Plots Against Hitler" (Mariner, 2016)
23 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, Plots Against Hitler (Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), Danny Orbach, Senior Lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusal...
Cristina Plamadeala, "Dossierveillance, Collaboration, and Fear in Society: The Saga of a Journey Through the Securitate Archives and Beyond" (Routledge, 2025)
23 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Exploring the cultural history of surveillance practices of the Securitate, Romania's secret police during its communist period, the book blends biogr...
Becky M. Nicolaides, "The New Suburbia: How Diversity Remade Suburban Life in Los Angeles After 1945" (Oxford UP, 2024)
22 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The adoption of the Hart-Celler Act in 1965, triggered a wave of immigration to the U.S. not seen since before the First World War. But these newcomer...
Angelos Chaniotis, "Age of Conquests: The Greek World from Alexander to Hadrian" (Harvard UP, 2018)
22 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The world that Alexander remade in his lifetime was transformed once more by his death in 323 BCE. In Age of Conquests: The Greek World from Alexander...
Martyn Whittock, "Vikings in the East: From Vladimir the Great to Vladimir Putin – The Origins of a Contested Legacy in Russia and Ukraine" (Biteback, 2025)
21 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Western Europe, we typically associate Vikings with the storm-tossed waters of the North Sea and the North Atlantic, the deep Scandinavian fjords a...
Peter D. Blackmer, "Unleashing Black Power: Grassroots Organizing in Harlem and the Advent of the Long, Hot Summers" (UVA Press, 2025)
21 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Unleashing Black Power: Grassroots Organizing in Harlem and the Advent of the Long, Hot Summers (UVA Press, 2025) explores the local dynamics, natio...
The Light Between Apple Trees: Rediscovering the Wild Through a Beloved American Fruit
20 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As a child in the foothills of the Himalayas, Priyanka Kumar was entranced by forest-like orchards of diverse and luscious fruit—especially apples. ...
William Doyle, "Napoleon at Peace: How to End a Revolution" (Reaktion Books, 2022)
19 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The French Revolution facilitated the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, but after gaining power he knew that his first task was to end it. In this book Will...
David Stasavage, "The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today" (Princeton UP, 2020)
18 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Historical accounts of democracy's rise tend to focus on ancient Greece and pre-Renaissance Europe. The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Globa...
Lorenzo Castellani, "Alberto Beneduce, Mussolini's Technocrat: Power, Knowledge, and Institutions in Fascist Italy" (Routledge, 2025)
18 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Should "good" people work for authoritarians? Does their implicit endorsement do more harm than their replacement by someone potentially worse? This w...
Carl Benedikt Frey, "How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations" (Princeton UP, 2025)
17 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations (Princeton UP, 2025), Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the conventional belief th...
Andrea Freeman, "Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: America’s Politics of Food, from the Trail of Tears to School Lunch" (Metropolitan Books, 2024)
17 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The first and definitive history of the use of food in American law and politics as a weapon of conquest and control, a Fast Food Nation for the Black...
Julia Ross Cummiskey, "Virus Research in Twentieth-Century Uganda: Between Local and Global" (Ohio UP, 2024)
16 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Virus Research in Twentieth-Century Uganda: Between Local and Global (Ohio UP, 2024) presents the stories of scientists at the Uganda Virus Research...
Karl Ittmann, "Fuelling Empire: The British Imperial Oil Complex, 1886-1945" (Oxford UP, 2025)
14 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Beginning in the late nineteenth century, British companies used the resources of empire to create an imperial oil industry that controlled 20% of glo...
Kathryn Hurlock, "Holy Places: How Pilgrimage Changed the World" (Profile, 2025)
14 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This year, as they have for millennia, many people around the world will set out on pilgrimages. But these are not only journeys of personal and spiri...
Justin Stover and George Woudhuysen, "The Lost History of Sextus Aurelius Victor" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)
14 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This book rediscovers a lost history of the Roman Empire, written by Sextus Aurelius Victor (ca. 320-390) and demonstrates for the first time both the...
Darren Mueller, "At the Vanguard of Vinyl: A Cultural History of the Long-Playing Record in Jazz" (Duke UP, 2024)
13 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In At the Vanguard of Vinyl, Darren Mueller examines how the advent of the long-playing record (LP) in 1948 revolutionized the recording and producti...
