New Books in Western European Studies
Episodes
Joyce E. Salisbury, “Rome’s Christian Empress: Galla Placidia Rules at the Twilight of the Empire” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2015)
14 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Before I read this excellent book, I had no idea that Rome–that is, the Roman Empire–ever had an empress. But, as Joyce E. Salisbury tells us in R...
James Turner, “Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities” (Princeton University Press, 2014)
10 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
James Turner is Cavanaugh Professor of Humanities, Emeritus, at Notre Dame University. His book Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanit...
Nikolaus Wachsmann, “KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps” (FSG, 2015)
10 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s podcast is the second in our summer series of interviews about the concentration camps in and around Nazi Germany. Earlier this summer I tal...
Lisa Moses Leff, “The Archive Thief: The Man Who Salvaged French Jewish History in the Wake of the Holocaust” (Oxford UP, 2015)
03 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Lisa Moses Leff joins host Jonathan Judaken to discuss her new book, The Archive Thief: The Man Who Salvaged French Jewish History in the Wake of the ...
Sarah Helm, “Ravensbruck: Life and Death in Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women” (Nan A. Talese, 2015)
01 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s podcast is the second in our summer series of interviews about the concentration camps in and around Nazi Germany. Earlier this summer I ta...
Daisy Hay, “Mr. and Mrs. Disraeli: A Strange Romance” (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2015)
25 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
As I imagine most any biographer will tell you, one of the great joys and privileges of biographical research is using archives. This is where one enc...
Raf De Bont, “Stations in the Field: A History of Place-Based Animal Research, 1870-1930” (U of Chicago Press, 2015)
24 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
While museums, labs, and botanical gardens have been widely studied by historians of science, field stations have received comparatively little attent...
Geoff Megargee, ed., “The USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos,” Vols. 1 and 2 (Indiana UP, 2009 and 2012)
21 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Every semester when I get to the point in World Civ when we’re talking about Nazi Germany, I ask my students to guess how many camps and ghettos the...
Asya Pereltsvaig and Martin Lewis, “The Indo-European Controversy: Facts and Fallacies in Historical Linguistics” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
21 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Who were the Indo-Europeans? Were they all-conquering heroes? Aggressive patriarchal Kurgan horsemen, sweeping aside the peaceful civilizations of Old...
Eric Reed, “Selling the Yellow Jersey: The Tour de France in the Global Era” (University of Chicago Press, 2015)
17 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The Tour de France is happening right now! The 2015 edition started on July 4th and will continue until July 26th. I’m excited to be able to share t...
Meredith K. Ray, “Daughters of Alchemy: Women and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy” (Harvard UP, 2015)
08 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
According to sixteenth-century writer Moderata Fonte, the untapped potential of women to contribute to the liberal arts was “buried gold.” Explori...
Kocku von Stuckrad, “The Scientification of Religion: An Historical Study of Discursive Change, 1800-2000” (De Gruyter, 2014)
06 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Science and religion are often paired as diametric opposites. However, the boundaries of these two fields were not always as clear as they seem to be ...
Anton Weiss-Wendt, “The Nazi Genocide of the Roma” (Berghahn, 2015) and “Racial Science in Hitler’s New Europe” (U of Nebraska Press, 2013)
06 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Normally I don’t try and talk about two books in the same interview. But, in discussing the interview, Anton Weiss-Wendt suggested that it made sen...
James A. Secord, “Visions of Science: Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age” (U of Chicago Press, 2014)
03 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
James A. Secord‘s new book is both deeply enlightening and a pleasure to read. Emerging from the 2013 Sandars Lectures in Bibliography at the Cambri...
J. Laurence Hare, “Excavating Nations: Archaeology, Museums, and the German-Danish Borderlands” (U of Toronto Press, 2015)
28 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
A recent book review I read began with the line “borderlands are back.” It’s certainly true that more and more historians have used borderland r...
Gary Wilder, “Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World” (Duke UP, 2015)
28 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Gary Wilder‘s new book, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Duke University Press, 2015) builds upon the work he b...
Chris O’Leary, “Rebel Rebel” (Zero Books, 2015)
20 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Who is David Bowie? Fans and critics have debated this question throughout his lengthy and storied career. Chris O’Leary, in his new book Rebel Rebe...
