New Books in Western European Studies
Episodes
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...
Robert Matzen, "Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II" (GoodKnight Books, 2019)
16 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Audrey Hepburn was justly known for her long acting career, yet her early life is largely unknown. In his book, Robert Matzen describes how she lived ...
Craig Benjamin, "Empires of Ancient Eurasia: The First Silk Roads Era, 100 BCE-250 CE" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
12 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the late second century BCE, a series of trading route developed between China in the east and Rome’s empire in the west. Craig Benjamin’s Empi...
Jeremy Black, "Charting the Past: The Historical Worlds of Eighteenth-Century England" (Indiana UP, 2018)
11 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Eighteenth-century England was a place of both the enlightenment and progress: new ideas abounded in science, politics, transportation, commerce, phil...
Sigrid Lien, "Pictures of Longing: Photography and the Norwegian-American Migration" (U Minnesota Press, 2018)
08 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In one of history’s largest migrations, hundreds of thousands of Norwegians immigrated to North American during the 1800s and early 1900s. In additi...
Christian Goeschel, "Mussolini and Hitler: The Forging of the Fascist Alliance" (Yale UP, 2018)
02 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, Mussolini and Hitler: The Forging of the Fascist Alliance (Yale University Press, 2018), Christian Goeschel, Senior Lecturer in Moder...
Joel Elliot Slotkin, "Sinister Aesthetics: The Appeal of Evil in Early Modern Literature" (Palgrave, 2017)
29 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Why did creative writers in early modern England write so forcefully about the relationship between aesthetics and morality? How did they imagine crea...
Kurt Raaflaub, "The Landmark Julius Caesar: The Complete Works" (Pantheon, 2017)
26 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
That the Roman leader Gaius Julius Caesar is so well remembered today for his achievements as a general is largely due to his skills as a writer. In T...
Stéphane Henaut and Jeni Mitchell, "A Bite-Sized History of France: Gastronomic Tales of Revolution, War, and Enlightenment" (The New Press, 2018)
25 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
From the cassoulet that won a war to the crêpe that doomed Napoleon, from the rebellions sparked by bread and salt to the new cuisines forged by empi...
Paul J. Kosmin, "Time and Its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire" (Harvard UP, 2018)
21 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the aftermath of Alexander the Great’s conquests, the Seleucid kings ruled a vast territory stretching from Central Asia to Anatolia, Armenia to ...
Margaret Arnold, "The Magdalene in the Reformation" (Harvard UP, 2018)
20 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Mary Magdalene’s story of conversion from sinner to saint is one of Christianity’s most compelling and controversial stories. The identity of this...
Sheilagh Ogilvie, "The European Guilds: An Economic Analysis" (Princeton UP, 2019)
20 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Guilds were prominent in medieval and early modern Europe, but their economic role has seldom been studied. In The European Guilds: An Economic Analys...
Discussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing
19 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more de...
Seth Bernard, "Building Mid-Republican Rome: Labor, Architecture, and the Urban Economy" (Oxford UP, 2018)
14 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Building Mid-Republican Rome: Labor, Architecture, and the Urban Economy (Oxford University Press, 2018), offers a holistic treatment of the developme...
Prakash Shah, "Western Foundations of the Caste System" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
13 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Indian caste system is an ancient, pervasive institution of social organization within the subcontinent – or is it? Join me as I speak with Dr. ...
Jennifer Ronyak, "Intimacy, Performance, and the Lied in the Early Nineteenth Century" (Indiana UP, 2018)
08 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Lied is one of the most important genres of nineteenth-century Romantic music, and one of the most intriguing. Balanced between public and private...
Alexander Langlands, "Cræft: An Inquiry into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts" (Norton, 2017)
04 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Alexander Langlands is a British archaeologist, historian, writer, and broadcaster. His most recent book, Cræft: An Inquiry into the Origins and Tr...
Chet Van Duzer, "Henricus Martellus’s World Map at Yale (c. 1491): Multispectral Imaging, Sources, and Influence" (Springer, 2019)
01 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Chet Van Duzer, an accomplished historian of cartography, trains his sight in this book on one uniquely important map produced in early modern Europe....
Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, "The Ideas that Made America: A Brief History" (Oxford UP, 2019)
28 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen's The Ideas that Made America: A Brief History (Oxford University Press, 2019) is a sweeping examination of the key ideas t...
Geraldine Heng, "The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
26 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press 2018), Geraldine Heng collects a remarkable array of medieval approac...
Matthew Bingham, "Orthodox Radicals: Baptist Identity in the English Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2019)
26 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Matthew Bingham, who teaches theology and church history at Oak Hill College, London, has written what must be one of the most startling accounts of r...
