New Books in History
Episodes
Nathalie Cooke, "Tastes and Traditions: A Journey Through Menu History" (Reaktion, 2025)
10 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Menus are invaluable snapshots of the food consumed at specific moments in time and place. Tastes and Traditions: A Journey through Menu History (Re...
Sam Klug, "The Internal Colony: Race and the American Politics of Global Decolonization" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
09 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In The Internal Colony: Race and the American Politics of Global Decolonization (University of Chicago Press, 2025), Dr. Sam Klug reveals the centra...
David G. Williamson, "Poland Betrayed: The Nazi-Soviet Invasions of 1939" (Pen & Sword, 2011)
09 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
After staging a mock attack at Gleiwitz, Germany unleashed its blitzkrieg on Poland on September 1, 1939. Two week later, Soviet forces streamed into ...
Kathleen Thelen, "Attention, Shoppers!: American Retail Capitalism and the Origins of the Amazon Economy" (Princeton UP, 2025)
08 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The United States is widely recognized as the quintessential consumer society, one where huge companies like Walmart and Amazon are famous for enticin...
Ian Rapley, "Green Star Japan: Esperanto and the International Language Question, 1880–1945" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
07 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ian Rapley’s Green Star Japan: Esperanto and the International Language Question, 1880-1945 (U Hawaii Press, 2024) is a sociopolitical history of ...
Robert J. Antony, "Outlaws of the Sea: Maritime Piracy in Modern China" (Hong Kong UP, 2024)
06 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Did you know Hong Kong used to be a hub for pirates? That factoid has long been part of the popular history for Hong Kong—and for Southern China bro...
Jim Storr, "War and Warfare in the Twentieth Century" (Howgate Publishing, 2025)
05 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What can we learn from war, and warfare, in the twentieth century? What observations and deductions can we make, and what lessons can we draw? ‘War ...
James M. O’Toole, "For I Have Sinned: The Rise and Fall of Catholic Confession in America" (Harvard UP, 2025)
04 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For generations, American Catholics went faithfully to confession, admitting their sins to a priest and accepting through him God’s forgiveness. The...
Lavanya Vemsani, "Reframing India in World History" (Lexington Books, 2024)
03 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Reframing India in World History breaks the stereotypical portrayal of India based on misconstrued historical theories. Prevalent constructions of In...
Michael Vorenberg, "Lincoln's Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War" (Knopf, 2025)
02 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
One historian’s journey to find the end of the Civil War—and, along the way, to expand our understanding of the nature of war itself and how socie...
Tana Li, "A Maritime Vietnam: From Earliest Times to the Nineteenth Century" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
01 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When we think of Vietnamese history, we tend to think of plucky peasant guerillas fighting for their independence against French colonial rule or Amer...
Peter Whitewood, "The Soviet-Polish War and its Legacy: Lenin’s Defeat and the Rise of Stalinism" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
31 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This detailed study traces the history of the Soviet-Polish War (1919-20), the first major international clash between the forces of communism and ant...
Ashis Ray, "The Trial That Shook Britain: How a Court Martial Hastened Acceptance of Indian Independence" (Routledge India, 2024)
30 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1945 to 1946, postwar India was enthralled by the treason trial of three officers—formerly of the Indian National Army, who fought against the Br...
Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, "The Age of Revolutions: And the Generations Who Made It" (Basic Books, 2024)
29 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A panoramic new history of the revolutionary decades between 1760 and 1825, from North America and Europe to Haiti and Spanish America, showing how pr...
Matt Lodder, "Tattoos: The Untold History of a Modern Art" (Yale UP, 2024)
28 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There is a pervasive stereotype of tattoo culture as relating to an underworld of scoundrels, sailors, and ne’er-do-wells, yet it has existed in the...
Kobi Kabalek, "Rescue and Remembrance: Imagining the German Collective After Nazism" (U Wisconsin Press, 2025)
27 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Rescue and Remembrance: Imagining the German Collective After Nazism (U Wisconsin Press, 2025), Kobi Kabalek examines how the rescue of Jews duri...
William Blakemore Lyon, "Forged in Genocide: Migrant Workers Shaping Colonial Capitalism in Namibia, 1890-1925" (de Gruyter, 2024)
26 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Forged in Genocide traces the early history of colonial capitalism in Namibia with a central focus on migrants who came to be key to the economy duri...