Felicia McCarren, “French Moves: The Cultural Politics of le hip hop” (Oxford UP, 2013)
10 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Felicia McCarren‘s latest book, French Moves: The Cultural Politics of le hip hop (Oxford University Press, 2013) explores the fascinating evolution...
Meryle Secrest, “Elsa Schiaparelli: A Biography” (Knopf, 2014)
02 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
As Meryle Secrest notes in the introduction to her new book, Elsa Schiaparelli: A Biography (Knopf, 2014),”The most extraordinary fashion designer o...
Emily Kuriloff, “Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Third Reich” (Routledge, 2013)
02 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Third Reich: History, Memory, Tradition (Routledge, 2013), Emily Kuriloff details a dimension of ...
Joseph Webster, “The Anthropology of Protestantism: Faith and Crisis among Scottish Fishermen” (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013)
29 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In The Anthropology of Protestantism:Faith and Crisis among Scottish Fishermen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), anthropologist Joseph Webster takes readers...
Benjamin Schmidt, “Inventing Exoticism: Geography, Globalism, and Europe’s Early Modern World” (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2015)
19 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Benjamin Schmidt‘s beautiful new book argues that a new form of exoticism emerged in the Netherlands between the mid-1660s and the early 1730s, than...
Robin Grier and Jerry F. Hough, “The Long Process of Development” (Cambridge UP, 2014)
11 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
According to a popular saying, “Nothing succeeds like success.” As concernswhat economists and political scientists call “development”–that ...
David Meren, “With Friends Like These: Entangled Nationalisms in the Canada-Quebec-France Triangle, 1944-1970” (University of British Columbia Press, 2014)
05 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In 1967, French President Charles de Gaulle cried out “Vive le Quebec libre!” from the balcony of Montreal’s City Hall. The controversial moment...
Michael Leggiere, “Blucher: Scourge of Napoleon” (U Oklahoma Press, 2014)
01 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
I have really enjoyed Michael Leggiere‘s earlier work, including the excellent Napoleon and Berlin : The Franco-Prussian War in North Germany, 1813 ...
Thomas Kemple, “Intellectual Work and the Spirit of Capitalism: Weber’s Calling” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
28 Apr 2015
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...
Michael Gorra, “The Bells in Their Silence: Travels through Germany” (Princeton UP, 2006)
24 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Despite being Germany’s most famous literary lion, in 1786 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had to jump on a mail coach incognito to begin his travels to ...
Hugo Frey, “Nationalism and the Cinema in France” (Berghahn Books, 2014)
24 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Hugo Frey‘s new book, Nationalism and the Cinema in France: Political Mythologies and Film Events, 1945-1995 (Berghahn Books, 2014) distinguishes be...
Aristotle Tziampiris, “The Emergence of Israeli-Greek Cooperation” (Springer, 2015)
30 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Aristotle Tziampiris is The Emergence of Israeli-Greek Cooperation (Springer, 2015). Tziampiris is Associate Professor of International Relations and ...
Dhara Anjaria, “Curzon’s India: Networks of Colonial Governance, 1899-1905” (Oxford University Press, 2014)
25 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
I won’t speak for you, but I find it utterly remarkable that the British were able to “rule” India. Britain, of course, is a small island off a ...
Nick Wilding, “Galileo’s Idol: Gianfrancesco Sagredo and the Politics of Knowledge” (U Chicago Press, 2014)
15 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Nick Wilding‘s new book is brilliant, thoughtful, and an absolute pleasure to read. Galileo’s Idol: Gianfrancesco Sagredo and The Politics of Know...
Brian Vick, “The Congress of Vienna: Power and Politics after Napoleon” (Harvard University Press, 2014)
14 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who knows anything about European history–and European diplomatic history in particular–who doesn’tknow a...
Kaeten Mistry, “The United States, Italy, and the Origins of Cold War: Waging Political Warfare” (Cambridge UP, 2014)
11 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In the annals of cold war history Italy is rarely seen as a crucial locale. In his stimulating new book, The United States, Italy, and the Origins o...
