New Books with Miranda Melcher

David Engerman, "Apostles of Development: Six Economists and the World They Made" (Oxford UP and Penguin RandomHouse South Asia, 2025)

17 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Apostles of Development: Six Economists and the World They Made (Oxford University Press and Penguin RandomHouse South Asia, 2025) by Dr. David Enger...

Haley Cohen Gilliland, "A Flower Traveled in My Blood: The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children" (Simon & Schuster, 2025)

16 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the early hours of March 24, 1976, the streets of Buenos Aires rumble with tanks as soldiers seize the presidential palace and topple Argentina’s...

Kelly A. Spring, "SPAM: A Global History" (Reaktion, 2025)

16 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The year 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, a conflict that solidified SPAM’s place in global food culture. Created...

Cat Dawson, "Monumental: How a New Generation of Artists Is Shaping the Memorial Landscape" (MIT Press, 2025)

15 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For centuries, monuments have telegraphed the values and origin myths of dominant culture in public space and on massive scale. They have signaled bot...

Renay Richardson and Arisa Loomba, "Human Resources: Slavery and the Making of Modern Britain" (Profile Books, 2025)

15 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ordinary items take on new meanings when you cast them in different light. The origins of tea, coffee and sugar are well known, but when you discover ...

Aditi Sahasrabuddhe, "Bankers' Trust: How Social Relations Avert Global Financial Collapse" (Cornell UP, 2025)

14 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Central bank cooperation during global financial crises has been anything but consistent. While some crises are arrested with extensive cooperation, o...

Andréa Becker, "Get It Out: On the Politics of Hysterectomy" (NYU Press, 2025)

14 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

At least one hysterectomy is performed every minute of the year, making it the most common gynecological surgery worldwide. By the age of sixty-five, ...

Rosemary Goring, "Exile: The Captive Years of Mary, Queen of Scots" (Berlinn, 2025)

14 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From the moment Mary, Queen of Scots set foot on English soil in 1568 until her execution at Fotheringhay Castle on 8 February 1587, she was the priso...

Juliet Rix, "London's Statues of Women" (SafeHaven Books, 2025)

14 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

No-one can fail to notice how many statues of Great Men there are around London: stern politicians, military generals, imperial adventurers . . . But ...

Aggie Hirst, "Politics of Play: Wargaming with the US Military" (Oxford UP, 2024)

13 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A wargaming renaissance has been underway in the US military. Having proven to be the most effective recruitment tool of the 21st century, games have ...

Kevin J. Tracey, "The Great Nerve: The New Science of the Vagus Nerve and How to Harness Its Healing Reflexes" (Penguin, 2025)

12 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The vagus nerve is fundamental to our health and vitality, coordinating critical functions from the precise heartbeat we need to exercise or rest to t...

Andrew Herscher, "Under the Campus, the Land: Anishinaabe Futuring, Colonial Non-Memory, and the Origin of the University of Michigan" (U Michigan Press, 2025)

12 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs, Anishinaabe leaders granted land to a college where their children could be educated. At the time, the colonial sett...

Ignacio G. Galán, "Furnishing Fascism: Modernist Design and Politics in Italy" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

12 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Along with the rise of Mussolini’s fascist regime, the interwar years in Italy also saw the widespread development of its modernist interior design ...

Tom Waidzunas et al., "Out Doing Science: LGBTQ STEM Professionals and Inclusion in Neoliberal Times" (UMass Press, 2025)

11 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past 50 years, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer professionals have organized to achieve greater inclusion into the fields of sc...

Phil Tiemeyer, "Women and the Jet Age: A Global History of Aviation and Flight Attendants" (Cornell UP, 2025)

11 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Women and the Jet Age: A Global History of Aviation and Flight Attendants (Cornell University Press, 2025) is a global history of postwar aviation th...

Kirstie Macleod, "The Red Dress: Conversations in Stitch" (Quickthorn, 2025)

09 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Red Dress: Conversations in Stitch (Quickthorn, 2025), shares the deeper story of The Red Dress, its embroiderers and Kirstie Macleod's own story...

Susan L. Carruthers, "Making Do: Britons and the Refashioning of the Postwar World" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

08 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Imagine a world in which clothing wasn't superabundant – cheap, disposable, indestructible – but perishable, threadbare and chronically scarce. Ei...

