Browse all reviews
What’s the point of history? / Daniel Woolf
Review Date: 06 November 2020
The sub-branch of history that is known by the ambiguous (and frightening to undergraduates, cats, and many mainstream academics) name “historiography” seems to be undergoing a Renaissance at the moment.
The Classical Debt: Greek Antiquity in an Era of Austerity / Johana Hannink
Review Date: 03 August 2017
At the height of the Greek financial crisis, reports from colleagues based in Athens painted a sorry picture of respectable citizens who had fallen upon hard times desperately rummaging in dustbins to supplement their dwindling larders. The statistics told an even grimmer story – between 2010 and 2011, suicide rates in Greece rose by 40 per cent.
Twilight of History / Shlomo Sand
Review Date: 04 May 2017
Shlomo Sand is no stranger to controversy.
Barbarism and Religion: Volume 6, Barbarism: Triumph in the West / J. G. A. Pocock
Review Date: 26 November 2015
Triumph in the West is the triumphant conclusion of J. G. A. Pocock’s series on Edward Gibbon and the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–89). Earlier installments sought to situate Gibbon and his text in a series of contexts: European Enlightenment(s), narratives of civil society, the conceptual history of ‘Decline and Fall’, theories concerning ‘barbarians’ and ‘savages’, ecclesiastical historiography.
Reinventing History. The Enlightenment Origins of Ancient History / eds. James Moore, Ian Morris, Andrew J. Bayliss
Review Date: 01 November 2009
This is a very interesting volume, which aims to bring together the variety of contexts and genres in which ancient history was employed and studied during the Enlightenment.
Invented Knowledge: False History, Fake Science and Pseudo-religions / Ronald H. Fritze
Review Date: 31 October 2009
The first principle of understanding history, I was taught, is to sympathize with the historical actors, to immerse oneself in their context and perspective.(1) Otherwise, history becomes a fabricated reconstruction – more about the writer's ideology than the events of the past.
Religion in History. Conflict, Conversion and Co-existence / John Wolffe
Review Date: 01 July 2005
The work under review here owes its genesis to the Open University course of the same title, for which it is the core text. As such, it consists of ten interlinked essays, specially commissioned, on the broad theme of the dynamics of difference within and between world religious traditions.