New Books in Intellectual History

Bradley R. Simpson, "The First Right: Self-Determination and the Transformation of International Order, 1941-2000" (Oxford UP, 2025)

25 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The idea of self-determination is one of the most significant in modern international politics. For more than a century diplomats, lawyers, scholars, ...

Christian Raffensperger, "Authorship, Worldview, and Identity in Medieval Europe" (Routledge, 2022)

24 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

What did medieval authors know about their world? Were they parochial and focused on just their monastery, town, or kingdom? Or were they aware of the...

Michelle Henning, "A Dirty History of Photography: Chemistry, Fog, and Empire" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

22 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In A Dirty History of Photography: Chemistry, Fog, and Empire (U Chicago Press, 2026), Professor Michelle Henning presents an environmental history...

Michael P.M. Fox et al., eds., " Framing the First World War: How Divergent Views Shaped a Global Conflict" (UP of Kansas, 2025)

21 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The character of the conflict that erupted in 1914 defied the expectations of many political leaders and military analysts. Despite the mountains of b...

Duncan Kelly, "Worlds of Wartime: The First World War and the Reconstruction of Modern Politics" (Oxford UP, 2025)

19 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Worlds of Wartime: The First World War and the Reconstruction of Modern Politics (Oxford University Press, 2025) by Duncan Kelly is a new intellectu...

John Samuel Harpham, "Intellectual Origins of American Slavery: English Ideas in the Early Modern Atlantic World" (Harvard UP, 2025)

19 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The period from 1550 to 1700 was critical in the development of slavery across the English Atlantic world. During this time, English discourse about s...

Mark Christian Thompson, "Phenomenal Blackness: Black Power, Philosophy, and Theory" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

18 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Mark Christian Thompson's book, Phenomenal Blackness: Black Power, Philosophy, and Theory (University of Chicago Press, 2022) examines the changin...

Keidrick Roy, "American Dark Age: Racial Feudalism and the Rise of Black Liberalism" (Princeton UP, 2024)

18 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Though the United States has been heralded as a beacon of democracy, many nineteenth-century Americans viewed their nation through the prism of the Ol...

Catherine Clarke, "A History of England in 25 Poems" (Penguin, 2025)

17 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

This is the history of England told in a new way: glimpsed through twenty-five remarkable poems written down between the eighth century and today, whi...

Mary E. Stuckey, "Remembering Jefferson: Who He Was, Who We Are" (UP of Kansas, 2025)

17 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Mary E. Stuckey, the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Communication Arts & Sciences at Pennsylvania State University, has a brilliant new book that dive...

Sheiba Kian Kaufman, "Persian Paradigms in Early Modern English Drama" (Oxford UP, 2025)

15 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Persian Paradigms in Early Modern English Drama examines the concept of early modern globality and the development of European toleration discourse t...

Angie Hobbs, "Why Plato Matters Now" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

14 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Does Plato matter? An ancient philosopher whose work has inspired and informed countless thinkers and poets across the centuries, his ideas are no lon...

Miriam Udel, "Modern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish Children's Literature" (Princeton UP, 2025)

14 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

As migration carried Yiddish to several continents during the long twentieth century, an increasingly global community of speakers and readers clung t...

Douglas Greene, "In Stalin's Shadow: Trotsky and the Legacy of the Moscow Trials" (Resistance Books, 2025)

14 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Most people on the contemporary left see Stalin as an unfortunate stain on the history of the global left, a part of the historical process that we’...

Noam Sienna, "Jewish Books in North Africa: Between the Early Modern and Modern Worlds" (Indiana UP, 2025)

13 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Author Noam Sienna unveils a vast Sephardic world created by these books. This literary network transcended geographical boundaries, connecting Jewish...

Paul J. Gutacker, "The Old Faith in a New Nation: American Protestants and the Christian Past" (Oxford UP, 2023)

13 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Conventional wisdom holds that tradition and history meant little to nineteenth-century American Protestants, who relied on common sense and "the Bibl...

Shuchen Xiang, "Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea" (Princeton UP, 2023)

12 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

A provocative defense of a forgotten Chinese approach to identity and difference. Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastr...

Tony Spawforth, "What the Greeks Did for Us" (Yale UP, 2023)

11 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Our contemporary world is inescapably Greek. Whether in a word like “pandemic,” a Freudian state of mind like the “Oedipus complex,” or a repl...

