New Books in Western European Studies
Episodes
Craig Griffiths, "The Ambivalence of Gay Liberation: Male Homosexual Politics in 1970s West Germany" (Oxford UP, 2021)
18 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Ambivalence of Gay Liberation: Male Homosexual Politics in 1970s West Germany (Oxford UP, 2021) explores ways of thinking, feeling, and talking a...
Carolina López-Ruiz, "Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean" (Harvard UP, 2021)
14 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Long before Herodotus told the story of the Greeks, the ancient Mediterranean teemed with what the Greeks themselves would recognize as hallmarks of c...
Eliza Reid, "Secrets of the Sprakkar: What the Outstanding Women of Iceland Know about Equality" (Sourcebooks, 2022)
08 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the past decade, adventurous travelers have flocked to the island nation of Iceland to enjoy its many wonders: stunning nature and wildlife, innova...
Jeremy Black, "The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: Strategies for a World War" (Roman and Littlefield, 2022)
08 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The wars between 1792 and 1815 saw the making of the modern world, with Britain and Russia the key powers to emerge triumphant from a long period of b...
Edward Jones Corredera, "The Diplomatic Enlightenment: Spain, Europe, and the Age of Speculation" (Brill, 2021)
07 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Diplomatic Enlightenment: Spain, Europe, and the Age of Speculation (Brill, 2021) reconfigures the study of the origins of the Enlightenment in t...
Ulrich Gutmair, "The First Days of Berlin: The Sound of Change" (John Wiley and Sons, 2021)
02 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Ulrich Gutmair about his book The First Days of Berlin: The Sound of Change (John Wiley and Sons, 2021). Berlin in the early 1990...
Sarah Farmer, "Rural Inventions: The French Countryside After 1945" (Oxford UP, 2020)
01 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Farmer's Rural Inventions: The French Countryside After 1945 (Oxford University Press, 2020) is a history of national, regional, and local tra...
Silvia Goldbaum Tarabini Fracapane, "The Jews of Denmark in the Holocaust: Life and Death in Theresienstadt Ghetto" (Routledge, 2020)
28 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, The Jews of Denmark in the Holocaust: Life and Death in Theresienstadt Ghetto (Routledge, 2020), Silvia Goldbaum Tarabini Fracapane...
Devin O. Pendas, "Democracy, Nazi Trials and Transitional Justice in Germany, 1945–1950" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
28 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, Democracy, Nazi Trials, and Transitional Justice in Germany, 1945-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Dr. Devin O. Pendas exam...
Paul M. Dover, "The Information Revolution in Early Modern Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
25 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Information Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Dr. Paul Dover argues that changes in the generation, prese...
Samuel Clowes Huneke, "States of Liberation: Gay Men Between Dictatorship and Democracy in Cold War Germany" (U Toronto Press, 2022)
25 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
States of Liberation: Gay Men Between Dictatorship and Democracy in Cold War Germany (U Toronto Press, 2022) traces the paths of gay men in East and ...
Teresa Kulawik and Zhanna Kravchenko, "Borderlands in European Gender Studies: Beyond the East-West Frontier" (Routledge, 2020)
22 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Challenging persistent geopolitical asymmetries in feminist knowledge production, this collection depicts collisions between concepts and lived experi...
Sarah Shortall, "Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French Politics" (Harvard UP, 2021)
21 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French Politics (Harvard University Press, 2021), Sarah Shortall exam...
Patricia Tilburg, "Working Girls: Sex, Taste, and Reform in the Parisian Garment Trades, 1880-1919" (Oxford UP, 2019)
16 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Patricia Tilburg's Working Girls: Sex, Taste, and Reform in the Parisian Garment Trades, 1880-1919 (Oxford University Press, 2019) is at once a cu...
Eric Protzer and Paul Summerville, "Reclaiming Populism: How Economic Fairness Can Win Back Disenchanted Voters" (Polity Press, 2022)
14 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
I spoke with Eric Protzer (Harvard University) and Paul Summerville (University of Victoria) about their great new book: Reclaiming Populism: How Eco...
