New Books with Miranda Melcher

Pamela Hutchinson, "The Red Shoes" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

14 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Endlessly fascinating, dark and bright, The Red Shoes (1948) employs every branch of the cinematic arts to sweep the audience off its feet, invigora...

Alfred Peredo Flores, "Tip of the Spear: Land, Labor, and US Settler Militarism in Guåhan, 1944–1962" (Cornell UP, 2023)

14 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Tip of the Spear: Land, Labor, and US Settler Militarism in Guåhan, 1944–1962 (Cornell University Press, 2023), Dr. Alfred Peredo Flores argue...

Zana Gulmohamad, "The Making of Foreign Policy in Iraq: Political Factions and the Ruling Elite" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

13 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How is foreign policy made in Iraq? Based on dozens of interviews with senior officials and politicians, The Making of Foreign Policy in Iraq: Politi...

James D. Fisher, "The Enclosure of Knowledge: Books, Power and Agrarian Capitalism in Britain, 1660–1800" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

12 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The rise of agrarian capitalism in Britain is usually told as a story about markets, land and wages. The Enclosure of Knowledge: Books, Power and Agr...

Maya Pagni Barak, "The Slow Violence of Immigration Court: Procedural Justice on Trial" (NYU Press, 2023)

11 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Each year, hundreds of thousands of migrants are moved through immigration court. With a national backlog surpassing one million cases, court hearings...

Monika Krause, "Model Cases: On Canonical Research Objects and Sites" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

10 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Model Cases: On Canonical Research Objects and Sites (University of Chicago Press, 2021), Dr. Monika Krause asks about the concrete material rese...

Ed Simon, "Devil's Contract: A History of the Faustian Bargain" (Melville House, 2024)

09 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From ancient times to the modern world, the idea of the Faustian bargain—the exchange of one’s soul in return for untold riches and power—has ex...

David Alff, "The Northeast Corridor: The Trains, the People, the History, the Region" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

09 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Traversed by thousands of trains and millions of riders, the Northeast Corridor might be America’s most famous railway, but its influence goes far b...

Miranda Melcher, "Securing Peace in Angola and Mozambique: The Importance of Specificity in Peace Treaties" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

08 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Explaining how and why there are such diverging outcomes of UN peace negotiations and treaties, this book offers a detailed examination of peace proce...

Tabitha Stanmore, "Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic" (Bloombury, 2024)

07 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Imagine: it's the year 1600 and you've lost your precious silver spoons, or maybe they've been stolen. Perhaps your child has a fever. Or you're facin...

Jonathan Judaken, "Critical Theories of Anti-Semitism" (Columbia UP, 2024)

07 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Despite its persistence and viciousness, anti-Semitism remains undertheorized in comparison with other forms of racism and discrimination. How should ...

Kathryn Hughes, "Catland: Louis Wain and the Great Cat Mania" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)

07 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1900, Britain and America were in the grip of a cat craze. An animal that had for centuries been seen as a household servant or urban nuisance had ...

Catherine Tan, "Spaces on the Spectrum: How Autism Movements Resist Experts and Create Knowledge" (Columbia UP, 2024)

06 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Movements that take issue with conventional understandings of autism spectrum disorder, a developmental disability, have become increasingly visible. ...

Jessie Abrahams, "Schooling Inequality: Aspirations, Opportunities and the Reproduction of Social Class" (Bristol UP, 2024)

06 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Despite a mass expansion of the higher education sector in the UK since the 1960s, young people from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds rema...

Tara Ward, "Appreciation Post: Towards an Art History of Instagram" (U California Press, 2024)

05 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What does an art history of Instagram look like? Appreciation Post: Towards an Art History of Instagram (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr...

Nat Reeve, "Nettleblack" (Cipher Press, 2022)

05 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

1893. Henry Nettleblack has to act fast or she’ll be married off by her elder sister. But leaving the safety of her wealthy life isn’t as simple a...

John Soluri, "Creatures of Fashion: Animals, Global Markets, and the Transformation of Patagonia" (UNC Press, 2024)

03 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, the mention of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego conjures images of idyllic landscapes untouched by globalisation. Creatures of Fashion: Animals,...

Peter Murray Jones, "The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England" (Boydell & Brewer, 2024)

30 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friars are often overlooked in the picture of health care in late mediaeval England. Physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, barbers, midwives - these are...