Jürgen Zimmerer, "Memory Wars: New German Historical Consciousness" (Reclam Verlag, 2023)

10 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Erinnerungskämpfe: Neues deutsches Geschichtsbewusstsein (Ditzingen: Reclam, 2023) is a new, provocative volume on German memory cultures and poli...

Moritz Föllmer, "The Quest for Individual Freedom: A Twentieth-Century European History" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

09 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

What does it mean to see oneself as free? And how can this freedom be attained in times of conflict and social upheaval? In this ambitious study, Mori...

D. J. Taylor, "Orwell: The New Life" (Pegasus Books, 2023)

09 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

A fascinating exploration of George Orwell--and his body of work--by an award-winning Orwellian biographer and scholar, presenting the author anew to ...

Matt Dawson, "The Political Durkheim: Sociology, Socialism, Legacies" (Routledge, 2023)

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Matt Dawson's The Political Durkheim: Sociology, Socialism, Legacies (Routledge, 2023) presents Durkheim as an important political sociologist, ins...

Jim Endersby, "The Arrival of the Fittest: Biology's Imaginary Futures, 1900-1935" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

07 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The Arrival of the Fittest: Biology’s Imaginary Futures, 1900–1935 by Jim Endersby In the early twentieth century, varied audiences took biology...

Alison Stone, "Women Philosophers in Nineteenth-Century Britain" (Oxford UP, 2023)

07 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Many women wrote philosophy in nineteenth-century Britain, and they wrote across the full range of philosophical topics. Yet these important women thi...

Mike Jay, "Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind" (Yale UP, 2023)

06 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Mike Jay's Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind (Yale UP, 2023) is a provocative and original history of the scientists and writers...

Richard Wolin, "Heidegger in Ruins: Between Philosophy and Ideology" (Yale UP, 2023)

05 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

What does it mean when a radical understanding of National Socialism is inextricably embedded in the work of the twentieth century's most important ph...

Youshaa Patel, "The Muslim Difference: Defining the Line Between Believers and Unbelievers from Early Islam to the Present" (Yale UP, 2023)

04 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

According to a famous prophetic report, “Whoever imitates a people becomes one of them.” What does “imitation” here mean? Rather, what does th...

Philip J. Stern, "Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism" (Harvard UP, 2023)

04 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Philip Stern places the corporation―more than the Crown―at the heart of British colonialism, arguing that companies built and governed global empi...

Betty Milan, "Analyzed by Lacan: A Personal Account" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

03 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Analyzed by Lacan: A Personal Account (Bloomsbury, 2023) brings together the first English translations of Why Lacan, Betty Milan's memoir of her a...

Andrew S. Curran, "Biography of a Dangerous Idea: A New History of Race from Louis XIV to Thomas Jefferson" (Other Press, 2026)

02 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

An engaging investigation of how 13 key Enlightenment figures shaped the concept of race, from the acclaimed author of Diderot and the Art of Thinking...

Baijayanti Roy, "The Nazi Study of India and Indian Anti-Colonialism" (Oxford UP, 2024)

01 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The Nazi Study of India and Indian Anti-Colonialism (2024) is the first detailed and critical study of the intellectual and political connections tha...

Amit Varshizky, "The Metaphysics of Race: Science and Faith in the Nazi Worldview" (Taylor & Francis, 2024)

31 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Metaphysics of Race seeks to reframe debates on the conflicting scientific and spiritual traditions that underpinned the Nazi worldview, showing ...

Scott A. Mitchell, "The Making of American Buddhism" (Oxford UP, 2023)

30 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Scott A. Mitchell is the Dean of Students and Faculty Affairs and holds the Yoshitaka Tamai Professorial Chair at the Institute of Buddhist Studies in...

Martin Jay, "Immanent Critiques: The Frankfurt School under Pressure" (Verso, 2023)

30 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Frankfurt School’s own legacy is best preserved by exercising an immanent critique of its premises and the conclusions to which they often led. ...

Philippe Huneman, "Why?: The Philosophy Behind the Question" (Stanford UP, 2023)

29 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why did triceratops have horns? Why did World War I occur? Why does Romeo love Juliet? And, most importantly, why ask why? In Why?: The Philosophy Be...

Lisa Silverman, "The Postwar Antisemite: Culture and Complicity After the Holocaust" (Oxford UP, 2025)

28 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In his influential Anti-Semite and Jew, French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre observed "If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him." In...

