New Books in History

Kathleen B. Casey, "The Things She Carried: A Cultural History of the Purse in America" (Oxford UP, 2025)

29 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For generations of Americans, the purse has been an essential and highly adaptable object, used to achieve a host of social, cultural, and political o...

Michael Hiltzik, "Golden State: The Making of California" (Mariner, 2025)

29 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

California has long reigned as the land of plenty, a place where the sun always shines and opportunity beckons. Even prior to its statehood in 1850, i...

Edward Luce, "Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet" (Simon and Schuster, 2025)

28 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Zbigniew Brzezinski was a key architect of the Soviet Union’s demise, which ended the Cold War. A child of Warsaw—the heart of central Europe’s ...

Faisal Chaudhry, "South Asia, the British Empire, and the Rise of Classical Legal Thought: Toward a Historical Ontology of the Law" (Oxford UP, 2024)

28 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

South Asia, the British Empire, and the Rise of Classical Legal Thought: Toward a Historical Ontology of the Law (Oxford UP, 2024) considers the leg...

Tom Arnold-Forster, "Walter Lippmann: An Intellectual Biography" (Princeton UP, 2025)

27 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From the years before World War I until the late 1960s, the journalist and political theorist Walter Lippmann was one of the most influential writers ...

Federico Marcon, "Fascism: The History of a Word" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

27 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The rise and popular support for authoritarianism around the world and within traditional democracies have spurred debates over the meaning of the ter...

Elaine Weiss, "Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools That Built the Civil Rights Movement" (Simon and Schuster, 2025)

26 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Elaine Weiss, acclaimed author of The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote, follows that magisterial work with a work of equal scholarly ...

Aviva Guttmann, "Operation Wrath of God: The Secret History of European Intelligence and Mossad's Assassination Campaign" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

26 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this unprecedented history of intelligence cooperation during the Cold War, Aviva Guttmann uncovers the key role of European intelligence agencies ...

Walter Scheidel, "What Is Ancient History?" (Princeton UP, 2025)

25 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s easy to think that ancient history is, well, ancient history—obsolete, irrelevant, unjustifiably focused on Greece and Rome, and at risk o...

Peter K. Andersson, "The Dandy: A People's History of Sartorial Splendour" (Oxford UP, 2025)

25 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A history of the dandy from below, from Beau Brummell and Baudelaire to Bowie and Bolan... and beyond. The historical figure of the dandy has commonly...

Michael Geheran, "Comrades Betrayed: Jewish World War I Veterans under Hitler" (Cornell UP, 2020)

25 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What claims could Jewish veterans make on the Nazi state by virtue of their having fought for Germany? How often did Germans treat Jewish veterans di...

Zack Cooper, "Tides of Fortune: The Rise and Decline of Great Militaries" (Yale UP, 2025)

24 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

An ambitious look at how the twentieth century's great powers devised their military strategies and what their implications mean for military competit...

Timothy Messer-Kruse, "Slavery’s Fugitives and the Making of the United States Constitution" (LSU Press, 2024)

24 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Slavery's Fugitives and the Making of the United States Constitution (LSU Press, 2024) unearths a long-hidden factor that led to the Constitutional...

Barbara H. Rosenwein, "Winter Dreams: A Historical Guide to Old Age" (Reaktion, 2025)

23 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Winter Dreams: A Historical Guide to Old Age (Reaktion, 2025) is an evocative history of the ways the old have thought, felt and expressed themselves...

Robert Fitzgerald, "Hardcore Punk in the Age of Reagan: The Lyrical Lashing of an American Presidency" (UNC Press, 2025)

23 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Few politicians produced the musical reaction that Ronald Reagan did. His California-branded conservatism inspired countless young people to pick up g...

Daniel Lomas, "The Secret History of UK Security Vetting from 1909 to the Present" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

22 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Using newly available government records, private papers, and documents obtained through Freedom of Information, The Secret History of UK Vetting fro...