The Audiobook's Century-Long Overnight Success
24 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today we present the first episode of a miniseries on audiobooks by getting into the history and theory of the medium. Audiobooks are having a moment—...
Surekha Davies, "Humans: A Monstrous History" (U California Press, 2025)
23 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Monsters are central to how we think about the human condition. Join award-winning historian of science in Humans: A Monstrous History (University o...
Maggie M. Cao, "Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
22 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies (University of Chicago Press, 2025) by Dr. Maggie Cao is the first book to offer a synthe...
Mick Brown, "The Nirvana Express: How the Search for Enlightenment Went West" (Oxford UP, 2023)
21 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Mick Brown’s The Nirvana Express: How the Search for Enlightenment Went West (Oxford UP, 2023) is a riveting account about the West's engagement w...
Joseph A. Seeley, "Border of Water and Ice: The Yalu River and Japan's Empire in Korea and Manchuria" (Cornell UP, 2024)
20 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Icy, unpredictable, and treacherous, the dangers of the Yalu River were heightened in the twentieth century when it became the longest non-maritime bo...
Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe, "Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, and Cult" (Ibidem Press, 2014)
19 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist (Ibidem Verlag, 2014) is the first comprehensive and scholarly biography of the U...
Martin Spychal, "Mapping the State: English Boundaries and the 1832 Reform Act" (U London Press, 2024)
18 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The 1832 Reform Act was a landmark moment in the development of modern British politics. By overhauling the country’s ancient representative system,...
Laurel Leff, "Well Worth Saving: American Universities' Life-And-Death Decisions on Refugees from Nazi Europe" (Yale UP, 2019)
17 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Well Worth Saving (Yale University Press, 2019), Professor Laurel Leff explores how American universities responded to the sudden and urgent appe...
Selena Wisnom, "The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of the Modern World" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
16 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When a team of Victorian archaeologists dug into a grassy hill in Iraq, they chanced upon one of the oldest and greatest stores of knowledge ever seen...
Chiara Faggella, "Becoming Couture: The Italian Fashion Industry after the Second World War" (Manchester UP, 2024)
15 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Becoming couture: The Italian fashion industry after the Second World War (Manchester University Press, 2024) by Dr. Chiara Faggella is the first boo...
Melissa Vise, "The Unruly Tongue: Speech and Violence in Medieval Italy" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
14 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Unruly Tongue: Speech and Violence in Medieval Italy (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025) by Dr. Melissa Vise, offers a new account of how th...
Patrick Beldio, "The Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram: Co-Creator of the Integral Yoga" (Lexington Books, 2024)
13 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram: Co-Creator of the Integral Yoga (Lexington Books, 2024) analyzes the contributions of the Mother (née Mirra ...
Harriet Atkinson, "Showing Resistance: Propaganda and Modernist Exhibitions in Britain, 1933-53" (Manchester UP, 2024)
12 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How did exhibitions become a vital tool for public communication in early twentieth century Britain? Showing resistance reveals how exhibitions were t...
Martha Bayless, "Entertainment, Pleasure, and Meaning in Early England" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
11 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The people of early England (c. 450–1100 CE) enjoyed numerous kinds of entertainment, recreation and pleasure, but the scattered records of such thi...
Jamie Jelinski, "Needle Work: A History of Commercial Tattooing in Canada" (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2024)
10 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1891 J. Murakami travelled from Japan, via San Francisco, to Vancouver Island and began working in and around Victoria. His occupation: creating pe...
On Barak, "Heat, a History: Lessons from the Middle East for a Warming Planet" (U California Press, 2024)
10 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Despite the flames of record-breaking temperatures licking at our feet, most people fail to fully grasp the gravity of environmental overheating. What...
Lina-Maria Murillo, "Fighting for Control: Power, Reproductive Care, and Race in the US-Mexico Borderlands" (UNC Press, 2025)
09 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The first birth control clinic in El Paso, Texas, opened in 1937. Since then, Mexican-origin women living in the border cities of El Paso and Ciudad J...
Andrew G. Walder, "Civil War in Guangxi: The Cultural Revolution on China's Southern Periphery" (Stanford UP, 2023)
09 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Guangxi, a region on China's southern border with Vietnam, has a large population of ethnic minorities and a history of rebellion and intergroup confl...
