New Books with Miranda Melcher

Byron Ellsworth Hamann, "The Invention of the Colonial Americas: Data, Architecture, and the Archive of the Indies, 1781–1844" (Getty, 2022)

18 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Invention of the Colonial Americas: Data, Architecture, and the Archive of the Indies, 1781–1844 (Getty, 2022) is an architectural history and ...

Eva Payne, "Empire of Purity: The History of Americans' Global War on Prostitution" (Princeton UP, 2024)

18 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Between the 1870s and 1930s, American social reformers, working closely with the US government, transformed sexual vice into an international politica...

Catherine Tatiana Dunlop, "The Mistral: A Windswept History of Modern France" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

17 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Every year, the chilly mistral wind blows through the Rhône valley of southern France, across the Camargue wetlands, and into the Mediterranean Sea. ...

Mariam Motamedi Fraser, "Dog Politics: Species Stories and the Animal Sciences" (Manchester UP, 2024)

15 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Do dogs belong with humans? Scientific accounts of dogs' 'species story,' in which contemporary dog-human relations are naturalised with reference to ...

Emily Murdoch Perkins, "Regina: The Queens Who Could Have Been" (The History Press, 2024)

14 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What queens would England have had if firstborn daughters, not firstborn sons, had inherited the throne? In Regina: The Queens Who Could Have Been (...

Brett Bannor, "American Sheep: A Cultural History" (U Georgia Press, 2024)

14 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why did Thomas Jefferson write that he would be happy if all dogs went extinct? What economic opportunity did attorney John Lord Hayes envision for th...

Patrick Dixon, "Nuggets of Gold: Further Processed Chicken and the Making of the American Diet" (U Georgia Press, 2024)

13 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For McDonald’s, the Chicken McNugget, the flagship product of further processed chicken, represented a once-in-a-generation innovation, a snack item...

Eleanor Baker, "Book Curses" (Bodleian Library, 2024)

13 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever wanted to protect your books from forgetful borrowers, merciless page-folders or outright thieves? Perhaps you have even wished harm on ...

Susan A. Brewer, "The Best Land: Four Hundred Years of Love and Betrayal on Oneida Territory" (Three Hills, 2024)

12 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Dr. Susan A. Brewer's fascinating The Best Land: Four Hundred Years of Love and Betrayal on Oneida Territory (Cornell University Press, 2024), sh...

Jennifer Greenburg, "At War with Women: Military Humanitarianism and Imperial Feminism in an Era of Permanent War" (Cornell UP, 2023)

11 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

At War with Women: Military Humanitarianism and Imperial Feminism in an Era of Permanent War (Cornell University Press, 2023) by Jennifer Greenburg r...

Edward Jones Corredera, "Odious Debt: Bankruptcy, International Law, and the Making of Latin America" (Oxford UP, 2024)

10 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What are fallen tyrants owed? What makes debt illegitimate? And when is bankruptcy moral? Drawing on new archival sources, this book shows how Latin A...

Dayne C. Riley, "Consuming Anxieties: Alcohol, Tobacco, and Trade in British Satire, 1660-1751" (Bucknell UP, 2024)

09 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Writers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries—a period of vast economic change—recognized that the global trade in alcohol and to...

Rebecca Charbonneau, "Mixed Signals: Alien Communication Across the Iron Curtain" (Polity, 2024)

08 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the shadow of the Cold War, whispers from the cosmos fueled an unlikely alliance between the US and USSR. The search for extraterrestrial intellige...

Lisa Sheryl Jacobson. "Intoxicating Pleasures: The Reinvention of Wine, Beer, and Whiskey After Prohibition" (U California Press, 2024)

25 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In popular memory the repeal of US Prohibition in 1933 signaled alcohol’s decisive triumph in a decades-long culture war. But as Dr. Lisa Jacobson r...

Amélie Barras, "Faith in Rights: Christian-Inspired NGOs at Work in the United Nations" (Stanford UP, 2024)

24 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Faith in Rights: Christian-Inspired NGOs at Work in the United Nations (Stanford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Amélie Barras explores why and how C...

Paula Fredriksen, "Ancient Christianities: The First Five Hundred Years" (Princeton UP, 2024)

23 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The ancient Mediterranean teemed with gods. For centuries, a practical religious pluralism prevailed. How, then, did one particular god come to domina...

