New Books in Western European Studies

Denva Gallant, "Illuminating the Vitae Patrum: The Lives of Desert Saints in Fourteenth-Century Italy" (Penn State UP, 2024)

29 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

During the fourteenth century in Western Europe, there was a growing interest in imitating the practices of a group of hermits known as the Desert Fat...

Nicola Clark, "The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens" (Norton, 2024)

28 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Every Tudor Queen had ladies-in-waiting. They were her confidantes and her chaperones. Only the Queen's ladies had the right to enter her most private...

Nicolas Véron, "Europe's Banking Union at Ten: Unfinished Yet Transformative" (Bruegel, 2024)

28 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 2012, to stave off the collapse of their currency union, Europe’s leaders sought to end the so-called “doom loop” between the solvency of the...

Simon Heffer, "Sing As We Go: Britain Between the Wars" (Penguin, 2024)

26 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Simon Heffer's book Sing As We Go: Britain Between the Wars (Penguin, 2024) is an astonishingly ambitious overview of the political, social and cult...

Matthijs Lok, "Europe Against Revolution: Conservatism, Enlightenment, and the Making of the Past" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

24 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Contemporary Europe seems to be divided between progressive cosmopolitans sympathetic to the European Union and the ideals of the Enlightenment, and c...

Henry Reece, "The Fall: The Last Days of the English Republic" (Yale UP, 2024)

23 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Why did England's one experiment in republican rule fail? Oliver Cromwell's death in 1658 sparked a period of unrivalled turmoil and confusion in Engl...

Genji Yasuhira, "Catholic Survival in the Dutch Republic: Agency in Coexistence and the Public Sphere in Utrecht, 1620-1672" (Amsterdam UP, 2024)

21 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Even in adversity, Catholics exercised considerable agency in post-Reformation Utrecht. Through the political practices of repression and toleration, ...

Nathaniel Gray Sutanto and Cory Brock, "T&T Clark Handbook of Neo-Calvinism" (T&T Clark, 2023)

19 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

T&T Clark Handbook of Neo-Calvinism (T&T Clark, 2023) comprehensively demonstrates neo-Calvinism's unique contribution to theology and Christian phil...

Harry R. McCarthy, "Boy Actors in Early Modern England" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

17 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Boy Actors in Early Modern England: Skill and Stagecraft in the Theatre (Cambridge University Press, 2022) by Dr. Harry McCarthy provides a new appro...

Carlos M. N. Eire, "They Flew: A History of the Impossible" (Yale UP, 2023)

16 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the early modern era, seemingly impossible stories of levitation, bilocation, and witchcraft were common and believable. The important question o...

Todd H. Weir, "Red Secularism: Socialism and Secularist Culture in Germany 1890 to 1933" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

16 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Red Secularism: Socialism and Secularist Culture in Germany 1890 to 1933 (Cambridge UP, 2023) is the first substantive investigation into one of the ...

Laurence M. Geary, "The Land War in Ireland: Famine, Philanthropy and Moonlighting" (Cork UP, 2023)

15 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this interview, he discusses his new book The Land War in Ireland: Famine, Philanthropy and Moonlighting (Cork UP, 2023), a collection of interco...

Cory C. Brock and Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, "Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction" (Lexham Press, 2023)

14 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Discover the rich theology of Neo-Calvinism. Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck sparked a theological tradition in the Netherlands that came to be know...

Mark Gilbert, "Italy Reborn: From Fascism to Democracy" (Norton, 2024)

13 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Italy's resurrection from 20 years of fascism, three years of war, and two years of civil war is one of the 20th century's great, under-told stories. ...

Bronagh Ann McShane, "Irish Women in Religious Orders, 1530-1700: Suppression, Migration and Reintegration" (Boydell & Brewer, 2022)

11 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Irish Women in Religious Orders, 1530-1700: Suppression, Migration and Reintegration (Boydell & Brewer, 2022) by Dr. Bronagh Ann McShane investigates...

Joseph A. Skloot, "First Impressions: Sefer Hasidim and Early Modern Hebrew Printing" (Brandeis UP, 2023)

08 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Joseph A. Skloot joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, First Impressions: Sefer hasimdim and Early Modern Hebrew Printing (Brandeis UP, 2023...