Heather L. Dichter, "Bidding for the 1968 Olympic Games: International Sport's Cold War Battle with NATO" (U Massachusetts Press, 2021)
11 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Heather Dichter, Associate Professor of Sports History and Sports Management at the International Centre for Sports History and...
Stuart Elden, "The Early Foucault" (Polity Press, 2021)
11 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It was not until 1961 that Foucault published his first major book, History of Madness. He had already been working as an academic for a decade, teac...
Rita Koganzon, "Liberal States, Authoritarian Families: Childhood and Education in Early Modern Thought" (Oxford UP, 2021)
03 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Rita Koganzon’s new book, Liberal States, Authoritarian Families: Childhood and Education in Early Modern Thought (Oxford UP, 2021), examines the ...
Margareta von Oswald and Jonas Tinius, "Across Anthropology: Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial" (Leuven UP, 2020)
31 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How can we rethink anthropology beyond itself? In this book, twenty-one artists, anthropologists, and curators grapple with how anthropology has been ...
Nicholas Jubber, "The Fairy Tellers: A Journey into the Secret History of Fairy Tales" (John Murray, 2022)
26 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Fairy Tellers: A Journey into the Secret History of Fairy Tales (John Murray, 2022), Nick Jubber unearths the lives of the dreamers who made ...
Katherine Harvey, "The Fires of Lust: Sex in the Middle Ages" (Reaktion Books, 2021)
26 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are with Katherine Harvey, author of The Fires of Lust: Sex in the Middle Ages (Reaktion Books, 2021). An illuminating exploration of the ...
Samuel J. Spinner, "Jewish Primitivism" (Stanford UP, 2021)
26 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Around the beginning of the twentieth century, Jewish writers and artists across Europe began depicting fellow Jews as savages or "primitive" tribesme...
Katja Hoyer, "Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire" (Pegasus Books, 2021)
25 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Before 1871, Germany was not yet nation but simply an idea. Its founder, Otto von Bismarck, had a formidable task at hand. How would he bring thirty-n...
Eleanor Janega and Neil Max Emmanuel, "The Middle Ages: A Graphic History" (Icon Books, 2020)
25 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A unique, illustrated book that aspires to bring medieval history closer to the general audience will change the way you see medieval history, The Mi...
Megan Moore, "The Erotics of Grief: Emotions and the Construction of Privilege in the Medieval Mediterranean" (Cornell UP, 2021)
24 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Erotics of Grief: Emotions and the Construction of Privilege in the Medieval Mediterranean (Cornell UP, 2021) considers how emotions propagate po...
Richard Bellamy et al., "Flexible Europe: Differentiated Integration, Democracy, and Domination" (Bristol UP, 2022)
24 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The past decade has been pivotal in the development of the European Union. The single currency has been tested to the limits by successive crises in t...
Aleksandra Prica, "Decay and Afterlife: Form, Time, and the Textuality of Ruins, 1100 to 1900" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
21 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Western ruins have long been understood as objects riddled with temporal contradictions, whether they appear in baroque poetry and drama, Romanticism’...
Brenna Moore, "Kindred Spirits: Friendship and Resistance at the Edges of Modern Catholicism" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
20 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Kindred Spirits: Friendship and Resistance at the Edges of Modern Catholicism (University of Chicago Press, 2021), Brenna Moore takes us inside a...
Nicholas Canny, "Imagining Ireland's Pasts: Early Modern Ireland Through the Centuries" (Oxford UP, 2021)
19 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Nicholas Canny is an Emeritus Professor at the National University of Ireland-Galway (NUIG). Since completing his PhD at the University of Pennsylva...
Ronald Beiner, "Dangerous Minds: Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Return of the Far Right" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018)
14 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and demise of the Soviet Union, prominent Western thinkers began to suggest that liberal democracy had triumphed...
Julie Kleinman, "Adventure Capital: Migration and the Making of an African Hub in Paris" (U California Press, 2019)
14 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Every day, hundreds of thousands of people move through the Gare du Nord train station in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, the largest train station...
Judith Herrin, "Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe" (Princeton UP, 2020)
14 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
At the end of the fourth century, as the power of Rome faded and Constantinople became the seat of empire, a new capital city was rising in the West. ...