Sophia Rose Arjana, “Muslims in the Western Imagination” (Oxford UP, 2015)
10 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In Muslims in the Western Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2015), Sophia Rose Arjana explores a variety of creative productions–including art, ...
Udi Greenberg, “The Weimar Century: German Emigres and the Ideological Foundation of the Cold War” (Princeton UP, 2015)
09 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
American policymakers and scholars alike have looked to the rapid transformation of Germany, specifically West Germany, from a defeated Nazi state int...
Akwugo Emejulu, “Community Development as Micropolitics: Comparing Theories, Policies, and Politics in America and Britain” (Policy Press, 2015)
09 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Akwugo Emejulu has written Community Development as Micropolitics: Comparing Theories, Policies, and Politics in America and Britain (Policy Press, 20...
Nicolas Kenny, “The Feel of the City: Experiences of Urban Transformation” (U of Toronto Press, 2014)
04 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Nicolas Kenny‘s new book, The Feel of the City: Experiences of Urban Transformation (University of Toronto Press, 2014) explores the sensory histori...
Alon Confino, “A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide” (Yale UP, 2014)
02 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Alon Confino‘s A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide (Yale University Press, 2014) begins with a vivid and devasta...
Ann C. Pizzorusso, “Tweeting Da Vinci” (Da Vinci Press, 2014)
18 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Ann C. Pizzorusso‘s new book is a wonderfully creative and gorgeously illustrated meeting of geology, art history, and Renaissance studies. Arguing ...
Matthew Stanley, “Huxley’s Church and Maxwell’s Demon: From Theistic Science to Naturalistic Science” (U of Chicago Press, 2014)
10 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
“Show me how it doos.” Such were the words of a young James Clerk “Dafty” Maxwell (1831-79), an inquisitive child prone to punning who grew i...
Robert J. Donia, “Radovan Karadzic: Architect of the Bosnian Genocide” (Cambridge UP, 2014)
06 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
As a graduate student at Ohio State in the early 1990s, I remember watching the collapse of Yugoslavia on the news almost every night and reading abou...
Heather Augustyn, “Ska: The Rhythm of Liberation” (Scarecrow, 2013)
02 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What is Ska music? This is a deceptively complicated question. In this podcast Heather Augustyn, the author of Ska: The Rhythm of Liberation(Scarecro...
Anne Knowles, Mastering Iron (U of Chicago Press, 2013) and Geographies of the Holocaust (Indiana UP, 2014)
30 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Last month on New Books in Geography, historian Susan Schulten discussed the development of thematic maps in the nineteenth century. Such maps focused...
Sean Forner, “German Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democratic Renewal: Culture and Politics after 1945” (Cambridge University Press, 2014)
30 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The Federal Republic of Germany is often held up today as one of the world’s great democracies, where the commitment to such ideals as transparency,...
Susan Byrne, “Law and History in Cervantes’ Don Quixote” (University of Toronto Press, 2013)
29 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Please listen to the fascinating conversation I had with Susan Byrne, Associate Professor of Spanish and Director of Undergraduate Studies for Spanish...
Carol E. Harrison, “Romantic Catholics: France’s Postrevolutionary Generation in Search of a Modern Faith” (Cornell UP, 2014)
23 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Since the political left and right first arose during the French Revolution, Catholics have been categorized as either conservatives or liberals, and ...
Jan Lemnitzer, “Power, Law and the End of Privateering” (Palgrave, 2014)
22 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Jan Lemnitzer‘s new book Power, Law and the End of Privateering (Palgrave, 2014) offers an exciting new take on the relationship between law and pow...
Michael Kwass, “Contraband: Louis Mandrin and the Making of a Global Underground” (Harvard University Press, 2014)
19 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Kwass‘s new book, Contraband: Louis Mandrin and the Making of a Global Underground is much more than an exciting biography of the notorious ...
Stephen L. Harp, “Au Naturel: Naturism, Nudism, and Tourism in Twentieth-Century France” (LSU Press, 2014)
05 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In the decades after the Second World War, France became the foremost nudist site in Europe. Stephen L. Harp‘s new book, Au Naturel: Naturism, Nudis...