Craig W. H. Luther, "Guderian's Panzers: From Triumph to Defeat on the Eastern Front (1941)" (Stackpole Books, 2025)

22 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, the surprise invasion of the Soviet Union that opened the Eastern Front in World War II....

Robert Morstein-Marx, "Julius Caesar and the Roman People" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

21 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Julius Caesar was no aspiring autocrat seeking to realize the imperial future but an unusually successful republican leader who was measured against t...

Bettina Ng′weno, "No Place Like Home in a New City: Anti-Urbanism and Life in Nairobi" (U of California Press, 2025)

21 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Bettina Ng’weno is Professor of African American and African Studies at the University of California, DavisNairobi, known as the Green City in the S...

Margaret C. Jacob, "The Secular Enlightenment" (Princeton UP, 2019)

20 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Secular Enlightenment by Professor Margaret C. Jacob, has been called a major new history on how the Enlightenment transformed people's everyday l...

Bench Ansfield, "Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City" (Norton, 2025)

20 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!” That legendary and apocryphal phrase, allegedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series a...

David Chaffetz, "Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires" (Norton, 2025)

19 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

No animal is so entangled in human history as the horse. The thread starts in prehistory, with a slight, shy animal, hunted for food. Domesticating th...

Paul Thomas Chamberlin, "Scorched Earth: A Global History of World War II" (Basic Books, 2025)

19 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In popular memory, the Second World War was an unalloyed victory for freedom over totalitarianism, marking the demise of the age of empires and the tr...

Paul Vigna, "The Almightier: How Money Became God, Greed Became Virtue, and Debt Became Sin" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)

18 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The pursuit of wealth is considered an essential function of human nature, and greed is an unspoken civic virtue. Many of us revere billionaires and W...

Gavin Williams, "Format Friction: Perspectives on the Shellac Disc" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

17 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

With the rise of the gramophone around 1900, the shellac disc traveled the world and eventually became the dominant sound format in the first half of ...

Kate Herrity, "Sound, Order and Survival in Prison: The Rhythms and Routines of HMP Midtown" (Bristol UP, 2024)

17 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The soundscape of prison life is that of constant clangs, bangs and jangles. What is the significance of this cacophonous din to those who live and wo...

Thomas Kemple, “Intellectual Work and the Spirit of Capitalism: Weber’s Calling” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)

16 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Thomas Kemple‘s new book is an extraordinarily thoughtful invitation to approach Max Weber (1864-1920) as a performer, and to experience Weber’s w...

Linda Gordon, "Seven Social Movements That Changed America" (LIveright, 2025)

15 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do social movements arise, wield power, and bring about meaningful change? Renowned scholar Linda Gordon investigates these and other salient ques...

Sandra Hempel, "Controlling Women: The Untold Story of Britain's First Female Police Force" (Hurst, 2025)

15 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Violence against women is out of control. Conviction rates for rape are so low that most survivors think it pointless to report, or later regret doing...

Philip Carr-Gomm, "A Brief History of Nakedness" (Reaktion, 2010)

14 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Philip Carr-Gomm joins Jana Byars to talk about A Brief History of Nakedness (Reaktion, 2010) on the occasion of its newest paperback edition. From...

Religion in the Lands That Became America

14 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Until now, the standard narrative of American religious history has begun with English settlers in Jamestown or Plymouth and remained predominantly Pr...

Ned Richardson-Little, "The German Democratic Republic: The Rise and Fall of a Cold War State" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

13 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The German Democratic Republic has come to stand as a symbol of communist tyranny, a source of Cold War nostalgia and socialist kitsch, and a failed a...

Jeremy DeWaal, "Geographies of Renewal: Heimat and Democracy in West Germany, 1945-1990" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

13 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The term “Heimat,” referring to a local sense of home and belonging, has been the subject of much scholarly and popular debate following the fall ...

Domale Dube, "Ogoni Women's Activism: The Transnational Struggle for Justice" (University of Illinois Press, 2025)

12 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

­A Glimpse of Ogoni Women’s Activism: The Transnational Struggle for Justice (University of Illinois Press, 2025) with Mariam Olugbo...