Alistair Moffat, "The Highlands and Islands of Scotland: A New History" (Birlinn, 2024)

07 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In The Highlands and Islands of Scotland: A New History (Birlinn, 2024) by Alistair Moffat, the chronicle begins millions of years ago, with the dra...

Claire Weeda, "Ethnicity in Medieval Europe 950-1250: Medicine, Power and Religion" (Boydell and Brewer, 2021)

02 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Students in twelfth-century Paris held slanging matches, branding the English drunkards, the Germans madmen and the French as arrogant. On Crusade, ar...

Ramón Espejo, "The Catalonian Journey of American Drama 1909-2000: From Jimmy Valentine to The Vagina Monologues" (Legenda, 2024)

02 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ramón Espejo's book The Catalonian Journey of American Drama 1909-2000: From Jimmy Valentine to The Vagina Monologues (Legenda, 2024) delves into t...

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

02 Jun 2024

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...

Matthew Kadane, "The Enlightenment and Original Sin" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

01 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Matthew Kadane, Professor of History at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, talks about his just new book, The Enlightenment and Original Sin (Univer...

Polo B. Moji, "Gender and the Spatiality of Blackness in Contemporary AfroFrench Narratives" (Routledge, 2022)

31 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Polo B. Moji's book Gender and the Spatiality of Blackness in Contemporary AfroFrench Narratives (Routledge, 2022) approaches the study of AfroEurop...

Eileen M. Hunt, "The First Last Man: Mary Shelley and the Postapocalyptic Imagination" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

28 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The First Last Man: Mary Shelley and the Postapocalyptic Imagination (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024) is the concluding text in political theorist Eilee...

Iris Moon, "Melancholy Wedgwood" (MIT Press, 2024)

26 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Melancholy Wedgwood (MIT Press, 2024) is an experimental biography of the ceramics entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood that reveals the tenuous relationshi...

Helen J. Nicholson, "Women and the Crusades" (Oxford UP, 2023)

25 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The crusade movement needed women: their money, their prayer support, their active participation, and their inspiration. Helen J. Nicholson's book Wo...

Adam Zientek, "A Thirst for Wine and War: The Intoxication of French Soldiers on the Western Front" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2024)

24 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Adam Zientek, Assistant Professor of History at UC Davis joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, A Thirst for Wine and War: The Intoxication of ...

Jane Hamlett and Julie-Marie Strange, "Pet Revolution: Animals and the Making of Modern British Life" (Reaktion Books, 2023)

23 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Pet Revolution: Animals and the Making of Modern British Life (Reaktion, 2023) by Dr. Jane Hamlett & Dr. Julie-Marie Strange tracks the British love ...

Jeremy Black, "In Fielding's Wake" (St. Augustine's Press, 2022)

21 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the second volume of The Weight of Words Series, In Fielding's Wake (St. Augustine's Press, 2022), Jeremy Black continues his efforts to present...

Nicholas Underwood, "Yiddish Paris: Staging Nation and Community in Interwar France" (Indiana UP, 2022)

21 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Nick Underwood's Yiddish Paris: Staging Nation and Community in Interwar Paris (Indiana University Press, 2022) is a captivating study of the cultur...

Jason A. Kerr, "Milton's Theological Process: Reading de Doctrina Christiana and Paradise Lost" (Oxford UP, 2023)

21 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This volume proposes a method for reading Milton's De Doctrina Christiana as an artifact of his process of theological thinking rather than as a rep...

Kate Morgan, "The Walnut Tree: Women, Violence and the Law – A Hidden History" (Mudlark, 2024)

19 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

'A woman, a dog and a walnut tree, the more they are beaten, the better they’ll be.' So went the proverb quoted by a prominent MP in the Houses of P...

Alexandra Paulin-Booth, "Time and Radical Politics in France: From the Dreyfus Affair to the First World War" (Manchester UP, 2023)

19 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

People experience and comprehend time in different fashions in response to events occurring around them. The experience of time and the speed at which...

Daniel R. Schwartz, "Ancient Jewish Historians and the German Reich: Seven Studies" (de Gruyter, 2024)

19 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Apart from an opening survey of modern study of ancient Jewish history, which emphasizes the foundational role of German-Jewish scholars, the studies ...