Dyan Elliott, "The Corrupter of Boys: Sodomy, Scandal, and the Medieval Clergy" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020)
11 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the fourth century, clerics began to distinguish themselves from members of the laity by virtue of their augmented claims to holiness. Because cler...
David Karmon, "Architecture and the Senses in the Italian Renaissance: The Varieties of Architectural Experience" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
07 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Architecture and the Senses in the Italian Renaissance: The Varieties of Architectural Experience (Cambridge UP, 2021) is the first study of Renaissa...
Malika Maskarinec, "The Forces of Form in German Modernism" (Northwestern UP, 2018)
05 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The late 19th and early 20th centuries in Europe were times of intense technological, social and political change and transformation, and so it’s ...
Martin Conway, "Western Europe’s Democratic Age: 1945-1968" (Princeton UP, 2021)
03 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What happened in the years following World War II to create a democratic revolution in the western half of Europe? In Western Europe’s Democratic A...
Rich Brownstein, "Holocaust Cinema Complete: A History and Analysis of 400 Films, with a Teaching Guide" (McFarland, 2021)
31 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Holocaust movies have become an important segment of world cinema and the de-facto Holocaust education for many. One quarter of all American-produced ...
From Linear A to Linear B: Suggestive Continuity
29 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Howard Burton talks with Ester Salgarella, Junior Research Fellow at St John's College, University of Cambridge, about her groundbrea...
Omar W. Nasim, "The Astronomer's Chair: A Visual and Cultural History" (MIT Press, 2021)
28 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The astronomer's chair is a leitmotif in the history of astronomy, appearing in hundreds of drawings, prints, and photographs from a variety of source...
Lucie Fremlova, "Queer Roma" (Routledge, 2021)
24 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Lucie Fremlova's book Queer Roma (Routledge, 2021) offers in-depth insight into the lives of queer Roma, thus providing rich evidence of the heterog...
Daniel M. Knight, "Vertiginous Life: An Anthropology of Time and the Unforeseen" (Berghahn Books, 2021)
24 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Vertiginous Life: An Anthropology of Time and the Unforeseen (Berghahn Books, 2021) provides a theory of the intense temporal disorientation brought ...
Alan Allport, "Britain at Bay: The Epic Story of the Second World War, 1938-1941" (Knopf, 2020)
22 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Here is the many-faceted, world-historically significant story of Britain at war. In looking closely at the military and political dimensions of the c...
Luis Lobo-Guerrero et al., "Mapping, Connectivity, and the Making of European Empires" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021)
22 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Luis Lobo-Guerrero is one of the three editors of this volume—Mapping, Connectivity, and the Making of European Empires—and one of the six contrib...
John Lapidus, "The Quest for a Divided Welfare State: Sweden in the Era of Privatization" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
16 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Generous welfare states are losing their key characteristics, not least in Sweden, where privatisation of funding has proceeded privatisation of provi...
Janna Coomans, "Community, Urban Health and Environment in the Late Medieval Low Countries" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
15 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
By exploring the uniquely dense urban network of the Low Countries, Janna Coomans debunks the myth of medieval cities as apathetic towards filth and d...
Vanesa Rodríguez-Galindo, "Madrid on the Move: Feeling Modern and Visually Aware in the Nineteenth Century" (Manchester UP, 2021)
13 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book Madrid on the Move: Feeling Modern and Visually Aware in the Nineteenth Century (Manchester UP, 2021), Vanesa Rodríguez-Galindo exp...
Kate Rigby, "Reclaiming Romanticism: Towards an Ecopoetics of Decolonisation" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
10 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The earliest environmental criticism took its inspiration from the Romantic poets and their immersion in the natural world. Today the “romanticising...
Jennifer Ferng and Lauren R. Cannady, "Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal Histories and Transnational Networks" (Voltaire Foundation, 2021)
08 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A ground-breaking volume examining the transnational conditions of the European Enlightenment, Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal Histories and Transn...
J. Ryan Stackhouse, "Enemies of the People: Hitler's Critics and the Gestapo" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
07 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How do terror and popularity merge under a dictatorship? How did the Gestapo deal with critics of Nazism? Based on hundreds of secret police case file...
