New Books with Miranda Melcher

Jamie Kreiner, "The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction" (Liveright, 2023)

18 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction (Liveright, 2023) by Dr. Jamie Kreiner presents a revelatory account of how Christi...

Caroline Peyton, "Radioactive Dixie: A Nuclear History of the American South" (U Georgia Press, 2025)

17 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

How and why did the South’s history, culture, and politics shape the region’s nuclear and energy industries? And how is that history linked to bro...

Catherine Clarke, "A History of England in 25 Poems" (Penguin, 2025)

17 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

This is the history of England told in a new way: glimpsed through twenty-five remarkable poems written down between the eighth century and today, whi...

Reena Goldthree, "Democracy’s Foot Soldiers: World War I and the Politics of Empire in the Greater Caribbean" (Princeton UP, 2025)

16 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Following the outbreak of World War I, tens of thousands of men from the British Caribbean volunteered as soldiers to fight on behalf of the British E...

Zoë McGee, "Courting Disaster: Reading Between the Lines of the Regency Novel" (Manchester UP, 2025)

15 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

What do #MeToo and Jane Austen have in common? More than you might think. Ever since the novel was invented, women have used it as a platform for sha...

Q. Edward Wang, "Staple to Superfood: A Global History of the Sweet Potato" (Columbia UP, 2025)

14 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Sweet potatoes were among the American crops Christopher Columbus brought back to Europe—where they were thought to be an aphrodisiac. In China, thi...

Vanessa Díaz and Petra R. Rivera-Rideau, "P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance" (Duke UP, 2026)

14 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance (Duke UP, 2026) explores the work of Puerto Rican musical superstar Bad Bu...

Bruno J. Strasser and Thomas Schlich, "The Mask: A History of Breathing Bad Air" (Yale UP, 2025)

13 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The Mask: A History of Breathing Bad Air (Yale UP, 2025) by Dr. Bruno J. Strasser and Dr. Thomas Schlich presents a history of masks protecting again...

Steven J. Brady, "Less Than Victory: American Catholics and the Vietnam War" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

13 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The first book of its kind, Less Than Victory: American Catholics and the Vietnam War (Cambridge UP, 2025) by Dr. Steven J. Brady explores both the ...

Julia H. Meszaros, "Economies of Gender: Masculinity, "Mail Order Brides," and Women’s Labor" (Rutgers UP, 2025)

12 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Economies of Gender: Masculinity, "Mail Order Brides," and Women's Labor (Rutgers University Press, 2025) by Dr. Julia Meszaros offers a provocative ...

Alison Bashford, "Decoding the Hand: A History of Science, Medicine, and Magic" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

12 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Why did Isaac Newton read books on chiromancy, the occult science of hand reading that revealed the secrets of the soul? Why did Charles Darwin claim ...

Marcy Norton, "The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492" (Harvard UP, 2024)

11 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492 (Harvard University Press, 2024), Dr. Marcy Norton offers a dramatic new interpretation of t...

Anna Sergi, "How to Recognize the Mafia Abroad: Critical Notes on ‘ndrangheta Mobility" (Policy Press, 2025)

11 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The influence and spread of clans and families within the ‘ndrangheta - the Calabrian mafia - is international yet recognising their activities is n...

Graeme Brooker, "The Story of the Interior: How We Have Shaped Rooms and How They Shape Us" (Thames & Hudson, 2025)

10 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

From traditional nomadic dwellings to state-of-the-art airports, through monumental temples and Baroque palaces to high-rise apartments and high-fashi...

Sarah Kunz, "Expatriate: Following a Migration Category" (Manchester UP, 2023)

09 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Who are expatriates? How do they differ from other migrants? And why should we care about such distinctions? Expatriate: Following a Migration Catego...

Anita Gonzalez, "Shipping Out: Race, Performance, and Labor at Sea" (U Michigan Press, 2025)

09 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Shipping Out: Race, Performance, and Labor at Sea (University of Michigan Press, 2025) by Dr. Anita Gonzalez provides a rare perspective on performan...

Sonya Lea, "American Bloodlines: Reckoning with Lynch Culture" (UP of Kentucky, 2025)

09 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Summer 1936: Rainey Bethea, a young Black man, is tried for the rape and murder of an elderly white woman. The all-white, all-male jury takes just fou...