Mari Takayanagi and Elizabeth Hallam Smith, "Necessary Women: The Untold Story of Parliament's Working Women" (The History Press, 2023)

18 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When suffragette Emily Wilding Davison hid overnight in the Houses of Parliament in 1911 to have her name recorded in the census there, she may not ha...

Anna Brinkman, "Balancing Strategy: Sea Power, Neutrality, and Prize Law in the Seven Years' War" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

18 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What is the relationship between seapower, law, and strategy? In Balancing Strategy: Seapower, Neutrality, and Prize-Law in the Seven Years' War (Ca...

Priya Satia, "Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution" (Bloomsbury, 2019)

18 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution transformed Britain from an agricultural and artisanal economy to one domina...

Ambereen Dadabhoy, "Shakespeare Through Islamic Worlds" (Routledge, 2023)

17 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Shakespeare through Islamic Worlds (Routledge, 2024) investigates the peculiar absence of Islam and Muslims from Shakespeare’s canon. While many of...

Marc McMenamin, "Ireland's Secret War: Dan Bryan, G2 and the Lost Tapes that Reveal The Hunt for Ireland's Nazi Spies" (Gill Books, 2022)

17 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Marc McMenamin's Ireland's Secret War: Dan Bryan, G2 and the Lost Tapes that Reveal The Hunt for Ireland's Nazi Spies (Gill Books, 2022) is a thril...

Christopher Ewing, "The Color of Desire: The Queer Politics of Race in the Federal Republic of Germany After 1970" (Cornell UP, 2024)

14 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Color of Desire: The Queer Politics of Race in the Federal Republic of Germany After 1970 (Cornell UP, 2024) tells the story of how, in the afte...

Karen Sullivan, "Eleanor of Aquitaine, As It Was Said: Truth and Tales about the Medieval Queen" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

14 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Karen Sullivan of Bard College talks to Jana Byars about her recent book, Eleanor of Aquitaine, As It Was Said: Truth and Tales about the Medieval Qu...

Lauren Horn Griffin, "Fabricating Founders in Early Modern England: History, Rhetoric, and the Origins of Christianity" (Brill, 2023)

14 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Fabricating Founders in Early Modern England: History, Rhetoric, and the Origins of Christianity (Brill, 2023) argues that in order to understand na...

Siân E. Grønlie, "The Old Testament in Medieval Icelandic Texts: Translation, Exegesis and Storytelling" (Boydell & Brewer, 2024)

13 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The historical narratives of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible have much in common with Icelandic saga literature: both are invested in origins and genea...

Hippokratis Kiaris, "The End of the Western Civilization?: The Intellectual Journey of Humanity to Adulthood" (Vernon Press, 2022)

11 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Hippokratis Kiaris about his book The End of the Western Civilization?: The Intellectual Journey of Humanity to Adulthood (Vernon...

Joanne Edge, "Onomantic Divination in Late Medieval Britain: Questioning Life, Predicting Death" (York Medieval Press, 2024)

11 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When will I die? What is the sex of my unborn child? Which of two rivals will win a duel? As today, people in the later Middle Ages approached their u...

Richard Dannatt and Robert Lyman, "Victory to Defeat: The British Army 1918-40" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

10 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The British Army won a convincing series of victories between 1916 and 1918. But by 1939 the British Army was an entirely different animal. The hard-w...

Mark Dooley, "Roger Scruton: The Philosopher on Dover Beach" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

09 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Roger Scruton was one of the outstanding British philosophers of the post-war years. Why then was he at best ignored and at worst reviled? In Roger S...

Lucy Barnhouse, "Hospitals in Communities of the Late Medieval Rhineland" (Amsterdam UP, 2023)

07 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Lucy Barnhouse of Arkansas State University talks with Jana Byars about her new book, Hospitals in Communities of the Late Medieval Rhineland: Houses...

Javier Samper Vendrell, "The Seduction of Youth: Print Culture and Homosexual Rights in the Weimar Republic" (U Toronto Press, 2020)

06 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Weimar Republic is well-known for its gay rights movement and recent scholarship has demonstrated some of its contradictory elements. In his recen...

Francesca Trivellato, "The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells Us about the Making of European Commercial Society" (Princeton UP, 2019)

05 May 2024

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...

Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac, "The Gender of Capital: How Families Perpetuate Wealth Inequality" (Harvard UP, 2023)

03 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In many countries, property law grants equal rights to men and women. Why, then, do women still accumulate less wealth than men? Combining quantitativ...

Michael Gilson, "Behind the Privet Hedge: Richard Sudell, the Suburban Garden and the Beautification of Britain" (Reaktion Books, 2024)

03 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Britain is a nation of gardeners; the suburban garden, with its roses and privet hedges, is widely admired and copied across the world. But it is litt...

Éric Fassin, "State Anti-Intellectualism and the Politics of Gender and Race: Illiberal France and Beyond" (CEU Press, 2024)

30 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of the CEU Press Podcast, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press/CEU Review of Books) sat down with Éric Fassin (Université Paris 8) to dis...

Victoria Sparey, "Shakespeare's Adolescents: Age, Gender and the Body in Shakespearean Performance and Early Modern Culture" (Manchester UP, 2024)

30 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Shakespeare's Adolescents: Age, Gender and the Body in Shakespearean Performance and Early Modern Culture (Manchester UP, 2024) by Dr. Victoria Spar...

Robert Gerwarth, "November 1918: The German Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2020)

29 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Was Weimar doomed from the outset? In November 1918: The German Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2020), Robert Gerwarth argues that this is the wr...

George R. Boyer, "The Winding Road to the Welfare State: Economic Insecurity and Social Welfare Policy in Britain" (Princeton UP, 2019)

29 Apr 2024

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...

Sheilagh Ogilvie, "The European Guilds: An Economic Analysis" (Princeton UP, 2019)

29 Apr 2024

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...

Adrian Tinniswood, "Noble Ambitions: The Fall and Rise of the Post-War Country House" (Basic Books, 2021)

28 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

As the sun set slowly on the British Empire in the years after the Second World War, the nation's stately homes were in crisis. Tottering under the we...

Sarah A. Bendall, "Shaping Femininity: Foundation Garments, the Body and Women in Early Modern England" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

28 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In sixteenth and seventeenth-century England, the female silhouette underwent a dramatic change. This very structured form, created using garments cal...

Kathryn Telling, "The Liberal Arts Paradox in Higher Education: Negotiating Inclusion and Prestige" (Policy Press, 2023)

27 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What is the future of higher education? In The Liberal Arts Paradox in Higher Education: Negotiating Inclusion and Prestige (Policy Press, 2023), D...

Nicholas Popper, "The Specter of the Archive: Political Practice and the Information State in Early Modern Britain" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

26 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We are used to thinking of ourselves as living in a time when more information is more available than ever before. In The Specter of the Archive: Pol...

Stefanos Geroulanos on "The Invention of Prehistory"

26 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What does it mean to be human? What do we know about the true history of humankind? In this episode, I spoke with historian and NYU professor Stefanos...

Alexander Statman, "A Global Enlightenment: Western Progress and Chinese Science" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

25 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Alexander Statman's book A Global Enlightenment: Western Progress and Chinese Science (U Chicago Press, 2023) is a revisionist history of the idea ...

Crawford Gribben, "J. N. Darby and the Roots of Dispensationalism" (Oxford UP, 2024)

24 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

J.N. Darby and the Roots of Dispensationalism (Oxford University Press, 2024) describes the work of one of the most important and under-studied theo...

Geoff Eley, "Nazism as Fascism: Violence, Ideology, and the Ground of Consent in Germany 1930-1945" (Routledge, 2013)

24 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Offering a dynamic and wide-ranging examination of the key issues at the heart of the study of German Fascism, Nazism as Fascism: Violence, Ideology,...

Michael Scott and Michael Collins, "Christian Shakespeare?: A Collection of Essays on Shakespeare in His Christian Context" (Vernon Press, 2022)

23 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The enigma of William Shakespeare's religious beliefs has long tantalized scholars and enthusiasts alike. Vernon Press's latest publication, Christia...

Jane Hamlett and Julie-Marie Strange, "Pet Revolution: Animals and the Making of Modern British Life" (Reaktion Books, 2023)

23 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Pet Revolution: Animals and the Making of Modern British Life (Reaktion Books, 2023) tracks the British love affair with pets over the last two centu...

John Tolan, "England's Jews: Finance, Violence, and the Crown in the Thirteenth Century" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)

22 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1290, Jews were expelled from England and subsequently largely expunged from English historical memory. Yet for two centuries they occupied importa...