Emily Mitchell-Eaton, "New Destinations of Empire: Mobilities, Racial Geographies, and Citizenship in the Transpacific United States" (U Georgia Press, 2024)

22 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1986 the Compact of Free Association marked the formal end of U.S. colonialism in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, while simultaneously re-ent...

Amy Helen Bell, "Under Cover of Darkness: Murders in Blackout London" (Yale UP, 2024)

22 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Fear was the unacknowledged spectre haunting the streets of London during the Second World War; fear not only of death from the German bombers circlin...

Theresa Flanigan, "The Ponte Vecchio: Architecture, Politics, and Civic Identity in Late Medieval Florence" (Brepols, 2024)

21 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Famous today for the shops lining its sloped street, the Ponte Vecchio is the last premodern bridge spanning the Arno River at Florence and one of the...

Melissa Johnston, "Building Peace, Rebuilding Patriarchy: The Failure of Gender Interventions in Timor-Leste" (Oxford UP, 2023)

21 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the two decades since the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, peacebuilding interventions a...

Chelsea Berry, "Poisoned Relations: Healing, Power, and Contested Knowledge in the Atlantic World" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

20 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

By the time of the opening of the Atlantic world in the fifteenth century, Europeans and Atlantic Africans had developed significantly different cultu...

Jan Machielsen, "The Basque Witch-Hunt: A Secret History" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

20 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In June 1609, two judges left Bordeaux for a territory at the very edge of their jurisdiction, a Basque-speaking province on the Atlantic coast called...

Stephanie Rutherford, "Villain, Vermin, Icon, Kin: Wolves and the Making of Canada" (McGill-Queen's Press, 2022)

18 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A wolf’s howl is felt in the body. Frightening and compelling, incomprehensible or entirely knowable, it is a sound that may be heard as threat or i...

Kenny Cupers, "The Earth That Modernism Built: Empire and the Rise of Planetary Design" (U Texas Press, 2024)

17 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Earth That Modernism Built: Empire and the Rise of Planetary Design (University of Texas Press, 2024) by Dr. Kenny Cupers traces the rise of plan...

Alissa Klots, "Domestic Service in the Soviet Union; Women's Emancipation and the Gendered Hierarchy of Labor" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

15 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Domestic Service in the Soviet Union: Women's Emancipation and the Gendered Hierarchy of Labor (Cambridge University Press, 2024) by Dr. Alissa Klots...

Katya Motyl, "Embodied Histories: New Womanhood in Vienna, 1894–1934" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

14 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Embodied Histories: New Womanhood in Vienna, 1894–1934 (University of Chicago Press, 2024) historian Dr. Katya Motyl explores the everyday acts...

Leslie Beth Ribovich, "Without a Prayer: Religion and Race in New York City Public Schools" (NYU Press, 2024)

13 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The processes of secularization and desegregation were among the two most radical transformations of the American public school system in all its hist...

Susan Gaunt Stearns. "Empire of Commerce: The Closing of the Mississippi and the Opening of Atlantic Trade" (U Virginia Press, 2024)

09 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Shortly after the ratification of the US Constitution in 1789, twenty-two-year-old Andrew Jackson pledged his allegiance to the king of Spain. Prior t...

David Cowan, "Politics of the Past: Inter-war Memories and the Making of British Popular Politics, 1939–2009" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

08 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The inter-war period (1918–1939) is still remembered as a period of mass deprivation – the 'hungry thirties'. But how did this impression emerge? ...

Elizabeth Garner Masarik, "The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State" (U Georgia Press, 2024)

24 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

With The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State (University of Georgia Press, 2024), Dr. Elizabeth Garner Masarik ...

Vivian Asimos, "Cosplay and the Dressing of Identity" (Reaktion, 2024)

20 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Cosplay, born from the fusion of ‘costume’ and ‘play’, transcends mere dress-up by transforming enthusiasts of TV shows, movies, books or vide...

Ramie Targoff, "Shakespeare's Sisters: Four Women Who Wrote the Renaissance" (Knopf, 2024)

20 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Shakespeare's Sisters: Four Women Who Wrote the Renaissance (Knopf, 2024) by Dr. Ramie Targoff, discover the lives and work of four ambitious Ren...