Thomas Kuehne, “Belonging and Genocide: Hitler’s Community, 1918-1945” (Yale UP, 2013)
23 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
As a teenager, I heard or read or saw (in films or on television) story after story about the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police. Despite the occasional ...
Robert Hewison, “Cultural Capital: The Rise and Fall of Creative Britain” (Verso, 2014)
19 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
How did a golden age of cultural funding in UK turn to lead? This is the subject of a new cultural history by Robert Hewison. Cultural Capital: The Ri...
Daniel Margocsy, “Commercial Visions: Science, Trade, and Visual Culture in the Dutch Golden Age” (University of Chicago Press, 2014)
09 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Margocsy‘s beautiful new book opens with a trip to Amsterdam by Baron Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach, and closes with a shopping spree by Pet...
Cathy L. Schneider, “Police Power and Race Riots: Urban Unrest in Paris and New York” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014)
08 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Cathy L. Schneider is the author of Police Power and Race Riots: Urban Unrest in Paris and New York (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). She is a...
John Lloyd and Cristina Marconi, “Reporting the EU: News, Media and the European Institutions” (I. B. Tauris, 2014)
05 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
How those within the Brussels Beltway in the EU institutions must pine for the simple days of the past. Not only was the European project in itself fa...
Michelle Moyd, “Violent Intermediaries: African Soldiers, Conquest, and Everyday Colonialism in German East Africa” (Ohio UP, 2014)
04 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In her imaginative and scrupulous book, Violent Intermediaries: African Soldiers, Conquest, and Everyday Colonialism in German East Africa (Ohio Unive...
Todd H. Weir, “Secularism and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Germany” (Cambridge UP, 2014)
01 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
If you look up the word “secular” in just about about any English-language dictionary, you’ll find that the word denotes, among other things, so...
Matthew Carr, “Fortress Europe: Dispatches from a Gated Continent” (New Press, 2012)
19 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
From London to Rome, Paris to Stockholm, there is no other contemporary issue that can move the general public’s political needle quite so quickly a...
Edward Ross Dickinson, “Sex, Freedom and Power in Imperial Germany 1880-1914” (Cambridge UP, 2014)
18 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In this interview with historian Edward Ross Dickinson we talk about sex. Well, actually we talk about the talk about sex. Since Michel Foucault’s e...
John Tresch, “The Romantic Machine: Utopian Science and Technology after Napoleon” (U Chicago Press, 2014)
30 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
After the Second World War, the Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukacs described National Socialism as a triumph of irrationalism and a “destruction of reas...
Randal Doane, “Stealing All Transmissions: A Secret History of the Clash” (PM Press, 2014)
22 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Who are the Clash? How did they become the “only band that matters”? In this podcast, Randal Doane, the author of Stealing All Transmissions: A Se...
Mark Corner, “The European Union: An Introduction” (I. B. Tauris, 2014)
16 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Some say it should be a loose collection of sovereign nation states; others say it should aspire to be a kind of super-nation state itself. Or is it, ...
Daniel Lee, “Petain’s Jewish Children: French Jewish Youth and the Vichy Regime, 1940-1942” (Oxford UP, 2014)
07 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Lee‘s new book, Petain’s Jewish Children: French Jewish Youth and the Vichy Regime, 1940-1942 (Oxford University Press, 2014) is highly com...
Thomas Kohut, “A German Generation: An Experiential History of the Twentieth Century” (Yale UP, 2012),
06 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Germans belonging to the generation born at the turn of the twentieth century endured staggering losses, many of which became difficult to mourn or ev...
Rebecca Rogers, “A Frenchwoman’s Imperial Story” (Stanford UP, 2013)
02 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1830s, the French school teacher Eugénie Luce migrated to Algeria. A decade later, she was a major force in the debates around educat...
Anson Rabinbach and Sander Gilman, “The Third Reich Sourcebook” (U California Press, 2013)
26 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Primary source readers represent an unusual historical genre. Unlike editions, their aim is not to enable the reader to hear, as clearly as possible, ...
Jonathan Swarts, “Constructing Neoliberalism: Economic Transformation in Anglo-American Democracies” (University of Toronto Press, 2013)
22 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The new book, Constructing Neoliberalism: Economic Transformation in Anglo-American Democracies (University of Toronto Press, 2013) shows how polit...