Denva Gallant, "Illuminating the Vitae Patrum: The Lives of Desert Saints in Fourteenth-Century Italy" (Penn State UP, 2024)

29 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

During the fourteenth century in Western Europe, there was a growing interest in imitating the practices of a group of hermits known as the Desert Fat...

Nicola Clark, "The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens" (Norton, 2024)

28 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Every Tudor Queen had ladies-in-waiting. They were her confidantes and her chaperones. Only the Queen's ladies had the right to enter her most private...

Matthew Goldmark, "Forms of Relation: Composing Kinship in Colonial Spanish America" (U Virginia Press, 2023)

28 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Drawing on literary texts, conversion manuals, and colonial correspondence from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain and Peru, Forms of Relation:...

Sean Redmond, "The Loneliness Room: A Creative Ethnography of Loneliness" (Manchester UP, 2024)

28 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Loneliness Room: A Creative Ethnography of Loneliness (Manchester University Press, 2024) by Dr. Sean Remond is a remarkably unique book takes th...

Barbara Klinger, "Immortal Films: 'Casablanca' and the Afterlife of a Hollywood Classic" (U California Press, 2022)

27 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Casablanca is one of the most celebrated Hollywood films of all time, its iconic romance enshrined in collective memory across generations. Drawing f...

Ricardo Quintana-Vallejo, "Growing Up in the Gutter: Diaspora and Comics" (U Arizona Press, 2024)

25 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Growing Up in the Gutter: Diaspora and Comics (U Arizona Press, 2024) by Dr. Ricardo Quintana-Vallejo offers new understandings of contemporary graph...

Paula S. De Vos, "Compound Remedies: Galenic Pharmacy from the Ancient Mediterranean to New Spain" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2020)

23 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Compound Remedies: Galenic Pharmacy from the Ancient Mediterranean to New Spain (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020) by Dr. Paula S. De Vos examine...

Nina Edwards, "The Virtues of Underwear: Modesty, Flamboyance, and Filth (Reaktion Books, 2024)

23 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Stories are woven into the fabric of our most personal garments. From the first loincloths to the intricate layers of shapewear, the concealed world o...

Keja L. Valens, "Culinary Colonialism, Caribbean Cookbooks, and Recipes for National Independence" (Rutgers UP, 2024)

22 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Women across the Caribbean have been writing, reading, and exchanging cookbooks since at least the turn of the nineteenth century. These cookbooks are...

Slava Greenberg, "Animated Film and Disability: Cripping Spectatorship" (Indiana UP, 2023)

21 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

While many live-action films portray disability as a spectacle, "crip animation" (a genre of animated films that celebrates disabled people's lived ex...

Genji Yasuhira, "Catholic Survival in the Dutch Republic: Agency in Coexistence and the Public Sphere in Utrecht, 1620-1672" (Amsterdam UP, 2024)

21 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Even in adversity, Catholics exercised considerable agency in post-Reformation Utrecht. Through the political practices of repression and toleration, ...

Anahit Behrooz, "BFFs: The Radical Potential of Female Friendship" (404 Ink, 2023)

20 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friendships can be the foundation of our earliest memories and most formative moments. But why are they often seen as secondary to romantic, or famili...

Paulina Rowinska, "Mapmatics: How We Navigate the World Through Numbers" (Pan Macmillan, 2024)

19 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How does a delivery driver distribute hundreds of packages in a single working day? Why does remote Alaska have such a large airport? Where should we ...

Jared McDonald, "Feeling Their Pain: Why Voters Want Leaders who Care" (Oxford UP, 2023)

18 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The 2020 Presidential Election in the United States marked, for many, a return to "compassionate politics." Joe Biden had run on a platform of empathy...

John Keane and Baogang He, "China's Galaxy Empire: Wealth, Power, War, and Peace in the New Chinese Century" (Oxford UP, 2023)

17 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In China's Galaxy Empire: Wealth, Power, War, and Peace in the New Chinese Century (Oxford University Press, 2024), authors Dr. John Keane and Dr. B...

Kira Huju, "Cosmopolitan Elites: Indian Diplomats and the Social Hierarchies of Global Order" (Oxford UP, 2023)

17 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Cosmopolitan Elites: Indian Diplomats and the Social Hierarchies of Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2023) by Dr. Kira Huju narrates the birth,...

