Category Archives: Uncategorized

Ned Richardson-Little, The German Democratic Republic: The Rise and Fall of a Cold War State – Bloomsbury, August 2025 This book is a succinct yet comprehensive history of East Germany which provides a differentiated picture of the communist state. It … Continue reading →

James Q. Whitman, From Masters of Slaves to Lords of Lands: The Transformation of Ownership in the Western World – Cambridge University Press, November 2024 Today we think of land as the paradigmatic example of property, while in the past, … Continue reading →

Derek Sayer, Postcards from Absurdistan: Prague at the End of History – Princeton University Press, January 2025 Postcards from Absurdistan is a cultural history of Prague from 1938, when the Nazis destroyed Czechoslovakia’s artistically vibrant liberal democracy, to 1989, when the … Continue reading →

Krista A. Milne, The Destruction of Medieval Manuscripts in England – Oxford University Press, April 2025 The Dissolution of the Monasteries (1536-40) is widely held as the single most significant event in England’s history of the destruction and loss of … Continue reading →

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 →