Lin Hongxuan, "Ummah Yet Proletariat: Islam, Marxism, and the Making of the Indonesian Republic" (Oxford UP, 2023)

25 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In contemporary Indonesia the idea that Islam and Marxism are inherently incompatible has become deeply entrenched. However, as Lin Hongxuan's work U...

Douglas Morris, "Legal Sabotage: Ernst Fraenkel in Hitler's Germany" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

25 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

During the mid-1930s, Germans opposed to Adolf Hitler had only a limited range of options available to them for resisting the Nazi regime. One of the ...

Marcus Willaschek, "Kant: A Revolution in Thinking" (Harvard UP, 2025)

24 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Immanuel Kant is undoubtedly the most important philosopher of the modern era. His Critique of Pure Reason, “categorical imperative,” and con...

Johannes Zachhuber, "Gregory of Nyssa: on the Hexaemeron: Text, Translation, and Essays" (Oxford UP, 2025)

22 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Johannes Zachhuber and Anna Marmodoro, eds., Gregory of Nyssa: On the Hexaemeron: Text, Translation, and Essays (Oxford UP, 2025) This book present...

Zubeda Jalalzai, "Literary License and the West’s Romance with Afghanistan" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

22 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of New Books Network, I speak with Zubeda Jalalzai about her book Literary License and the West’s Romance with Afghanistan (...

Kwame Nkrumah and Pan-Africanism’s High Tide: A Conversation with Howard W. French

20 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide (Liveright, 2025), the second work in a trilogy from best-sellin...

Shiben Banerji, "Lineages of the Global City: Occult Modernism and the Spiritualization of Democracy" (U Texas Press, 2025)

18 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

War, revolution, genocide, rebellion, slump. The economic and political turmoil of the early twentieth century seemed destined to rip asunder the ties...

Graham Harman, "Waves and Stones: The Continuous and the Discontinuous in Human Thought" (Allen Lane, 2025)

15 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A new exploration of our conception of reality, by one of the world’s most influential philosophers.How do we understand the world and our place in ...

Mike Bird, "The Land Trap: A New History of the World's Oldest Asset" (Penguin, 2025)

14 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In The Land Trap (Portfolio / Penguin), Mike Bird—Wall Street editor at The Economist—reveals how this ancient asset still exerts outsize influe...

Negar Mansouri and Daniel R. Quiroga-Villamarín eds., "Ways of Seeing International Organisations: New Perspectives for International Institutional Law" (Cambridge UP, 2025

13 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For decades, the field of scholarship that studies the law and practice of international organisations -also known as 'international institutional law...

Liang Qichao, "Thoughts from the Ice-Drinker’s Studio: Essays on China and the World" (Penguin Classics, 2023)

13 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Thoughts from the Ice-Drinker’s Studio: Essays on China and the World (Penguin Classics, 2023) brings together a newly translated selection of pre-...

Edward McPherson, "Look Out: The Delight and Danger of Taking the Long View" (Astra House, 2025)

13 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Look Out: The Delight and Danger of Taking the Long View (Astra House, 2025) by Edward McPherson is an exploration of long-distance mapping, aerial p...

Dan Edelstein, "The Revolution to Come: A History of an Idea from Thucydides to Lenin" (Princeton UP, 2025)

10 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Political thinkers from Plato to John Adams saw revolutions as a grave threat to society and advocated for a constitution that prevented them by balan...

Éléna Choquette, "Land and the Liberal Project: Canada’s Violent Expansion" (UBC Press, 2024)

06 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1867, Canada was a small country flanking the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes, but within a few years its claims to sovereignty spanned the cont...

Adam Silverstein, "Haman" (Princeton UP, 2025)

05 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Haman, infamous as the antagonist in the book of Esther, appears as a villainous figure in virtually all varieties of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam...

Carolyn J. Eichner, "Feminism's Empire" (Cornell UP, 2022)

04 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...

Elizabeth Chika Tippett, "The Master-Servant Doctrine: How Old Legal Rules Haunt the Modern Workplace" (U California Press, 2025)

04 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The field of employment law used to be called "master-servant law." Even if this term has fallen out of favor, a central truth has not changed: modern...

Maria Bach, "Relocating Development Economics: The First Generation of Modern Indian Economists" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

03 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Originating in the Nineteenth Century, the European idea of development was shaped around the premise that the West possessed progressive characterist...

