New Books in Intellectual History

James McElvenny, "A History of Modern Linguistics: From the Beginnings to World War II" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)

09 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ingrid Piller speaks with James McElvenny about his new book A History of Modern Linguistics: From the Beginnings to World War II (Edinburgh UP, ...

Matthew Robertson, "Puruṣa: Personhood in Ancient India" (Oxford UP, 2024)

09 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The concept of the puruṣa, or person, is implicated in a wide range of ancient texts throughout the Indian subcontinent. In Puruṣa: Personhood i...

Christopher Michael Blakley, "Empire of Brutality: Enslaved People and Animals in the British Atlantic World" (Louisiana State UP, 2023)

08 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Historians of early America, slavery, early African American history, the history of science, and environmental history have interrogated the complex ...

Eric Calderwood, "On Earth Or in Poems: The Many Lives of Al-Andalus" (Harvard UP, 2023)

08 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

During the Middle Ages, the Iberian Peninsula was home not to Spain and Portugal but rather to al-Andalus. Ruled by a succession of Islamic dynasties,...

Enactivism, Embodiment, and the Gorier Stuff with Marilyn Stendera

07 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode Pat speaks with Dr Marilyn Stendera, co-author (with Emily Hughes) of Heidegger’s Alternative History of Time (Routledge, 2024)...

Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, "The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market" (Bloomsbury. 2023)

05 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In their bestselling book Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway revealed the origins of climate change denial. Now, in The Big Myth: ...

Stefanos Geroulanos, "The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins" (Liveright, 2024)

04 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Books about the origins of humanity dominate bestseller lists, while national newspapers present breathless accounts of new archaeological findings an...

Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, "Merits of the Plague" (Penguin, 2023)

02 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Six hundred years ago, the author of this landmark work of history and religious thought—an esteemed judge, poet, and scholar in Cairo—survived th...

Alexej Lochmatow, "Public Knowledge in Cold War Poland: Scholarly Battles and the Clash of Virtues, 1945–1956" (Routledge, 2023)

01 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the years after World War II, Polish scholars and scientists faced a complex and deeply personal political reality, the result of a long and viole...

W. B. Allen, "Montesquieu's 'The Spirit of the Laws': A Critical Edition" (Anthem Press, 2023)

31 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Spirit of the Laws not only systematizes the foundational ideas of “separation of powers” and “balances and checks,” it provides the deci...

Huaping Lu-Adler, "Kant, Race, and Racism: Views from Somewhere" (Oxford UP, 2023)

31 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Kant scholars have paid relatively little attention to his raciology. They assume that his racism, as personal prejudice, can be disentangled from his...

Jeanelle K. Hope and Bill V. Mullen, "The Black Antifascist Tradition: Fighting Back from Anti-Lynching to Abolition" (Haymarket Books, 2024)

29 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The story of the fight against fascism across the African diaspora, revealing that Black antifascism has always been vital to global freedom struggles...

Aleksandar Bosković and Steven Teref, "Zenithism (1921-1927): A Yugoslav Avant-Garde Anthology" (Academic Studies Press, 2023)

29 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Zenithism (1921-1927): A Yugoslav Avant-Garde Anthology (Academic Studies Press, 2023) is the first-ever English language anthology of zenithism –...

Robin Waterfield, "Plato of Athens: A Life in Philosophy" (Oxford UP, 2023)

28 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The first ever biography of the founder of Western philosophy Considered by many to be the most important philosopher ever, Plato was born into a well...

Michael Ortiz, "Anti-Colonialism and the Crises of Interwar Fascism" (Bloombury, 2023)

27 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What is fascism? Is it an anomaly in the history of modern Europe? Or its culmination? In Anti-Colonialism and the Crises of Interwar Fascism (Bloom...

Jeffrey R. Di Leo, "Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: An Overview" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

27 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The most exhaustive mapping of contemporary literary theory to date, Jeffrey R. Di Leo's book Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: An Overview ...

Chia-ling Yang, "Appropriating Antiquity for Modern Chinese Painting" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

27 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The pursuit of antiquity was important for scholarly artists in constructing their knowledge of history and cultural identity in late imperial China. ...