Regina Kazyulina, "Women Under Suspicion: Fraternization, Espionage, and Punishment in the Soviet Union During World War II" (U Wisconsin Press, 2025)

12 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Officially, women in the Soviet Union enjoyed a degree of equality unknown elsewhere in Allied countries at the time. However, long-standing norms of ...

Ara Sarafian et al., "Microhistories in Armenian Studies" (Cal State Fresno Press, 2025)

12 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The articles appearing in this volume were presented at a conference entitled “Microhistories in Armenian Studies” organized by the Armenian Studi...

Jessica Ratcliff, "Monopolizing Knowledge: The East India Company and Britain's Second Scientific Revolution" (Cambridge UP, 2025))

11 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the book Monopolizing Knowledge: The East India Company and Britain’s Second Scientific Revolution (Cambridge UP, 2025), author Jessica Ratclif...

Hanno Sauer, "The Invention of Good and Evil: A World History of Morality " (Oxford UP, 2024)

10 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this sweeping new history of humanity, told through the prism of our ever-changing moral norms and values, Hanno Sauer shows how modern society is ...

Alan McPherson, "Ghosts of Sheridan Circle: How a Washington Assassination Brought Pinochet's Terror State to Justice" (UNC Press, 2019)

09 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On September 21, 1976, a car bomb exploded in Washington DC, killing a former Chilean diplomat named Orlando Letelier and his American colleague Ronni...

Jonathan Fisher and Nina Wilén, "African Peacekeeping" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

09 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In African Peacekeeping (Cambridge University Press, 2022), Dr. Jonathan Fisher and Dr. Nina Wilén explore the story of Africa's contemporary histo...

Megan Brown, "The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community" (Harvard UP, 2022)

09 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community (Harvard University Press, 2022), Dr. Megan Brown details the surprising st...

Robert Hutchinson, "After Nuremberg: American Clemency for Nazi War Criminals" (Yale UP, 2022)

08 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Robert Hutchinson's After Nuremberg: American Clemency for Nazi War Criminals (Yale UP, 2022) is about the fleeting nature of American punishment fo...

Maxim Samson, "Earth Shapers: How Humans Mastered Geography and Remade the World" (Profile Books, 2025)

07 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Mountains, meridians, rivers, and borders--these are some of the features that divide the world on our maps and in our minds. But geography is far les...

David D. Hall, "The Puritans: A Transatlantic History" (Princeton UP, 2019) 

06 Aug 2025

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...

Christy Pichichero, "The Military Enlightenment: War and Culture in the French Empire from Louis XIV to Napoleon" (Cornell UP, 2018)

05 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Covering the pivotal period from the mid-seventeenth century through the era of the French Revolution, Christy Pichichero's The Military Enlightenme...

Chiara Formichi, "Islam and Asia: A History" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

04 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Challenging the geographical narrative of the history of Islam, Chiara Formichi’s new book Islam and Asia: A History (Cambridge University Press, 20...

Giles Tremlett, "The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

04 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When civil war broke out in Spain in 1936, tens of thousands of young men and women from across the world flocked there to fight against the Nation...

Julia Sneeringer, "A Social History of Early Rock ‘n’ Roll in Germany: Hamburg from Burlesque to The Beatles, 1956-69" (Bloomsbury, 2018)

03 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Beatles’ sojourn in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg during the early 1960s is part of music legend. As Julia Sneeringer reveals in A Social Hi...

Y. Kokosalakis and F. J. Leira-Castiñeira, "Violence and Propaganda in European Civil Wars" (Routledge, 2025)

02 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Violence and Propaganda in European Civil Wars explores the complex interplay between violence and propaganda during the continent's major civil conf...

Sasha D. Pack, "The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Hispano-African Border" (Stanford UP, 2019)

01 Aug 2025

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...