Michael S. Neiberg, "When France Fell: The Vichy Crisis and the Fate of the Anglo-American Alliance" (Harvard UP, 2021)
03 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
According to US Secretary of War Henry Stimson, the "most shocking single event" of World War II was not the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but rath...
Devin J. Vartija, "The Color of Equality: Race and Common Humanity in Enlightenment Thought" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2021)
02 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Enlightenment is often either praised as the wellspring of modern egalitarianism or condemned as the cradle of scientific racism. How should we ma...
Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, “Herculaneum Uncovered” (Open Agenda, 2021)
30 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Herculaneum Uncovered is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Director of Research and Honorary...
Eric Berkowitz, "Dangerous Ideas: A Brief History of Censorship in the West from the Ancients to Fake News" (Beacon Press, 2021)
29 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Eric Berkowitz has written a short history of a censorship, a large topic that has been a phenomenon since the advent of recorded history. In Danger...
Annegret Oehme, "The Knight Without Boundaries: Yiddish and German Arthurian Wigalois Adaptations" (Brill, 2021)
26 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This volume explores a core medieval myth, the tale of an Arthurian knight called Wigalois, and the ways it connects the Yiddish-speaking Jews and the...
Daniel Lee, "The Right of Sovereignty: Jean Bodin on the Sovereign State and the Law of Nations" (Oxford UP, 2021)
24 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Sovereignty is the vital organizing principle of modern international law. Daniel Lee's book The Right of Sovereignty: Jean Bodin on the Sovereign St...
Charlie Louth on Rainer Maria Rilke
19 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Charlie Louth’s illuminating recent book, Rilke: The Life of the Work (Oxford University Press, 2021) examines why Rilke’s poems have exercised ...
Claire Weeda, "Ethnicity in Medieval Europe 950-1250: Medicine, Power and Religion" (Boydell and Brewer, 2021)
19 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Students in twelfth-century Paris held slanging matches, branding the English drunkards, the Germans madmen and the French as arrogant. On Crusade, ar...
Anders Persson, "EU Diplomacy and the Israeli-Arab Conflict, 1967-2019" (Edinburgh UP, 2020)
18 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Nearly 50 years since the European Foreign Ministers issued their first declaration on the conflict between Israel and Palestine in 1971, the Europea...
Ambrogio A. Caiani, "To Kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII" (Yale UP, 2021)
17 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of France, and Pope Pius VII shared a common goal: to reconcile the Catholic ch...
Mark Mazower, "The Greek Revolution: 1821 and the Making of Modern Europe" (Penguin, 2021)
16 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the exhausted, repressive years that followed Napoleon's defeat in 1815, there was one cause that came to galvanize countless individuals across Eu...
Emile Chabal, "France" (Polity, 2020)
12 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
An accessible and compelling read, Emile Chabal's France (Polity, 2020) is an overview of the nation's political history from 1940 right up to the e...
Michael Braddick, "A Useful History of Britain: The Politics of Getting Things Done" (Oxford UP, 2021)
10 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What have the Romans ever done for us? That’s the question put to his pals by Reg, in a much quoted scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian. The ...
Paul Preston, "A People Betrayed: A History of Corruption, Political Incompetence and Social Division in Modern Spain" (Liveright, 2020)
08 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Sir Paul Preston’s A People Betrayed: A History of Corruption, Political Incompetence, and Social Division in Modern Spain (Liveright, 2020) is a ...
Vincent Evener, "Enemies of the Cross: Suffering, Truth, and Mysticism in the Early Reformation" (Oxford UP, 2020)
08 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today we talk to Vincent Evener of United Theological Seminary about his new book, Enemies of the Cross: Suffering, Truth, and Mysticism in the Earl...
Jussi M. Hanhimäki, "Pax Transatlantica: America and Europe in the Post-Cold War Era" (Oxford UP, 2021)
04 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Is the West finished as a political idea? In recent years, observers have begun pointing to signs that the transatlantic community is eroding. When th...
Tobias Hof, "Galeazzo Ciano: The Fascist Pretender" (U Toronto Press, 2021)
02 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
He was the son of a prominent politician, Benito Mussolini’s son-in-law, and viewed by many as the Duce’s likely successor, only to die before a ...