William Bain, "Political Theology of International Order" (Oxford UP, 2020)

26 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Is contemporary international order truly a secular arrangement? Theorists of international relations typically adhere to a narrative that portrays th...

Colleen Taylor, "Irish Materialisms: The Nonhuman and the Making of Colonial Ireland, 1690-1830" (Oxford UP, 2024)

26 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Coins, flax, spinning wheels, mud, pigs. Each of these objects were ubiquitous in the premodern cultural representation of the Irish. Through case stu...

Aaron Clift, "Anticommunism in French Society and Politics, 1945-1953" (Oxford UP, 2023)

25 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Anticommunism in French Society and Politics, 1945-1953 (Oxford UP, 2023) evaluates the prevalence of anticommunism among the French population in 1...

Maarten Couttenier, "Anthropology and Race in Belgium and the Congo (1839-1922)" (Routledge, 2023)

24 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Maarten Couttenier's Anthropology and Race in Belgium and the Congo (1839-1922) (Routledge, 2023) examines the history of Belgian physical anthropo...

Marc-William Palen, "Pax Economica: Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade World" (Princeton UP, 2024)

23 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A new economic history which uncovers the forgotten left-wing, anti-imperial, pacifist origins of economic cosmopolitanism and free trade from the mid...

Stephen Phillips, "The Metaphysics of Meditation: Sri Aurobindo and Adi-Sakara on the Isa Upanisad" (Bloombury, 2024)

20 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In The Metaphysics of Meditation: Sri Aurobindo and Ādi Śaṅkara on the Īśā Upaniṣad (Bloomsbury 2024), Stephen Phillips argues that the two...

Stephanie Li, "Ugly White People: Writing Whiteness in Contemporary America" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

20 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

White Americans are confronting their whiteness more than ever before, with political and social shifts ushering in a newfound racial awareness. And w...

Isaac Deutscher, "Lenin's Childhood" (Verso, 2024)

20 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On January 21, 1924 and at the age of 53, Vladimir Lenin passed away. We’ve now had a century of a world without him, but also a century of a world ...

How to Be a Good Statesman: Johnny Burtka on Political Leadership from Xenophon to Churchill

19 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We have a preponderance of books on leadership in business; yet, despite broad dissatisfaction with our political leaders, almost none on how to be a ...

Rachel Gordan, "Postwar Stories: How Books Made Judaism American" (Oxford UP, 2024)

18 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The period immediately following World War II was an era of dramatic transformation for Jews in America. At the start of the 1940s, President Roosevel...

Ashok Gopal, "A Part Apart: The Life and Thought of B.R. Ambedkar" (Navayana Press, 2023)

18 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) is perhaps the most iconised historical figure in India. Born into a caste deemed ‘unfit for human association’...

SherAli Tareen, "Perilous Intimacies: Debating Hindu-Muslim Friendship After Empire" (Columbia UP, 2023)

15 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friendship—particularly interreligious friendship—offers both promise and peril. After the end of Muslim political sovereignty in South Asia, how ...

Pankaj Jain and Jeffery D. Long, "Indian and Western Philosophical Concepts in Religion" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2023)

14 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Philosophical concepts are influential in the theories and methods to study the world religions. Even though the disciplines of anthropology and relig...

Janine Giordano Drake, "The Gospel of Church: How Mainline Protestants Vilified Christian Socialism and Fractured the Labor Movement" (Oxford UP, 2023)

13 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1908, Unitarian pastor Bertrand Thompson observed the momentous growth of the labor movement with alarm. "Socialism," he wrote, "has become a disti...

Korey Garibaldi, "Impermanent Blackness: The Making and Unmaking of Interracial Literary Culture in Modern America" (Princeton UP, 2023)

13 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Impermanent Blackness: The Making and Unmaking of Interracial Literary Culture in Modern America (Princeton UP, 2023), Korey Garibaldi explores i...

Travis Rieder, "Catastrophe Ethics: How to Choose Well in a World of Tough Choices" (Dutton, 2024)

13 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In a world of often confusing and terrifying global problems, how should we make choices in our everyday lives? Does anything on the individual level ...