Victoria de Grazia, "The Perfect Fascist: A Story of Love, Power, and Morality in Mussolini’s Italy" (Harvard UP, 2020)

31 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In her new book, The Perfect Fascist: A Story of Love, Power, and Morality in Mussolini’s Italy (Belknap Press), Dr. Victoria de Grazia takes the s...

Nathan Stoltzfus, “Hitler’s Compromises: Coercion and Consensus in Nazi Germany” (Yale UP, 2016)

30 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How did the Nazi regime respond to protest? How did Hitler’s desire for popular authority shape the relationship between state and society? Nathan S...

Michael Vorenberg, "Lincoln's Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War" (Knopf, 2025))

29 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

More than a century and a half after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, historians are still searching for exactly when the U.S. Civil War...

Michael Stauch, "Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

28 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The criminalization of Black youth was central to policing in urban America during the civil rights era and continued in Detroit even after the rise o...

Ory Amitay, "Alexander the Great in Jerusalem: Myth and History" (Oxford UP, 2025)

27 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When I sat down with Dr. Ory Amitay, his passion for myth, history, and ancient cultures was infectious. Our conversation about his new book, Alexand...

Audrey Truschke, "India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent" (Princeton UP, 2025)

26 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Much of world history is Indian history. Home today to one in four people, the subcontinent has long been densely populated and deeply connected to As...

Julian Jackson, "De Gaulle" (Harvard UP, 2018)

26 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Charles de Gaulle is one of the greatest figures of twentieth century history. If Sir Winston Churchill was (in the words of Harold Macmillan) the "gr...

Jo Teeuwisse, "Fake History: 101 Things That Never Happened" (Ebury Press, 2022)

25 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Fake news about the past is fake history. Did Hugo Boss design the Nazi uniforms? Did medieval people think the world was flat? Did Napoleon shoot ...

Michael John Witgen, "Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America" (UNC Press, 2021)

25 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Against long odds, the Anishinaabeg resisted removal, retaining much of their land in the Old Northwest—what’s now Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnes...

Ashley Howard, "Midwest Unrest: 1960s Urban Rebellions and the Black Freedom Movement" (UNC Press, 2025)

24 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This episode features Dr. Ashley Howard, assistant professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Iowa, discussing her book, ...

M’hamed Oualdi, "A Slave between Empires: A Transimperial History of North Africa" (Columbia UP, 2020)

24 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In light of the profound physical and mental traumas of colonization endured by North Africans, historians of recent decades have primarily concentrat...

Kelefa Sanneh, "Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres" (Penguin, 2021)

23 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Kelefa Sanneh was born in England, and lived in Ghana and Scotland before moving with his parents to the United States in the early 1980s. He was a po...

Luke A. Nichter, "The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election Of 1968" (Yale UP, 2024)

22 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A sitting Democratic president who chooses not to run for re-election, a vice president running out of the president’s shadow, and a Republican nomi...

Alex J. Kay and David Stahel, "Mass Violence in Nazi-Occupied Europe" (Indiana UP, 2018)

22 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Alex J. Kay (senior lecture of History at Potsdam University in Berlin) and David Stahel (senior lecturer in History at the University of New South Wa...

Darius Von Guttner-Sporzynski, "The Jagiellon Dynasty, 1386-1596: Politics, Culture, Diplomacy" (Brepols, 2024)

21 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The volume offers a re-examination of the rise of the Jagiellon dynasty in medieval and early modern Central Europe. Originating in Lithuania and ...

Scott Harrison et al., "Socialist Subjectivities: Queering East Germany under Honecker" (U Michigan Press, 2025)

21 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Socialist Subjectivities: Queering East Germany under Honecker (University of Michigan Press, 2025) works within the logics of queer time to rean...

Nicholas Thomas, "Voyagers: The Settlement of the Pacific" (Apollo, 2020)

21 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Voyagers: The Settlement of the Pacific (Apollo, 2020), the distinguished anthropologist Nicholas Thomas tells the story of the peopling of the P...