Danielle Alesi, "Eating Animals in the Early Modern Atlantic World: Consuming Empire, 1492-1700" (Taylor & Francis, 2025)

09 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Eating Animals in the Early Modern Atlantic World: Consuming Empire, 1492-1700 (Amsterdam University Press, 2025) by Dr. Danielle Alesi examines how ...

Charles G. Thomas, "Ujamaa's Army: The Creation and Evolution of the Tanzania People's Defence Force, 1964-1979" (Ohio UP, 2024)

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The immediate postcolonial moment brought both promise and peril for the states of Africa and their security. The process of decolonization generated ...

Jeff Jarvis, "Magazine" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

02 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

For a century, magazines were the authors of culture and taste, of intelligence and policy - until they were overthrown by the voices of the public th...

Jordan Frith, "Barcode" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

31 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Barcodes are about as ordinary as an object can be. Billions of them are scanned each day and they impact everything from how we shop to how we travel...

Sara Byala, "Bottled: How Coca-Cola Became African" (Oxford UP, 2023)

30 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Travel to virtually any African country and you are likely to find a Coca-Cola, often a cold one at that. Bottled asks how this carbonated drink bec...

Stephanie Barczewski, "How the Country House Became English (Reaktion, 2023)

29 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How the Country House Became English (Reaktion, 2023) by Dr. Stephanie Barczewski is an exploration of the evolution of the quintessentially English ...

Kathryn Cornell Dolan, "Breakfast Cereal: A Global History" (Reaktion Books, 2023)

29 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Breakfast Cereal: A Global History (Reaktion, 2023) by Dr. Kathryn Dolan presents the long, distinguished and surprising history of breakfast cereal....

Filip Kovacevic, "KGB Literati: Spy Fiction and State Security in the Soviet Union" (U Toronto Press, 2025)

25 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

KGB Literati: Spy Fiction and State Security in the Soviet Union (University of Toronto Press, 2025) offers a first-ever glimpse into the mysterious ...

Samuel Helfont, "The Iraq Wars: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2025)

24 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

American wars in Iraq were a defining feature of global politics for almost thirty years. The Gulf War of 1991, the American invasion of Iraq in 2003,...

Andrea Maraschi and Francesca Tasca, "Food, Heresies, and Magical Boundaries in the Middle Ages (Amsterdam UP, 2024)

24 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Food, Heresies, and Magical Boundaries in the Middle Ages (Amsterdam UP, 2024) by Dr. Andrea Maraschi & Dr. Francesca Tasca, readers will find st...

Tracey Norman and Mark Norman, "Devon's Forgotten Witches: 1860–1910" (The History Press, 2025)

23 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Witchcraft and witches throughout history have long captured the imagination, yet hidden away in archives are records of long forgotten cases. Many of...

Amy Bowers Cordalis, "The Water Remembers: My Indigenous Family's Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life" (Little Brown, 2024)

23 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For the members of a Northern California tribe, salmon are the lifeblood of the people—a vital source of food, income, and cultural identity. When a...

Riley Linebaugh, "Curating the Colonial Past: The 'Migrated Archives' and the Struggle for Kenya's History" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

23 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 1960s, British colonial administrations in East Africa organized the systematic destruction and removal of secret documents from colonies...

Hilary Davidson, "A Guide to Regency Dress: from Corsets and Breeches to Bonnets and Muslins" (Yale UP 2025)

22 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In A Guide to Regency Dress: from Corsets and Breeches to Bonnets and Muslins (Yale UP 2025), celebrated dress historian Dr. Hilary Davidson brings ...

Matthew Scobie and Anna Sturman, "The Economic Possibilities of Decolonisation" (Bridget Williams Books, 2024)

22 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What do the economics of decolonisation mean for the future of Aotearoa? This question drives the work of Dr. Matthew Scobie and Dr. Anna Sturman as t...

Judith Jesch, "The Saga of the Earls of Orkney" (Birlinn, 2025)

21 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In The Saga of the Earls of Orkney (Birlinn, 2025), Professor Judith Jesch presents a fascinating history of the Earldom of Orkney, which was establ...