Margaret Cook Andersen, "Fertile Expectations: The Politics of Involuntary Childlessness in Twentieth-Century France" (Manchester UP, 2025)

06 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

An engaging history of motherhood, demography, and infertility in twentieth-century France, Fertile expectations: The politics of involuntary childle...

Kevin Guyan, "Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Classifications and the Dangers of Inclusion" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

05 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Classifications and the Dangers of Inclusion (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Kevin Guyan reveals how the fight for LGBTQ equalit...

Daanika Kamal, "Domestic Violence in Pakistan: The Legal Construction of 'Bad' and 'Mad' Women" (Oxford UP, 2025)

03 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Pakistani women are increasingly pursuing legal avenues against acts of domestic violence. Their claims, however, are often dismissed through characte...

Patrick Luiz Sullivan De Oliveira, "Ascending Republic: The Ballooning Revival in Nineteenth-Century France" (MIT Press, 2025)

02 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On August 27, 1783, a large crowd gathered in Paris to watch the first ascent of a hydrogen balloon. Despite the initial feverish enthusiasm, by the m...

Sam Dalrymple, "Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia" (HarperCollins UK, 2025)

02 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As recently as 1928, a vast swathe of Asia – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait – ...

Sarah Gold McBride "Whiskerology: The Culture of Hair in Nineteenth-Century America" (Harvard UP, 2025)

29 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hair is always and everywhere freighted with meaning. In nineteenth-century America, however, hair took on decisive new significance as the young nati...

Elena Jackson Albarran, "Good Neighbor Empires: Children and Cultural Capital in the Americas" (Brill, 2024)

26 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A class of child artists in Mexico, a ship full of child refugees from Spain, classrooms of child pageant actors, and a pair of boy ambassadors reveal...

Tie Ning, Annelise Finegan trans., "My Sister's Red Shirt" (Sinoist Books, 2025)

25 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Growing up in a glittering new decade of possibility, Anran is radically different to her sister. Outspoken and idealistic, she relishes in challengin...

Philip Kadish, "The Great White Hoax: Frauds, Forgeries, and 200 Years of Selling Racism in America"

24 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Fake news, outright political lies, a shamelessly partisan press, and the collapse of truth, civility, and shared facts, Dr. Philip Kadish argues, are...

Matthew Allen, "Drink and Democracy: Alcohol and the Political Imaginary in Colonial Australia" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025)

23 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The nineteenth-century spread of democracy in Britain and its colonies coincided with an increase in alcohol consumption and in celebratory public din...

Lieba Faier, "The Banality of Good: The UN's Global Fight Against Human Trafficking" (Duke UP, 2024)

22 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In The Banality of Good: The UN’s Global Fight against Human Trafficking (Duke University Press, 2024), Dr. Lieba Faier examines why contemporary ...

Vivian Kong, "Multiracial Britishness: Global Networks in Hong Kong, 1910–45" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

22 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What does it mean to be British? To answer this, Multiracial Britishness: Global Networks in Hong Kong, 1910–45 (Cambridge UP, 2023) by Dr. Vivian...

Claire Pierson, "Women's Troubles: Gender and Feminist Politics in Post-Agreement Northern Ireland" (Manchester University Press, 2025)

21 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do feminist movements develop and organise in ethno-nationally divided societies? How does this challenge our understandings of contemporary fourt...

John Barr, "1960s University Buildings: The Golden Age of British Modern Architecture" (Lund Humphries, 2025)

21 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The 1960s continue to hold an almost mythical place in Western culture, particularly in Britain, where change was widespread and infiltrated many aspe...

Jeremy Stolow, "Picturing Aura: A Visual Biography" (MIT Press, 2025)

20 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Picturing Aura: A Visual Biography (MIT Press, 2025) by Dr. Jeremy Stolow is the first book of its kind: an extended historical, anthropological, and...

David Crystal, "Bookish Words and Their Surprising Stories" (Bodleian Library, 2025)

20 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Bookish Words & their Surprising Stories (Bodleian, 2025) by Dr. David Crystal, explore how books have played a pivotal role in the history of En...

Emily Hauser, "Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World through the Women Written Out of It" (Univ of Chicago Press, 2025)

19 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Achilles. Agamemnon. Odysseus. Hector. The lives of these and many other men in the greatest epics of ancient Greece have been pored over endlessly in...

James D. Brown, "Cracking the Crab: Russian Espionage Against Japan, from Peter the Great to Richard Sorge" (Hurst, 2025)

19 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Richard Sorge is one of history’s most famous spies. This hard-drinking, womanising, motorcycle-crashing Soviet officer penetrated the German embass...

