New Books in Western European Studies
Episodes
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...
Carl Benedikt Frey, "How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations" (Princeton UP, 2025)
19 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations (Princeton University Press, 2025), Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the convent...
Tracy Borman, "The Stolen Crown: Treachery, Deceit and the Death of the Tudor Dynasty" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2025)
12 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the long and dramatic annals of British history, no transition from one monarch to another has been as fraught and consequential as that which ende...
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 ...
Vanesa Rodríguez-Galindo, "Madrid on the Move: Feeling Modern and Visually Aware in the Nineteenth Century" (Manchester UP, 2021)
08 Nov 2025
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...
Jenny C. Mann, "The Trials of Orpheus: Poetry, Science, and the Early Modern Sublime" (Princeton UP, 2021)
08 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest is Jenny Mann, who has a new book titled The Trials of Orpheus: Poetry, Science, and the Early Modern Sublime (Princeton University ...
Louise Nyholm Kallestrup, "The Construction of Witchcraft in Early Modern Denmark, 1536-1617" (Routledge, 2025)
01 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Louise Nyholm Kallestrup joins Jana Byars to talk about her new book, The Construction of Witchcraft in Early Modern Denmark, 1536-1617 (Routledge, ...
Jakub Gortat, "Remembering National Socialism in Austrian Post-war Film" (1945-1955) (Brill, 2025)
29 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Entrenched in the myth of being victim of the Nazi aggression, Austrian elites pursued a politics of memory that symbolically shook off any responsibi...
Kenneth G. Appold, "Luther and the Peasants: Religion, Ritual, and the Revolt Of 1525" (Oxford UP, 2025)
27 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Kenneth G. Appold joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, Luther and the Peasants: Religion, Ritual, and the Revolt of 1525 (Oxford UP, 2025). ...
Maurice Samuels, "Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair" (Yale UP, 2024)
21 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On January 5, 1895, Captain Alfred Dreyfus’s cries of innocence were drowned out by a mob shouting “Death to Judas!” In Alfred Dreyfus: The Man...
Paul Galvez, "Courbet's Landscapes: The Origins of Modern Painting" (Yale UP, 2022)
20 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1862 and 1866 Gustave Courbet embarked on a series of sensuous landscape paintings that would later inspire the likes of Monet, Pissarro, and ...
William Doyle, "Napoleon at Peace: How to End a Revolution" (Reaktion Books, 2022)
19 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The French Revolution facilitated the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, but after gaining power he knew that his first task was to end it. In this book Will...
Danny Orbach, "Plots Against Hitler" (Mariner, 2016)
19 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, Plots Against Hitler (Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), Danny Orbach, Senior Lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusal...
Lorenzo Castellani, "Alberto Beneduce, Mussolini's Technocrat: Power, Knowledge, and Institutions in Fascist Italy" (Routledge, 2025)
18 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Should "good" people work for authoritarians? Does their implicit endorsement do more harm than their replacement by someone potentially worse? This w...
Arnar Eggert Thoroddsen, "Icelandic Pop: Then, Today, Tomorrow, Next Week" (Reaktion Books, 2025)
18 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Iceland punches well above its weight in the world of music, producing global icons like Björk, Sigur Rós, Of Monsters and Men, and Laufey, while at...
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 ...
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, ...
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...
Andrew Lambert, "No More Napoleons: How Britain Managed Europe from Waterloo to World War One" (Yale UP, 2025)
07 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How, for just over a century, Britain ensured it would not face another Napoleon Bonaparte--manipulating European powers while building a global marit...
Justine De Young, "The Art of Parisian Chic: Modern Women and Modern Artists in Impressionist Paris" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
06 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Using artworks by Berthe Morisot, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and others, The Art of Parisian Chic: Modern Women and Modern ...
David M. Whitford, "The Making of a Reformation Man: Martin Luther and the Construction of Masculinity" (Routledge, 2025)
05 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David Whitford joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, The Making of a Reformation Man: Martin Luther and the Construction of Masculinity (Routl...