Molly-Claire Gillett, "Irish Lacemaking: Art, Industry and Cultural Practice" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

21 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Following the career of the Irish lace designer and inspector Emily Anderson (1856-1948), Irish Lacemaking: Art, Industry and Cultural Practice (Blo...

Mayu Fujikawa, "Envisioning Diplomacy: Japanese Ambassadors in Early Modern Europe" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2025)

19 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Japan sent its first diplomatic delegations to visit the popes and dignitaries of Europe. Europ...

Jennifer Ott, "Where the City Meets the Sound: The Story of Seattle's Waterfront" (HistoryLink, 2025) This

19 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From canoes on the beach at Dzidzilalich to steamships and piers, Seattle's waterfront was the center of the city's economy and culture for generation...

Shiben Banerji, "Lineages of the Global City: Occult Modernism and the Spiritualization of Democracy" (U Texas Press, 2025)

18 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

War, revolution, genocide, rebellion, slump. The economic and political turmoil of the early twentieth century seemed destined to rip asunder the ties...

Sharon Sliwinski, "An Alphabet for Dreamers: How to See the World with Eyes Closed" (MIT Press, 2025)

18 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Borrowing from the traditional alphabet book genre for children, An Alphabet for Dreamers: How to See the World with Eyes Closed (MIT Press, 2025) b...

Amy Erdman Farrell, "Intrepid Girls: The Complicated History of the Girl Scouts of the USA" (UNC Press, 2025)

18 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When eight-year-old Amy Erdman Farrell moved with her family to Akron, Ohio, in 1972, she found herself adrift in a sea of taunting boys and mean girl...

David Nasaw, "The Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II" (Penguin, 2025)

16 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In its duration, geographical reach, and ferocity, World War II was unprecedented, and the effects on those who fought it and their loved ones at home...

Hannah Frydman, "Between the Sheets: Sexuality, Classified Advertising, and the Moral Threat to Press Freedom in France" (Cornell UP, 2025)

16 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Between the Sheets: Sexuality, Classified Advertising, and the Moral Threat to Press Freedom in France (Cornell UP, 2025) by Dr. Hannah Frydman r...

Katrina Navickas, "Contested Commons: A History of Protest and Public Space in England" (Reaktion, 2025)

14 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A radical history of England, Contested Commons: A History of Protest and Public Space in England (Reaktion, 2025) by Dr. Katrina Navickas is a grip...

Mirya Holman, "The Hidden Face of Local Power: Appointed Boards and the Limits of Democracy" (Temple UP, 2025)

14 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Hidden Face of Local Power: Appointed Boards and the Limits of Democracy (Temple UP, 2025) by Dr. Mirya Holman explicates the purpose, role, and ...

Negar Mansouri and Daniel R. Quiroga-Villamarín eds., "Ways of Seeing International Organisations: New Perspectives for International Institutional Law" (Cambridge UP, 2025

13 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For decades, the field of scholarship that studies the law and practice of international organisations -also known as 'international institutional law...

Edward McPherson, "Look Out: The Delight and Danger of Taking the Long View" (Astra House, 2025)

13 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Look Out: The Delight and Danger of Taking the Long View (Astra House, 2025) by Edward McPherson is an exploration of long-distance mapping, aerial p...

Kathryn Chelminski, "Governing Energy Transitions: A Study of Regime Complex Effectiveness on Geothermal Development in Indonesia and the Philippines" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

12 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As the world moves with increasing urgency to mitigate climate change and catalyze energy transitions to net zero, understanding the governance mechan...

Julian Schmid, "Marvel, DC and US Security: The Superhero Genre and Foreign Policy in the Twenty-first Century" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)

12 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Marvel, DC and US Security: The Superhero Genre and Foreign Policy in the Twenty-first Century (Edinburgh UP, 2025) by Dr. Julian Schmid considers ho...

René Esparza, "From Vice to Nice: Midwestern Politics and the Gentrification of AIDS" (UNC Press, 2025)

11 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Shifting the focus of AIDS history away from the coasts to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, this impressive book uncovers how homonormativ...

Charlotte Macdonald, "Garrison World: Redcoat Soldiers in New Zealand and across the British Empire" (Bridget Williams Books, 2025)

11 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The pivotal year of 1870 brought down the curtain on the redcoat garrison world at both the metropolitan and colonial ends of the empire . . . In fewe...

Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich and Seth Denizen, "Thinking Through Soil: Wastewater Agriculture in the Mezquital Valley" (Harvard UP, 2025)

10 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

To think through soil is to engage with some of the most critical issues of our time. In addition to its agricultural role in feeding eight billion pe...

Rachel Jean-Baptiste, "Multiracial Identities in Colonial French Africa: Race, Childhood, and Citizenship" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

10 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Despite increasingly hardened visions of racial difference in colonial governance in French Africa after World War I, interracial sexual relationships...

James Sears, "Queering Rehoboth Beach: Beyond the Boardwalk" (Temple UP, 2024)

09 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

“Create A More Positive Rehoboth” was a decades-long goal for progress and inclusiveness in a charming beach town in southern Delaware. Rehoboth, ...

Sylvia D. Hoffert, "Wagging Tongues and Tittle Tattle: Gossip, Rumor, and Reputation in a Small Southern Town" (U Georgia Press, 2025)

08 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Wagging Tongues and Tittle Tattle: Gossip, Rumor, and Reputation in a Small Southern Town (University of Georgia Press, 2025), Dr. Sylvia Hoffert...

José Blanco F. and Raúl J. Vázquez-López, "Dress, Fashion, and National Identity in Puerto Rico: Taínos to Beauty Queens" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

07 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Analyzing dress, costume, and fashion in Puerto Rico, Dress, Fashion, and National Identity in Puerto Rico: Taínos to Beauty Queens (Bloomsbury, 20...

Beau Cleland, "Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria: How Pirates, Smugglers, and Scoundrels Almost Saved the Confederacy" (U Georgia Press, 2025)

07 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria: How Pirates, Smugglers, and Scoundrels Almost Saved the Confederacy (U Georgia Press, 2025) by Dr. Beau Clel...

Éléna Choquette, "Land and the Liberal Project: Canada’s Violent Expansion" (UBC Press, 2024)

06 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1867, Canada was a small country flanking the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes, but within a few years its claims to sovereignty spanned the cont...

Melanie McDonagh, "Converts: From Oscar Wilde to Muriel Spark, Why So Many Became Catholic in the 20th Century" (Yale UP, 2025)

06 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The twentieth century is understood as an era of growing, inexorable secularism, yet in Britain between the 1890s and the 1960s there was a marked tur...

Anna Zhelnina, "Private Life, Public Action: How Housing Politics Mobilized Citizens in Moscow" (Temple UP, 2025)

05 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Renovation, an urban renewal plan in Moscow that was announced in the spring of 2017, proposed to demolish thousands of socialist-era apartment buildi...

Adam Silverstein, "Haman" (Princeton UP, 2025)

05 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Haman, infamous as the antagonist in the book of Esther, appears as a villainous figure in virtually all varieties of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam...

Anny Gaul, "Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the Tomato" (U California Press, 2025)

04 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

By the end of the twentieth century, the tomato—indigenous to the Americas—had become Egypt's top horticultural crop and a staple of Egyptian cuis...

Elizabeth Chika Tippett, "The Master-Servant Doctrine: How Old Legal Rules Haunt the Modern Workplace" (U California Press, 2025)

03 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The field of employment law used to be called "master-servant law." Even if this term has fallen out of favor, a central truth has not changed: modern...

Alexander Cooley and Alexander Dukalskis, "Dictating the Agenda: The Authoritarian Resurgence in World Politics" (Oxford UP, 2025)

03 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Following the end of the Cold War, the world experienced a remarkable wave of democratization. Over the next two decades, numerous authoritarian regim...

Jonathan S. Jones, "Opium Slavery: Civil War Veterans and America's First Opioid Crisis" (UNC Press, 2025)

02 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

During the Civil War, the utility and widespread availability of opium and morphine made opiates essential to wartime medicine. After the war ended, t...

Julia Wagner, "Hester Street" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

02 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Joan Micklin Silver's groundbreaking debut feature film, Hester Street (1975), vividly portrays the immigrant experience through the eyes of Gitl (C...

Marc Sommers, "We the Young Fighters: Pop Culture, Terror, and War in Sierra Leone" (U Georgia Press, 2023)

30 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We the Young Fighters: Pop Culture, Terror, and War in Sierra Leone (U Georgia Press, 2023) by Dr. Marc Sommers is at once a history of a nation, the...