Daniel Tutt, "How to Read Like a Parasite: Why the Left Got High on Nietzsche" (Repeater, 2024)

12 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A how-to guide for the left on how to overcome Nietzsche's divisive and damaging influence.  How to Read Like a Parasite: Why the Left Got High on N...

Surya Parekh, "Black Enlightenment" (Duke UP, 2023)

12 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Black Enlightenment (Duke UP, 2023), Surya Parekh reimagines the Enlightenment from the position of the Black subject. Parekh examines the works...

Sofia Rehman, "Gendering the Hadith Tradition: Recentering the Authority of Aisha, Mother of the Believers" (Oxford UP, 2024)

12 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Gendering the Hadith Tradition: Recentering the Authority of Aisha, Mother of the Believers (Oxford UP, 2024) presents for the first time a partial t...

Brian Merchant, "Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech" (LIttle, Brown, 2023)

10 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

"Luddite" has become an insult and Brain Merchant wants to change that. Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech (Little,...

Lorraine Daston, "Rivals: How Scientists Learned to Cooperate" (Columbia Global Reports, 2023)

10 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Rivals: How Scientists Learned to Cooperate (Columbia Global Reports, 2023), Lorraine Daston, Director Emerita of the Max Planck Institute for th...

Myrto Garani et al., "The Oxford Handbook of Roman Philosophy" (Oxford UP, 2023)

09 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Several decades of scholarship have demonstrated that Roman thinkers developed in new and stimulating directions the systems of thought they inherited...

Patrick Olivelle, "Ashoka: Portrait of a Philosopher King" (Yale UP, 2024)

08 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There are few historical figures more integral to South Asian history than Emperor Ashoka, a third-century BCE king who ruled over a larger area of th...

Carmen Fracchia, "'Black But Human': Slavery and Visual Arts in Hapsburg Spain, 1480-1700" (Oxford UP, 2019)

08 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Carmen Fracchia's book Black But Human': Slavery and Visual Arts in Hapsburg Spain, 1480-1700 (Oxford UP, 2019) is the first study to focus on the ...

Dariusz Tołczyk, "Blissful Blindness: Soviet Crimes under Western Eyes" (Indiana UP, 2023)

08 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The most heinous Soviet crimes - the Red Terror, brutal collectivization, the Great Famine, the Gulag, Stalin's Great Terror, mass deportations, and o...

The Reeducation of Race with Sonali Thakkar (JP)

07 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

NYU professor Sonali Thakkar’s brilliant first book, The Reeducation of Race: Jewishness and the Politics of Antiracism in Postcolonial Thought (...

Murray Dick, "The Infographic: A History of Data Graphics in News and Communications" (MIT Press, 2020)

07 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Infographics and data visualization are ubiquitous in our everyday media diet, particularly in news—in print newspapers, on television news, and onl...

Angie Chau, "Paris and the Art of Transposition: Early Twentieth Century Sino-French Encounters" (U Michigan Press, 2023)

06 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A brief stay in France was, for many Chinese workers and Chinese Communist Party leaders, a vital stepping stone for their careers during the cultural...

Leona Toker, "Gulag Literature and the Literature of Nazi Camps: An Intercontexual Reading" (Indiana UP, 2019)

06 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Devoted to the ways in which Holocaust literature and Gulag literature provide contexts for each other, Leona Toker's Gulag Literature and the Litera...

Baidik Bhattacharya, "Colonialism, World Literature, and the Making of the Modern Culture of Letters" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

05 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In a radical and ambitious reconceptualization of the field, Colonialism, World Literature, and the Making of the Modern Culture of Letters (Cambrid...

Jean-Manuel Roubineau, "The Dangerous Life and Ideas of Diogenes the Cynic" (Oxford UP, 2023)

04 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The ancient philosopher Diogenes--nicknamed "The Dog" and decried by Plato as a "Socrates gone mad"--was widely praised and idealized as much as he wa...

Roseen Giles, "Monteverdi and the Marvellous: Poetry, Sound, and Representation" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

04 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The marvellous, a key concept in literary debates at the turn of the seventeenth century, involved sensory and perspectival transformation, a rhetoric...

Yaniv Feller, "The Jewish Imperial Imagination: Leo Baeck and German-Jewish Thought" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

03 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Jewish Imperial Imagination: Leo Baeck and German-Jewish Thought (Cambridge UP, 2024) discusses the life and work of Leo Baeck (1873–1956) the...