Emily Webber, "Mining Men: Britain's Last Kings of the Coalface" (Penguin, 2025)

18 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The story of the last generation of British miners: fathers and sons, brothers and comrades, big hitters and broken men, strikers and scabs. Mining M...

Violet Moller, "Inside the Stargazer's Palace: The Transformation of Science in 16th-Century Europe" (OneWorld, 2024)

18 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus declared the earth revolved around the Sun, overturning centuries of scholastic presumption. A new age was coming into vi...

Frederick Reece, "Forgery in Musical Composition: Aesthetics, History, and the Canon" (Oxford University Press, 2025)

17 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We all know about art forgeries, but why write fake classical music? In Forgery in Musical Composition: Aesthetics, History, and the Canon (Oxford U...

Mark Somos, Matthew Cleary, Pablo Dufour, Edward Jones Corredera, and Emanuele Salerno, "The Unseen History of International Law" (Oxford UP, 2025)

17 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Unseen History of International Law (Oxford University Press, 2025) locates and describes almost one thousand surviving copies of the first nine ...

L. Sasha Gora, "Culinary Claims: Indigenous Restaurant Politics in Canada" (University of Toronto Press, 2025)

16 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Culinary Claims: Indigenous Restaurant Politics in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2025) by Dr. L. Sasha Gora explores the complex relationships...

Barbara Allen, "Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds: Stories of Extinction" (Reaktion, 2025)

16 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds: Stories of Extinction (Reaktion, 2025) by Reverend Barbara Allen presents thirty-one extinct species through the p...

Brent Z. Kaup and Kelly F. Austin, "The Pathogens of Finance: How Capitalism Breeds Vector-Borne Disease" (U of California Press, 2025)

14 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Pathogens of Finance: How Capitalism Breeds Vector-Borne Disease (University of California Press, 2025) by Dr. Brent Z. Kaup & Dr. Kelly F. Austi...

Samuel Rutherford, "Teaching Gender: The British University and the Rise of Heterosexuality, 1860-1939" (Oxford UP, 2025)

14 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, universities were one of many institutional state structures wherein gender differenc...

Alison Griffiths, "Nomadic Cinema: A Cultural Geography of the Expedition Film" (Columbia UP, 2025)

11 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From In Borneo, the Land of the Head-Hunters to The Epic of Everest to Camping Among the Indians, the early twentieth century was the heyday of ex...

Sarah Bilston, "The Lost Orchid: A Story of Victorian Plunder and Obsession" (Harvard UP, 2025)

11 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1818, a curious root arrived in a small English village, tucked—seemingly by accident—in a packing case mailed from Brazil. The amateur botanis...

Sladja Blažan, "Ghosts and Their Hosts: The Colonization of the Invisible World in Early America" (University of Virginia Press, 2025)

08 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Ghosts and Their Hosts: The Colonization of the Invisible World in Early America (University of Virginia Press, 2025), Dr. Sladja Blažan explain...

Harrison Browne and Rachel Browne, "Let Us Play: Winning the Battle for Gender Diverse Athletes" (Beacon Press, 2025)

08 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The debate over the inclusion of gender diverse people in sport has become the latest battleground in the fight for basic human rights and equality. T...

Jenn Hobbs, "Bodily Fluids, Fluid Bodies and International Politics: Feminist Technoscience, Biopolitics and Security" (Bristol University Press, 2024)

07 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In recent years, security actors have become increasingly concerned with health issues. Bodily Fluids, Fluid Bodies and International Politics: Femin...

Anthony C. Infanti, "The Human Toll: Taxation and Slavery in Colonial America" (NYU Press, 2025)

03 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Human Toll: Taxation and Slavery in Colonial America (NYU Press, 2025) by Anthony C. Infanti documents how the American colonies used tax law to ...

Bonnie Yochelson, "Too Good to Get Married: The Life and Photographs of Miss Alice Austen" (Fordham UP, 2025)

03 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Too Good to Get Married: The Life and Photographs of Miss Alice Austen (Fordham University Press, 2025) by Dr. Bonnie Yochelson, explore Gilded A...

Coll Thrush, "Wrecked: Unsettling Histories from the Graveyard of the Pacific" (University of Washington Press, 2025)

03 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Northwest Coast of North America is a treacherous place. Unforgiving coastlines, powerful currents, unpredictable weather, and features such as th...

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...