Michael McCulloch, "Building a Social Contract: Modern Workers’ Houses in Early Twentieth-Century Detroit" (Temple UP, 2023)

30 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The dream of the modern worker’s house emerged in early twentieth-century America as wage earners gained access to new, larger, and better-equipped ...

Meg Bernhard, "Wine" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

28 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Meg Bernhard about her new book Wine (Bloomsbury, 2023). Agricultural product and cultural commodity, drink of ritual and drink of...

Allison Christine Meier, "Grave" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

27 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Grave (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Allison C. Meier takes a ground-level view of how burial sites have transformed over time and how they continue to change...

Jenny Linford, "Repast: The Story of Food" (Thames & Hudson, 2025)

26 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Our insatiable appetite for creativity in the kitchen – or around the open fire – is reflected in the fascinating array of objects explored in thi...

Lauren E. M. Everett, "Fortunate People in a Fortunate Land: At Home in Santa Monica's Rent-Controlled Housing" (Temple UP, 2025)

26 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Rent control and other tenant protections have profound and positive impacts on individuals’ and communities’ lives. Dr. Lauren Everett’s Fortu...

Micah S. Muscolino, "Remaking the Earth, Exhausting the People: The Burden of Conservation in Modern China" (U Washington Press, 2025)

25 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From the 1940s to the 1960s, soil and water conservation measures transformed both the arid, erosion-prone environment of China’s Loess Plateau and ...

Nina Wilen, "Securitizing the Sahel: Analyzing External Interventions and Their Consequences" (Oxford UP, 2025)

25 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Sahel has become a focal point of international security interventions, with external actors providing extensive security force assistance (SFA) t...

Amy Hughes, "An Actor's Tale: Theater, Culture, and Everyday Life in the Nineteenth-Century United States" (U Michigan Press, 2025)

24 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Harry Watkins was no one special. During a career that spanned four decades, this nineteenth-century actor yearned for fame but merely skirted the edg...

Tom White, "Bad Dust: A History of the Asbestos Disaster" (Repeater, 2025)

23 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Once used extensively in schools, hospitals, and housing, asbestos has taken the lives of millions. Bad Dust: A History of the Asbestos Disaster (Re...

Stephen D. Hopper, "Eucalyptus" (Reaktion, 2025)

23 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Eucalypts, iconic to Australia, have shaped art, science and landscapes worldwide. With around nine hundred species, from towering giants to compact m...

Sarah Hoiland, "Righteous Sisterhood: The Politics and Power of an All-Women's Motorcycle Club" (Temple UP, 2025)

23 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A righteous sister identifies herself as a biker. She might wrench, or maintain, her own bike, and she prefers to ride with other righteous sisters. ...

Julie Dobrow, "Love and Loss After Wounded Knee: A Biography of an Extraordinary Interracial Marriage" (NYU Press, 2025)

22 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Like any set of star-crossed lovers, Elaine and Charles came from different worlds. Elaine, an acclaimed childhood poet from a remote corner of the Ma...

Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy, "Videotape" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

22 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Over the span of a single decade, VHS technology changed the relationship between privacy and entertainment, pried open the closed societies behind th...

David Chanoff, "Anthony Benezet: Quaker, Abolitionist, Anti-Racist" (U Georgia Press, 2025)

22 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Wilberforce, Clarkson, Wesley. Britain’s great abolitionist activist Granville Sharp. Each of these consequential figures of the eighteenth-century ...

Margaret Grace Myers, "The Fight for Sex Ed: The Century-Long Battle Between Truth and Doctrine" (Beacon Press, 2025)

21 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The US has some of the highest rates of STIs and teen pregnancies in the industrialized world. A comprehensive sex education curriculum—which teache...

Killian Clarke, "Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and Succeed" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

21 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why do some revolutions fail and succumb to counterrevolutions, whereas others go on to establish durable rule? Marshalling original data on counterr...

Emily Winderman, "Back-Alley Abortion: A Rhetorical History (JHU Press, 2025)

19 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How did three words come to carry the weight of America's abortion debates? In Back-Alley Abortion: A Rhetorical History (JHU Press, 2025), Dr. Emil...

