New Books with Miranda Melcher
Episodes
Carol A. Heimer, "Governing the Global Clinic: HIV and the Legal Transformation of Medicine" (University of Chicago Press, 2025)
02 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
HIV emerged in the world at a time when medicine and healthcare were undergoing two major transformations: globalization and a turn toward legally inf...
Robert Garland, "What to Expect When You're Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife" (Princeton UP, 2025)
02 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A lively story of death, What to Expect When You're Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife (Princeton University Press, 2025) by Dr. Rober...
Katarina Kušic, "Beyond International Intervention: Politics of Improvement in Serbia" (University of Michigan Press, 2025)
01 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Studies of statebuilding and peacebuilding have been criticized for their disregard of people living the consequences of intervention projects. Beyon...
Jack Ashby, "Nature's Memory: Behind the Scenes at the World’s Natural History Museums" (Penguin, 2025)
31 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Nature's Memory: Behind the Scenes at the World’s Natural History Museums (Penguin, 2025), zoologist Jack Ashby shares hidden stories behind th...
Catriona M.M. MacDonald, "The Caledoniad: The Making of Scottish History" (John Donald, 2024)
30 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why did Scots in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries know so little about their past and even less about those who controlled their history? Is the...
Nao Tomabechi, "Supervillains: The Significance of Evil in Superhero Comics" (Rutgers UP, 2025)
29 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Alongside superheroes, supervillains, too, have become one of today’s most popular and globally recognizable figures. However, it is not merely thei...
Jana Dambrogio and Daniel Starza Smith, "Letterlocking: The Hidden History of the Letter" (MIT Press, 2025)
27 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Before the invention of the gummed envelope in the 1830s, how did people secure their private letters? The answer is letterlocking—the ingenious pro...
Janine Schipper, "Conservation Is Not Enough: Rethinking Relationships with Water in the Arid Southwest" ((U Wyoming Press, 2025)
24 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Conservation Is Not Enough: Rethinking Relationships with Water in the Arid Southwest (University of Wyoming Press, 2025) by Dr. Janine Schipper reco...
Richard D. Oram, "A Land Won from Waste: Scotland AD 400-1400" (Birlinn, 2025)
24 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Drawing together the evidence of archaeology, palaeoecology, climate history and the historical record, this first environmental history of Scotland e...
Dan Sperrin, "State of Ridicule: A History of Satire in English Literature" (Princeton UP, 2025)
22 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Satire is a funny, aggressive, and largely oppositional literature which is typically created by people who refuse to participate in a given regime’...
Alan Strathern, "Converting Rulers: Global Patterns, 1450-1850" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
19 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why did so many rulers throughout history risk converting to a new religion brought by outsiders? In his award-winning Unearthly Powers (2019), Dr. ...
Andrew Ofstehage, "Welcome to Soylandia: Transnational Farmers in the Brazilian Cerrado" (Cornell UP, 2025)
19 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Following a group of US Midwest farmers who purchased tracts of land in the tropical savanna of eastern Brazil, Welcome to Soylandia: Transnational ...
Dionne Koller, "More Than Play: How Law, Policy, and Politics Shape American Youth Sport" (U California Press, 2025)
18 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tens of millions of children in the United States participate in youth sport, a pastime widely believed to be part of a good childhood. Yet most child...
Aviva Briefel, "Ghosts and Things: The Material Culture of Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism" (Cornell UP, 2025)
17 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ghosts and Things: The Material Culture of Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism (Cornell University Press, 2025) by Dr. Aviva Briefel argues that Victoria...
Stuart Ward, "Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
17 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How did Britain cease to be global? In Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2023), Professor Stuart War...
Jennifer Lynn Gross, "Sisterhood of the Lost Cause: Confederate Widows in the New South" (LSU Press, 2025)
16 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Historians have thoroughly documented the vast devastation of the Civil War. In the attention they have paid to aspects of that destruction, however, ...
Ben Jackson, "Material Masculinities: Men and Goods in Eighteenth-Century England" (Manchester UP, 2025)
15 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Material Masculinities: Men and Goods in Eighteenth-Century England (Manchester University Press, 2025) by Dr. Ben Jackson examines the material and ...