Marchella Ward, "Blindness and Spectatorship in Ancient and Modern Theatres: Towards New Ways of Looking and Looking Back" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

01 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The use of disability as a metaphor is ubiquitous in popular culture – nowhere more so than in the myths, stereotypes and tropes around blindness. T...

Ryan Wolfson-Ford, "Forsaken Causes: Liberal Democracy and Anticommunism in Cold War Laos" (U Wisconsin Press, 2024)

01 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ryan Wolfson-Ford’s provocative new book, Forsaken Causes: Liberal Democracy and Anticommunism in Cold War Laos (U Wisconsin Press, 2024), is an i...

Erin Elizabeth Greer, "Fiction, Philosophy and the Ideal of Conversation" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

29 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The ideal of ‘conversation’ recurs in modern thought as a symbol and practice central to ethics, democratic politics, and thinking itself. Interwe...

Dominique Scarfone, "The Reality of the Message: Psychoanalysis in the Wake of Jean Laplanche" (Unconscious in Translation, 2023)

29 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Reality of the Message: Psychoanalysis in the Wake of Jean Laplanche (Unconscious in Translation, 2023) compiles papers written by Dominique Scar...

Christian R. Burset, "An Empire of Laws: Legal Pluralism in British Colonial Policy" (Yale UP, 2023)

29 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In An Empire of Laws: Legal Pluralism in British Colonial Policy (Yale University Press, 2023), Dr. Christian R. Burset presents a compelling reexam...

Till Van Rahden, "Multiplicity: Jewish History and the Ambivalences of Universalism" (Hamburger Editionen, 2022)

24 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Since the Enlightenment, the question has arisen as to how it is possible to think of the “unity of the human race” as a multiplicity. How can the...

Michael Johnston, "The Middle English Book: Scribes and Readers, 1350-1500" (Oxford UP, 2023)

24 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Michael Johnston's The Middle English Book: Scribes and Readers, 1350-1500 (Oxford UP, 2023) addresses a series of questions about the copying and ...

Katharina Pistor, "The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality" (Princeton UP, 2019)

22 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

"Most lawyers, most actors, most soldiers and sailors, most athletes, most doctors, and most diplomats feel a certain solidarity in the face of outsid...

Harriet Lyon, "Memory and the Dissolution of the Monasteries in Early Modern England" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

22 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The dissolution of the monasteries was recalled by individuals and communities alike as a seismic rupture in the religious, cultural, and socio-econom...

Isabella Alexander, "Copyright and Cartography: History, Law, and the Circulation of Geographical Knowledge" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

22 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Isabella Alexander's book Copyright and Cartography: History, Law, and the Circulation of Geographical Knowledge (Bloomsbury, 2023) explores the int...

T. Corey Brennan, "The Fasces: A History of Ancient Rome's Most Dangerous Political Symbol" (Oxford UP, 2022)

21 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

"Fascism" is a word ubiquitous in our contemporary political discourse, but few know about its roots in the ancient past or its long, strange evolutio...

Robert Louis Wilken, "Liberty in the Things of God: The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom" (Yale UP, 2019)

20 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Robert Louis Wilken, the William R. Kenan Professor Emeritus of the History of Christianity at the University of Virginia, has written an intellectual...

Ricky W. Law, "Transnational Nazism: Ideology and Culture in German Japanese Relations, 1919-1936" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

20 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In his new book, Transnational Nazism: Ideology and Culture in German Japanese Relations, 1919-1936 (Cambridge University Press, 2019), associate prof...

Torsa Ghosal, "Out of Mind: Mode, Mediation, and Cognition in Twenty-First-Century Narrative" (Ohio State UP, 2021)

20 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What is the relationship between aesthetic presentation of thought and scientific conceptions of cognition? Torsa Ghosal’s Out of Mind: Mode, Media...

Isabel B. Taylor, "The Crown and Its Records: Archives, Access, and the Ancient Constitution in Seventeenth-Century England" (De Gruyter, 2023)

19 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Archives are popularly seen as liminal, obscure spaces -- a perception far removed from the early modern reality. In The Crown and Its Records: Archi...