Kristin A. Olbertson, "The Dreadful Word: Speech Crime and Polite Gentlemen in Massachusetts, 1690–1776" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
09 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Dreadful Word: Speech Crime and Polite Gentlemen in Massachusetts, 1690–1776 (Cambridge University Press, 2022) by Dr. Kristin Olbertson is the...
Andrew C. Isenberg, "The Age of the Borderlands: Indians, Slaves, and the Limits of Manifest Destiny, 1790-1850" (UNC Press, 2025)
09 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Most US history textbooks contain a familiar map: shaded colors stretch across North America, clearly and neatly demarcating the extent of US expansi...
Kirsten L. Scheid, "Fantasmic Objects: Art and Sociality from Lebanon, 1920–1950" (Indiana UP, 2022)
09 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Fantasmic Objects: Art and Sociality from Lebanon, 1920–1950 (Indiana UP, 2022), Kirsten L. Scheid offers a striking study of both modern art i...
Margaret Peacock, "Frequencies of Deceit: How Global Propaganda Wars Shaped the Middle East" (U California Press, 2025)
08 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On June 8, 1967, Egypt's most famous radio broadcaster, Ahmed Said, reported that Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian forces had defeated the Israeli army...
Anthony Grafton, "Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa" (Harvard UP, 2023)
08 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa (Harvard UP, 2023) is a revelatory new account of the magus―the learned magician―and his place i...
Jørgen Møller and Jonathan Doucette, "The Catholic Church and European State Formation, AD 1000-1500" (Oxford UP, 2022)
08 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Generations of social scientists and historians have argued that the escape from empire and consequent fragmentation of power - across and within poli...
Jeremy Black, "A History of the Railroad in 100 Maps" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
08 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Since their origins in eighteenth-century England, railroads have spread across the globe, changing everything in their path, from where and how peopl...
Richard Heppner, "Woodstock: From World War to Culture Wars" (SUNY Press, 2024)
07 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Few towns in America are as famous as Woodstock, New York—although Woodstock may be most famous for an event that happened many miles away! Long bef...
Gary Griggs, "California Catastrophes: The Natural Disaster History of the Golden State" (U California Press, 2024)
07 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
California has more natural hazards per square mile than any other state, but this hasn’t deterred people from moving here. Entire California towns ...
Nir Arielli, "The Dead Sea: A 10,000 Year History" (Yale UP, 2025)
07 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Dead Sea is a place of many contradictions. Hot springs around the lake are famed for their healing properties, though its own waters are deadly t...
Eric Dienstfrey, "Making Stereo Fit: The History of a Disquieting Film Technology" (U California Press, 2024)
07 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Surround sound is often mistaken as a relatively new phenomenon in cinemas, one that emerged in the 1970s with the arrival of Dolby. Making Stereo Fi...
Manu Pillai, "Gods, Guns and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity" (Allen Lane, 2025)
06 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What is Hinduism? For centuries, that question was particularly thorny, both for local Indians and for colonial outsiders. People inside and outside t...
Georgia Finnegan, "Grace & Grit: A History of Ballet in Minnesota" (Afton Historical Society, 2024)
06 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The names are iconic and familiar to anyone in Minnesota with an interest in dance: the Andaházy School of Classical Ballet, Minnesota Dance Theatre,...
Maria Kaika and Luca Ruggiero, "Class Meets Land: The Embodied History of Land Financialization" (U California Press, 2024)
06 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Class Meets Land: The Embodied History of Land Financialization (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Maria Kaika & Dr. Luca Ruggiero reveals...
Janam Mukherjee, "Hungry Bengal: War, Famine and the End of Empire" (Oxford UP, 2015)
06 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The years leading up to the independence and accompanying partition of India mark a tumultuous period in the history of Bengal. Representing both a ma...
Elizabeth T. Craft, "Yankee Doodle Dandy: George M. Cohan and the Broadway Stage" (Oxford UP, 2024)
05 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
George M. Cohan was one of those rare Broadway figures who was a composer, lyricist, playwright, performer, director, theater owner, and star actor. H...