Myka Tucker-Abramson, "Cartographies of Empire: The Road Novel and American Hegemony" (Stanford UP, 2025)
14 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The road novel is often dismissed as a mundane, nostalgic genre: Jack, Sal, and other tedious white men on the road trying to recapture an authentic y...
Rochelle Rojas, "Bad Christians and Hanging Toads: Witch Crafting in Northern Spain, 1525–1675" (Cornell UP, 2025)
14 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bad Christians and Hanging Toads: Witch Crafting in Northern Spain, 1525–1675 (Cornell University Press, 2025) by Dr. Rochelle Rojas tells riveting...
Stephanie Schmidt, "Child Martyrs and Militant Evangelization in New Spain: Missionary Narratives, Nahua Perspectives" (U Texas Press, 2025)
09 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A cornerstone of the evangelization of early New Spain was the conversion of Nahua boys, especially the children of elites. They were to be emissaries...
Eunji Kim, "The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy" (Princeton UP, 2025)
08 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In an age of growing wealth disparities, politicians on both sides of the aisle are sounding the alarm about the fading American Dream. Yet despite al...
Charlie English, "The CIA Book Club: The Best-Kept Secret of the Cold War" (Random House, 2025)
07 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For nearly five decades after the Second World War, the Iron Curtain divided Europe, forming the longest and most heavily guarded border on earth. No ...
Andrea Pappas, "Embroidering the Landscape: Women, Art and the Environment in British North America, 1740-1770" (Lund Humphries, 2023)
06 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Linking histories of women, relationships to the natural environment, material culture and art, in Embroidering the Landscape: Women, Art and the Env...
Alan Chong, "The International Politics of Communication: Representing Community in a Globalizing World" (U Michigan Press, 2025)
05 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In an era of globalization, international communication constantly takes place across borders, defying sovereign control as it influences opinion. Whi...
Zev J. Handel, "Chinese Characters Across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese" (U Washington Press, 2025)
04 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
While other ancient nonalphabetic scripts—Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Mayan hieroglyphs—are long extinct, Chinese characters, in...
Katie Milestone and Simon A. Morrison, "Transatlantic Drift: The Ebb and Flow of Dance Music" (Reaktion Books, 2025)
04 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Transatlantic Drift: The Ebb and Flow of Dance Music (Reaktion, 2025) by Dr. Katie Milestone & Dr. Simon A. Morrison explores the emergence and evolu...
Ipek A. Celik Rappas, "Filming in European Cities: The Labor of Location" (Cornell UP, 2025)
03 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Filming in European Cities: The Labor of Location (Cornell University Press, 2025) explores the effort behind creating screen production locations. D...
Paul Chrystal, "Miracula: Weird and Wonderful Stories of Ancient Greece and Rome" (Reaktion, 2025)
02 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Both humorous and shocking, Miracula: Weird and Wonderful Stories of Ancient Greece and Rome (Reaktion, 2025) by Paul Crystal is filled with astonis...
Laleh Khalili, "Extractive Capitalism: How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy" (Profile Books, 2025)
01 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Whether it's pumping oil, mining resources or shipping commodities across oceans, the global economy runs on extraction. Promises of frictionless trad...
Matthew Daniel Eddy, "Media and the Mind: Art, Science, and Notebooks as Paper Machines, 1700-1830" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
30 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We often think of reason as a fixed entity, as a definitive body of facts that do not change over time. But during the Enlightenment, reason also was ...
Terry Baxter and Libby Coyner-Tsosie, "Stories on Skin: A Librarian's Guide to Tattoos as Personal Archives" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
28 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tattoos are not merely decorative; they contain deep meaning for individuals and communities. They document their wearers' personal histories and posi...
Fernando Collantes, "Milk in Spain and the History of Diet Change: The Political Economy of Dairy Consumption Since 1950" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
27 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In barely three generations the Spanish diet has changed beyond recognition. The traditional concerns around nutritional health and scarcity have been...
Laura Spinney, "Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
27 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Star. Stjarna. Setareh. Thousands of miles apart, humans look up at the night sky and use the same word to describe what they see. Listen to these Eng...
Annalisa Marzano, "Plants, Politics and Empire in Ancient Rome" (Cambridge UP. 2022)
27 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Plants, Politics and Empire in Ancient Rome (Cambridge University Press, 2022) by Dr. Annalisa Marzano investigates the cultural and political dimens...