Harry R. McCarthy, "Boy Actors in Early Modern England" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

17 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Boy Actors in Early Modern England: Skill and Stagecraft in the Theatre (Cambridge University Press, 2022) by Dr. Harry McCarthy provides a new appro...

John Soluri, "Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States" (U Texas Press, 2021)

16 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Bananas, the most frequently consumed fresh fruit in the United States, have been linked to Miss Chiquita and Carmen Miranda, "banana republics," and ...

Gale L. Kenny, "Christian Imperial Feminism: White Protestant Women and the Consecration of Empire" (NYU Press, 2024)

13 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Amidst the global instability of the early twentieth century, white Christian American women embraced the idea of an “empire of Christ” that was r...

Timothy Morton, "Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology" (Columbia UP, 2024)

12 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Hell on earth is real. The toxic fusion of big oil, Evangelical Christianity, and white supremacy has ignited a worldwide inferno, more phantasmagoric...

Chloe Wigston Smith, "Novels, Needleworks, and Empire: Material Entanglements in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World" (Yale UP, 2024)

12 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the eighteenth century, women’s contributions to empire took fewer official forms than those collected in state archives. Their traces were recor...

Adam Berg, "The Olympics that Never Happened: Denver '76 and the Politics of Growth" (U Texas Press, 2023)

12 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

If you don't recall the 1976 Denver Olympic Games, it's because they never happened. The Mile-High City won the right to host the winter games and the...

Bronagh Ann McShane, "Irish Women in Religious Orders, 1530-1700: Suppression, Migration and Reintegration" (Boydell & Brewer, 2022)

11 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Irish Women in Religious Orders, 1530-1700: Suppression, Migration and Reintegration (Boydell & Brewer, 2022) by Dr. Bronagh Ann McShane investigates...

Stephanie Ternullo, "How the Heartland Went Red: Why Local Forces Matter in an Age of Nationalized Politics" (Princeton UP, 2024)

10 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past several decades, predominantly White, postindustrial cities in America’s agriculture and manufacturing centre have flipped from blue t...

Adrienne Brown, "The Residential Is Racial: A Perceptual History of Mass Homeownership" (Stanford UP, 2024)

09 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Housing experts and activists have long described the foundational role race has played in the creation of mass homeownership. This book insistently t...

Sharrona Pearl, "Do I Know You?: From Face Blindness to Super Recognition" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)

08 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Do I Know You? From Faceblindness to Super Recognition (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023), Dr. Sharrona Pearl explores the fascinating catego...

Alistair Moffat, "The Highlands and Islands of Scotland: A New History" (Birlinn, 2024)

07 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In The Highlands and Islands of Scotland: A New History (Birlinn, 2024) by Alistair Moffat, the chronicle begins millions of years ago, with the dra...

Alistair Moffat, "The Highlands and Islands of Scotland: A New History" (Birlinn, 2024)

07 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In The Highlands and Islands of Scotland: A New History (Birlinn, 2024) by Alistair Moffat, the chronicle begins millions of years ago, with the dra...

Aaron Eddens, "Seeding Empire: American Philanthrocapital and the Roots of the Green Revolution in Africa" (U California Press, 2024)

06 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Seeding Empire: American Philanthrocapital and the Roots of the Green Revolution in Africa (University of California Press, 2024), Dr. Aaron Edde...

Naosuke Mukoyama, "Fueling Sovereignty: Colonial Oil and the Creation of Unlikely States" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

05 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

European colonialism was often driven by the pursuit of natural resources, and the resulting colonisation and decolonization processes have had a prof...

Mark Robert Rank, "The Random Factor: How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World Around Us" (U California Press, 2024)

04 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It’s comforting to think that we can be successful because we work hard, climb ladders, and get what we deserve, but each of us has been profoundly ...

Jane Hamlett and Julie-Marie Strange, "Pet Revolution: Animals and the Making of Modern British Life" (Reaktion Books, 2023)

23 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Pet Revolution: Animals and the Making of Modern British Life (Reaktion, 2023) by Dr. Jane Hamlett & Dr. Julie-Marie Strange tracks the British love ...

Rob Drew, "Unspooled: How the Cassette Made Music Shareable" (Duke UP, 2023)

20 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Well into the new millennium, the analog cassette tape continues to claw its way back from obsolescence. New cassette labels emerge from hipster encla...