Christina Jerne, "Opposition by Imitation: The Economics of Italian Anti-Mafia Activism" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

19 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For more than 150 years, Italy has been home to a resilient and evolving resistance against the pervasive influence of mafias. While these criminal or...

Max Adams and Colm O’Brien, "Northumbria AD 367-867: Earth Hall, Ring Gift and Heaven’s Field" (Birlinn, 2025)

18 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The story of the lands between the Forth and Humber from the end of the Roman period to the Viking kingdom of York is one of the most richly fascinati...

John Goodall, "The Castle: A History" (Yale UP, 2022)

17 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In The Castle: A History (Yale University Press, 2022) Dr. John Goodall presents a vibrant history of the castle in Britain, from the early Middle A...

Michelle McSweeney, "OK" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

17 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

"OK" as a word accepts proposals, describes the world as satisfactory (but not good), provides conversational momentum, or even agrees (or disagrees)....

Sonia Faleiro, "The Robe and the Sword: How Buddhist Extremism Is Shaping Modern Asia" (Columbia UP, 2025)

14 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When the robe becomes a weapon, who can stop the violence? We think of Buddhism as a faith of peace—rooted in compassion, patience, and nonviolence...

Tracy Borman, "The Stolen Crown: Treachery, Deceit and the Death of the Tudor Dynasty" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2025)

12 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the long and dramatic annals of British history, no transition from one monarch to another has been as fraught and consequential as that which ende...

Joshua Castellino, "Calibrating Colonial Crime: Reparations and The Crime of Unjust Enrichment" (Policy Press, 2025)

04 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

While decolonization liberated territories, it left the root causes of historical injustice unaddressed. Governance change did not address past wrongs...

Rebecca van Laer, "Cat" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

03 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Rebecca van Laer and her partner purchase a home and move in with their senior cats, Toby and Gus. Their loved ones see this as a step toward an i...

Sarah Griswold, "Resurrecting the Past: France's Forgotten Heritage Mandate" (Cornell UP, 2025)

03 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Resurrecting the Past: France's Forgotten Heritage Mandate (Cornell UP, 2025), Dr. Sarah Griswold shows how the Levant became a crucial front in ...

Graeme Rigby, "Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring" (Hurst Publishers, 2025)

03 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring: Adventures with the King of Fishes (Hurst, 2025) by Graeme Rigby contains almost everything you didn’t know...

Elizabeth Currie, "Street Style: Art and Dress in the Time of Caravaggio" (Reaktion, 2025)

02 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In late sixteenth-century Rome, artists found inspiration in bustling streets and taverns, depicting soldiers, Romani fortune tellers, sex workers and...

Linda Upham-Bornstein, "'Mr. Taxpayer versus Mr. Tax Spender': Taxpayers’ Associations, Pocketbook Politics, and the Law during the Great Depression" (Temple UP, 2023)

02 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

During the Great Depression, the proliferation of local taxpayers’ associations was dramatic and unprecedented. The justly concerned members of thes...

Jessica Campbell, "The Brontës and the Fairy Tale" (Ohio UP, 2024)

01 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Brontës and the Fairy Tale (Ohio UP, 2024) by Dr. Jessica Campbell is the first comprehensive study devoted to the role of fairy tales and folkl...

Martin Moore and Thomas Colley, "Dictating Reality: The Global Battle to Control the News" (Columbia UP, 2025)

01 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From the United States to China and from Brazil to India, an authoritarian approach to news is spreading across the world. Increasingly, the media is ...

Claudia Gastrow, "The Aesthetics of Belonging: Indigenous Urbanism and City Building in Oil-Boom Luanda" (UNC Press Books, 2024)

31 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

After centuries of colonial rule, the end of Angola’s three-decade civil war in 2002 provided an irresistible opportunity for the government to reim...

Tamar Mitts, "Safe Havens for Hate: The Challenge of Moderating Online Extremism" (Princeton UP, 2025)

31 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Content moderation on social media has become one of the most daunting challenges of our time. Nowhere is the need for action more urgent than in the ...

John Blair, "Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World" (Princeton UP, 2025)

30 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World (Princeton UP, 2025) by Professor John Blair provides the first in-depth, globa...

Nora Kenworthy, "Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare" (MIT Press, 2024)

30 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare (MIT Press, 2024), Dr. Nora Kenworthy presents an eye-opening investigation into charitabl...