Masha Kirasirova, "The Eastern International: Arabs, Central Asians, and Jews in the Soviet Union's Anticolonial Empire" (Oxford UP, 2024)

19 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the first few years after the Russian Revolution, an ideological project coalesced to link the development of what Stalin demarcated as the interna...

Park Jeong-Mi, "The State's Sexuality: Prostitution and Postcolonial Nation Building in South Korea" (U California Press, 2024)

19 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The State's Sexuality: Prostitution and Postcolonial Nation Building in South Korea (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Park Jeong-Mi uncov...

Laura F. Edwards, "Only the Clothes on Her Back: Clothing and the Hidden History of Power in the Nineteenth-Century United States" (Oxford UP, 2022)

18 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What can dresses, bedlinens, waistcoats, pantaloons, shoes, and kerchiefs tell us about the legal status of the least powerful members of American soc...

A. D. Bergin, "The Wicked of the Earth" (Northodox, 2024)

17 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

October, 1650, traumatised Parliamentarian spy James Archer returns north seeking his sister Meg, missing in the aftermath of Newcastle’s recent wit...

Ian Miller, "Self-Esteem: An American History" (Polity Press, 2024)

17 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

By the end of the twentieth century, the idea of self-esteem had become enormously influential. A staggering amount of psychological research and self...

Rachael Litherland and Philly Hare, "People with Dementia at the Heart of Research: Co-Producing Research through The Dementia Enquirers Model" (Jessica Kingsley, 2024)

16 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

People with dementia are uniquely qualified to discuss the challenges of their condition and the features of effective support, but their voices are a...

Erin Lee Mock, "Changed Men: Veterans in American Popular Culture after World War II" (U Virginia Press, 2024)

16 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Millions of GIs returned from overseas in 1945. A generation of men who had left their families and had learned to kill and to quickly dispatch sexual...

Nicholas Baer, "Historical Turns: Weimar Cinema and the Crisis of Historicism" (U California Press, 2024)

16 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Historical Turns: Weimar Cinema and the Crisis of Historicism (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Nicholas Baer reassesses Weimar cinema in...

Hannah Pollin-Galay, "Occupied Words: What the Holocaust Did to Yiddish" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

15 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Holocaust radically altered the way many East European Jews spoke Yiddish. Finding prewar language incapable of describing the imprisonment, death...

Richard Schoch, "How Sondheim Can Change Your Life" (Atria Books, 2024)

14 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For fans of musical theatre, Stephen Sondheim is one of the true titans – the genius who brought us Sweeney Todd and West Side Story, Into the Woods...

Scott J. Weiner, "Kinship, State Formation and Governance in the Arab Gulf States" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)

13 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Tribe-state relations are a foundational element of authoritarian bargains in the Middle East, and in particular in the Gulf States. However, the stru...

Stuart Anderson, "Pharmacopoeias, Drug Regulation, and Empires: Making Medicines Official in Britain's Imperial World, 1618-1968" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2024)

06 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The word "pharmacopoeia" has come to have many meanings, although it is commonly understood to be a book describing approved compositions and standard...

Melissa Teixeira, "A Third Path: Corporatism in Brazil and Portugal" (Princeton UP, 2024)

05 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Following the Great Depression, as the world searched for new economic models, Brazil and Portugal experimented with corporatism as a “third path”...

Jerry Brotton, "Four Points of the Compass: The Unexpected History of Direction" (Penguin, 2024)

05 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

North, south, east and west: almost all societies use the four cardinal directions to orientate themselves, to understand who they are by projecting w...

Hannah Weaver, "Experimental Histories: Interpolation and the Medieval British Past" (Cornell UP, 2024)

04 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Experimental Histories: Interpolation and the Medieval British Past (Cornell University Press, 2024), Dr. Hannah Weaver examines the mediaeval pr...

Brian Groom, "Made in Manchester: A People's History of the City That Shaped the Modern World" (Harpernorth, 2024)

02 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Long before Manchester gave the world titans of industry, comedy, music and sport, it was the cosmopolitan Roman fort of Mamucium. But it was as the ‘...

Jonathan A. Allan, "Uncut: A Cultural Analysis of the Foreskin" (U Regina Press, 2024)

02 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The “uncut” penis is viewed by some as attractive or erotic, and by others as ugly or undesirable. Secular parents of male infants worry about whe...