Steven Nadler, "Spinoza: A Life" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

22 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) was one of the most important philosophers of all time; he was also one of the most radical and controversial. The story ...

Julie Peakman, "Libertine London: Sex in the Eighteenth-Century Metropolis" (Reaktion, 2024)

22 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Libertine London: Sex in the Eighteenth-Century Metropolis (Reaktion, 2024) by Dr. Julie Peakman investigates the sex lives of women from 1680 to 183...

Peter Gray, "William Sharman Crawford and Ulster Radicalism" (U College Dublin Press, 2023)

21 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Exploring both his life and legacy, the first full biography of William Sharman Crawford, the leading agrarian and democratic radical active in Ulster...

Jeremy Black, "Paris: A Short History" (Thames & Hudson, 2024)

20 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Once described as "that metropolis of dress and debauchery" by the Scottish poet David Mallet, Paris has always had a reputation for a peculiar joie ...

Coreen McGuire, "Measuring Difference, Numbering Normal: Setting the Standards for Disability in the Interwar Period" (Manchester UP, 2020)

20 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Measurements, and their manipulation, have been underestimated as crucial historical forces motivating and guiding the way we think about disability. ...

Amanda Wunder, "Spanish Fashion in the Age of Velázquez: A Tailor at the Court of Philip IV" (Yale UP, 2024)

20 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Spanish Fashion in the Age of Velázquez: A Tailor at the Court of Philip IV (Yale University Press, 2024) by Dr. Amanda Wunder is the first archival...

Stephen Morillo, "War and Conflict in the Middle Ages" (Polity Press, 2022)

20 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In War and Conflict in the Middle Ages (Polity, 2022), Dr. Stephen Morillo offers the first global history of armed conflict between 540 and 1500 or...

Nicholas Terpstra, "Senses of Space in the Early Modern World" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

19 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How did early moderns experience sense and space? How did the expanding cultural, political, and social horizons of the period emerge out of those exp...

Guido Alfani, "As Gods Among Men: A History of the Rich in the West" (Princeton UP, 2023)

19 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This provocative and interesting book has received considerable attention. Roaring reviews and interviews include  The Financial Times (UK), The...

Debby Koren, "Responsa in a Historical Context: A View of Post-Expulsion Spanish-Portuguese Jewish Communities Through 16th- And 17th-Century Responsa" (Academic Studies Press, 2023)

18 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Debby Koren's book Responsa in a Historical Context: A View of Post-Expulsion Spanish-Portuguese Jewish Communities Through 16th- And 17th-Century R...

Thor Rydin, "The Works and Times of Johan Huizinga (1872-1945): Writing History in the Age of Collapse" (Amsterdam UP, 2023)

17 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Thor Rydin joins to talk about his new book, The Works and Times of Johan Huizinga (1872- 1945): Writing History in the Age of Collapse (Amsterdam U...

Philip Freeman, "Two Lives of Saint Brigid" (Four Courts Press, 2024)

17 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

St. Brigid is the earliest and best-known of the female saints of Ireland. In the generation after St. Patrick, she established a monastery for men an...

Liz Tregenza, "Wholesale Couture: London and Beyond, 1930-70" (Bloombury, 2023)

17 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Wholesale Couture: London and Beyond, 1930-70 (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Dr. Liz Tregenza seeks to revise the notion that wholesale couturiers were simply...

D. J. Taylor, "Who Is Big Brother?: A Reader's Guide to George Orwell" (Yale UP, 2024)

17 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

An intellectual who hated intellectuals, a socialist who didn't trust the state--our foremost political essayist and author of Animal Farm and Nine...

Kerry Wallach, "Traces of a Jewish Artist: The Lost Life and Work of Rahel Szalit" (Penn State UP, 2024)

16 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Graphic artist, illustrator, painter, and cartoonist Rahel Szalit (1888-1942) was among the best-known Jewish women artists in Weimar Berlin. But afte...

Felipe Fernández-Armesto and Manuel Lucena Giraldo, "How the Spanish Empire Was Built: A 400 Year History" (Reaktion, 2024)

16 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Sixteenth-century Spain was small, poor, disunited and sparsely populated. Yet the Spaniards and their allies built the largest empire the world had e...