Georgios Varouxakis, "The West: The History of an Idea" (Princeton UP, 2025)
04 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How did “the West” come to be used as a collective self-designation signaling political and cultural commonality? When did “Westerners” begin ...
Carol Atack, "Plato: A Civic Life" (Reaktion, 2025)
27 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Plato is a key figure from the beginnings of Western philosophy, yet the impact of his lived experience on his thought has rarely been explored. Born ...
Árni Heimir Ingólfsson , "Jón Leifs and the Musical Invention of Iceland" (Indiana UP, 2019)
27 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Jón Leifs and the Musical Invention of Iceland (Indiana University Press, 2019), Árni Heimir Ingólfsson provides a striking account of the ...
Eleanor Conlon and Martin Vaux, "The Three Ravens Folk Tales: New Tellings of Half-forgotten Stories from England's 39 Historic Counties" (The History Press, 2025)
18 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Do you know the legends of the giants who ruled England before the first human kings? What about the demon dog Black Shuck who terrorized sixteenth-ce...
Christopher Millington, "Murder in Marseille: Right-Wing Terrorism in 1930s Europe" (Manchester UP, 2025)
16 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On 9 October 1934, terrorists murdered King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in a Marseille street. The Croatian ultranationalist Ustashe was behind the atta...
Brandon Bloch, "Reinventing Protestant Germany: Religious Nationalists and the Contest for Post-Nazi Democracy" (Harvard UP, 2025)
11 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Germany’s Protestant churches, longtime strongholds of nationalism and militarism, largely backed the Nazi dictatorship that took power in 1933. For...
David Welsh, "The Social Railway and Its Workers in Europes Modern Era, 1880-2023: Moments of Fury, Ramparts of Hope" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
10 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Social Railway and Its Workers in Europe’s Modern Era, 1880-2023: Moments of Fury, Ramparts of Hope (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. David Welsh exami...
Joanne Yao, "The Ideal River: How Control of Nature Shaped the International Order" (Manchester UP, 2022)
08 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Environmental politics has traditionally been a peripheral concern for international relations theory, but increasing alarm over global environmental ...
Steven Veerapen, "Witches: A King's Obsession" (Birlin, 2025)
03 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Witches – whether broomstick-riding spell-casters or Wiccan earth-worshippers – have been culturally relevant for centuries. For centuries, too, b...
David Woodman, "The First King of England: Æthelstan and the Birth of a Kingdom" (Princeton UP, 2025)
02 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The First King of England: Æthelstan and the Birth of a Kingdom (Princeton University Press, 2025) by Professor David Woodman is a foundational biog...
Chris Millington, "A History of Fascism in France: From the First World War to the National Front" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
31 Aug 2025
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...
Anders M. Greene-Crow, "Austerity Measures: The Poetics of Food Insecurity in Early Modern English Literature" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
27 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
My guest today is Anders M. Greene-Crow. Anders teaches at the Woods College of Advancing Studies and is a former Professor of English at Boston Colle...
Harald Bodenschatz et al., "Urban Planning in Nazi Germany: Attack, Triumph, Terror in the European Context, 1933–1945" (DOM, 2025)
26 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Urban Planning in Nazi Germany: Attack, Triumph, Terror in the European Context, 1933–1945 (DOM, 2025) is edited by Uwe Altrock, Harald Bodenschat...
Jonathan Daly and Leonid Trofimov, "The Russian Revolution and Its Global Impact: A Short History with Documents" (Hackett Publishing, 2017)
26 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"On the centenary of the Russian Revolution, Jonathan Daly and Leonid Trofimov have reinvigorated the study of a turning point in world history. Inste...
Jérémy Filet, "The Jacobites and the Grand Tour: Educational Travel and Small-States' Diplomacy" (Manchester UP, 2025)
26 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Jacobites and the Grand Tour: Educational travel and small-states' diplomacy (Manchester University Press, 2025) by Dr. Jérémy Filet is the fir...
Agnes Arnold-Forster, "The Cancer Problem: Malignancy in Nineteenth-Century Britain" (Oxford UP, 2021)
25 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Agnes Arnold-Forster's book The Cancer Problem: Malignancy in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Oxford UP, 2021) offers the first medical, cultural, and s...
Michelle P. Brown, "Bede and the Theory of Everything" (Reaktion Books, 2023)
23 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bede and the Theory of Everything (Reaktion Books, 2023) investigates the life and world of Bede (c. 673–735), foremost scholar of the early Middle...
Raymond Jonas, "Habsburgs on the Rio Grande: The Rise and Fall of the Second Mexican Empire" (Harvard UP, 2024)
23 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For a few years in the middle of the nineteenth century, Mexico was ruled by an Austrian and defended by a French army. This often neglected story is ...
Konrad H. Jarausch, "Embattled Europe: A Progressive Alternative" (Princeton UP, 2021)
23 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A bracing corrective to predictions of the European Union’s decline, by a leading historian of modern Europe Is the European Union in decline? Recen...
Mariya Grinberg, "Trade in War: Economic Cooperation Across Enemy Lines" (Cornell UP, 2025)
21 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Trade between belligerents during wartime should not occur. After all, exchanged goods might help enemies secure the upper hand on the battlefield. Ye...
Paul Thomas Chamberlin, "Scorched Earth: A Global History of World War II" (Basic Books, 2025)
19 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In popular memory, the Second World War was an unalloyed victory for freedom over totalitarianism, marking the demise of the age of empires and the tr...
Barry Strauss, "Jews vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World's Mightiest Empire" (Simon & Schuster, 2025)
19 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jews vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World's Mightiest Empire (Simon & Schuster, 2025) by Barry Strauss recounts the history and ...
Mark Braude, "The Invisible Emperor: Napoleon on Elba from Empire to Exile" (Penguin Press, 2018)
17 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
I must’ve been a kid when I first heard the palindrome “Able I was ere I saw Elba”. Napoleon didn’t mean a lot to me at the time. “Elba” m...
Marla Segol, "Kabbalah and Sex Magic: A Mythical-Ritual Genealogy" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2022)
17 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Kabbalah and Sex Magic: A Mythical-Ritual Genealogy (Penn State University Press, 2021) a provocative book, Marla Segol explores the developme...
Thomas Kemple, “Intellectual Work and the Spirit of Capitalism: Weber’s Calling” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
16 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Thomas Kemple‘s new book is an extraordinarily thoughtful invitation to approach Max Weber (1864-1920) as a performer, and to experience Weber’s w...
David de Boer, "The Early Modern Dutch Press in an Age of Religious Persecution" (Oxford UP, 2023)
16 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David de Boer returns to the podcast to talk to Jana Byars about his first book, The Early Modern Dutch Press in the Age of Religious Persecution (O...
Enrique Dussel, "The Theological Metaphors of Marx" (Duke UP, 2024)–A Conversation with Camilo Pérez-Bustillo and Eduardo Mendieta
15 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Theological Metaphors of Marx (Duke UP, 2024) by Enrique Dussel – A Conversation with Camilo Pérez-Bustillo and Eduardo Mendieta In The Th...
Garrett M. Graff, "When the Sea Came Alive: An Oral History of D-Day" (Simon and Schuster, 2025)
13 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
June 6, 1944—known to us all as D-Day—is one of history’s greatest and most unbelievable military triumphs. The surprise sunrise landing of more...
Ned Richardson-Little, "The German Democratic Republic: The Rise and Fall of a Cold War State" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
13 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The German Democratic Republic has come to stand as a symbol of communist tyranny, a source of Cold War nostalgia and socialist kitsch, and a failed a...
Federico Marcon, "Fascism: The History of a Word" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
11 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The rise and popular support for authoritarianism around the world and within traditional democracies have spurred debates over the meaning of the ter...
Megan Brown, "The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community" (Harvard UP, 2022)
09 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community (Harvard University Press, 2022), Dr. Megan Brown details the surprising st...
Michael Geheran, "Comrades Betrayed: Jewish World War I Veterans under Hitler" (Cornell UP, 2020)
08 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What claims could Jewish veterans make on the Nazi state by virtue of their having fought for Germany? How often did Germans treat Jewish veterans di...
Margaret C. Jacob, "The Secular Enlightenment" (Princeton UP, 2019)
04 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Secular Enlightenment by Professor Margaret C. Jacob, has been called a major new history on how the Enlightenment transformed people's everyday l...
Giles Tremlett, "The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
04 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When civil war broke out in Spain in 1936, tens of thousands of young men and women from across the world flocked there to fight against the Nation...
Robert Morstein-Marx, "Julius Caesar and the Roman People" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
04 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Julius Caesar was no aspiring autocrat seeking to realize the imperial future but an unusually successful republican leader who was measured against t...
Julia Sneeringer, "A Social History of Early Rock ‘n’ Roll in Germany: Hamburg from Burlesque to The Beatles, 1956-69" (Bloomsbury, 2018)
03 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Beatles’ sojourn in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg during the early 1960s is part of music legend. As Julia Sneeringer reveals in A Social Hi...
Y. Kokosalakis and F. J. Leira-Castiñeira, "Violence and Propaganda in European Civil Wars" (Routledge, 2025)
02 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Violence and Propaganda in European Civil Wars explores the complex interplay between violence and propaganda during the continent's major civil conf...
Hannah Charnock, "Teenage intimacies: Young Women, Sex and Social Life in England, 1950-80" (Manchester UP, 2025)
02 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Teenage Intimacies offers a new account of the ‘sexual revolution’ in mid-twentieth century England. Rather than focusing on ‘Swinging London’...
Sasha D. Pack, "The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Hispano-African Border" (Stanford UP, 2019)
01 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Hispano-African Border(Stanford, 2019), Sasha D. Pack considers the...
Jeremy DeWaal, "Geographies of Renewal: Heimat and Democracy in West Germany, 1945-1990" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
30 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The term “Heimat,” referring to a local sense of home and belonging, has been the subject of much scholarly and popular debate following the fall ...
Murad Idris, "War for Peace: Genealogies of a Violent Ideal in Western and Islamic Thought" (Oxford UP, 2019)
30 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Murad Idris, a political theorist in the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at the University of Virginia, explores the concept of peace, the term ...
Marion Bower, "The Life and Work of Joan Riviere: Freud, Klein and Female Sexuality" (Routledge, 2018)
27 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Joan Riviere (1883-1962) is best known for her role in promoting the ideas of others. She came to prominence in the world of psychoanalysis as Freud’...
Christopher Ocker, "Luther, Conflict, and Christendom: Reformation Europe and Christianity in the West" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
27 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Martin Luther - monk, priest, intellectual, or revolutionary - has been a controversial figure since the sixteenth century. Most studies of Luther str...
Christy Pichichero, "The Military Enlightenment: War and Culture in the French Empire from Louis XIV to Napoleon" (Cornell UP, 2018)
27 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Covering the pivotal period from the mid-seventeenth century through the era of the French Revolution, Christy Pichichero's The Military Enlightenme...
Victoria de Grazia, "The Perfect Fascist: A Story of Love, Power, and Morality in Mussolini’s Italy" (Harvard UP, 2020)
27 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, The Perfect Fascist: A Story of Love, Power, and Morality in Mussolini’s Italy (Belknap Press), Dr. Victoria de Grazia takes the s...
Julian Jackson, "De Gaulle" (Harvard UP, 2018)
26 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Charles de Gaulle is one of the greatest figures of twentieth century history. If Sir Winston Churchill was (in the words of Harold Macmillan) the "gr...
Nathan Stoltzfus, “Hitler’s Compromises: Coercion and Consensus in Nazi Germany” (Yale UP, 2016)
26 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How did the Nazi regime respond to protest? How did Hitler’s desire for popular authority shape the relationship between state and society? Nathan S...
Alex J. Kay and David Stahel, "Mass Violence in Nazi-Occupied Europe" (Indiana UP, 2018)
20 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Alex J. Kay (senior lecture of History at Potsdam University in Berlin) and David Stahel (senior lecturer in History at the University of New South Wa...
Meegan Kennedy, "Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy: Beautiful Mechanism" (Oxford UP, 2025)
18 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy: Beautiful Mechanism (Oxford UP, 2025) by Dr. Meegan Kennedy examines a revolutionary period in microscopi...
Anastasios Karababas, "In the Footsteps of the Jews of Greece: From Ancient Times to the Present Day" (Vallentine Mitchell & Co, 2024)
16 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“To live, a people must always be able to know its past, to judge it, to accept it.”— Simone Veil, French politician and Shoah survivor When I ...
Ian Stewart, "The Celts: A Modern History" (Princeton UP, 2025)
15 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Before the Greeks and Romans, the Celts ruled the ancient world. They sacked Rome, invaded Greece, and conquered much of Europe, from Ireland to Turke...
John McGahern, "The Dark: A Critical Edition" (Syracuse UP, 2025)
14 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bringing John McGahern's 1965 masterpiece back into print in the United States after years of inaccessibility, this new sixtieth-anniversary critica...
Juliet Rix, "London's Statues of Women" (SafeHaven Books, 2025)
14 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
No-one can fail to notice how many statues of Great Men there are around London: stern politicians, military generals, imperial adventurers . . . But ...
Rosemary Goring, "Exile: The Captive Years of Mary, Queen of Scots" (Berlinn, 2025)
12 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From the moment Mary, Queen of Scots set foot on English soil in 1568 until her execution at Fotheringhay Castle on 8 February 1587, she was the priso...
Neil Gregor, "The Symphony Concert in Nazi Germany" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
12 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A new history of how the musical worlds of German towns and cities were transformed during the Nazi era. In the years after the Nazis came to power i...
Samuel Kline Cohn, "Popular Protest and Ideals of Democracy in Late Renaissance Italy" (Oxford UP, 2022)
11 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Samuel K Cohn, Jr. joins Jana Byars to talk about Popular Protest and the Ideals of Democracy in Late Renaissance Italy (Oxford University Press, 2...
Joseph Valente, "Irish Shame: A Literary Reckoning" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)
11 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The first edited collection dedicated to the historical specifics of Irish shame Offers an anatomy of Irish shame as a cultural predicament Com...
Michael Green and Ineke Huysman eds., "Private Life and Privacy in the Early Modern Low Countries" (Brepols Publishers, 2023)
10 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Green joins Jana Byars to talk about his volume with co-editor Ineke Huysman, Private Life and Privacy in the Early Modern Low Countries (Br...
Robert G. Morrison, "Merchants of Knowledge: Intellectual Exchange in the Ottoman Empire and Renaissance Europe" (Stanford UP, 2025)
10 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1450 and 1550, a remarkable century of intellectual exchange developed across the Eastern Mediterranean. As Renaissance Europe depended on kno...
Julie Singer, "Out of the Mouths of Babes: Infant Voices in Medieval French Literature" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
05 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A wide-ranging study of the rich questions raised by speaking infants in medieval French literature.Medieval literature is full of strange moments whe...
Andrew Hartman, "Karl Marx in America" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
05 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Karl Marx in America (University of Chicago Press, 2025), by Andrew Hartman To read Karl Marx is to contemplate a world created by capitalism. Peop...
Enrique Fernández and Darlene Abreu-Ferreira, "Death and Gender in the Early Modern Period" (Brill, 2024)
04 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Enrique Fernández and Darlene Abreu-Ferreira, eds. Death and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Brill, 2024). In premodern Europe, the gender identity...