Arwen P. Mohun, "American Imperialist: Cruelty and Consequence in the Scramble for Africa" (Chicago UP, 2023)
05 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This biography of “African explorer” Richard Dorsey Mohun, written by one of his descendants, reveals how American greed and state power helped sh...
Stefan Cristian Ionescu, "Justice and Restitution in Post-Nazi Romania: Rebuilding Jewish Lives and Communities, 1944-1950" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
05 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On 23rd August 1944, following the collapse of the pro-Nazi dictatorship of Ion Antonescu, Romania changed sides and abandoned the Axis to join the Al...
John Coakley ed et al., "The Problem of Piracy in the Early Modern World: Maritime Predation, Empire, and the Construction of Authority at Sea" (Amsterdam UP, 2024)
04 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the early modern period, both legal and illegal maritime predation was a common occurrence, but the expansion of European maritime empires exacerba...
Robert C. Austin, "Royal Fraud: The Story of Albania's First and Last King" (Central European UP, 2024)
04 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Listen to this engaging podcast with historian Robert Austin, the author of Royal Fraud: The Story of Albania's First and Last King (Central Europea...
Michael Visontay, "Noble Fragments: The Gripping Story of the Antiquarian Bookseller Who Broke Up a Gutenberg Bible" (Scribe, 2024)
04 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
One hundred years ago, Gabriel Wells, a New York bookseller, committed a crime against history. He broke up the world’s greatest book, the Gutenberg...
Kyle Orland, "Minesweeper" (Boss Fight Books, 2023)
04 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If you had some free time and a Windows PC in the 1990s, your mouse probably crawled its way to Minesweeper, an exciting watch-where-you-click puzzle ...
Isabel Moreira, "Balthild of Francia: Anglo-Saxon Slave, Merovingian Queen, and Abolitionist Saint" (Oxford UP, 2024)
03 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This book tells the remarkable life of Balthild of Francia (c. 633-80), a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon slave who became a queen of France. Described in...
Robert Houghton, "The Middle Ages in Computer Games: Ludic Approaches to the Medieval and Medievalism" (Boydell & Brewer, 2024)
03 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Games with a medieval setting are commercially lucrative and reach a truly massive audience. Moreover, they can engage their players in a manner that ...
László Borhi, "Survival under Dictatorships: Life and Death in Nazi and Communist Regimes" (Central European UP, 2024)
03 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A complex array of individual responses to the abuse of power by the state is represented in this book in three horrific episodes in the history of Ea...
Christos Lynteris, "Visual Plague: The Emergence of Epidemic Photography" (MIT Press, 2022)
02 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How epidemic photography during a global pandemic of bubonic plague contributed to the development of modern epidemiology and our concept of the “pa...
Hallie Franks, "Ancient Sculpture and Twentieth-Century American Womanhood: Venus Envy" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
02 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ancient Sculpture and Twentieth-Century American Womanhood: Venus Envy (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Hallie Franks examines the reception of Graeco-Roman...
David N. Livingstone, "The Empire of Climate: A History of an Idea" (Princeton UP, 2024)
02 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Scientists, journalists, and politicians increasingly tell us that human impacts on climate constitute the single greatest threat facing our planet an...
Caroline Dunn, "Ladies-in-waiting in Medieval England" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
02 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Caroline Dunn joins Jana Byars to talk about her new book, Ladies-in-Waiting in Medieval England (Cambridge UP, 2025), which examines female attend...
Ellen Fenzel Arnold, "Medieval Riverscapes: Environment and Memory in Northwest Europe, C. 300-1100" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
01 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jana Byars talks to Ellen Arnold about Medieval Riverscapes: Environment and Memory in Northwest Europe, 300 - 1100 (Cambridge UP, 2024). Fishermen...
Timothy P. R. Weaver, "Inequality, Crime, and Resistance in New York City" (Temple UP, 2025)
01 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Looking closely at New York City's political development since the 1970s, three "political orders"--conservativism, neoliberalism, and egalitarianism-...
Dawn Day Biehler, "Animating Central Park: A Multispecies History" (U Washington Press, 2024)
01 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From deer and beavers to “free range” pigs and goats in and around Seneca Village, what we now know as Central Park has long been home to an abund...