Kristina Kolbe, "The Sound of Difference: Race, Class and the Politics of 'Diversity' in Classical Music" (Manchester UP, 2024)

02 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when the elitist space of 'Western' classical music seeks to diversify itself? And what are the social effects worked through diversity d...

Erika Engelhaupt, "Go to Hell: A Traveler's Guide to Earth's Most Otherworldly Destinations" (National Geographic, 2024)

01 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

With Go to Hell: A Traveler's Guide to Earth's Most Otherworldly Destinations (National Geographic, 2024) by Erika Engelhaupt, you can go to hell an...

Georgia Henley, "Reimagining the Past in the Borderlands of Medieval England and Wales" (Oxford UP, 2024)

01 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Challenging the standard view that England emerged as a dominant power and Wales faded into obscurity after Edward I's conquest in 1282, Reimagining ...

Dariusz Wojcik et al., "Atlas of Finance: Mapping the Global Story of Money" (Yale UP, 2024)

31 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From the emergence of money in the ancient world to today’s interconnected landscape of high-frequency trading and cryptocurrency, the story of fina...

Friederike Baer, "Hessians: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War" (Oxford UP, 2022)

30 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Between 1776 and 1783, Britain hired an estimated 30,000 German soldiers to fight in its war against the Americans. Collectively known as Hessians, th...

Nat Reeve, "Earlyfate" (Cipher Press, 2024)

24 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Pip Property is no stranger to disaster. Typically, they’ve got a plan, but now Dallyangle’s favourite dandy & part-time criminal is locked in the...

Wilko Graf von Hardenberg, "Sea Level: A History" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

21 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

News reports warn of rising sea levels spurred by climate change. Waters inch ever higher, disrupting delicate ecosystems and threatening island and c...

E. L. Gaston, "Illusions of Control: Dilemmas in Managing U.S. Proxy Forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria" (Columbia UP, 2024)

19 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the last two decades, the United States has supported a range of militias, rebels, and other armed groups in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Critic...

Michael J. Alarid, "Hispano Bastion: New Mexican Power in the Age of Manifest Destiny, 1837-1860" (U New Mexico Press, 2022)

19 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Hispano Bastion: New Mexican Power in the Age of Manifest Destiny, 1837-1860 (University of New Mexico Press, 2023), historian Dr. Michael J. Ala...

Peter C. Kunze, "Staging a Comeback: Broadway, Hollywood, and the Disney Renaissance" (Rutgers UP, 2023)

19 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 1980s, Walt Disney Productions was struggling, largely bolstered by the success of its theme parks. Within fifteen years, however, it had...

Anne Higonnet, "Liberty Equality Fashion: The Women Who Styled the French Revolution" (Norton, 2024)

18 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Joséphine Bonaparte, future Empress of France; Térézia Tallien, the most beautiful woman in Europe; and Juliette Récamier, muse of intellectuals, ...

Jennifer Chudy, "Some White Folks: The Interracial Politics of Sympathy, Suffering, and Solidarity" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

18 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There is racial inequality in America, and some people are distressed over it while others are not. Some White Folks: The Interracial Politics of Sym...

Corey Ross, "Liquid Empire: Water and Power in the Colonial World" (Princeton UP, 2024)

17 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a handful of powerful European states controlled more than a third of the land surface of the planet. These...

Alastair Bonnett, "40 Maps That Will Change How You See the World" (Ivy Press, 2024)

16 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

40 Maps That Will Change How You See the World (Ivy Press, 2024) by Dr. Alistair Bonnett is a meticulously curated selection of 40 maps that spans th...

Meghana Joshi, "Children are Everywhere: Conspicuous Reproduction and Childlessness in Reunified Berlin" (Berghahn, 2024)

15 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Children are Everywhere: Conspicuous Reproduction and Childlessness in Reunified Berlin (Berghahn Books, 2024) by Dr. Meghana Joshi engages with how ...

Rochelle Gurstein, "Written in Water: The Ephemeral Life of the Classic in Art" (Yale UP, 2024)

13 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Is there such a thing as a timeless classic? More than a decade ago, Dr. Rochelle Gurstein set out to explore and establish a solid foundation for the...

Wes Marshall, "Killed by a Traffic Engineer: Shattering the Delusion That Science Underlies Our Transportation System" (Island Press, 2024)

12 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the US we are nearing four million road deaths since we began counting them in 1899. The numbers are getting worse in recent years, yet we continue...