Michael Osborne, “The Emergence of Tropical Medicine in France” (University of Chicago Press, 2014)
11 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In The Emergence of Tropical Medicine in France (University of Chicago Press, 2014), Michael Osborne offers a new way to think about and practice the ...
John Tresch, “The Romantic Machine: Utopian Science and Technology after Napoleon” (University of Chicago Press, 2012)
05 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
John Tresch‘s beautiful new book charts a series of transformations that collectively ushered in a new cosmology in the Paris of the early-mid ninet...
John Protevi, “Life, War, Earth: Deleuze and the Sciences” (University of Minnesota Press, 2013)
22 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Right now, humanists across very different disciplinary fields are trying to create the kinds of cross-disciplinary conversations that might open up n...
Daryn Lehoux, “What Did the Romans Know?: An Inquiry into Science and Worldmaking” (University of Chicago Press, 2012)
16 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Daryn Lehoux‘s new book will forever change the way you think about garlic and magnets. What Did the Romans Know?: An Inquiry into Science and Worl...
Helene Snee, “A Cosmopolitan Journey: Difference, Distinction and Identity Work in Gap Year Travel” (Ashgate, 2014)
12 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Helene Snee, a researcher at the University of Manchester, has written an excellent new book that should be essential reading for anyone interested in...
David B. Dennis, “Inhumanities: Nazi Interpretations of Western Culture” (Cambridge UP, 2012)
08 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
I occasionally teach Western Civilization and you may have taken it in college. We all know the drill: Greeks-Romans-Dark Ages-Middle Ages-Renaissance...
David N. Livingstone, “Dealing with Darwin: Place, Politics, and Rhetoric in Religious Engagements with Evolution” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2014)
06 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
David N. Livingstone‘s new book traces the processes by which communities of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that shared the sam...
Joe Moran, “Armchair Nation: An Intimate History of Britain in Front of the TV” (Profile Books, 2013)
30 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The social and cultural historian Joe Moran, Professor of English and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University, UK is interested in the ev...
Alice Conklin, “In the Museum of Man: Race, Anthropology, and Empire in France, 1850-1950” (Cornell UP, 2013)
29 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Host Jonathan Judaken and author Alice Conklin discuss the thorny relationship between science, society, and empire at the high water mark of French ...
Adam Phillips, “Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst” (Yale UP, 2014)
28 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
For those who are savvy about all things psychoanalytic, be they analysts, analysands, or fellow travelers, the existence, presence, work, writing, an...
Andrew Demshuk, “The Lost German East: Forced Migration and the Politics of Memory, 1945-1970” (Cambridge UP, 2012)
23 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
At the close of the Second World War, the Allies expelled several million Germans from the eastern portion of the former Reich. Thanks to the work of ...
Michael Bryant, “Eyewitness to Genocide: The Operation Reinhard Death Camp Trials, 1955-1966” (University of Tennessee Press, 2014)
15 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
My marginal comment, recorded at the end of the chapter on the Belzec trial in Michael Bryant‘s fine new book Eyewitness to Genocide: The Operation ...
Ari Joskowicz, “The Modernity of Others: Jewish Anti-Catholicism in Germany and France” (Stanford UP, 2014)
15 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In 1873, the German scientist Rudolf Virchow declared in Parliament that liberals were locked in a Kulturkampf, a “culture war” with the forces of...
Craig Martin, “Subverting Aristotle: Religion, History, and Philosophy in Early Modern Science” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2014)
14 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Craig Martin‘s new book carefully traces religious arguments for and against Aristotelianism from the eleventh through the eighteenth centuries. Bas...
Noah Shusterman, “The French Revolution: Faith, Desire, and Politics” (Routledge, 2013)
14 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
This year marks the 225th anniversary of the outbreak of the French Revolution. You don’t have to be a historian to know and appreciate how signific...
Brian A. Catlos, “Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, c.1050-1614” (Cambridge UP, 2014)
08 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In the current political climate it might be easy to assume that Muslims in the ‘West’ have always been viewed in a negative light. However, when ...
Wendy Lower, “Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013)
07 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
It seems quite reasonable to wonder if there’s anything more to learn about the Holocaust. Scholars from a variety of disciplines have been research...