The Renaissance of Marxist Studies: A Discussion with Babak Amini

03 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The last few years have seen a resurgence of interest in academic research in Marxism and related fields, and many researchers have been stepping up t...

Philip Pettit, "The State" (Princeton UP, 2023)

02 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In The State (Princeton University Press, 2023), the prominent political philosopher Philip Pettit embarks on a massive undertaking, offering a majo...

John Kieschnick, "Buddhist Historiography in China" (Columbia UP, 2022)

01 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Since the early days of Buddhism in China, monastics and laity alike have expressed a profound concern with the past. In voluminous historical works, ...

Yoram Hazony, "Conservatism: A Rediscovery" (Regnery Publishing, 2022)

29 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Conservatism needs to be rediscovered. That is, it needs to be differentiated from the post WWII concept of liberal democracy and return to its tradit...

Sarah Ruden, "Vergil: The Poet's Life" (Yale UP, 2023)

28 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Aeneid stands as a towering work of Classical Roman literature and a gripping dramatization of the best and worst of human nature. In the proces...

Ithamar Theodor, "The Philosophy of the Bhagavad-Gita" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

27 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Bhagavad Gita is a world classic often considered to be not just the 'Hindu Bible' but sometimes the 'Indian Bible' as well. Over the last two cen...

Jochen Hellbeck, "World Enemy No. 1: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews" (Penguin Group, 2025)

26 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’...

Maia Kotrosits, "After Transformation: Rewriting Time, Christian Late Antiquity, and the Present" (Duke UP, 2025)

25 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...

Verena Halsmayer on Managing Growth in Miniature: Solow’s Model as an Artifact

24 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, chats with Verena Halsmeyer, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Vienna, about her recent, award-winning boo...

Mary Edwards, "Sartre’s Existential Psychoanalysis: Knowing Others" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

23 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Thinking of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, it is hard to think of him without imagining him in very particular contexts. One will likely ima...

David Chanoff, "Anthony Benezet: Quaker, Abolitionist, Anti-Racist" (U Georgia Press, 2025)

22 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Wilberforce, Clarkson, Wesley. Britain’s great abolitionist activist Granville Sharp. Each of these consequential figures of the eighteenth-century ...

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...

Yehudah Halper, "Averroes on Pathways to Divine Knowledge" (Academic Studies Press, 2025)

19 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today we will be talking to Yehudah Halper about his new book, Averroes on Pathways to Divine Knowledge (Academic Studies Press, 2025). The twe...

David Boyk, "Provincial Metropolis: Intellectuals and the Hinterland in Colonial India" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

18 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...

Bryan A. Banks, "Write to Return: Huguenot Refugees on the Frontiers of the French Enlightenment" (McGill-Queen's, 2024)

15 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The revocation of the Edict of Nantes led more than 200,000 Huguenots to flee France after 1685. Many settled close to the country's frontiers, where...

Lars Cornelissen, "Neoliberalism and Race" (Stanford UP, 2025)

11 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Neoliberalism and Race (Stanford UP, 2025) Lars Cornelissen argues that the category of race constitutes an organizing principle of neolib...

Dag Nikolaus Hasse, "What Is European? On Overcoming Colonial and Romantic Modes of Thought" (Amsterdam UP, 2025)

11 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It is common to define Europe by its democratic, scientific, religious, and cultural traditions. But in What is European? On Overcoming Colonial and ...

Amie Thomasson, "Rethinking Metaphysics" (Oxford UP, 2025)

10 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The word “metaphysics” conjures up thoughts of very hard questions about reality and deep, perhaps unresolvable, metaphysical mysteries. But is th...

Ellen Muehlberger, "Things Unseen: Essays on Evidence, Knowledge, and the Late Ancient World" (U California Press, 2025)

10 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 ...

Nerina Rustomji, "The Beauty of the Houri: Heavenly Virgins and Feminine Ideals" (Oxford UP, 2021)

09 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In her scintillating new book, The Beauty of the Houri: Heavenly Virgins, Feminine Ideals (Oxford UP, 2021), Nerina Rustomji presents a fascinating...

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...

Yunxiang Gao, "Arise Africa, Roar China: Black and Chinese Citizens of the World in the Twentieth Century" (UNC Press, 2021)

08 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Arise Africa, Roar China: Black and Chinese Citizens of the World in the Twentieth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2021) explores the c...