Miriam Piilonen, "Theorizing Music Evolution: Darwin, Spencer, and the Limits of the Human" (Oxford UP, 2024)

15 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What did historical evolutionists such as Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer have to say about music? What role did music play in their evolutionary t...

Kevin Lambert, "Symbols and Things: Material Mathematics in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2021)

15 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The stereotype of the solitary mathematician is widespread, but practicing users and producers of mathematics know well that our work depends heavily ...

Grazia Ting Deng, "Chinese Espresso: Contested Race and Convivial Space in Contemporary Italy" (Princeton UP, 2024)

14 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Why and how local coffee bars in Italy--those distinctively Italian social and cultural spaces--have been increasingly managed by Chinese baristas sin...

Aidan Beatty and Dan O'Brien, "Irish Questions and Jewish Questions: Crossovers in Culture" (Syracuse UP, 2018)

12 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Irish and the Jews are two of the classic outliers of modern Europe. Both struggled with their lack of formal political sovereignty in the ninete...

Seamus O'Malley, "Irish Culture and 'The People': Populism and Its Discontents" (Oxford UP, 2022)

11 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Seamus O’Malley is an associate professor at Yeshiva University. His first book was Making History New: Modernism and Historical Narrative (Oxford...

Hume, the Epicureans, and the Origins of Liberalism

10 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Enlightenment philosopher David Hume enjoyed a tremendous influence on intellectual history. What did Hume believe, why was it so controversial at the...

Robert M. Jarvis, "Gambling Under the Swastika: Casinos, Horse Racing, Lotteries, and Other Forms of Betting in Nazi Germany" (Carolina Academic Press, 2019)

09 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Although much has been written about the Nazis, one aspect of their rule has been all but overlooked: gambling. While philosophically opposed to gambl...

Elizabeth Coggeshall, "On Amistà: Negotiating Friendship in Dante’s Italy" (U Toronto Press, 2023)

08 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Although we often think of friendship today as an indisputable value of human social life, for thinkers and writers across late mediaeval Christian so...

Tzafrir Barzilay, "Poisoned Wells: Accusations, Persecution, and Minorities in Medieval Europe, 1321-1422" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)

08 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Between 1348 and 1350, Jews throughout Europe were accused of having caused the spread of the Black Death by poisoning the wells from which the entire...

Adele Oliver, "Deeping It: Colonialism, Culture & Criminalisation of UK Drill" (404 Ink, 2023)

07 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Deeping It: Colonialism, Culture & Criminalisation of UK Drill (404 Ink, 2023) by Adèle Oliver shines a critical light on UK drill and its fraught r...

Claudio Ferlan, "The Jesuits: A Thematic History" (Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2023)

06 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In The Jesuits: A Thematic History (Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2023), Claudio Ferlan provides an exploration of the tradition of the Society of Je...

Leah Broad, "Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World" (Faber & Faber, 2023)

05 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This is a story of four composers whose careers, lives and loves as women working in 20th century Britain have since been largely forgotten. Dr Lea...

Sarah Horowitz, "The Red Widow: The Scandal That Shook Paris and the Woman Behind It All" (Sourcebooks, 2022)

05 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Sex. Lies. Murder. Sarah Horowitz's The Red Widow: The Scandal that Shook Paris and the Woman Behind It All (Sourcebooks, 2022) is a book I literall...

Paola Tartakoff, "Between Christian and Jew: Conversion and Inquisition in the Crown of Aragon, 1250-1391" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2012)

02 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1341 in Aragon, a Jewish convert to Christianity was sentenced to death, only to be pulled from the burning stake and into a formal religious inter...

Marie de Vignerot, Richelieu's Forgotten Advisor and Heiress

02 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Despite being one of the most influential women of 17th century France, Marie de Vignerot has been largely forgotten. The niece, heiress, and advisor ...

Huaping Lu-Adler, "Kant, Race, and Racism: Views from Somewhere" (Oxford UP, 2023)

01 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Kant scholars have paid relatively little attention to his raciology. They assume that his racism, as personal prejudice, can be disentangled from his...

Oliver Wunsch, "A Delicate Matter: Art, Fragility, and Consumption in Eighteenth-Century France" (Penn State UP, 2024)

31 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Eighteenth-century France witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of materially unstable art, from oil paintings that cracked within years of their c...