Kate Morgan, "The Walnut Tree: Women, Violence and the Law – A Hidden History" (Mudlark, 2024)

19 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

'A woman, a dog and a walnut tree, the more they are beaten, the better they’ll be.' So went the proverb quoted by a prominent MP in the Houses of P...

Mari Takayanagi and Elizabeth Hallam Smith, "Necessary Women: The Untold Story of Parliament's Working Women" (The History Press, 2023)

18 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When suffragette Emily Wilding Davison hid overnight in the Houses of Parliament in 1911 to have her name recorded in the census there, she may not ha...

Anna Brinkman, "Balancing Strategy: Sea Power, Neutrality, and Prize Law in the Seven Years' War" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

18 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What is the relationship between seapower, law, and strategy? In Balancing Strategy: Seapower, Neutrality, and Prize-Law in the Seven Years' War (Ca...

Joan E. Cho, "Seeds of Mobilization: The Authoritarian Roots of South Korea's Democracy" (U Michigan Press, 2024)

17 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

South Korea is sometimes held as a dream case of modernization theory, a testament to how economic development leads to democracy. Seeds of Mobilisat...

Elizabeth O’Brien Ingleson, "Made in China: When US-China Interests Converged to Transform Global Trade" (Harvard UP, 2024)

16 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For centuries, the vastness of the Chinese market tempted foreign companies in search of customers. But in the 1970s, when the United States and China...

Tessa Winkelmann, "Dangerous Intercourse: Gender and Interracial Relations in the American Colonial Philippines, 1898–1946" (Cornell UP, 2023)

15 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Dangerous Intercourse: Gender and Interracial Relations in the American Colonial Philippines, 1898–1946 (Cornell University Press, 2023), Dr. T...

Liliana Doganova, "Discounting the Future: The Ascendancy of a Political Technology" (Princeton UP, 2024)

14 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Forest fires, droughts, and rising sea levels beg a nagging question: have we lost our capacity to act on the future? Dr. Liliana Doganova’s book D...

Shelley X. Liu, "Governing After War: Rebel Victories and Post-War Statebuilding" (Oxford UP, 2024)

13 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Governing After War: Rebel Victories and Post-war Statebuilding (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Shelley X. Liu explores how wartime processes ...

Siân E. Grønlie, "The Old Testament in Medieval Icelandic Texts: Translation, Exegesis and Storytelling" (Boydell & Brewer, 2024)

13 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The historical narratives of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible have much in common with Icelandic saga literature: both are invested in origins and genea...

Pamela Aronson and Matthew R. Fleming, "Gender Revolution: How Electoral Politics and #MeToo are Reshaping Everyday Life" (Routledge, 2023)

12 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Gender Revolution: How Electoral Politics and #MeToo are Reshaping Everyday Life (Routledge, 2023) by Dr. Pamela Aronson and Matthew R. Fleming caref...

Joanne Edge, "Onomantic Divination in Late Medieval Britain: Questioning Life, Predicting Death" (York Medieval Press, 2024)

11 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When will I die? What is the sex of my unborn child? Which of two rivals will win a duel? As today, people in the later Middle Ages approached their u...

Maggie Messitt, "Newspaper" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

09 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Newspaper (Bloomsbury, 2024) by Dr. Maggie Messitt is about more than news printed on paper. It brings us inside our best and worst selves, from cens...

Kris Butler, "Drink Maps in Victorian Britain" (Bodleian Library, 2024)

08 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What is a ‘drink map’? It may sound like a pub guide, yet it actually refers to a type of late nineteenth-century British map designed specificall...

Julia Havas, "Woman Up: Invoking Feminism in Quality Television" (Wayne State UP, 2022)

08 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

While American television has long relied on a strategic foregrounding of feminist politics to promote certain programming's cultural value, Woman Up...

John Powers, "Technology and the Making of Experimental Film Culture" (Oxford UP, 2023)

04 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Bolex camera, 16mm reversal film stocks, commercial film laboratories, and low-budget optical printers were the small-gauge media technologies tha...

Michael Gilson, "Behind the Privet Hedge: Richard Sudell, the Suburban Garden and the Beautification of Britain" (Reaktion Books, 2024)

03 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Britain is a nation of gardeners; the suburban garden, with its roses and privet hedges, is widely admired and copied across the world. But it is litt...