Eleanor Paynter, "Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present" (U California Press, 2024)
26 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Eleanor Paynter responds to the cris...
Alexander Stoffel, "Eros and Empire: The Transnational Struggle for Sexual Freedom in the United States" (Stanford UP, 2025)
25 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The history of queer politics in the United States since 1968 is commonly narrated as either a progressive campaign for state recognition or as a subc...
Asa Simon Mittman, "Cartographies of Exclusion: Anti-Semitic Mapping in Medieval England" (Penn State UP, 2024)
24 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From the battles over Jerusalem to the emergence of the “Holy Land,” from legally mandated ghettos to the Edict of Expulsion, geography has long b...
Tadashi Ishikawa, "Geographies of Gender: Family and Law in Imperial Japan and Colonial Taiwan" (Cambridge UP., 2024)
23 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Geographies of Gender: Family and Law in Imperial Japan and Colonial Taiwan (Cambridge University Press, 2024) Dr. Tadashi Ishikawa traces percep...
Katie Rose Hejtmanek, "The Cult of CrossFit: Christianity and the American Exercise Phenomenon" (NYU Press, 2025)
20 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
CrossFit in the United States has become increasingly popular, around which a fascinating culture has developed which shapes everyday life for the peo...
Jennifer Clapp, "Titans of Industrial Agriculture: How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why It Matters" (MIT Press, 2025)
19 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of farm machinery, fertilizer, seeds, and pesticides are sold to farmers around the world. Although...
Faith Tibble, "Crown of Thorns: Humble Gods and Humiliated Kings" (T&T Clark, 2025)
18 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jesus' Crown of Thorns has become one of the most ubiquitous features of Christian religious art, but was the original crown anything like the crown o...
María de Los Ángeles Picone, "Landscaping Patagonia: Spatial History and Nation-Making in Chile and Argentina" (UNC Press, 2025)
16 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In late nineteenth-century Latin America, governments used new scientific, technological, and geographical knowledge not only to consolidate power and...
Nicholas Jubber, "Monsterland: A Journey Around the World’s Dark Imagination" (Scribe, 2025)
10 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Monsters, in all their terrifying glory, have preoccupied humans since we began telling stories. But where did these stories come from? In Monsterlan...
Kathleen Thelen, "Attention, Shoppers!: American Retail Capitalism and the Origins of the Amazon Economy" (Princeton UP, 2025)
08 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The United States is widely recognized as the quintessential consumer society, one where huge companies like Walmart and Amazon are famous for enticin...
Rebecca Zorach, "Temporary Monuments: Art, Land, and America's Racial Enterprise" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
08 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Art has long played a key role in constructing how people understand and imagine America. Starting with contemporary controversies over public monumen...
Stephen J. Campbell, "Leonardo da Vinci: An Untraceable Life" (Princeton UP, 2025)
08 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) never signed a painting, and none of his supposed self-portraits can be securely ascribed to his hand. He revealed nex...
Eric Min, "Words of War: Negotiation as a Tool of Conflict" (Cornell UP, 2025)
06 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Of all interstate conflicts across the last two centuries, two-thirds have ended through negotiated agreement. Wartime diplomacy is thus commonly seen...
Loretta Vandi, "Eufrasia Burlamacchi" (Getty Publications and Lund Humphries, 2025)
06 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Eufrasia Burlamacchi (Getty Publications and Lund Humphries, 2025) by Dr. Loretta Vandi is a timely exploration of the skilful illuminated manuscript...
Patrick Wallis, "The Market for Skill: Apprenticeship and Economic Growth in Early Modern England" (Princeton UP, 2025)
05 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Apprenticeship dominated training and skill formation in early modern Europe. Years spent learning from a skilled master were a nearly universal exper...
Nathalie Cooke, "Tastes and Traditions: A Journey Through Menu History" (Reaktion, 2025)
03 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Menus are invaluable snapshots of the food consumed at specific moments in time and place. Tastes and Traditions: A Journey through Menu History (Re...