Ian G. Baird, "Champassak Royalty and Sovereignty: Within and Between Nation-States in Mainland Southeast Asia" (U Wisconsin Press, 2024)
01 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Before the creation of the European colonial states in the nineteenth century, Southeast Asia had hundreds of royal families, large and small. Today, ...
Sam Srauy, "Race, Culture and the Video Game Industry: A Vicious Circuit" (Routledge, 2024)
01 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
My guest today Sam Srauy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Journalism, and Public Relations at Oakland University, Her res...
Aliyah Khan on the Muslim Caribbean
28 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Saeed Khan and Chella Ward sat down with Dr Aliyah Khan to discuss Muslimness in the Caribbean, drawing on Aliyah’s book Far From ...
Matthew Hughes, "Britain's Pacification of Palestine" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
28 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this complete military history of Britain's pacification of the Arab revolt in Palestine, Britain's Pacification of Palestine (Cambridge UP, 2019...
Mike Sielski, "Magic in the Air: The Myth, the Mystery, and the Soul of the Slam Dunk" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)
26 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The evolution of basketball, and much of the social and cultural change in America, can be traced through one powerful act on the court: the slam dunk...
Doina Anca Cretu, "Foreign Aid and State Building in Interwar Romania" (Stanford UP, 2025)
26 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The decades following World War I were a period of political, social, and economic transformation for Central and Eastern Europe. Foreign Aid and Sta...
Yuval Ben-Bassat and Johann Büssow, "Late Ottoman Gaza: An Eastern Mediterranean Hub in Transformation" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
26 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today, when we think about Gaza we think about the war, the destruction of the city and the constant movement of its population. In contemporary publi...
Gemma Hollman, "Women in the Middle Ages: Illuminating the World of Peasants, Nuns, and Queens" (Abbeville Press, 2024)
26 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Medieval women ruled over kingdoms, abbeys, and households; produced stunning works of art and craft; and did the hard work that kept ordinary familie...
David R. Saunders, "Chasing Archipelagic Dreams: The Expansion of Foreign Influence in Sabah amid the End of Empire, 1945–1965" (Cornell UP, 2024)
25 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Chasing Archipelagic Dreams: The Expansion of Foreign Influence in Sabah amid the End of Empire, 1945–1965 (Cornell University Press, 2024), Dr...
Jenny Shaw, "The Women of Rendezvous: A Transatlantic Story of Family and Slavery" (UNC Press, 2024)
23 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Women of Rendezvous: A Transatlantic Story of Family and Slavery (UNC Press, 2024) is a dramatic transatlantic story about five women who birthe...
Benjamin Heber Johnson, "Texas: An American History" (Yale UP, 2025)
23 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There's more to Texas than hats, oil, and BBQ, writes Benjamin Johnson in his sweeping new synthesis, Texas: An American History (Yale UP: 2025) - ...
Thanasis S. Fotiou, "Hitler’s Hunting Squad in Southern Europe: The Bloody Path of Fritz Schubert through Occupied Crete and Macedonia" (Pen and Sword, 2024)
23 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Hitler’s Hunting Squad in Southern Europe: The Bloody Path of Fritz Schubert through Occupied Crete and Macedonia (Pen and Sword, 2024) traces the ...
Catherine Lila Chou and Mark Harrison, "Revolutionary Taiwan: Making Nationhood in a Changing World Order" (Cambria Press, 2024)
23 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Popular English-language discourse about Taiwan often contains tropes like how “Taiwan is the real China” or how Taiwan “split with China in 194...
Megan Moran, "Gender and Family Networks in Early Modern Italy" (Amsterdam UP, 2024)
23 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Women from the Ricasoli and Spinelli families formed a wide variety of social networks within and beyond Florence through their letters as they negoti...
Rhiannon Stephens, "Poverty and Wealth in East Africa: A Conceptual History" (Duke UP, 2022)
22 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Poverty and Wealth in East Africa: A Conceptual History (Duke UP, 2022), Rhiannon Stephens offers a conceptual history of how people living in ea...
Ilan Stavans, "Latino USA: A Cartoon History" (Basic Books, 2024)
22 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This interview includes Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera, Professor of Humanities, Universidad de Puerto Rico-Mayagüez (UPR-M); Annette Martínez-Iñesta, Inst...