Virginia Nicholson, "All the Rage: Power, Pain, Pleasure: Stories from the Frontline of Beauty 1860-1960" (Pegasus Books, 2024)

11 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In All the Rage: Power, Pain, Pleasure: Stories from the Frontline of Beauty 1860-1960 (Pegasus Book, 2024) richly detailed account, Virginia Nichol...

Risa Cromer, "Conceiving Christian America: Embryo Adoption and Reproductive Politics" (NYU Press, 2023)

09 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1997, a group of white pro-life evangelical Christians in the United States created the nation’s first embryo adoption program to “save” the ...

John Withington, "A History of Fireworks from: Their Origins to the Present Day" (Reaktion, 2024)

08 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A History of Fireworks from: Their Origins to the Present Day (Reaktion, 2024) by John Withington illuminates the glittering history of fireworks, fr...

Natalie Wall, "Black Expression and White Generosity: A Theoretical Framework of Race" (Emerald Publishing, 2024)

07 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Black Expression and White Generosity: A Theoretical Framework of Race (Emerald Publishing, 2024), Dr. Natalie Wall takes readers on a journey th...

Marco Bastos, "Brexit, Tweeted: Polarization and Social Media Manipulation" (Bristol UP, 2024)

06 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dissecting 45 million tweets from the period that followed the Brexit referendum, Brexit, Tweeted: Polarization and Social Media Manipulation (Brist...

Iris Jamahl Dunkle, "Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb" (U California Press, 2024)

06 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1939, when John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath was published, it became an instant bestseller and a prevailing narrative in the nation's collect...

Neil Vickers and Derek Bolton, "Being Ill: On Sickness, Care and Abandonment" (Reaktion Books, 2024)

05 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A serious illness often changes the way others see us. Few, if any, relationships remain the same. The sick become more dependent on partners and fami...

Emma Hinds, "The Knowing" (Bedford Square Publishers, 2024)

04 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the slums of 19th-century New York. A tattooed mystic fights for her life. Her survival hangs on the turn of a tarot card. Powerful, intoxicating a...

Gerald Sim, "Screening Big Data: Films That Shape Our Algorithmic Literacy" (Routledge, 2024)

03 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Screening Big Data: Films that Shape Our Algorithmic Literacy (Routledge, 2024) examines the influence of key films on public understanding of big da...

Christian Wolmar, "The Liberation Line: The Untold Story of How American Engineering and Ingenuity Won World War II" (Hachette, 2024)

02 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

They certainly were not soldiers, yet they suddenly found themselves in uniform, in a foreign land. But, as locomotive drivers, track-workers, conduct...

Lynne B. Sagalyn, "Times Square Remade: The Dynamics of Urban Change" (MIT Press, 2023)

30 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What is it about Times Square that has inspired such attention for well over a century? And how is it that, despite its many changes of character, the...

Jonathan Maskit, "Bicycle" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

29 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

These days the bicycle often appears as an interloper in a world constructed for cars. An almost miraculous 19th-century contraption, the bicycle prom...

Inger Sigrun Bredkjær Brodey, "Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)

28 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How did Jane Austen become a cultural icon for fairy-tale endings when her own books end in ways that are rushed, ironic, and reluctant to satisfy rea...

Courtney Ann Irby, "Guiding God's Marriage: Faith and Social Change in Premarital Counseling" (NYU Press, 2024)

27 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It is well-known that the institution of marriage has changed dramatically in the past few decades. However, very little research has focused on the r...

Ian Williams, "Vampire State: The Rise and Fall of the Chinese Economy (Birlinn, 2024)

27 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

State capitalism. Socialism with Chinese characteristics. A socialist market economy. There have been numerous descriptions of the Chinese economy. Ho...

Alessandra Russo, "A New Antiquity: Art and Humanity as Universal, 1400-1600" (Penn State UP, 2024)

26 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We tend to think of sixteenth-century European artistic theory as separate from the artworks displayed in the non-European sections of museums. In A ...

Joseph Harley, "At Home with the Poor: Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in England, c.1650-1850" (Manchester UP, 2024)

25 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

At Home with the Poor: Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in England, c.1650-1850 (Manchester UP, 2024) by Dr. Joseph Harley opens the doors to...

