Author Archives: stuartelden

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 →

Rob Kitchin, Critical Data Studies: An A to Z Guide to Concepts and Methods – Polity, December 2024 Critical Data Studies has come of age as a vibrant, interdisciplinary field of study. Taking data as its primary analytical focus, the … Continue reading →

Elyse Graham, Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II – HarperCollins, September 2024 The untold story of the academics who became OSS spies, invented modern spycraft, and helped turn the tide of the … Continue reading →