New Books with Miranda Melcher

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...

Lindsay O'Neill, "The Two Princes of Mpfumo: An Early Eighteenth-Century Journey Into and Out of Slavery" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

21 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1716 two princes from Mpfumo—what is today Maputo, the capital of Mozambique—boarded a ship licensed by the East India Company bound for Englan...

Martyn Percy, "The Crisis of Colonial Anglicanism: Empire, Slavery and Revolt in the Church of England" (Hurst, 2025)

21 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Crisis of Colonial Anglicanism: Empire, Slavery and Revolt in the Church of England (Hurst, 2025) by Dr. Martyn Percy offers a bold and unsettlin...

Asheesh Kapur Siddique, "The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World" (Yale UP, 2024)

19 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Over the span of two hundred years, Great Britain established, governed, lost, and reconstructed an empire that embraced three continents and two ocea...

Melinda Cooper, "Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance" (Zone Books, 2024)

18 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

At the close of the 1970s, government treasuries and central banks took a vow of perpetual self-restraint. To this day, fiscal authorities fret over s...

Marek Kohn, "The Stories Old Towns Tell: A Journey Through Cities at the Heart of Europe" (Yale UP, 2023)

17 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Historic quarters in cities and towns across the middle of Europe were devastated during the Second World War—some, like those of Warsaw and Frankfu...

Samar Al-Bulushi, "War-Making as Worldmaking: Kenya, the United States, and the War on Terror" (Stanford UP, 2024)

17 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Since Kenya's invasion of Somalia in 2011, the Kenyan state has been engaged in direct combat with the Somali militant group Al-Shabaab, conducting ai...

Marcel Elias, "English Literature and the Crusades: Anxieties of Holy War, 1291-1453" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

16 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The period from the Mamlūk reconquest of Acre (1291) to the Ottoman siege of Constantinople (1453) witnessed the production of a substantial corpus o...

Jacqueline M. Burek, "Literary Variety and the Writing of History in Britain's Long Twelfth Century" (York Medieval Press, 2023)

16 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Histories of Britain composed during the "twelfth-century renaissance" display a remarkable amount of literary variety (Latin varietas). Furthermore,...

Hunter Price, "Sacred Capital: Methodism and Settler Colonialism in the Empire of Liberty" (U Virginia Press, 2024)

16 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the early years of American independence, Methodism emerged as the new republic’s fastest growing religious movement and its largest voluntary as...

Jessica A. Brockmole, "Pink Cars and Pocketbooks: How American Women Bought Their Way Into the Driver's Seat" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2025)

16 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Since the commercial introduction of the automobile, US automakers have always sought women as customers and advertised accordingly. How, then, did ca...

Adam Pennington, "Henry VIII and the Plantagenet Poles: The Rise and Fall of a Dynasty" (Pen and Sword History, 2024)

15 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The story of King Henry VIII, a man who married six times only to execute two of those wives, is part of Great Britain’s national and international ...

Marie-France Fortin, "The King Can Do No Wrong: Constitutional Fundamentals, Common Law History, and Crown Liability" (Oxford UP, 2024)

14 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

'The king can do no wrong' remains one of the most fundamental yet misunderstood tenets of the common law tradition. Confusion over the phrase's histo...

Patricia Owens, "Erased: A History of International Thought Without Men" (Princeton UP, 2025)

13 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The academic field of international relations presents its own history as largely a project of elite white men. And yet women played a prominent role ...

Philip Howell, "Pub" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

12 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The pub is an English institution. Yet its history has been obscured by myth and nostalgia. In Pub (Bloomsbury, 2025) a new addition to the Object L...

Magdalena Buchczyk, "Weaving Europe, Crafting the Museum: Textiles, History and Ethnography at the Museum of European Cultures, Berlin" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

10 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Weaving Europe, Crafting the Museum: Textiles, history and ethnography at the Museum of European Cultures, Berlin (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Dr. Magdalena...

Edward Simon, "The Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Heavenly Virtues: A Visual History" (Cernunnos, 2024)

10 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A companion piece to Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology and Elysium: A Visual History of Angelology, Seven Sins and Seven Virtues (Abram...