Sally King, "Menstrual Myth Busting: The Case of the Hormonal Female" (Policy Press, 2025)
02 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Menstrual Myth Busting: The Case of the Hormonal Female (Policy Press, 2025), Dr. Sally King interrogates the diagnostic label of premenstrual sy...
Sam Klug, "The Internal Colony: Race and the American Politics of Global Decolonization" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
02 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In The Internal Colony: Race and the American Politics of Global Decolonization (University of Chicago Press, 2025), Dr. Sam Klug reveals the centra...
Philip Harling, "Managing Mobility: The British Imperial State and Global Migration, 1840-1860" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
31 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1840 and 1860 the British Empire expanded rapidly in scale, with rampant annexation of territory and ruthless suppression of rebellion. These ...
Sinem Arcak Casale, "Gifts in the Age of Empire: Ottoman-Safavid Cultural Exchange, 1500–1639" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
31 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When the Safavid dynasty, founded in 1501, built a state that championed Iranian identity and Twelver Shi’ism, it prompted the more established Otto...
Peder Anker, "For The Love of Bombs: The Trail of Nuclear Suffering" (Anthem Press, 2025)
30 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The truism that history is written by its winners reflects the literature about how the bomb came about, with apologetic books most often written by U...
Andrew Canessa and Manuela Lavinas Picq, "Savages and Citizens: How Indigeneity Shapes the State" (U Arizona Press, 2025)
30 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Although Indigenous peoples are often perceived as standing outside political modernity, Savages and Citizens: How Indigeneity Shapes the State (Uni...
Liz William, "Rough Music: Folk Customs, Transgression and Alternative Britain" (Reaktion, 2025)
29 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Rough Music: Folk Customs, Transgression and Alternative Britain (Reaktion, 2025) by Liz Williams explores transgression and shame in British folklor...
Jason L. Newton, "Cutover Capitalism: The Industrialization of the Northern Forest" (West Virginia UP, 2024)
29 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What happened to the loggers of America’s past when lumbermen moved west and south in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? How did the...
Rune Nyord, "Yearning for Immortality: The European Invention of the Ancient Egyptian Afterlife" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
29 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Many of us are familiar with the ancient Egyptians’ obsession with immortality and the great efforts they made to secure the quality of their afterl...
David Oakeshott, "Schooling, Conflict and Peace in the Southwestern Pacific: Becoming Enemy Friends" (Bristol UP, 2024)
26 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bringing concepts from critical transitional justice and peacebuilding into dialogue with education, Schooling, Conflict and Peace in the Southwester...
Kiran Mehta, "To Detain or to Punish: Magistrates and the Making of the London Prison System, 1750–1840" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025)
25 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Imprisonment was rarely used as punishment in Britain before 1800. The criminal justice system was based on terror and deterrence, sentencing convicts...
Adam Kotsko, "Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
24 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era (University of Minnesota Press, 2025) by Dr. Adam Kotsko explores the beloved science fiction...
James M. O’Toole, "For I Have Sinned: The Rise and Fall of Catholic Confession in America" (Harvard UP, 2025)
24 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For generations, American Catholics went faithfully to confession, admitting their sins to a priest and accepting through him God’s forgiveness. The...
Mary Anne Hunting and Kevin D. Murphy, "Women Architects at Work: Making American Modernism" (Princeton UP, 2025)
24 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the decades preceding World War II, professional architecture schools enrolled increasing numbers of women, but career success did not come easily....
Surekha Davies, "Humans: A Monstrous History" (U California Press, 2025)
23 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Monsters are central to how we think about the human condition. Join award-winning historian of science in Humans: A Monstrous History (University o...
Heather Akou, "Afterthought: A Family Story" (Indiana U Libraries, 2025)
22 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Afterthought: A Family Story (Indiana University Bloomington Libraries Publishing, 2025) by Dr. Heather Akou focuses on the life of her grandmother, ...
James Tejani, "A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles and America" (Norton, 2024)
20 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Port of Los Angeles is all around us. Objects we use on a daily basis pass through it: furniture, apparel, electronics, automobiles, and much more...
Clive Bloom, "London Uncanny: A Gothic Guide to the Capital in Weird History and Fiction" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
18 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From Kensington to the East End, under candlelight, gas lamp and then neon signs, London is both a bustling physical metropolis and a stirring psychic...
