Author Archives: stuartelden

Shane Bobrycki, The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages – Princeton University Press, November 2024 By the fifth and sixth centuries, the bread and circuses and triumphal processions of the Roman Empire had given way to a quieter world. And … Continue reading →

Daniela R. P. Weiner, Teaching a Dark Chapter: History Books and the Holocaust in Italy and the Germanys – Cornell University Press, July 2024 Teaching a Dark Chapter explores how textbook narratives about the Fascist/Nazi past in Italy, East Germany, and … Continue reading →

Aaron Aquilina, The Ontology of Death: The Philosophy of the Death Penalty in Literature – Bloomsbury, November 2024 Through examination of the death penalty in literature, Aaron Aquilina contests Heidegger’s concept of ‘being-towards-death’ and proposes a new understanding of the … Continue reading →

Harvey J. Kaye, The British Marxist Historians – John Hunt/Zer0 – reissue, September 2022 I shared news of this reissue before. There is now a New Books network discussion with Morteza Hajizadeh. Thanks to dmf for this link.

Steven Shapin, Eating and Being: A History of Ideas about Our Food and Ourselves – University of Chicago Press, November 2024 New Books discussion with Kelly Spivey – thanks to dmf for this link What we eat, who we are, … Continue reading →

Edward Wilson-Lee, The Grammar of Angels: A Search for the Magical Powers of Language in Renaissance Italy – William Collins, January 2025 ‘A deeply fascinating, sui generis book by a brilliant scholar-writer, which uses the life story of a Renaissance prodigy to … Continue reading →

Julia Jorati, Slavery and Race: Philosophical Debates in the Eighteenth Century – Oxford University Press, November 2023 review by Peter K. J. Park at NDPR Millions of Africans were enslaved and transported to the Americas in the eighteenth century. Europeans–many … Continue reading →

Derek S. Denman, Fortress Power: Hostile Designs and the Politics of Spatial Control – University of Minnesota Press, July 2025 A compelling treatise on the relationship between power and enclosure Fortress Power presents a genealogy of fortification as a material and … Continue reading →

Ian G. Baird, Champassak Royalty and Sovereignty: Within and between Nation-States in Mainland Southeast Asia – University of Wisconsin Press, December 2024 The Kingdom of Champassak was founded in 1713 in what is now southern Laos, and its royal lineage, the … Continue reading →