Carol Nackenoff and Julie Novkov, "American by Birth: Wong Kim Ark and the Battle for Citizenship" (UP of Kansas, 2021)

20 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

All nations make rules -- through their constitutions, legislatures, bureaucratic practices – about who counts as a citizen. American by Birth exa...

Sean McMeekin, "Stalin's War: A New History of World War II" (Basic Books, 2021)

20 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

World War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its events. But Hitler was ...

How ClioVis is Transforming Education and Historical Research

19 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

 Today I’m speaking with Marcus Golding, historian and Director of Educational Operations at ClioVis. ClioVis is an incredible software and learnin...

Allan Doig, "A History of the Church through its Buildings" (Oxford UP, 2021)

19 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A History of the Church through its Buildings (Oxford University Press, 2021) by Allan Doig takes the reader to meet people who lived through momen...

Peter Apps, "Deterring Armageddon: A Biography of NATO" (Hachette UK, 2024)

18 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The history of the world’s most successful military alliance, from the wrecked Europe of 1945 to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. As they s...

Meegan Kennedy, "Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy: Beautiful Mechanism" (Oxford UP, 2025)

18 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy: Beautiful Mechanism (Oxford UP, 2025) by Dr. Meegan Kennedy examines a revolutionary period in microscopi...

Haley Cohen Gilliland, "A Flower Traveled in My Blood: The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children" (Simon & Schuster, 2025)

17 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the early hours of March 24, 1976, the streets of Buenos Aires rumble with tanks as soldiers seize the presidential palace and topple Argentina’s...

Sonia C. Gomez, "Picture Bride, War Bride: The Role of Marriage in Shaping Japanese America" (NYU Press, 2024)

16 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Picture Bride, War Bride examines how the institution of marriage created pockets of legal and social inclusion for Japanese women during the period ...

Alissa Walter, "Contested City: Citizen Advocacy and Survival in Modern Baghdad" (Stanford UP, 2025)

16 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Contested City: Citizen Advocacy and Survival in Modern Baghdad (Stanford UP, 2025) offers a history of state-society relations in Baghdad, exploring...

Juliane Fürst, "Flowers Through Concrete: Explorations in Soviet Hippieland" (Oxford UP, 2021)

15 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Flowers Through Concrete: Explorations in Soviet Hippieland (Oxford University Press, 2021) is the first chronological history of Soviet hippies, ...

Ian Stewart, "The Celts: A Modern History" (Princeton UP, 2025)

15 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Before the Greeks and Romans, the Celts ruled the ancient world. They sacked Rome, invaded Greece, and conquered much of Europe, from Ireland to Turke...

Renay Richardson and Arisa Loomba, "Human Resources: Slavery and the Making of Modern Britain" (Profile Books, 2025)

15 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ordinary items take on new meanings when you cast them in different light. The origins of tea, coffee and sugar are well known, but when you discover ...

Jeremy Black, "The Civil War" (Saint Augustine's Press, 2025)

14 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The American Civil War may have been more consequential to American history (and its global supremacy) than its Revolutionary War and participation in...

Rosemary Goring, "Exile: The Captive Years of Mary, Queen of Scots" (Berlinn, 2025)

14 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From the moment Mary, Queen of Scots set foot on English soil in 1568 until her execution at Fotheringhay Castle on 8 February 1587, she was the priso...

Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman, "Hitler's American Gamble: Pearl Harbor and Germany's March to Global War" (Basic Books, 2021)

13 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A riveting account of the five most crucial days in twentieth-century diplomatic history: from Pearl Harbor to Hitler's declaration of war on the Unit...

Ignacio G. Galán, "Furnishing Fascism: Modernist Design and Politics in Italy" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

12 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Along with the rise of Mussolini’s fascist regime, the interwar years in Italy also saw the widespread development of its modernist interior design ...

Phil Tiemeyer, "Women and the Jet Age: A Global History of Aviation and Flight Attendants" (Cornell UP, 2025)

12 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Women and the Jet Age: A Global History of Aviation and Flight Attendants (Cornell University Press, 2025) is a global history of postwar aviation th...