Katie Beisel Hollenbach, "The Business of Bobbysoxers: Cultural Production in 1940s Frank Sinatra Fandom" (Oxford UP, 2024)

09 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Business of Bobbysoxers: Cultural Production in 1940s Frank Sinatra Fandom (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Katie Beisel Hollenbach reconsi...

Martín Alberto Gonzalez, "Why You Always So Political?: The Experiences and Resiliencies of Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx Students in Higher Education" (Viva Oxnard, 2023)

08 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As of 2018, only about one in ten Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx (MMAX) students graduate with a college degree. Drawing on in-depth interviews, part...

Hiroshi Motomura, "Borders and Belonging: Toward a Fair, Realistic, and Sustainable Immigration Policy" (Oxford UP, 2024)

08 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Immigration is now a polarizing issue across most advanced democracies. But too much that is written about immigration fails to appreciate the complex...

Emily E K Murdoch on the Governess Bureau Series

08 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When the nobility and gentility of England are at their wits end, they send a discrete note to Miss Vivienne Clarke’s Governess Bureau. Only accepti...

Arvid J. Lukauskas and Yumiko Shimabukuro, "Misery Beneath the Miracle in East Asia" (Cornell UP, 2024)

07 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Misery beneath the Miracle in East Asia (Cornell University Press, 2024) challenges prevailing views of the East Asian economic miracle. Existing sch...

Zai Liang. "From Chinatown to Every Town: How Chinese Immigrants Have Expanded the Restaurant Business in the United States" (U California Press, 2023)

07 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From Chinatown to Every Town: How Chinese Immigrants Have Expanded the Restaurant Business in the United States (University of California Press, 2024...

Neil Fox, "Music Films: Documentaries, Concert Films and Other Cinematic Representations of Popular Music" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

05 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Music Films: Documentaries, Concert Films and Other Cinematic Representations of Popular Music (Bloomsbury, 2024), Dr. Neil Fox considers a broad...

Daniel Oberhaus, "The Silicon Shrink: How Artificial Intelligence Made the World an Asylum" (MIT Press, 2025)

04 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

AI psychiatrists promise to detect mental disorders with superhuman accuracy, provide affordable therapy for those who can't afford or can't access tr...

D. C. Helmuth, "Hidden Libraries: The World's Most Unusual Book Depositories" (Lonely Planet, 2024)

04 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Hidden Libraries: The World’s Most Unusual Book Depositories (Lonely Planet, 2024) by Diana Helmuth, discover 50 of the world's most magnificen...

Marijam Did, "Everything to Play For: An Insider's Guide to How Videogames are Changing Our World" (Verso, 2024)

03 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Everything to Play For: How Videogames Are Changing the World (Verso, 2024) by Marijiam Did asks if videogames can achieve egalitarian goals instead ...

Angela Wanhalla et al., "Te Hau Kainga: The Maori Home Front during the Second World War" (Auckland UP, 2024)

02 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Taking readers to the farms and factories, the marae and churches where Māori lived, worked and raised their families, Te Hau Kāinga: The Māori Ho...

Blessin Adams, "Thou Savage Woman: Female Killers in Early Modern Britain" (HarperCollins, 2025)

02 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Early Modern Britain was awash with pamphlets, ballads, woodcuts broadcasting bloodthirsty tales of traitorous wives, greedy mistresses, cunning femal...

Yves Rees, "Travelling to Tomorrow: How Australia's Modern Women Pioneered Our Romance with the United States" (New South, 2024)

02 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A celebrity decorator with blue hair. A single mother who advised JFK in the Oval Office. A Christian nudist with a passion for almond milk. As explor...

Helen Louise Cowie, "Animals in World History" (Routledge, 2024)

01 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Animals in World History (Routledge, 2024) by Dr. Helen Cowie provides a concise synthesis of human-animal relations over time, charting shifting att...

Amanda Lagji, "Postcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time: Waiting for Now" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

01 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Postcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time: Waiting for Now (Edinburgh University Press, 2022) by Dr. Amanda Lagji reveals the fundamental, constitutive ...

Mirca Madianou, "Technocolonialism: When Technology for Good is Harmful" (Polity, 2024)

01 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

With over 300 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, and with emergencies and climate disasters becoming more common, AI and big data are ...