Todd McGowan, "Emancipation After Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory Revolution" (Columbia UP, 2019)

19 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

An Interview with Todd McGowan about his recent Emancipation After Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory Revolution (Columbia University Press, 2019). The ...

Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, "Post-Imperial Possibilities: Eurasia, Eurafrica, Afroasia" (Princeton UP, 2023)

18 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How can territory and peoples be organized? After the dissolution of empires, was the nation-state the only way to unite people politically, culturall...

Lawrence Glickman, "Free Enterprise: An American History" (Yale UP, 2019)

18 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

“Free enterprise” is an everyday phrase that connotes an American common sense. It appears everywhere from political speeches to pop culture. And ...

Ed Simon, "Relic" (Bloomsbury. 2024)

15 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Object Lessons is a Bloomsbury series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. This book, Relic, by Dr. Ed S...

Jewish War Ethics, Ancient to Contemporary: A Conversation with Rabbi Shlomo Brody

14 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How should we think about violent accounts in the Bible? Why did Gandhi urge the Jews to turn a blind eye to anti-Semitism during World War II? What i...

Patrick Gamsby, "The Discourse of Scholarly Communication" (Lexington Books, 2023)

14 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Discourse of Scholarly Communication (Lexington Books, 2023) examines the place and purpose of modern scholarship and its dialectical relationshi...

Alison M. Downham Moore, "The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women's Ageing" (Oxford UP, 2022)

14 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women's Ageing (Oxford University Press, 2022), Alison Downham Moore discusses her c...

Anthony Kaldellis, "Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium" (Harvard UP, 2019)

13 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Though commonly used today to identify a polity that lasted for over a millennium, the label “Byzantine empire” is an anachronism imposed by more ...

Paul Mendes-Flohr, "Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent" (Yale UP, 2019)

12 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent (Yale University Press, 2019), Paul Mendes-Flohr, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinit...

Andrius Gališanka, "John Rawls: The Path to a Theory of Justice" (Harvard UP, 2019)

12 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It is hard to overestimate the influence of John Rawls on political philosophy and theory over the last half-century. His books have sold millions of ...

Devin Griffiths and Deanna Kreisel, "After Darwin: Literature, Theory, and Criticism in the Twenty-First Century" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

10 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Creative storytelling is the beating heart of Darwin's science. All of Darwin's writings drew on information gleaned from a worldwide network of scien...

Michael Devitt, "Biological Essentialism" (Oxford UP, 2023)

10 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What makes a species a species? Aristotle answered the species question by positing unchanging essences, properties that all and only members of a spe...

Jeffery D. Long, "Discovering Indian Philosophy: An Introduction to Hindu, Jain and Buddhist Thought" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

08 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Jeffery D. Long's Indian Philosophy: An Introduction (Bloomsbury, 2023) helps readers discover how the many and varied schools of Indian thought ca...

Seth Zuiho Segall, "The House We Live in: Virtue, Wisdom, and Pluralism" (Equinox, 2023)

08 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The values of liberalism, pluralism, and democratic governance are under sustained attack from right-wing Christian fundamentalists, white ethnonation...

Gregory Wallance, "Into Siberia: George Kennan's Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia" (St. Martin's Press, 2023)

08 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It’s perhaps one of history’s funny accidents that relations between the U.S. and Russia were changed not by one, but two, George Kennans. Decades...

The Future of the Future: A Discussion with Jonathan White

07 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

"An air of finality pervades today’s world." That is the opening sentence of Jonathan White’s book In the Long Run: The Future as a Political Ide...

Nicholas Dames, "The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century" (Princeton UP, 2023)

05 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Why do books have chapters? With this seemingly simple question, Dr. Nicholas Dames embarks on a literary journey spanning two millennia, revealing ho...

Daniel Capper, "Roaming Free Like a Deer: Buddhism and the Natural World" (Cornell UP, 2022)

05 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Daniel Capper's book Roaming Free Like a Deer: Buddhism and the Natural World (Cornell UP, 2022) delves into ecological experiences in seven Buddhis...