Jürgen Buchenau and David S. Dalton, "Anti-Catholicism in the Mexican Revolution, 1913-1940" (Simon and Schuster, 2024)

11 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Anti-Catholicism in the Mexican Revolution, 1913–1940 examines anti-Catholic leaders and movements during the Mexican Revolution, an era that resul...

Yardena Schwartz, "Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict" (Union Square, 2024)

11 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this interview, Yardena Schwartz discusses her book Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict, o...

Samuel Kline Cohn, "Popular Protest and Ideals of Democracy in Late Renaissance Italy" (Oxford UP, 2022)

11 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Samuel K Cohn, Jr. joins Jana Byars to talk about Popular Protest and the Ideals of Democracy in Late Renaissance Italy (Oxford University Press, 2...

Robert G. Morrison, "Merchants of Knowledge: Intellectual Exchange in the Ottoman Empire and Renaissance Europe" (Stanford UP, 2025)

10 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Between 1450 and 1550, a remarkable century of intellectual exchange developed across the Eastern Mediterranean. As Renaissance Europe depended on kno...

Alexus McLeod, "Myth and Identity in the Martial Arts: Creating the Dragon" (Lexington Books, 2025)

09 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Myth and Identity in the Martial Arts: Creating the Dragon (Lexington Books, 2025) is a study of the role of myth and ideology in the formatio...

Kirstie Macleod, "The Red Dress: Conversations in Stitch" (Quickthorn, 2025)

09 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Red Dress: Conversations in Stitch (Quickthorn, 2025), shares the deeper story of The Red Dress, its embroiderers and Kirstie Macleod's own story...

The Roma: A Travelling History

08 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The word Roma conjures images of free-spirited nomads, creative and easy-going people who choose to eschew social conformity for personal independence...

Judith Scheele, "Shifting Sands: A Human History of the Sahara" (Basic Books, 2025)

07 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What comes to mind when we think about the Sahara? Rippling sand dunes, sun-blasted expanses, camel drivers and their caravans perhaps. Or famine, cli...

Andrew Tobolowsky, "Israel and its Heirs in Late Antiquity" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

07 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Andrew Tobolowsky's Israel and Its Heirs in Late Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2025) explores constructions of Israelite identity among Jewish, Samarita...

Margaret Cook Andersen, "Fertile Expectations: The Politics of Involuntary Childlessness in Twentieth-Century France" (Manchester UP, 2025)

06 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

An engaging history of motherhood, demography, and infertility in twentieth-century France, Fertile expectations: The politics of involuntary childle...

John Bardes, "The Carceral City: Slavery and the Making of Mass Incarceration in New Orleans, 1803-1930" (UNC Press, 2024)

05 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Carceral City: Slavery and the Making of Mass Incarceration in New Orleans, 1803-1930 (UNC Press, 2024) reveals that Americans often assume that ...

Alex Vernon, "Peace Is a Shy Thing: The Life and Art of Tim O'Brien" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)

05 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The first literary biography of Tim O'Brien, the preeminent American writer of the war in Vietnam and one of the best writers of his generation, drawi...

Foreign Aid and State Building in Interwar Romania

04 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of the CEU Review of Books Podcast I sat down with Dr Doina Anca Cretu to talk about her first book, Foreign Aid and State Building i...

Jennifer Crane, "'Gifted Children' in Britain and the World: Elitism and Equality Since 1945" (Oxford UP, 2025)

04 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Who are 'gifted' children? In ‘Gifted Children’ in Britain and the World: Elitism and Equality since 1945 Jennifer Crane, a senior lecturer in ...

Bridging History, Policy and Place with Bruce Harvey

03 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Bruce Harvey is a historian and photographer based in Syracuse, NY, who works at the intersection of memory, place, and public history. As an independ...

Sam Dalrymple, "Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia" (HarperCollins UK, 2025)

02 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As recently as 1928, a vast swathe of Asia – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait – ...