New Books in Western European Studies

Kelsey Rubin-Detlev, "The Epistolary Art of Catherine the Great" (Liverpool UP, 2019)

20 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The Epistolary Art of Catherine the Great (Liverpool University Press, 2019) is the first scholarly monograph devoted to the comprehensive analysis of...

Daniel Schwartz, "Ghetto: The History of a Word" (Harvard UP, 2019)

19 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The word “ghetto” has taken on different meanings since its coinage in the 16th century. The uses of this term have varied considerably, from its ...

Mike Duncan, "The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic" (PublicAffairs, 2017)

19 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The Roman Republic was one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of civilization. Beginning as a small city-state in central Italy, Rome ...

Appeasement Eighty Years On

18 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

According to one dictionary definition, the term means: “to yield or concede to the belligerent demands of (a nation, group, person, etc.) in a conc...

David Wheat, "Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640" (UNC Press, 2016)

18 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

David Wheat’s fantastic book Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640 (University of North Carolina Press, 2016) argues that the extens...

Margaret E. Schotte, "Sailing School: Navigating Science and Skill, 1550-1800" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2019)

14 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Throughout the Age of Exploration, European maritime communities bent on colonial and commercial expansion embraced the complex mechanics of celestial...

Liz Gloyn, "Tracking Classical Monsters in Popular Culture" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019)

12 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

What is it about ancient monsters that popular culture still finds so enthralling? Why do the monsters of antiquity continue to stride across the mode...

Han F. Vermeulen, "Before Boas: The Genesis of Ethnography and Ethnology in the German Enlightenment" (U Nebraska Press, 2015)

11 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The history of anthropology has been written from multiple viewpoints, often from perspectives of gender, nationality, theory, or politics. Winner of ...

John Launer, "Sex Versus Survival: The Life and Ideas of Sabina Spielrein" (Henry N. Abrams, 2017)

11 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

John Launer's Sex Versus Survival: The Life and Ideas of Sabina Spielrein (Henry N. Abrams, 2017) manages to supplant (and given the power of the vis...

Iain MacGregor, "Checkpoint Charlie: The Cold War, The Berlin Wall, and the Most Dangerous Place On Earth" (Scribner, 2019)

08 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

There is perhaps no more iconic symbol of the Cold War than the Berlin Wall, the 96-mile-long barrier erected around West Berlin in 1961 to stem the f...

Sara Lorenzini, "Global Development: A Cold War History" (Princeton UP, 2019)

07 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

As Dr. Sara Lorenzini points out in her new book Global Development: A Cold War History (Princeton UP, 2019), the idea of economic development was a r...

Carlo Bonomi, "The Cut and the Building of Psychoanalysis, Vol. I," (Routledge, 2017)

07 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Carlo Bonomi's two-volume set dreams the foundation of psychoanalysis as it writes its history. The work animates the reader's imagination, inviting t...

Annabel L. Kim, "Unbecoming Language: Anti-Identitarian French Feminist Fictions" (Ohio State UP, 2018)

06 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In Unbecoming Language: Anti-Identitarian French Feminist Fictions (The Ohio State University Press, 2018), Annabel Kim tangles with the question of d...

Emily Wilson, trans., "The Odyssey" (Norton, 2017)

05 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The first great adventure story in the Western canon, The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty, and powe...

Kathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing

03 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trad...

Joseph F. O'Callaghan, "Alfonso X, the Justinian of His Age" (Cornell UP, 2019)

01 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

While monarchs throughout history used their power to make laws as a tool for governing their realms, rarely did they undertake the long and detailed ...

Julia Nicholls, "Revolutionary Thought after the Paris Commune, 1871-1885" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

01 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Revolutionary Thought after the Paris Commune, 1871-1885 (Cambridge University Press, 2019), is the first comprehensive account of French revolutiona...

Eileen Boris, "Making the Woman Worker: Precarious Labor and the Fight for Global Standards, 1919-2019" (Oxford UP, 2019)

01 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Founded in 1919 along with the League of Nations, the International Labour Organization (ILO) establishes labor standards and produces knowledge about...

Dan Jones, "Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands" (Viking, 2019)

29 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Much has been written about the Crusades, the religiously-inspired wars that pockmarked the later centuries of the Middle Ages. Yet for all of the man...

Amy Carney, "Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS" (Toronto UP, 2018)

25 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

From 1931 to 1945, leaders of the SS sought to transform their organization into a racially-elite family community that would serve as the Third Reich...

J. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019)

24 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude t...

Henning Melber, "Dag Hammarskjöld, the United Nations, and the Decolonisation of Africa" (Hurst, 2019)

21 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Dag Hammarskjold was such a dynamic secretary-general that for years, the motto about him was simply “Leave it to Dag.” Only the second person to ...

Catherine Clark, "Paris and the Cliché of History: The City in Photographs, 1860-1970" (Oxford UP, 2018)

18 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

What’s the first image that comes to mind when you hear the words “Paris” and “photography”? Is it a famous photo, perhaps an Atget, Brassai...

Yael Almog, "Secularism and Hermeneutics" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2019)

16 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In the late Enlightenment, a new imperative began to inform theories of interpretation: all literary texts should be read in the same way that we read...

Jeremy Black, "A Brief History of Spain" (Robinson, 2019)

14 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Wonderfully concise and very readable, A Brief History of Spain (Robinson, 2019), is perfect for travelers as well as the discerning reader. Professor...

Grégoire Mallard, "Gift Exchange: The Transnational History of a Political Idea" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

03 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Since Marcel Mauss published his foundational essay "The Gift" in 1925, many anthropologists and specialists of international relations have seen in t...

Gerry Milligan, "Moral Combat: Women, Gender and War in Italian Renaissance Literature" (U Toronto Press, 2018)

01 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Gerry Milligan’s Moral Combat: Women, Gender and War in Italian Renaissance Literature (University of Toronto Press, 2018) takes as its subject the ...

Brittany Lehman, "Teaching Migrant Children in West Germany and Europe, 1945-1992" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)

30 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In her new book, Teaching Migrant Children in West Germany and Europe, 1945-1992 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Brittany Lehman examines the right to edu...

Geoffrey Parker, "Emperor: A New Life of Charles V" (Yale UP, 2019)

27 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The Emperor Charles V (1500–1558), ruler of Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, the Netherlands, and much of Italy and Central and South America, has long...

Tyson Reeder, "Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots: Free Trade in the Age of Revolution" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2019)

26 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

After emerging victorious from their revolution against the British Empire, many North Americans associated commercial freedom with independence and r...

Tim Frandy, "Inari Sami Folklore: Stories from Aanaar" (U Wisconsin Press, 2019)

25 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Inari Sámi Folklore: Stories from Aanaar (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019) is rich multivoiced anthology of folktales, legends, joik songs, prove...

Jeremy Black, "A Brief History of Italy" (Robinson, 2019)

24 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Despite the Roman Empire's 500-year reign over Europe, parts of Africa and the Middle East, Italy does not have the same long national history as stat...

Mark Roseman, "Lives Reclaimed: A Story of Rescue and Resistance in Nazi Germany" (Metropolitan Books, 2019)

20 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

What makes some people aid the persecuted while others just stand by? Questions about rescue and resistance have been fundamental to the field of geno...

Jasper Heinzen, "Making Prussians, Raising Germans: A Cultural History of Prussian State-Building after Civil War, 1866-1935" (Cambridge UP, 2017)

19 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

How does civil war shape state building and national identity over the long term? What do the underlying conflicts between Hanoverians and the Prussia...

Evdoxios Doxiadis, "State, Nationalism, and the Jewish Communities of Modern Greece" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018)

16 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

How did minorities fit into the new Greek state during the country’s transition from imperial rule to national sovereignty? How did the relationship...

Elizabeth D. Carney, "Eurydice and the Birth of Macedonian Power" (Oxford UP, 2019)

12 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

As the wife of a Macedonian king and the mother of three sons who would succeed him, Eurydice played an important role in Macedonia at an important mo...

Shayne Legassie, "The Medieval Invention of Travel" (U Chicago Press, 2017)

06 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Shayne Legassie talks about medieval travel, especially long distance travel, and the way it was feared, praised, and sometimes treated with suspicion...

Katie Jarvis, "Politics in the Marketplace: Work, Gender, and Citizenship in Revolutionary France" (Oxford UP, 2019)

04 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The king’s guards became increasingly nervous as they watched nearly 7,000 individuals march on Versailles on October 5, 1789. The crowd approaching...

Keir Giles, "Moscow Rules: What Drives Russia to Confront the West" (Chatham House, 2019)

03 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

From Moscow, the world looks different. It is through understanding how Russia sees the world—and its place in it—that the West can best meet the ...

Bianca Premo, "The Enlightenment on Trial: Ordinary Litigants and Colonialism in the Spanish Empire" (Oxford UP, 2017)

02 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Bianca Premo’s award-winning book The Enlightenment on Trial: Ordinary Litigants and Colonialism in the Spanish Empire, published by Oxford Universi...

Jenny Huangfu Day, "Qing Travelers to the Far West: Diplomacy and the Information Order in Late Imperial China" (Cambridge UP, 2018)

29 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Historians in the English-speaking world have long studied how European and American travelers and diplomats conceptualized China, but, especially in ...

Jesse Cromwell, "The Smugglers’ World: Illicit Trade and Atlantic Communities in Eighteenth-Century Venezuela" (UNC Press, 2018)

28 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Chocolate – nothing is more irresistible for a decadent treat or a rich drink to warm you on a cold winter’s evening.  In eighteenth-century Vene...

Davide Crippa, The Impossibility of Squaring the Circle in the 17th Century" (Birkhäuser, 2019)

28 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

From 1667 to 1676, a pivotal controversy played out among several mathematical luminaries of the time, partly in the proceedings of the Royal Society ...

Mark Braude, "The Invisible Emperor: Napoleon on Elba from Empire to Exile" (Penguin Press, 2018)

27 Aug 2019

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...

Geoffrey Parker, "Emperor: A New Life of Charles V" (Yale UP, 2019)

23 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

From his accession to the Spanish throne in 1516 until his abdication in 1556, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V dominated Europe in a way that no rule...

Susan Jaques, "The Caesar of Paris:  Napoleon Bonaparte, Rome, and the Artistic Obsession That Shaped An Empire" (Pegasus Books, 2018)

22 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In her book, The Caesar of Paris:  Napoleon Bonaparte, Rome, and the Artistic Obsession That Shaped An Empire (Pegasus Books, 2018), Susan Jaques off...

Evgeny Finkel, "Ordinary Jews: Choice and Survival during the Holocaust" (Princeton UP, 2017)

22 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Can there be a political science of the Holocaust? Evgeny Finkel, in his new book Ordinary Jews: Choice and Survival during the Holocaust(Princeton Un...

Danny Orbach, "Plots Against Hitler" (Eamon Dolan/HMH, 2016)

21 Aug 2019

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...

M. David Litwa, "How the Gospels Became History: Jesus and Mediterranean Myths" (Yale UP, 2019)

19 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Did the early Christians believe their myths? Like most ancient—and modern—people, early Christians made efforts to present their myths in the mos...

Lisa Greenwald, "Daughters of 1968: Redefining French Feminism and the Women’s Liberation Movement" (U Nebraska Press, 2019)

15 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

May ’68 marked a watershed moment in French society, culture, and political life. The feminist movement was no exception. Women took to the streets ...

Michael Lower, "The Tunis Crusade of 1270: A Mediterranean History" (Oxford UP, 2018)

12 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Why was a Crusade that was initially meant for Syria end up in Tunis? How did the aspirations of the King of France and the Mamluk Sultan, the King of...

Is the Idea of "The Enlightenment" Still Useful?

09 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In a new podcast of the series ‘Arguing History’, Professor Jeremy Black, the most prolific historian writing in the Anglophone world, if not on t...

Erin-Marie Legacey, "Making Space for the Dead: Catacombs, Cemeteries, and the Reimagining of Paris, 1780-1830" (Cornell UP, 2019)

07 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In Making Space for the Dead: Catacombs, Cemeteries, and the Reimagining of Paris, 1780-1830 (Cornell University Press, 2019), Dr. Erin-Marie Legacey,...

Robert Crowcroft, "The End is Nigh: British Politics, Power, and the Road to the Second World War" (Oxford UP, 2019)

06 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Few decades have given rise to such potent mythologies as the 1930s. Popular impressions of those years prior to the Second World War were shaped by t...

Elizabeth Otto, "Haunted Bauhaus: Occult Spirituality, Gender Fluidity, Queer Identities, and Radical Politics" (MIT Press, 2019)

06 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In this segment of New Books in History, Jana Byars talks with Elizabeth “Libby” Otto, Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Studies and E...

Violet Moller, "The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found" (Doubleday, 2019)

31 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Violet Moller has written a narrative history of the transmission of books from the ancient world to the modern. In The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Y...

Katharina Karcher, "Sisters in Arms: Militant Feminisms in the Federal Republic of Germany since 1968" (Berghahn, 2017)

31 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In her new book, Sisters in Arms: Militant Feminisms in the Federal Republic of Germany since 1968 (Berghahn, 2017), Katharina Karcher Lecturer in Ger...

Peter Jan Margry, "The Miracle of Amsterdam: Biography of a Contested Devotion" (U Notre Dame, 2019)

31 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

harles Caspers and Peter Jan Margry's The Miracle of Amsterdam: Biography of a Contested Devotion (University of Notre Dame, 2019) presents a “cultu...

David Stenner, "Globalizing Morocco: Transnational Activism and the Postcolonial State" (Stanford UP, 2019)

29 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The story of Morocco’s independence struggle against France and Spain is a complicated one. Because it occurred around the same time of the long-run...

Jamie Aroosi, "The Dialectical Self: Kierkegaard, Marx, and the Making of the Modern Subject" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2019)

24 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Jamie Aroosi has written an important book that brings together the theoretical work of Karl Marx and Soren Kierkegaard in a kind of intellectual enco...

E. Danto and A. Steiner-Strauss, "Freud/Tiffany: Anna Freud, Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham and the Best Possible School" (Routledge, 2018)

19 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Elizabeth Danto and Alexandra Steiner-Strauss’ edited book, Freud/Tiffany: Anna Freud, Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham and The Best Possible School (Rout...

Donald Reid, "Opening the Gates: The Lip Affair, 1968-1981" (Verso Books, 2018)

11 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In the summer of 1973, Donald Reid was an undergraduate student who had traveled to France for the first time to work on his Honors thesis in History....

Liat Steir-Livny, "Remaking Holocaust Memory: Documentary Cinema by Third Generation Survivors in Israel" (Syracuse UP, 2019)

11 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The Holocaust was and remains a central trauma in Israel’s national consciousness. It has found ample expressions in Israeli documentary cinema from...

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

10 Jul 2019

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...

Caroline Boggis-Rolfe, "The Baltic Story: A Thousand Year History of Its Lands, Sea, and Peoples" (Amberley, 2019)

08 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The story of the littoral nations of the Baltic Sea is like a saga, that genre perfected by those tenacious inhabitants of the rocky shores of this an...

Petra Goedde, "The Politics of Peace: A Global Cold War History" (Oxford UP, 2019)

05 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Earlier histories of the Cold War haven’t exactly been charitable toward the peace activists and pacifists who led peace initiatives. Pacifists in t...

Stephen Hardy and Andrew Holman, "Hockey: A Global History" (U Illinois Press, 2018)

03 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Today we are joined by Stephen Hardy, retired professor of kinesiology and affiliate professor of history at the University of New Hampshire, and Andr...

Tiffany Florvil and Vanessa Plumly, "Rethinking Black German Studies: Approaches, Interventions, and Histories" (Peter Lang, 2018)

03 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Black German Studies is an interdisciplinary field that has experienced significant growth over the past three decades, integrating subjects such as g...

William Caferro, "Petrarch's War: Florence and the Black Death in Context" (Cambridge UP, 2018)

03 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In 1349 the City-Republic of Florence had just endured a horrific epidemic of bubonic plague, that contagion that became known as the Black Death. Nev...

Sasha D. Pack, "The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Hispano-African Border" (Stanford UP, 2019)

01 Jul 2019

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...

Caitlyn Collins, "Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving" (Princeton UP, 2019)

28 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Where in the world do working moms have it best? In her new book, Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving (Princeton Universit...

Jeremy F. Walton, "Muslim Civil Society and the Politics of Religious Freedom in Turkey" (Oxford UP, 2017)

28 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The social history of Turkey across the twentieth century has produced a tension between state governance and religion. This history informs and shape...

Daniel Nemser, "Infrastructures of Race: Concentration and Biopolitics in Colonial Mexico" (U Texas Press, 2017)

28 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Daniel Nemser’s Infrastructures of Race: Concentration and Biopolitics in Colonial Mexico(University of Texas Press, 2017) examines the long history...

Tim Bouverie, "Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill and the Road to War" (Tim Duggan Books, 2019)

27 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill and the Road to War(Tim Duggan Books, 2019) is a groundbreaking history of the disastrous years of indecis...

Jeanette M. Fregulia, "A Rich and Tantalizing Brew: A History of How Coffee Connected the World" (U Arkansas Press, 2019))

26 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In this this interview, Carrie Tippen talks with Jeanette M. Fregulia about the movements of coffee beans, coffee drinking, and coffee houses from Eth...

Jeffrey T. Zalar, "Reading and Rebellion in Catholic Germany, 1770-1914" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

25 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Popular conceptions of Catholic censorship, symbolized above all by the Index of Forbidden Books, figure prominently in secular definitions of freedom...

Edward Vallance, "Loyalty, Memory and Public Opinion in England, 1658-1727" (Manchester UP, 2019)

20 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

People value loyalty. We prize it in our dogs. We loyally carry loyalty cards to claim discounts at our favourite stores and coffee shops. We follow s...

Carolyn J. Dean, "The Moral Witness: Trials and Testimony after Genocide" (Cornell UP, 2019)

19 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Carolyn J. Dean’s The Moral Witness: Trials and Testimony after Genocide (Cornell University Press, 2019) examines the cultural history of the idea ...

David Green, "The Hundred Years War: A People’s History" (Yale UP, 2014)

19 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The year 1453 marked the end of an intermittent yet seemingly endless series of wars between the Kingdom of France and the Kingdom of England that, so...

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

10 Jun 2019

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 ...

Jane Hooper, "Feeding Globalization: Madagascar and the Provisioning Trade, 1600-1800" (Ohio UP, 2017)

10 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Madagascar lies so close to the African coast--and so near the predictable wind system of the Indian Ocean--that it’s easy to overlook the island, t...

Francesca Trivellato, "The Promise and Peril of Credit" (Princeton UP, 2019)

07 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In 1647, the French author Étienne Cleirac asserted in his book Les us, et coustumes de la mer that the credit instruments known as bills of exchange...

Cathal J. Nolan, "The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost" (Oxford UP, 2019)

06 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

History has tended to measure war's winners and losers in terms of its major engagements, battles in which the result was so clear-cut that they could...

Daniel Hershenzon, "The Captive Sea: Slavery, Communication, and Commerce in Early Modern Spain and the Mediterranean" (U Penn Press, 2018)

05 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

For hundreds of years, people living on the coasts of  the Mediterranean Sea enslaved one another. Moslems from North Africa captured Italians, Frenc...

Demetra Kasimis, "The Perpetual Immigrant and the Limits of Athenian Democracy" (Cambridge UP, 2018)

03 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Demetra Kasimis’s new book, The Perpetual Immigrant and the Limits of Athenian Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2018) interrogates the role an...

Norman Eisen, "The Last Palace: Europe's Turbulent Century in Five Lives and One Legendary House" (Crown, 2018)

31 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

As we’ve previously discussed, there are a lot of books about democracy filling book store and library shelves right now. Norman Eisen could have wr...

Timothy A. Sayle, "Enduring Alliance: A History of NATO and the Postwar Global Order" (Cornell UP, 2019)

28 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization regularly appears in newspapers and political science scholarship. Surprisingly, historians have yet to devote ...

John J. Curley, "Global Art and the Cold War" (Laurence King Publishers, 2019)

27 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

It was the passionate amateur painter, Winston Churchill, who introduced one of the Cold War’s key metaphors: The Iron Curtain. As John J. Curley ar...

James Crossland, "War, Law and Humanity: The Campaign to Control Warfare, 1853-1914" (Bloomsbury, 2018)

27 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Beginning in the mid-1850s, a number of people in Europe and the United States undertook a range of efforts in response to the horrors of war. In his ...

Adrian Goldsworthy, "Hadrian's Wall" (Basic Books, 2018)

24 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Stretching across the north of England, from coast to coast, are the 73-mile long remnants of a fortification built by the Roman Army during the reign...

Jeremy Black, "The World at War, 1914-1945" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019)

22 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In one of his latest books, The World at War, 1914-1945 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), Professor of History at Exeter University, Jeremy Black, the mos...

Stephen Fritz, "The First Soldier: Hitler as a Military Leader" (Yale UP, 2018)

21 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In his new book, The First Soldier: Hitler as a Military Leader (Yale University Press, 2018), Stephen Fritz professor of history at East Tennessee St...

Kris Lane, "Potosí: The Silver City That Changed the World" (U California Press, 2019)

20 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In 1545, a native Andean prospector hit pay dirt on a desolate red mountain in highland Bolivia. There followed the world's greatest silver bonanza, m...

Toby Green, "A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution" (U Chicago Press, 2019)

17 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

All too often, the history of early modern Africa is told from the perspective of outsiders. In his book A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Ris...

Harold J. Cook, "The Young Descartes: Nobility, Rumor, and War" (U Chicago Press, 2018)

15 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Harold J. Cook talks about the travels and trials of the young Descartes, a man who spent as much time traveling and fighting as he did studying philo...

Caitlín Eilís Barrett, "Domesticating Empire: Egyptian Landscapes in Pompeian Gardens" (Oxford UP, 2019)

07 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Domesticating Empire: Egyptian Landscapes in Pompeian Gardens (Oxford University Press, 2019) is the first contextually-oriented monograph on Egyptian...

Houri Berberian, "Roving Revolutionaries: Armenians and the Connected Revolutions in the Russian, Iranian and Ottoman Worlds" (U California Press, 2019)

07 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In her newest book, Roving Revolutionaries: Armenians and the Connected Revolutions in the Russian, Iranian and Ottoman Worlds (University of Californ...

Jacob Lee, "Masters of the Middle Waters: Indian Nations and Colonial Ambitions Along the Mississippi" (Harvard UP, 2019)

23 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

America’s waterways were once the superhighways of travel and communication. Coursing through a central line across the landscape, with tributaries ...

Richard Hingley, "Londinium: A Biography" (Routledge, 2018)

18 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

From its humble beginnings as a crossing point over the river Thames Londinium grew into the largest city in Roman Britain. In Londinium: A Biography ...

Margaret C. Jacob, "The Secular Enlightenment" (Princeton UP, 2019)

16 Apr 2019

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...