Beatrice Heuser, "War: A Genealogy of Western Ideas and Practices" (Oxford UP, 2022)

03 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

War is often thought of mainly the concern of professional soldiers and maybe politicians as well. However, philosophers and theorists of varying type...

Greg Ellermann, "Thought's Wilderness: Romanticism and the Apprehension of Nature" (Stanford UP, 2022)

03 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

While much recent ecocriticism has questioned the value of nature as a concept, Thought's Wilderness: Romanticism and the Apprehension of Nature (St...

Bedross Der Matossian, "The Armenian Social Democrat Hnchakian Party: Politics, Ideology and Transnational History" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

03 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Bedross Der Matossian's The Armenian Social Democrat Hnchakian Party: Politics, Ideology and Transnational History (Bloomsbury, 2023), based on new ...

Jon Paul Sydnor and Anthony J. Watson, "Nondualism: An Interreligious Exploration" (Lexington Books, 2023)

01 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The time has come for nondualism. As a fundamentally unifying concept, nondualism may seem out of place in an age of rising nationalism and bitter deg...

Joshua Ehrlich, "The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

01 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The East India Company was a unique entity in world history: More than just a commercial enterprise, the Company tried to act as its own government. N...

Alberto Toscano, "Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis" (Verso, 2023)

31 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In a world shaken by ecological, economic and political crises, the forces of authoritarianism and reaction seem to have the upper hand. How should we...

Holly A. Baggett, "Making No Compromise: Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, and the Little Review" (Northern Illinois UP, 2023)

30 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Holly A. Baggett's Making No Compromise: Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, and the Little Review (Northern Illinois UP, 2023) is the first book-length...

Colorblindness and the Classics: A Conversation with Andre Archie

30 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Why has Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of a color-blind society suffered so many recent setbacks? Classical philosopher Andre Archie argues that we n...

Ankhi Mukherjee and Ato Quayson, "Decolonizing the English Literary Curriculum" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

28 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

George Floyd's death on May 25th 2020 marked a watershed in reactions to anti-Black racism in the United States and elsewhere. Intense demonstrations ...

John J. Michalczyk et al.. "Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ and the Holocaust: A Prelude to Genocide" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

27 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For decades scholars have pored over Hitler's autobiographical journey/political treatise, debating if Mein Kampf has genocidal overtones and arguab...

Renée Fox, "The Necromantics: Reanimation, the Historical Imagination, and Victorian British and Irish Literature" (Ohio State UP, 2023)

27 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Necromantics: Reanimation, the Historical Imagination, and Victorian British and Irish Literature (Ohio State UP, 2023) dwells on the literal af...

Hillel Goldberg, "Across the Expanse of Jewish Thought: From the Holocaust to Halakhah and Beyond" (Ktav, 2022)

27 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Drawing on Isaiah Berlin’s inferential essay, “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” Hillel Goldberg opens this volume: “By commitment I am a hedgehog –...

Caleb Wellum, "Energizing Neoliberalism: The 1970s Energy Crisis and the Making of Modern America" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)

26 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How the 1970s energy crisis facilitated a neoliberal shift in US political culture. In Energizing Neoliberalism: The 1970s Energy Crisis and the Maki...

Stephen Harris, "Buddhist Ethics and the Bodhisattva Path: Santideva on Virtue and Well-Being" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

26 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Santideva's 8th-century Mahayana Buddhist classic, "The Guide to the Practices of Awakening" (Bodhicaryavatara), has been a source of philosophical in...

Eugenio Refini, "Staging the Soul: Allegorical Drama as Spiritual Practice in Baroque Italy" (Legenda, 2022)

25 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

As per William Shakespeare, ‘all the world’s a stage’. But what if the human soul was a stage too? What if the stage of the world and the stage ...

Amar Sohal, "The Muslim Secular: Parity and the Politics of India's Partition" (Oxford UP, 2023)

24 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Concerned with the fate of the minority in the age of the nation-state, Muslim political thought in modern South Asia has often been associated with r...

Camillo Leonardi, "Speculum Lapidum: A Renaissance Treatise on the Healing Properties of Gemstones" (Penn State UP, 2023)

23 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

First published in Venice in 1502, Camillo Leonardi’s Speculum Lapidum is an encyclopedic summary of all classical and medieval sources of lithoth...