Steve Tibble, "Crusader Criminals: The Knights Who Went Rogue in the Holy Land" (Yale UP, 2024)

24 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Crusader Criminals: The Knights Who Went Rogue in the Holy Land (Yale University Press, 2024), Dr. Steve Tibble presents a vivid new history of t...

Francis Stevens, "The Heads of Cerberus and Other Stories" (MIT Press, 2024)

23 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When three people in Philadelphia inhale dust developed by a scientist who has discovered parallel universes, they are transported into an interdimens...

F. J. Watson, "Lies of the Flesh" (Polygon, 2024)

23 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When evil stalks the land, who can you trust? Autumn 1314. In the aftermath of the Scottish victory at the Battle of Bannockburn, the villagers of War...

Andreas E. Feldmann, "Repertoires of Terrorism: Organizational Identity and Violence in Colombia's Civil War" (Columbia UP, 2024)

22 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Why do armed groups employ terrorism in markedly different ways during civil wars? Drawing on more than a decade of fieldwork, Dr. Andreas E. Feldmann...

Amir Alexander, "Liberty's Grid: A Founding Father, a Mathematical Dreamland, and the Shaping of America" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

21 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Seen from an airplane, much of the United States appears to be a gridded land of startling uniformity. Perpendicular streets and rectangular fields, a...

Felia Allum, "Women of the Mafia: Power and Influence in the Neapolitan Camorra" (Cornell UP, 2024)

21 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Women of the Mafia: Power and Influence in the Neapolitan Camorra (Cornell UP, 2024) by Dr. Felia Allum dives into the Neapolitan criminal underworl...

David Kroening Seitz, "A Different Trek: Radical Geographies of Deep Space Nine" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)

20 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A different kind of Star Trek television series debuted in 1993. Deep Space Nine was set not on a starship but a space station near a postcolonial pla...

Beng Huat Chua, "Public Subsidy, Private Accumulation: The Political Economy of Singapore's Public Housing" (NUS Press, 2024)

19 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The achievement of Singapore’s national public housing program is impressive by any standard. Within a year of its first election victory in 1959, t...

Jack Margolin, "The Wagner Group: Inside Russia’s Mercenary Army" (Reaktion Books, 2024)

19 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Wagner Group: Inside Russia’s Mercenary Army (Reaktion, 2024) exposes the history and the future of the Wagner Group, Russia’s notorious and ...

Zrinka Stahuljak, "Fixers: Agency, Translation, and the Early Global History of Literature" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

18 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Fixers: Agency, Translation, and the Early Global History of Literature (University of Chicago Press, 2024), Dr. Zrinka Stahuljak challenges scho...

Wendy Ugolini, "Wales in England, 1914-1945: A Social, Cultural, and Military History" (Oxford UP, 2024)

16 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

At the beginning of the twentieth century, for many English men and women of Welsh origin the idea of being in some part 'Welsh' reaffirmed their own ...

John Schofield, "Wicked Problems for Archaeologists: Heritage as Transformative Practice" (Oxford UP, 2024)

15 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

'Wicked Problems' are those problems facing the planet and its inhabitants, present and future, which are hard (if not impossible) to resolve and for ...

Theodore Papakostas, "How to Fit All of Ancient Greece in an Elevator" (William Collins, 2024)

14 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Two strangers meet in a trapped elevator. One is an archaeologist, the other isn’t. A simple question, ‘What do you do?’, becomes the springboar...

Lynn M. Tesser, "Rethinking the End of Empire: Nationalism, State Formation, and Great Power Politics" (Stanford UP, 2024)

13 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Why did a nation-state order emerge when nationalist activism was usually an elitist pursuit in the age of empire? Ordinary inhabitants and even most ...

Isaac Nakhimovsky, "The Holy Alliance: Liberalism and the Politics of Federation" (Princeton UP, 2024)

12 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Holy Alliance is now most familiar as a label for conspiratorial reaction. In The Holy Alliance: Liberalism and the Politics of Federation (Prin...

Aaron M. Hyman, "Rubens in Repeat: The Logic of the Copy in Colonial Latin America" (Getty, 2021)

03 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) never crossed the Atlantic himself, but his impact in colonial Latin America was profound. Prints made after the Flemi...

Henry H. Work, "Wood, Whiskey and Wine: A History of Barrels"(Reaktion Books, 2024)

01 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Barrels – we rarely acknowledge their importance, but without them we would be missing out on some of the world’s finest wines and spirits. For ov...