Kim Pernell, "Visions of Financial Order: National Institutions and the Development of Banking Regulation" (Princeton UP, 2024)

31 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The global financial crisis of the late 2000s was marked by the failure of regulators to rein in risk-taking by banks. And yet regulatory issues varie...

Dan Archer, "Voices from Nepal: Uncovering Human Trafficking through Comics Journalism" (U Toronto Press, 2024)

31 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How can we better protect survivors? How can we learn from their stories without causing further harm? With a pen in one hand and watercolours in the ...

Elizabeth Campbell, "Museum Worthy: Nazi Art Plunder in Postwar Western Europe" (Oxford UP, 2024)

29 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Art looting is commonly recognized as a central feature of Nazi expropriation, in both the Third Reich and occupied territories. After the war, the fa...

Vera Keller, "Curating the Enlightenment: Johann Daniel Major and the Experimental Century" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

27 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How did the research universities of the Enlightenment come into being? And what debt do they owe to scholars of the previous era? Focusing on the car...

Taylor N. Carlson, "Through the Grapevine: Socially Transmitted Information and Distorted Democracy" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

26 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Accurate information is at the heart of democratic functioning. For decades, researchers interested in how information is disseminated have focused on...

Erica Borgstrom and Renske Visser, "Critical Approaches to Death, Dying and Bereavement" (Routledge, 2024)

26 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Critical Approaches to Death, Dying and Bereavement (Routledge, 2025) by Professor Erica Borgstrom & Dr. Renske Visser is the first of its kind to ex...

Terrence C. Petty, "Nazis at the Watercooler: War Criminals in Postwar German Government Agencies" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)

24 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

After World War II, when a new German democracy was born in the western region of the vanquished Third Reich, tens of thousands of civil servants were...

Matthew McCormack, "Shoes and the Georgian Man" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

24 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Shoes are everyday objects but they are loaded with meaning. Shoes and the Georgian Man (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Matthew McCormack reveals how shoe...

Michael Tondre, "Oil" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

23 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Black gold. Liquid sunlight. Texas tea. Oil remains the ur-commodity of our global era, having been distilled from ancient algae and marine life to tu...

Ryan Tan Wander, "Settler Tenses: Queer Time and Literatures of the American West" (Texas Tech UP, 2024)

23 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In today’s cultural and political climate of relative LGBTQ+ inclusion, Settler Tenses: Queer Time and Literatures of the American West (Texas Tec...

Michelle D. Brock, "Plagues of the Heart: Crisis and Covenanting in a Seventeenth-Century Scottish Town" (Manchester UP, 2024)

22 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Using a wide range of archival material and a microhistorical approach, Plagues of the Heart: Crisis and Covenanting in a Seventeenth-Century Scottis...

Andy Wightman, "The Poor Had No Lawyers: Who Owns Scotland and How They Got it" (Birlinn, 2025)

22 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Who owns Scotland? How did they get it? What happened to all the common land in Scotland? Has the Scottish Parliament made any difference? Can we get ...

Bianca M. Lopez, "Queen of Sorrows: Plague, Piety, and Power in Late Medieval Italy" (Cornell UP, 2024)

21 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Queen of Sorrows: Plague, Piety, and Power in Late Medieval Italy (Cornell University Press, 2024) by Dr. Bianca Lopez takes an original approach to ...

April-Louise Pennant, "Babygirl, You've Got This!: Experiences of Black Girls and Women in the English Education System" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

21 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do Black women experience education in Britain? Within British educational research about Black students, gender distinctions have been largely ab...

Melanie Dennis Unrau, "The Rough Poets: Reading Oil-Worker Poetry" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2024)

19 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Oil workers are often typecast as rough: embodying the toxic masculinity, racism, consumerist excess, and willful ignorance of the extractive industri...

Steven King, "Fraudulent Lives: Imagining Welfare Cheats from the Poor Law to the Present" (McGill Queen's UP, 2024)

19 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Western welfare state model is beset with structural, financial, and moral crises. So-called scroungers, cheats, and disability fakers persistentl...

James Michael Buckley, "City of Wood: San Francisco and the Architecture of the Redwood Lumber Industry" (U Texas Press, 2024)

18 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

California’s 1849 gold rush triggered creation of the “instant city” of San Francisco as a to base exploit the rich natural resources of the Ame...