Daniel Unowsky, “The Plunder: The 1898 Anti-Jewish Riots in Habsburg Galicia” (Stanford UP, 2018)
19 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Unowsky's book isn't about a genocide or other incident of mass violence. Instead, The Plunder examines a series of riots against Jews in Hab...
Jeremy Black, "Britain and Europe: A Short History" (Hurst, 2019)
13 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It was a pleasure, earlier today, to speak to Jeremy Black, professor of history at the University of Exeter, about his new book, Britain and Europe: ...
Stefanos Geroulanos, "Transparency in Postwar France: A Critical History of the Present" (Stanford UP, 2017)
12 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to do a “microhistory” of a concept? Stefanos Geroulanos pursues just such a project in the 22 chapters of Transparency in Postw...
Robin Wallace, "Hearing Beethoven: A Story of Musical Loss and Discovery" (UChicago Press, 2018)
07 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Music lovers and researchers alike have long been fascinated by the story of Ludwig van Beethoven who became profoundly deaf as an adult and could not...
Kevin Ingram, "Converso Non-Conformism in Early Modern Spain: Bad Blood and Faith from Alonso de Cartagena to Diego Velázquez" (Palgrave, 2018)
07 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It was a delight to catch up with Kevin Ingram, professor of history at Saint Louis University, Madrid, to discuss his very impressive new book. Conve...
Zeb Tortorici, "Sins Against Nature: Sex and Archives in Colonial New Spain" (Duke UP, 2018)
01 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Sins Against Nature: Sex and Archives in Colonial New Spain (Duke University Press, 2018), Zeb Tortorici analyzes a vast corpus of documents in ord...
Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison, "The Class Ceiling: Why it Pays to be Privileged" (Policy Press, 2019)
31 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Who gets in to top professions? In The Class Ceiling: Why it pays to be privileged (Policy Press, 2019), Drs Sam Friedman, an associate professor of s...
Jodi Campbell, "At the First Table: Food and Social Identity in Early Modern Spain" (U Nebraska Press, 2017)
29 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jodi Campbell is Professor of History at Texas Christian University. She has written extensively on Spanish drama, royal history and women’s history...
David L. Hoffmann, "The Stalin Era" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
29 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book The Stalinist Era(Cambridge University Press, 2018), David L. Hoffmann focuses on the myriad ways in which Stalinist practices had the...
George R. Boyer, "The Winding Road to the Welfare State: Economic Insecurity and Social Welfare Policy in Britain" (Princeton UP, 2019)
28 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The creation of the postwar welfare state in Great Britain did not represent the logical progression of governmental policy over a period of generatio...
Dagmar Herzog, "Unlearning Eugenics: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Disability in Post-Nazi Europe" (U Wisconsin Press, 2018)
25 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, Unlearning Eugenics: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Disability in Post-Nazi Europe (University of Wisconsin Press, 2018), Dagmar Herzog...
Elizabeth A. Fraser, "Mediterranean Encounters: Artists Between Europe and the Ottoman Empire, 1774–1839" (Penn State UP, 2017)
23 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Elizabeth A. Fraser's Mediterranean Encounters: Artists Between Europe and the Ottoman Empire, 1774–1839 (Penn State University Press, 2017) takes i...
Andrew Lambert, "Seapower States: Maritime Culture, Continental Empires and the Conflict That Made the Modern World" (Yale UP, 2018)
23 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Andrew Lambert, Professor of Naval History at King’s College, London, author of eighteen books, and winner of the prestigious Anderson Medal—turns...
Volker Berghahn, "Journalists between Hitler and Adenauer: From Inner Emigration to the Moral Reconstruction of West Germany" (Princeton UP, 2018)
18 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What can the lives of journalists under Hitler and Adenauer reveal? How did they navigate the Third Reich as "internal emigrants"? How did the emergin...
Julian Jackson, "De Gaulle" (Harvard UP, 2018)
16 Jan 2019
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...
John Witte, Jr., "The Western Case for Monogamy over Polygamy" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
15 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
John Witte, Jr.'s The Western Case for Monogamy over Polygamy (Cambridge University Press, 2018) is an extensively researched book showcasing the auth...
Kathryn Lomas, "The Rise of Rome: From the Iron Age to the Punic Wars" (Harvard UP, 2018)
15 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
By the third century BC, the once-modest settlement of Rome had conquered most of Italy and was poised to build an empire throughout the Mediterranean...
Sarah Thomsen Vierra, "Turkish Germans in the Federal Republic of Germany: Immigration, Space, and Belonging, 1961-1990" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
14 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
After years of being overlooked, there has been a growing interest among academic historians in the history of Turkish Guest Workers in West Germany. ...