Aaron Sheehan-Dean, "Fighting with the Past: How Seventeenth-Century History Shaped the American Civil War" (UNC Press, 2025)
12 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Civil War Americans, like people today, used the past to understand and traverse their turbulent present. As Dr. Aaron Sheehan-Dean reveals in this fa...
Lawrence Grossman, "Living in Both Worlds: Modern Orthodox Judaism in the United States, 1945-2025" (Academic Studies Press, 2025)
12 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In American Judaism today, Orthodoxy is the fastest growing movement. However, Orthodoxy is anything but monolithic. Living in Both Worlds: Modern Or...
Matthias Egeler, "Elves and Fairies: A Short History of the Otherworld" (Yale UP, 2025)
11 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Originating in Norse and Celtic mythologies, elves and fairies are a firmly established part of Western popular culture. Since the days of the Vikings...
Robert L. Worden and Jane Leung Larson, "A Chinese Reformer in Exile: Kang Youwei and the Chinese Empire Reform Association in North America, 1899-1911" (Brill, 2025)
10 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A Chinese Reformer in Exile: Kang Youwei and the Chinese Empire Reform Association in North America, 1899-1911 is an encyclopaedic reference work doc...
John R. Davis, "Keep Your Ear to the Ground: A History of Punk Fanzines in Washington, DC" (Georgetown UP, 2025)
10 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
John R. Davis's Keep Your Ear to the Ground (Georgetown University Press, 2025) is the first history of the fanzines that emerged from Washington, D...
What is Free Speech with Fara Dabhoiwala
09 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The speech debates have not abated, and it’s clear that invoking the First Amendment, and the importance of free speech for democracy, does not sett...
Maria Fedorova, "Seeds of Exchange: Soviets, Americans, and Cooperation in Agriculture, 1921–1935" (Northern Illinois UP, 2025)
09 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Seeds of Exchange: Soviets, Americans, and Cooperation in Agriculture, 1921–1935 (Northern Illinois UP, 2025) examines the US and Soviet exchange ...
Aram G. Sarkisian, "Orthodoxy on the Line: Russian Orthodox Christians and Labor Migration in the Progressive Era" (NYU Press, 2025)
08 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Orthodoxy on the Line: Russian Orthodox Christians and Labor Migration in the Progressive Era (NYU Press, 2025) is an Immigration and labor history o...
Miranda Spieler, "Slaves in Paris: Hidden Lives and Fugitive Histories" (Harvard UP, 2025)
08 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the decades leading up to the French Revolution, when Paris was celebrated as an oasis of liberty, slaves fled there, hoping to be freed. They pict...
Katherine J. Parkin, "The Abortion Market: Buying and Selling Access in the Era Before Roe" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
07 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The abortion market was a powerful economic force in American life. Before legalization lowered the cost, one million women each year collectively pai...
Andrew Lambert, "No More Napoleons: How Britain Managed Europe from Waterloo to World War One" (Yale UP, 2025)
07 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How, for just over a century, Britain ensured it would not face another Napoleon Bonaparte--manipulating European powers while building a global marit...
Marion Orr, "House of Diggs: The Rise and Fall of America's Most Consequential Black Congressman, Charles C. Diggs Jr." (UNC Press, 2025)
06 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At the height of the civil rights movement, Charles C. Diggs Jr. (1922-1998) was the consummate power broker. In a political career spanning 1951 to 1...
Xiaobo Lü, "Domination and Mobilization: The Rise and Fall of Political Parties in China's Republican Era" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
06 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How and why did the Chinese Communist Party rise to power in the 1940s at the expense of its Nationalist (KMT) rival? In his new book, Domination and...
David M. Whitford, "The Making of a Reformation Man: Martin Luther and the Construction of Masculinity" (Routledge, 2025)
05 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David Whitford joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, The Making of a Reformation Man: Martin Luther and the Construction of Masculinity (Routl...
Georgios Varouxakis, "The West: The History of an Idea" (Princeton UP, 2025)
04 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How did “the West” come to be used as a collective self-designation signaling political and cultural commonality? When did “Westerners” begin ...
Jamal J. Elias, "After Rumi: The Mevlevis and Their World" (Harvard UP, 2025)
03 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jamal J. Elias' new book After Rumi: The Mevlevis & Their World (Harvard UP, 2025) takes us on a historical journey through the development of the M...