Sally Coulthard, "A Brief History of the Countryside in 100 Objects" (HarperCollins UK, 2024)
17 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For most of human history, we were rural folk. Our daily lives were bound up with working the land, living within the rhythm of the seasons. We poured...
Matt Lodder, "Tattoos: The Untold History of a Modern Art" (Yale UP, 2024)
17 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There is a pervasive stereotype of tattoo culture as relating to an underworld of scoundrels, sailors, and ne’er-do-wells, yet it has existed in the...
Tycho van der Hoog, "Comrades Beyond the Cold War: North Korea and the Liberation of Southern Africa" (Hurst, 2025)
16 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
North Korea was an important player in the decolonisation of Africa. Freedom fighters across the continent received vital assistance from Pyongyang, a...
Jehanne Dubrow, "Civilians" (LSU Press, 2025)
15 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The final volume in Dr. Jehanne Dubrow’s groundbreaking trilogy about the experience of being a modern military spouse, Civilians (LSU Press, 2025...
Anna Nilsson Hammar and Svante Norrhem, "Serving Aristocracy: Negotiation, Learning, and Mobility in an Early Modern Knowledge Community" (Routledge, 2025)
15 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Serving Aristocracy: Negotiation, Learning, and Mobility in an Early Modern Knowledge Community (Routledge, 2025) by Dr. Anna Nilsson Hammar & Dr. Sv...
Maggie M. Cao, "Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
14 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies (University of Chicago Press, 2025) by Dr. Maggie Cao is the first book to offer a synthe...
Fiona Handyside, "Girls' Hairstories: Sparkle and Resilience in Contemporary Screen Cultures" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)
14 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why have dynamic and shifting hairstyles, from Katniss Everdeen’s Power Plait to JoJo Siwa’s outsize bows, become such a significant part of how g...
Mia Consalvo et al., "Streaming by the Rest of Us: Microstreaming Videogames on Twitch" (MIT Press, 2025)
14 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The vast majority of people who stream themselves playing videogames online do so with few or no viewers. In Streaming by the Rest of Us: Microstream...
Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, "Prison Capital: Mass Incarceration and Struggles for Abolition Democracy in Louisiana" (UNC Press, 2023)
14 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Every year between 1998 to 2020 except one, Louisiana had the highest per capita rate of incarceration in the nation and thus the world. Prison Capit...
Selena Wisnom, "The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of the Modern World" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
13 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When a team of Victorian archaeologists dug into a grassy hill in Iraq, they chanced upon one of the oldest and greatest stores of knowledge ever seen...
Chiara Faggella, "Becoming Couture: The Italian Fashion Industry after the Second World War" (Manchester UP, 2024)
13 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Becoming couture: The Italian fashion industry after the Second World War (Manchester University Press, 2024) by Dr. Chiara Faggella is the first boo...
Melissa Vise, "The Unruly Tongue: Speech and Violence in Medieval Italy" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
12 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Unruly Tongue: Speech and Violence in Medieval Italy (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025) by Dr. Melissa Vise, offers a new account of how th...
Lea David, "A Victim's Shoe, a Broken Watch, and Marbles: Desire Objects and Human Rights"(Columbia UP, 2025)
11 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Everyday items found at the sites of atrocities possess a striking emotional force. Victims’ garments, broken glasses, wallets, shoes, and other suc...
Martha Bayless, "Entertainment, Pleasure, and Meaning in Early England" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
11 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The people of early England (c. 450–1100 CE) enjoyed numerous kinds of entertainment, recreation and pleasure, but the scattered records of such thi...
Jamie Jelinski, "Needle Work: A History of Commercial Tattooing in Canada" (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2024)
10 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1891 J. Murakami travelled from Japan, via San Francisco, to Vancouver Island and began working in and around Victoria. His occupation: creating pe...
Kristin A. Olbertson, "The Dreadful Word: Speech Crime and Polite Gentlemen in Massachusetts, 1690–1776" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
09 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Dreadful Word: Speech Crime and Polite Gentlemen in Massachusetts, 1690–1776 (Cambridge University Press, 2022) by Dr. Kristin Olbertson is the...