Angelos Chaniotis, "Age of Conquests: The Greek World from Alexander to Hadrian" (Harvard UP, 2018)
08 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The world that Alexander remade in his lifetime was transformed once more by his death in 323 BCE. In Age of Conquests: The Greek World from Alexander...
Michael Cotey Morgan, "The Final Act: The Helsinki Accords and the Transformation of the Cold War" (Princeton UP, 2018)
03 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Just when you thought that you knew everything and anything pertaining to the Cold War and the ending of it, along comes University of North Carolina ...
Hassan Malik, "Bankers and Bolsheviks: International Finance and the Russian Revolution" (Princeton UP, 2018)
03 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Lumbering late Tsarist Russia and international finance? Is there anything there? The Bolsheviks and finance? How can there be anything there? It...
Anne Reinhardt, "Navigating Semi-Colonialism: Shipping, Sovereignty, and Nation-Building in China, 1860–1937" (Harvard U Asia Center, 2018)
02 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
At a time when trade between China and the outside world is rarely out of the news, it remains important to remember that in centuries past global com...
Irmak Karademir Hazir, "Enter Culture, Exit Arts? The Transformation of Cultural Hierarchies in European Newspaper Culture Sections, 1960–2010" (Routledge, 2018)
26 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How has European culture changed since the 1960s? In Enter Culture, Exit Arts? The Transformation of Cultural Hierarchies in European Newspaper Cultur...
Matthew Gabriele, "Apocalypse and Reform from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages" (Routledge, 2018)
21 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Apocalypse and Reform from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Routledge, 2018) is a rich, comparative study, drawing on the scholarship of eleven auth...
Harry O. Maier, "New Testament Christianity in the Roman World" (Oxford UP, 2018)
20 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
I had the opportunity to catch up with Harry O. Maier, professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the Vancouver School of Theology, to discu...
Noah Benezra Strote, "Lions and Lambs: Conflict in Weimar and the Creation of Post-Nazi Germany" (Yale UP, 2017)
13 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It has long been assumed that stability was imposed on Germany after World War II; that the United States in particular taught Germans, among other th...
Paola Bertucci, "Artisanal Enlightenment: Science and the Mechanical Arts in Old Regime France" (Yale UP, 2018)
06 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Paola Bertucci's Artisanal Enlightenment: Science and the Mechanical Arts in Old Regime France (Yale University Press, 2018) is an innovative new look...
McKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017)
06 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of Gener...
Daniel Siemens, “Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler’s Brownshirts” (Yale UP, 2017)
26 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler’s Brownshirts (Yale University Press, 2017, Daniel Siemens, professor of European history a...
Eric D. Weitz, “Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy” (Princeton UP, 2018)
20 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What can the Weimar Republic teach us about how democracies fail? How could the same vibrancy that gave us cultural touchstones spawn Nazism? In his n...
Lee Bidgood, “Czech Bluegrass: Notes from the Heart of Europe” (U Illinois Press, 2017)
14 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Although bluegrass music is typically associated with the bluegrass state of Kentucky and Appalachia, the genre is actually played in many pockets all...
Michael Brenner, “A History of Jews in Germany Since 1945: Politics, Culture, and Society” (Indiana UP, 2018)
12 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In A History of Jews in Germany Since 1945: Politics, Culture, and Society (Indiana University Press, 2018), edited by Michael Brenner, Professor of...
Edward J. Watts, “Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell into Tyranny” (Basic Books, 2018)
05 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Despite enduring for nearly five centuries, the Roman Republic ended in a series of crises and wars that discredited the idea of republics in the West...
M. L. Rozenblit and J. Karp, “World War I and the Jews: Conflict and Transformation in Europe, the Middle East, and America” (Berghahn, 2017)
30 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How was Jewish life affected by the First World War? How did Jews around the world understand, engage with, and influence the Great War and surroundin...
Iain Provan, “The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture” (Baylor UP, 2017)
29 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Exactly five centuries after Martin Luther posted his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg, Christians continue to debate the best...
Naomi Seidman, “The Marriage Plot, Or, How Jews Fell In Love With Love, And With Literature” (Stanford UP, 2016)
29 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In The Marriage Plot, Or, How Jews Fell In Love With Love, And With Literature (Stanford University Press, 2016), Naomi Seidman, Chancellor Jackman P...
Shannon Fogg, “Stealing Home: Looting, Restitution, and Reconstructing Jewish Lives in France, 1942-1947” (Oxford UP, 2017)
25 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
While the history of the Second World War and Jewish persecution in France has been widely studied, the return of survivors in the aftermath of deport...
Patricia Lorcin and Todd Shepard, “French Mediterraneans: Transnational and Imperial Histories” (U Nebraska Press, 2016)
24 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Following a 2011 meeting of the annual Mediterranean Workshop at the University of Minnesota, Patricia Lorcin (a co-convener) approached Todd Shepard ...