Dilek Kurban, "Limits of Supranational Justice: The European Court of Human Rights and Turkey's Kurdish Conflict" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
28 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dilek Kurban’s Limits of Supranational Justice: The European Court of Human Rights and Turkey's Kurdish Conflict (Cambridge UP, 2020) considers t...
Susan Mokhberi, "The Persian Mirror: French Reflections of the Safavid Empire in Early Modern France" (Oxford UP, 2019)
28 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When I/we think about the early modern relationship between France and Persia, Montesquieu's 1721 Lettres persanes is a text that comes to mind imme...
Machteld Venken, "Peripheries at the Centre: Borderland Schooling in Interwar Europe" (Berghahn Books, 2021)
27 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Following the Treaty of Versailles, European nation-states were faced with the challenge of instilling national loyalty in their new borderlands, in w...
Caroline A. Kita, "Jewish Difference and the Arts in Vienna: Composing Compassion in Music and Biblical Theater" (Indiana UP, 2019)
26 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
During the mid-19th century, the works of Arthur Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner sparked an impulse toward German cultural renewal and social change t...
Teofilo Ruiz, “The Consolations of History” (Open Agenda, 2021)
26 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Consolations of History is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Teofilo Ruiz, Professor Emeritus of History at UCLA...
Emily Greble, "Muslims and the Making of Modern Europe" (Oxford UP, 2021)
25 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Emily Greble, Associate Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, is the author of Muslims and the Making of Modern Europe (Oxford Universit...
Daniel Andrés López, "Lukács: Praxis and the Absolute" (Haymarket Books, 2020)
23 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Hungarian Marxist philosopher George Lukács has long occupied a complicated place in the Marxist canon of thinkers, both his lived and theoretica...
Jay Rubenstein, “Apocalypse Then: The First Crusade” (Open Agenda, 2021)
22 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Apocalypse Then: The First Crusade is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Jay Rubenstein, Professor of History and Dir...
Robert McCrum, "Shakespearean: On Life and Language in Times of Disruption" (Simon and Schuster, 2021)
22 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When inspiration struck Robert McCrum to write a book about the Bard, it came while watching one of the playwright’s plays in Central Park, New York...
Eunice Blavascunas, "Foresters, Borders, and Bark Beetles: The Future of Europe's Last Primeval Forest" (Indiana UP, 2020)
20 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Foresters, Borders, and Bark Beetles: The Future of Europe’s Last Primeval Forest (Indiana University Press, 2020), Eunice Blavascunas provide...
Josiah Ober, “Democratic Lessons: What the Greeks Can Teach Us” (Open Agenda, 2021)
14 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Democratic Lessons: What the Greeks Can Teach Us is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Josiah Ober, Tsakopoulos-Kouna...
Terence Renaud, "New Lefts: The Making of a Radical Tradition" (Princeton UP, 2021)
13 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1960s, the radical youth of Western Europe’s New Left rebelled against the democratic welfare state and their parents’ antiquated politics ...
Gábor Ágoston, "The Last Muslim Conquest: The Ottoman Empire and Its Wars in Europe" (Princeton UP, 2021)
13 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The image of the Ottoman Turks and their interaction with the Christian West, has undergone many changes in the past: from William Gladstone's famous ...
Paola Ugolini, "Court and Its Critics: Anti-Court Sentiments in Early Modern Italy" (U Toronto Press, 2020)
11 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The fashionable and decorous men whom we recognize in portraits and letters from the Italian Renaissance penned some of the most scathing critiques of...
Judith Pollmann, "Catholic Identity and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1520-1635" (Oxford UP, 2011)
07 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today Judith Pollmann, professor of early modern dutch history at Leiden University in Leiden, The Netherlands, to talk about her book, Catholic Ide...
Maria Mavroudi, “Byzantium: Beyond the Cliché” (Open Agenda, 2021)
01 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Byzantium: Beyond the Cliché is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Maria Mavroudi, Professor of History at UC Berkel...
Daniel Larsen, "Plotting for Peace: American Peacemakers, British Codebreakers, and Britain at War, 1914–1917" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
30 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
With Britain by late 1916 facing the prospect of an economic crisis and increasingly dependent on the US, rival factions in Asquith's government battl...