Nadine A. Sinno, "A War of Colors: Graffiti and Street Art in Postwar Beirut" (U Texas Press, 2024)

02 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the last two decades in Beirut, graffiti makers have engaged in a fierce “war of colors,” seeking to disrupt and transform the city’s physi...

Hanne Elliot Fønss Nielsen, "Brand Antarctica: How Global Consumer Culture Shapes Our Perceptions of the Ice Continent" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)

01 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Antarctica is, and has always been, very much “for sale.” Whales, seals, and ice have all been marketed as valuable commodities, but so have the s...

Jennifer M. Black, "Branding Trust: Advertising and Trademarks in Nineteenth-Century America" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)

01 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the early nineteenth century, the American commercial marketplace was a chaotic, unregulated environment in which knock-offs and outright frauds th...

Jaume Aurell, "What Is a Classic in History?: The Making of a Historical Canon" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

30 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What is a classic in historical writing? How do we explain the continued interest in certain historical texts, even when their accounts and interpreta...

Victoria Sparey, "Shakespeare's Adolescents: Age, Gender and the Body in Shakespearean Performance and Early Modern Culture" (Manchester UP, 2024)

30 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Shakespeare's Adolescents: Age, Gender and the Body in Shakespearean Performance and Early Modern Culture (Manchester UP, 2024) by Dr. Victoria Spar...

Adia Harvey Wingfield, "Gray Areas: How the Way We Work Perpetuates Racism and What We Can Do to Fix It" (Amistad Press, 2023)

30 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Labor and race have shared a complex, interconnected history in America. For decades, key aspects of work—from getting a job to workplace norms to a...

Adrian Tinniswood, "Noble Ambitions: The Fall and Rise of the Post-War Country House" (Basic Books, 2021)

28 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

As the sun set slowly on the British Empire in the years after the Second World War, the nation's stately homes were in crisis. Tottering under the we...

John H. Cable, "Southern Enclosure: Settler Colonialism and the Postwar Transformation of Mississippi" (UP of Kansas, 2023)

28 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Historians of the American South have come to consider the mechanization and consolidation of cotton farming—the “Southern enclosure movement”—...

Michael De Groot, "Disruption: The Global Economic Shocks of the 1970s and the End of the Cold War" (Cornell UP, 2024)

28 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Disruption: The Global Economic Shocks of the 1970s and the End of the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2024), Dr. Michael De Groot argues tha...

Sarah A. Bendall, "Shaping Femininity: Foundation Garments, the Body and Women in Early Modern England" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

28 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In sixteenth and seventeenth-century England, the female silhouette underwent a dramatic change. This very structured form, created using garments cal...

Tabea Alexa Linhard, "Unexpected Routes: Refugee Writers in Mexico" (Stanford UP, 2023)

26 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Unexpected Routes: Refugee Writers in Mexico (Stanford University Press, 2023) by Dr. Tabea Alexa Linhard chronicles the refugee journeys of six writ...

Dana Gorzelany-Mostak, "Tracks on the Trail: Popular Music, Race, and the US Presidency" (U Michigan Press, 2023)

26 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From Bill Clinton playing his saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show to Barack Obama referencing Jay-Z's song "Dirt Off Your Shoulder," politicians have...

Pamela Robertson Wojcik, "Unhomed: Cycles of Mobility and Placelessness in American Cinema" (U California Press, 2024)

24 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Unhomed: Cycles of Mobility and Placelessness in American Cinema (University of California Press, 2024), Dr. Pamela Roberston Wojcik examines Ame...

Danielle Taschereau Mamers, "Settler Colonial Ways of Seeing: Documentation, Administration, and the Interventions of Indigenous Art" (Fordham UP, 2023)

23 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How do bureaucratic documents create and reproduce a state’s capacity to see? What kinds of worlds do documents help create? Further, how might such...

Gary S. Cross, "Free Time: The History of an Elusive Ideal" (NYU Press, 2024)

23 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Free time, one of life’s most precious things, often feels unfulfilling. But why? And how did leisure activities transition from strolling in the pa...

Julie Peakman, "Libertine London: Sex in the Eighteenth-Century Metropolis" (Reaktion, 2024)

22 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Libertine London: Sex in the Eighteenth-Century Metropolis (Reaktion, 2024) by Dr. Julie Peakman investigates the sex lives of women from 1680 to 183...