Margaret Peacock, "Frequencies of Deceit: How Global Propaganda Wars Shaped the Middle East" (U California Press, 2025)
08 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On June 8, 1967, Egypt's most famous radio broadcaster, Ahmed Said, reported that Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian forces had defeated the Israeli army...
Gary Griggs, "California Catastrophes: The Natural Disaster History of the Golden State" (U California Press, 2024)
07 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
California has more natural hazards per square mile than any other state, but this hasn’t deterred people from moving here. Entire California towns ...
Maria Kaika and Luca Ruggiero, "Class Meets Land: The Embodied History of Land Financialization" (U California Press, 2024)
06 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Class Meets Land: The Embodied History of Land Financialization (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Maria Kaika & Dr. Luca Ruggiero reveals...
Simona Valeriani, "The Royal Albert Hall: Building the Arts and Sciences" (Brepols, 2024)
05 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Royal Albert Hall: Building the Arts and Sciences (Brepols, 2024) by Dr. Simona Valeriani takes one of London’s most iconic buildings and decon...
Vera Tiesler, "Ancient Maya Teeth: Dental Modification, Cosmology, and Social Identity in Mesoamerica" (U Texas Press, 2024)
05 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dental modification was common across ancient societies, but perhaps none were more avid practitioners than the Maya. They filed their teeth flat or p...
Waiyee Loh, "Empire of Culture: Neo-Victorian Narratives in the Global Creative Economy" (SUNY Press, 2024)
03 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Empire of Culture: Neo-Victorian Narratives in the Global Creative Economy (SUNY Press, 2024) by Dr. Waiyee Loh brings together contemporary represen...
Erik Baker, "Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America" (Harvard UP, 2025)
02 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How Americans think about work changed profoundly over the course of the twentieth century. Thrift and persistence came to seem old-fashioned. Success...
Hallie Franks, "Ancient Sculpture and Twentieth-Century American Womanhood: Venus Envy" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
02 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ancient Sculpture and Twentieth-Century American Womanhood: Venus Envy (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Hallie Franks examines the reception of Graeco-Roman...
Dawn Day Biehler, "Animating Central Park: A Multispecies History" (U Washington Press, 2024)
01 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From deer and beavers to “free range” pigs and goats in and around Seneca Village, what we now know as Central Park has long been home to an abund...
Wan-Chuan Kao, "White before Whiteness in the Late Middle Ages" (Manchester UP, 2024)
28 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
White before Whiteness in the Late Middle Ages (Manchester University Press, 2024) by Dr. Wan-Chuan Kao analyses premodern whiteness as operations of...
Daniel Silverman, "Seeing Is Disbelieving: Why People Believe Misinformation in War, and When They Know Better" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
28 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Factual misinformation is spread in conflict zones around the world, often with dire consequences. But when is this misinformation actually believed, ...
Philip A. Martin, "Strong Commanders, Weak States: How Rebel Governance Shapes Military Integration after Civil War" (Cornell UP, 2025)
26 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Strong Commanders, Weak States: How Rebel Governance Shapes Military Integration after Civil War (Cornell University Press, 2025), Dr. Philip A. ...
Gemma Hollman, "Women in the Middle Ages: Illuminating the World of Peasants, Nuns, and Queens" (Abbeville Press, 2024)
26 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Medieval women ruled over kingdoms, abbeys, and households; produced stunning works of art and craft; and did the hard work that kept ordinary familie...
David R. Saunders, "Chasing Archipelagic Dreams: The Expansion of Foreign Influence in Sabah amid the End of Empire, 1945–1965" (Cornell UP, 2024)
25 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Chasing Archipelagic Dreams: The Expansion of Foreign Influence in Sabah amid the End of Empire, 1945–1965 (Cornell University Press, 2024), Dr...
Marion Laurence, "Intrusive Impartiality: Learning, Contestation, and Practice Change in United Nations Peace Operations" (Oxford UP, 2024)
24 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Impartiality is a guiding principle in United Nations peace operations that has helped legitimize multilateral intervention in dozens of armed conflic...
Jenny Shaw, "The Women of Rendezvous: A Transatlantic Story of Family and Slavery" (UNC Press, 2024)
23 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Women of Rendezvous: A Transatlantic Story of Family and Slavery (UNC Press, 2024) is a dramatic transatlantic story about five women who birthe...