The Technological Soul: Alex Priou on Modernity, Ideology, and the Limits of Reason

06 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI acting director Eli Karetny speaks with Alex Priou, Professor of Political Philosophy at the University...

Joshua Castellino, "Calibrating Colonial Crime: Reparations and The Crime of Unjust Enrichment" (Policy Press, 2025)

04 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

While decolonization liberated territories, it left the root causes of historical injustice unaddressed. Governance change did not address past wrongs...

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...

Natasha Piano, "Democratic Elitism: The Founding Myth of American Political Science" (Harvard UP, 2025)

01 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Do competitive elections secure democracy, or might they undermine it by breeding popular disillusionment with liberal norms and procedures? The so-ca...

Adair Rounthwaite, "This Is Not My World: Art and Public Space in Socialist Zagreb" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)

29 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This Is Not My World: Art and Public Spaces in Socialist Zagreb (U Minnesota Press, 2024) examines the Group of Six Authors—a collective of you...

Rick A López, "Rooted in Place: Botany, Indigeneity, and Art in the Construction of Mexican Nature, 1570-1914" (U Arizona Press, 2025)

28 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Since the first moment of conquest, colonizers and the colonized alike in Mexico confronted questions about what it meant to be from this place, what ...

Garrett Hardin’s Tragic Environmentalism

27 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

An ecologist in California claimed that the iron laws of nature locked humanity into destroying our environment. This meant that we must take drastic ...

Jeremy Swist, "Julian Augustus: Platonism, Myth and the Refounding of Rome" (Oxford UP, 2025)

27 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Roman emperor Julian (r. 361-363 CE) was a man of action and of letters, which he employed in an effort to return the Empire to the light of the p...

Michael Lazarus, "Absolute Ethical Life: Aristotle, Hegel and Marx" (Stanford UP, 2025)

26 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Absolute Ethical Life: Aristotle, Hegel and Marx by Michael Lazarus Karl Marx gave us not just a critique of the political economy of capital but a w...

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...

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...

Hector Vera, "Yardstick Nation: The Metric System in America" (Vanderbilt UP, 2025)

25 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why is there no metric system in the United States? Why is it that a country known for its openness to the future, its scientific innovations, and its...

Dagmar Wujastyk, "Indian Alchemy: Sources and Contexts" (Oxford UP, 2025)

23 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Indian Alchemy: Sources and Contexts (Oxford UP, 2025) serves to expand readers' understanding of what it meant to practice alchemy on the Indian su...

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...

Massimo Modonesi, "The Antagonistic Principle: Marxism and Political Action​" (Haymarket, 2019)

20 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What does it mean to be a political subject? This is one of the key questions asked by Massimo Modonesi in ​The Antagonistic Principle: Marxism and ...

Ladelle McWhorter, "Unbecoming Persons: The Rise and Demise of the Modern Moral Self" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

20 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How should one live? What should one do? And what do these questions have to do with being a good person? In Unbecoming Persons: The Rise and Demine ...

David Bressoud, "Calculus Reordered: A History of the Big Ideas" (Princeton UP, 2019)

19 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Calculus Reordered: A History of the Big Ideas (Princeton UP, 2019) takes readers on a remarkable journey through hundreds of years to tell the story ...

Thomas Smith, "Rewriting the First Crusade: Epistolary Culture in the Middle Ages" (Boydell & Brewer, 2024)

16 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The letters stemming from the First Crusade are premier sources for understanding the launch, campaign, and aftermath of the expedition. Between 1095 ...

Gianna Englert, "Democracy Tamed: French Liberalism and the Politics of Suffrage" (Oxford UP, 2024)

15 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Does good democratic government require intelligent, moral, and productive citizens? Can our political institutions educate the kind of citizens we wi...

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...

Ethan A. Everett, "The Investment Philosophers: Financial Lessons from the Great Thinkers" (Columbia Business School, 2025)

13 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What do Warren Buffett and Friedrich Nietzsche have in common? Why does Baruch Spinoza’s understanding of irrational emotions help explain financial...

Madeleine Chalmers, "French Technological Thought and the Nonhuman Turn" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)

13 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

French Technological Thought and the Nonhuman Turn  (Edinburgh University Press, 2024) traces a genealogy of thinking and writing about technology, ...

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...

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...