Shay A. Pilnik, "The Ravine of Memory: Babyn Yar Between the Holocaust and the Great Patriotic War" (Purdue UP, 2025)
22 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Nazis and their collaborators buried over 100,000 victims at Babyn Yar, a ravine in modern-day Ukraine. Most of the individuals were Jewish, makin...
Andrew Jotischky, "The Monastic World: A 1,200-Year History" (Yale UP, 2024)
21 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From the late Roman Empire onwards, monasteries and convents were a common sight throughout Europe. But who were monasteries for? What kind of people ...
Adnan Husain on Reorienting History
21 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Chella Ward and Salman Sayyid talked to Adnan Husain about some of the challenges involved in reorienting history. We spoke about the...
Noa Shashar, "The Marital Knot: Agunot in the Ashkenazi Realm, 1648-1850" (Brandeis UP, 2024)
21 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In The Marital Knot: Agunot in the Ashkenazi Realm, 1648 - 1850 (Brandeis UP, 2024), Noa Shashar sheds light on Jewish family life in the early m...
Martyn Percy, "The Crisis of Colonial Anglicanism: Empire, Slavery and Revolt in the Church of England" (Hurst, 2025)
21 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Crisis of Colonial Anglicanism: Empire, Slavery and Revolt in the Church of England (Hurst, 2025) by Dr. Martyn Percy offers a bold and unsettlin...
Susan Tate Ankeny, "American Flygirl" (Citadel Press, 2024)
20 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1931, Hazel Ying Lee, a nineteen-year-old American daughter of Chinese immigrants, sat in on a friend’s flight lesson. It changed her life. In le...
Mario Cams and Elke Papelitzky, "Remapping the World in East Asia: Toward a Global History of the 'Ricci Maps'" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
20 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When we think of the sixteenth-century arrival of European missionaries in East Asia, there is a tendency to imagine this meeting as a civilizational ...
Tahir Kamran, "Chequered Past, Uncertain Future: The History of Pakistan" (Reaktion Books, 2024)
20 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Pakistan’s history since independence is…complicated. Partition wrecked the economy, leaving all the economic infrastructure in India. Democracy w...
The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at the New Yorker
19 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Our book is: The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at the New Yorker (Mariner Books, 2024) by Dr. Amy Reading, which is a lively and intimate bi...
Xian Wang, "Gendered Memories: An Imaginary Museum for Ding Ling and Chinese Female Revolutionary Martyrs" (U Michigan Press, 2025)
19 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Gendered Memories: An Imaginary Museum for Ding Ling and Chinese Female Revolutionary Martyrs (U Michigan Press, 2025) takes readers on a journey th...
Nicole Lobdell, "X-Ray" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
19 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
X-rays are powerful. Moving through objects undetected, revealing the body as a tryptic of skin, tissue, and bone. X-rays gave rise to a transparent w...
Asheesh Kapur Siddique, "The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World" (Yale UP, 2024)
19 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Over the span of two hundred years, Great Britain established, governed, lost, and reconstructed an empire that embraced three continents and two ocea...
Emine Ö Evered, "Prohibition in Turkey: Alcohol and the Politics of Identity" (U Texas Press, 2024)
19 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Historian Emine Ö. Evered’s Prohibition in Turkey: Alcohol and the Politics of Identity (University of Texas Press, 2024) investigates the histo...
Lori A. Flores, "Awaiting Their Feast: Latinx Food Workers and Activism from World War II to Covid-19" (UNC Press, 2025)
18 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Though Latinx foodways are eagerly embraced and consumed by people across the United States, the nation exhibits a much more fraught relationship with...
Adam R. Nelson, "Exchange of Ideas: The Economy of Higher Education in Early America" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
18 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Exchange of Ideas: The Economy of Higher Education in Early America (U Chicago Press, 2023) launches a breathtakingly ambitious new economic history ...
Yoni Appelbaum, "Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of Prosperity" (Random House, 2025)
18 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We take it for granted that good neighborhoods—with good schools and good housing—are inaccessible to all but the very wealthy. But, in America, t...
Kathryn Taylor, "Ordering Customs: Ethnographic Thought in Early Modern Venice" (U Delaware Press, 2023)
18 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ordering Customs: Ethnographic Thought in Early Modern Venice (University of Delaware Press, 2023) explores how Renaissance Venetians sought to make ...