Dirk H. Ehnts, “Modern Monetary Theory and European Macroeconomics” (Routledge, 2017)
23 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today we spoke with with Dirk H. Ehnts to talk about his new book Modern Monetary Theory and European Macroeconomics (Routledge, 2017). This is a very...
Michael G. Hanchard, “The Spectre of Race: How Discrimination Haunts Western Democracies” (Princeton UP, 2018)
19 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Michael G. Hanchard’s new book The Spectre of Race: How Discrimination Haunts Western Democracies (Princeton University Press, 2018) is a rich and...
Ivan Simic, “Soviet Influences on Postwar Yugoslav Gender Policies” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)
18 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book Soviet Influences on Postwar Yugoslav Gender Policies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), Ivan Simic explores how Yugoslav communists learned...
Venus Bivar, “Organic Resistance: The Struggle over Industrial Farming in Postwar France” (UNC Press, 2018)
16 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Organic Resistance: The Struggle over Industrial Farming in Postwar France (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), Venus Bivar documents the de...
Dániel Margócsy, et al., “The Fabrica of Andreas Vesalius: A Worldwide Descriptive Census, Ownership, and Annotations of the 1543 and 1555 Editions” (Brill, 2018)
11 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Fabrica of Andreas Vesalius: A Worldwide Descriptive Census, Ownership, and Annotations of the 1543 and 1555 Editions (Brill, 2018) is a masterful...
Sara J. Brenneis, “Spaniards in Mauthausen: Representations of a Nazi Concentration Camp, 1940-2015” (U Toronto, 2018)
10 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
To be quite honest, I had no idea there were any Spanish prisoners at Mauthausen. That’s perhaps an unusual way to begin a blog post. But it refl...
Larry E. Jones, “Hitler versus Hindenburg: The 1932 Presidential Elections and the End of the Weimar Republic” (Cambridge UP, 2016)
08 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The failure of democracy during the Weimar Republic is currently at the center of public discussion due to the global populist wave of the last few ye...
David Stuttard, “Nemesis: Alcibiades and the Fall of Athens” (Harvard UP, 2018)
05 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Among the many personages associated with the Peloponnesian War, none are as colorful as the Athenian general Alcibiades. In Nemesis: Alcibiades and t...
B. P. Owensby and R. J. Ross, “Justice in a New World: Negotiating Legal Intelligibility in British, Iberian, and Indigenous America” (NYU Press, 2018)
28 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Justice in a New World: Negotiating Legal Intelligibility in British, Iberian, and Indigenous America (New York University Press, 2018), edited by Bri...
Lorenzo Zamponi, “Social Movements, Memory and Media: Narrative in Action in the Italian and Spanish Student Movements” (Palgrave, 2018)
25 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How do social movements remember the past? How do collective memories affect their current strategic choices? In his book Social Movements, Memory and...
Giulio Ongaro, “Peasants and Soldiers: The Management of the Venetian Military Structure in the Mainland Dominion between the 16th and 17th Centuries” (Routledge, 2017)
25 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Giulio Ongaro, currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Economics Department at the University of Milan-Bicocca has just published Peasants and Sol...
Sir John Elliott, “Scots and Catalans: Union and Disunion” (Yale UP, 2018)
18 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Sir John Elliott, Regius Professor Emeritus of Modern History at Oxford University, one of the premier historians writing in English on Spanish and Eu...
Quinn Slobodian, “Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism” (Harvard UP, 2018)
18 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The relationship between neoliberals and the state is one that has been endlessly debated. Are neoliberals anti-statist? Or are they advocates of a st...
Joseph Ben Prestel, “Emotional Cities: Debates on Urban Change in Berlin and Cairo, 1860-1910” (Oxford UP, 2017)
12 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Joseph Ben Prestel talks with us about Emotional Cities: Debates on Urban Change in Berlin and Cairo, 1860-1910 (Oxford University Press, 2017), blen...
Benjamin Carter Hett, “The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic” (Henry Holt, 2018)
11 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The downfall of the Weimar Republic in Germany has long fascinated historians, but this catastrophe gained increasing prominence as a touchstone for c...
Peter Heather, “Rome Resurgent: War and Empire in the Age of Justinian” (Oxford UP, 2018)
10 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the 6th century CE, the Roman emperor Justinian embarked upon a series of wars that seemed to herald the restoration of the Roman empire in the wes...
Megan Ward, “Seeming Human: Artificial Intelligence and Victorian Realist Character” (OSU Press, 2018)
07 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Artificial intelligence and Victorian literature: these two notions seem incompatible. AI brings us to the age of information and technology, whereas ...