Paul Betts, "Ruin and Renewal: Civilising Europe After the Second World War" (Basic Books, 2021)
30 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"One of the most enduring myths of history writing about Europe in the 20th century is that the century can be neatly divided into a tale of two halve...
John Shovlin, "Trading with the Enemy: Britain, France, and the 18th-Century Quest for a Peaceful World Order" (Yale UP, 2021)
29 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Britain and France waged war eight times in the century following the Glorious Revolution, a mutual antagonism long regarded as a "Second Hundred Year...
Dora Osborne, "What Remains: The Post-Holocaust Archive in German Memory Culture" (Camden House, 2020)
27 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
With the passing of those who witnessed National Socialism and the Holocaust, the archive matters as never before. However, the material that remains ...
Chris Millington, "A History of Fascism in France: From the First World War to the National Front" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
24 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
FASCISM...FRANCE. Two words/ideas that scholars have spent much time and energy debating in relationship to one another. Chris Millington's A Histor...
Angeliki Lymberopoulou, "Cross-cultural Interaction Between Byzantium and the West, 1204-1669" (Routledge, 2020)
20 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The early modern Mediterranean was an area where many different rich cultural traditions came in contact with each other, and were often forced to co-...
Aleksandra Bartoszko, "Treating Heroin Addiction in Norway: The Pharmaceutical Other" (Routledge, 2021)
20 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Focusing on the world of Norwegian Opioid Substitution Treatment (OST) in the aftermath of significant reforms, Aleksandra Bartoszko's book Treating...
Brigitte Le Normand, "Citizens Without Borders: Yugoslavia and Its Migrant Workers in Western Europe" (U Toronto Press, 2021)
10 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Among Eastern Europe’s postwar socialist states, Yugoslavia was unique in allowing its citizens to seek work abroad in Western Europe’s liberal de...
Giles Tremlett, "The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
10 Sep 2021
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 Nationali...
H. Glenn Penny, "In Humboldt's Shadow: A Tragic History of German Ethnology" (Princeton UP, 2021)
06 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Berlin Ethnological Museum is one of the world's largest and most important anthropological museums, housing more than a half million objects coll...
Tímea Drinóczi and Agnieszka Bień-Kacała, "Illiberal Constitutionalism in Poland and Hungary" (Routledge, 2021)
03 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past decade, Poland and Hungary have become laboratories for a new kind of government: proto-authoritarian regimes that still have regular el...
Gerd Horten, "Don't Need No Thought Control: Western Culture in East Germany and the Fall of the Berlin Wall" (Berghahn Books, 2020)
02 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The fall of the Berlin Wall is typically understood as the culmination of political-economic trends that fatally weakened the East German state. Meanw...
Philippe Vonnard, "Creating a United Europe of Football: The Formation of UEFA (1949–1961)" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
31 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Philippe Vonnard, Senior SNSF Researcher at the University de Lausanne, and the author of Creating a United Europe of Football...
Thomas O. Haakenson, "Grotesque Visions: The Science of Berlin Dada" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
31 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Thomas O. Haakenson's book Grotesque Visions: The Science of Berlin Dada (Bloomsbury, 2021) focuses on the radical avant-garde interventions of Salo...
John Coffey, "The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions: The Post-Reformation Era, 1559-1689" (Oxford UP, 2020)
23 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions: The Post-Reformation Era, 1559-1689 (Oxford UP, 2020) traces the emergence of Anglophone Prot...
Jason Frank, "The Democratic Sublime: On Aesthetics and Popular Assembly" (Oxford UP, 2021)
19 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Political Theorist Jason Frank, the John L. Senior Professor of Government at Cornell University, has written a new book, The Democratic Sublime: On ...
Jeremy Black, "Strategy and the Second World War: How the War Was Won, and Lost" (Robinson, 2021)
18 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A concise, accessible account of strategy and the Second World War, Strategy and the Second World War: How the War Was Won, and Lost (Robinson, 2021...
Bogdan C. Iacob et al., "1989: A Global History of Eastern Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
16 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The collapse of the Berlin Wall has come to represent the entry of an isolated region onto the global stage. On the contrary, this study argues that c...