Elisabeth Åsbrink, "1947: Where Now Begins" (Other Press, 2019)
01 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
An award-winning writer captures a year that defined the modern world, intertwining historical events around the globe with key moments from her perso...
Jonathan Teubner, "Charity After Augustine: Solidarity, Conflict, and the Practices of Charity in the Latin West" (Oxford UP, 2025)
23 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jonathan Teubner, Charity After Augustine: Solidarity, Conflict, and the Practices of Charity in the Latin West (Oxford UP, 2025) Through a unique ...
Bernd Roeck, "The World at First Light: A New History of the Renaissance" (Princeton UP, 2025)
22 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today I’m speaking with Bernd Roeck about his book, The World at First Light: A New History of the Renaissance (Princeton University Press, 2025)....
Violet Moller, "Inside the Stargazer's Palace: The Transformation of Science in 16th-Century Europe" (OneWorld, 2024)
18 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus declared the earth revolved around the Sun, overturning centuries of scholastic presumption. A new age was coming into vi...
Alice Hunt, "Republic: Britain's Revolutionary Decade, 1649–1660" (Faber and Faber, 2024)
18 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Alice Hunt’s Republic: Britain’s Revolutionary Decade 1649-1650 (Faber and Faber, 2024) takes a chronological look at the current events, perso...
Carolin Duttlinger, "Attention and Distraction in Modern German Literature, Thought, and Culture" (Oxford UP, 2022)
17 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Carolin Duttlinger is Professor of German Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford (UK) and Co-Director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre...
Elise Franklin "Disintegrating Empire: Algerian Family Migration and the Limits of the Welfare State in France" (University of Nebraska Press, 2024)
10 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is a conversation with Dr. Elise Franklin whose first book, Disintegrating Empire: Algerian Family Migration and the Limits of the...
Julia Sneeringer, "West Germany: A Society in Motion, 1949-89" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
08 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Julia Sneeringer's book provides a concise overview of developments in the Federal Republic of Germany from the end of the Second World War and German...
Charles J Esdaile, "The Spanish Civil War: A Military History" (Routledge, 2019)
08 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Spanish Civil War: A Military History takes a new, military approach to the conflict that tore Spain apart from 1936 to 1939. In many histories,...
Stephan Kieninger, "Dynamic Détente: The United States and Europe, 1964-1975" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016)
07 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This book examines the dynamic evolution of Western détente policies which sought to transform Europe and overcome its Cold War division through more...
David de Boer and Geert H. Janssen eds.,"Refugee Politics in Early Modern Europe" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024)
07 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David de Boer and Geert H. Janssen, eds. Refugee Politics in Early Modern Europe (Bloomsbury, 2024). This book is available as an open source public...
Questions: A Discussion with Leslie Butler and Holly Case
06 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
BOOKS UNDER DISCUSSION: Leslie Butler, Consistent Democracy: The "Woman Question" and Self-Government in Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford Univers...
Sabrin Hasbun, "Crossing: A Love Story Between Italy and Palestine" (Footnote Press, 2025)
06 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A beautiful and compelling family memoir retracing the love story between Sabrin Hasbun’s Palestinian father and Italian mother, and the life of her...
Roger Chickering, "The German Empire, 1871–1918" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
04 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Furious economic growth and social change resulted in pervasive civic conflict in Imperial Germany. Roger Chickering presents a wide-ranging history o...
Elisabeth Åsbrink "And in the Vienna Woods the Trees Remain: The Heartbreaking True Story of a Family Torn Apart by War" (Other Press, 2020)
04 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews and a Notable Translated Book of the Year by World Literature Today Winner of the August Prize, th...
Simon Stjernholm, "Sensing Islam: Engaging and Contesting the Senses in Muslim Religiosity" (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025)
03 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Simon Stjernholm's new book Sensing Islam: Engaging and Contesting the Senses in Muslim Religiosity (Bloomsbury Press, 2025) considers specific cas...