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Perhaps the central theme in the history of Spain has been whether it can be considered a European country, or whether its unique historical trajectory qualifies it for a status as a marginal case, a fringe member of the continental club.

The last decade has witnessed a flowering of interest in the history of women and cancer, alongside studies on the history of cancer and related topics.(1) While there might be historical trends that explain the attention paid to certain topics in medical history at particular times, the literature on the history of cancer deals with an inherently controversial disease

‘He was one of the best National Socialists, one of the strongest defenders of the German Reich, one of the greatest opponents of all enemies of the Empire.

This book is more than just a history of the German-Jewish communities before and during the Holocaust. It is also part memoir, part impassioned response to the National Socialists’ ‘destruction of a civilization’. This breadth, though, should come as no surprise. For the book’s author, the late John Grenville, was himself a Holocaust survivor.

Over the past generation of scholarship, the history of consumption and material culture has emerged as a rich subfield of European history.

To write a general history of two neighbouring countries spanning 100 years is no easy task. Furthermore, in 1905 Norway became independent of Sweden, meaning that there was no natural linkage between the two, geography apart.

The SS-Helferinnenkorps, the women who volunteered to support the SS, and who formed a female Nazi elite, have to date been the subject of minimal research. Until now, very little was known about these women, where they came from, why they volunteered, how they were trained, where they worked, and what became of them after the war.

Penelope Fitzgerald’s historical novel The Beginning of Spring, set in Moscow in 1913 but written at the height of perestroika, conveys an ambivalence familiar to those of us who spent time there during the Gorbachev years.

There are many ways to write about the history of Italian cycling. John Foot explains that his book ‘tells the story moving between biographies of individual cyclists, tales of races and an analysis of Italian society’ and that ‘space will be dedicated to the role of bicycle in everyday Italian life’ (p. 4).

Leif Jerram has written Streetlife to encourage historians to reconsider and reflect upon the manner in which they construct narratives of modern history and the agency they attribute to traditional sources of events.