Mary Terrall, “Catching Nature in the Act” (University of Chicago Press, 2014)
04 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Mary Terrall‘s new book is a beautifully-written, carefully-researched, and compellingly-argued account of the practices of natural history in the e...
Filip Slaveski, “The Soviet Occupation of Germany” (Cambridge UP, 2013)
02 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
For over three years, from June 1941 to late 1944, the German Army and related Nazi forces (the SS, occupation troops, administrative organizations) c...
John Dickie, “Mafia Republic: Italy’s Criminal Curse” (Sceptre, 2014)
01 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Mafia Republic: Italy’s Criminal Curse (Sceptre, 2013) is the second book by John Dickie on the history of the three organized crime groups from Sou...
Sener Akturk, “Regimes of Ethnicity and Nationhood in Germany, Russia, and Turkey (Cambridge UP, 2012)
11 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
What processes must take place in order for countries to radically redefine who is a citizen? Why was Russia able to finally remove ethnicity from int...
Mark Levene, “The Crisis of Genocide” (Oxford University Press, 2014)
03 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
I imagine one of the greatest compliments an author of an historical monograph can receive is to hear that his or her book changed the way a subject i...
Omar W. Nasim, “Observing by Hand: Sketching the Nebulae in the Nineteenth Century” (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
02 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In Omar W. Nasim‘s new book, a series of fascinating characters sketch, paint, and etch their way toward a mapping of the cosmos and the human mind....
Clare Haru Crowston, “Credit, Fashion, Sex: Economies of Regard in Old Regime France”
29 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Anyone who’s been paying attention to the flurry around the French economist Thomas Piketty’s 2013 Capitalism in the Twenty-first Century (Le Capi...
Geoffrey Wawro, “A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire” (Basic Books, 2014)
27 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
When I was in graduate school, those of us who studied World War One commented regularly on the degree to which historians concentrated their attentio...
Anne Gorsuch, “All This is Your World: Soviet Tourism at Home and Abroad After Stalin” (Oxford UP, 2011)
22 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Thirty years after a trip to the GDR, Soviet cardiologist V.I. Metelitsa still remembered mistakenly trying to buy a dress for a ten-year-old daughter...
Richard Yeo, “Notebooks, English Virtuosi, and Early Modern Science” (University of Chicago Press, 2014)
14 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
During the Great Fire of London in September 1666, Samuel Pepys went out to the garden and dug some holes. There he placed his documents, some wine, a...
Barry Rubin and Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, “Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East” (Yale UP, 2014)
11 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
This book tells a remarkable and–to me at least–little known but very important story. In Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle Ea...
Richard Weikart, “Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress” (Palgrave MacMillan, 2011)
03 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
For many years now, historians have wondered whether Hitler had any sort of consistent ideology. His writings are rambling and confusing. His speeches...
Donna-Lee Frieze, “Totally Unofficial: The Autobiography of Raphael Lemkin” (Yale UP, 2013)
01 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
It’s hard to overestimate the role of Raphael Lemkin in calling the world’s attention to the crime of genocide. But for decades his name languis...
Lucy Hughes-Hallett, “Gabriele d’Annunzio: Poet, Seducer, and Preacher of War” (Knopf, 2013)
27 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Winner of the 2013 Samuel Johnson Prize, Lucy Hughes-Hallett‘s biography of Gabriele d’Annunzio is a book with a big mission: to write inventively...
Federico Fabbrini, “Fundamental Rights in Europe: Challenges and Transformations in Comparative Perspective” (Oxford University Press, 2014)
21 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Federico Fabbrini is Assistant Professor of European & Comparative Constitutional Law at Tilburg Law School in the Netherlands. In his new book, entit...
Robert Mitchell, “Experimental Life: Vitalism in Romantic Science and Literature” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2013)
16 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Mitchell‘s new book is wonderfully situated across several intersections: of history and literature, of the Romantic and contemporary worlds,...
Steven L. Jacobs, “Lemkin on Genocide” (Lexington Books, 2012)
12 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
It’s hard to overestimate the role of Raphael Lemkin in calling the world’s attention to the crime of genocide. But for decades his name languis...