John Tolan, "England's Jews: Finance, Violence, and the Crown in the Thirteenth Century" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)

22 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1290, Jews were expelled from England and subsequently largely expunged from English historical memory. Yet for two centuries they occupied importa...

Jessica Cox, "Confinement: The Hidden History of Maternal Bodies in Nineteenth-Century Britain" (The History Press, 2023)

21 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Covering a fascinating period of population growth, high infant mortality and deep social inequality, rapid medical advances and pseudoscientific quac...

Fumilayo Showers, "Migrants Who Care: West Africans Working and Building Lives in U.S. Health Care" (Rutgers UP, 2023)

21 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

As the U.S. population ages and as health care needs become more complex, demand for paid care workers in home and institutional settings has increase...

Amanda Wunder, "Spanish Fashion in the Age of Velázquez: A Tailor at the Court of Philip IV" (Yale UP, 2024)

20 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Spanish Fashion in the Age of Velázquez: A Tailor at the Court of Philip IV (Yale University Press, 2024) by Dr. Amanda Wunder is the first archival...

Heather Parry, "Electric Dreams: Sex Robots and Failed Promises of Capitalism" (404 Ink, 2024)

20 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the future, we’ll all be having sex with robots… won’t we? Roboticists say they’re a distracting science fiction, yet endless books, films ...

Stephen Morillo, "War and Conflict in the Middle Ages" (Polity Press, 2022)

20 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In War and Conflict in the Middle Ages (Polity, 2022), Dr. Stephen Morillo offers the first global history of armed conflict between 540 and 1500 or...

Diana Leon-Boys, "Elena, Princesa of the Periphery: Disney’s Flexible Latina Girl" (Rutgers UP, 2023)

19 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the summer of 2016, Disney introduced its first Latina princess, Elena of Avalor. Elena, Princess of the Periphery: Disney’s Flexible Latina Gir...

Nicholas Terpstra, "Senses of Space in the Early Modern World" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

19 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How did early moderns experience sense and space? How did the expanding cultural, political, and social horizons of the period emerge out of those exp...

Lorenza B. Fontana, "Recognition Politics: Indigenous Rights and Ethnic Conflict in the Andes" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

18 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Recognition Politics: Indigenous Rights and Ethnic Conflict in the Andes (Cambridge University Press, 2023) by Dr. Lorenza B. Fontana is a pioneering...

Liz Tregenza, "Wholesale Couture: London and Beyond, 1930-70" (Bloombury, 2023)

17 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Wholesale Couture: London and Beyond, 1930-70 (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Dr. Liz Tregenza seeks to revise the notion that wholesale couturiers were simply...

Victoria Flexner and Jay Reifel, "A History of the World in 10 Dinners: 2,000 Years, 100 Recipes" (Rizoli, 2023)

16 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For every lover of food culture, A History of the World in 10 Dinners: 2,000 Years, 100 Recipes (Rizzoli, 2023) by Victoria Flexner and Jay Reifel p...

Felipe Fernández-Armesto and Manuel Lucena Giraldo, "How the Spanish Empire Was Built: A 400 Year History" (Reaktion, 2024)

16 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Sixteenth-century Spain was small, poor, disunited and sparsely populated. Yet the Spaniards and their allies built the largest empire the world had e...

Annaliese Jacobs Claydon, "Arctic Circles and Imperial Knowledge: The Franklin Family, Indigenous Intermediaries, and the Politics of Truth" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

15 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1845 an expedition led by Sir John Franklin vanished in the Canadian Arctic. The enduring obsession with the Franklin mystery, and in particular In...

Sharrona Pearl, "Mask" (Bloombury, 2024)

14 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From the theatre mask and masquerade to the masked criminal and the rise of facial recognition software, masks have long performed as an instrument fo...

Stewart Lawrence Sinclair, "Space Rover" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

13 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1971, the first lunar rover arrived on the moon. The design became an icon of American ingenuity and the adventurous spirit and vision many equated...

Egor Lazarev, "State-Building as Lawfare: Custom, Sharia, and State Law in Postwar Chechnya" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

13 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

State-Building as Lawfare: Custom, Sharia, and State Law in Postwar Chechnya (Cambridge University Press, 2023) by Dr. Egor Lazarev explores the use ...

Zhang Ling, "Aftershock" (Amazon Crossing, 2024)

12 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the summer of 1976, an earthquake swallows up the city of Tangshan, China. Among the hundreds of thousands of people scrambling for survival is a m...