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Once We Were Slaves: The Extraordinary Journey of a Multi-Racial Jewish Family / Laura Arnold Leibman
Review Date: 25 August 2023
Sometimes (not often enough) an academic book comes along that ticks all the boxes: it is based on thorough research, spanning archives on different continents, engaging with rich and varied source materials; it is held together by a tight set of themes; it is written in beautiful prose.
No Return / Rowan Dorin
Review Date: 08 June 2023
It is hard to review this book without lapsing into the language of academic letters of recommendation: it is brilliant, illuminating. The genre is the Anglo-American 'book of the thesis’. This genre contrasts with that of first books from young German and French scholars in that the author has taken years to revise his 2015 Harvard thesis thoroughly.
Listening to the Language of the People / Natalie Zemon Davis
Review Date: 05 April 2023
Cities of the Plain Cities of the Plain—not the ones in the Book of Genesis, but those scattered across Wallachia, between the southern Carpathians and the lower Danube. For most of the medieval and early modern periods, this territory was a borderland between Christian and Ottoman Europe.
Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500 / ed. Thomas W. Smith
Review Date: 21 October 2022
Books that manage to encapsulate something essential but often elusive quickly turn indispensable for scholars. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church is one such volume. Expertly edited by Thomas W. Smith, the collection of essays tackles one of the most profound issues of studying the Medieval Church—the interplay between authority and power as understood, articulated, and exercised by ecclesiastic actors and received by their surroundings.
Soldiers, Saints, and Shamans / Nathaniel Morris
Review Date: 12 August 2022
The period 1910-40 was tumultuous in Mexican history. The armed phase of the Mexican Revolution (1910-20) was followed by fragmented attempts by Revolutionary politicians to assert Federal control and modernisation in the face of military rebellion, resistance to social reform, two major religious revolts known as the Cristiada, and ongoing, albeit often unremarked, agency from Mexico’s indigenous populations.
Public Opinion in Early Modern Scotland, c.1560-1707 / Karin Bowie
Review Date: 25 March 2022
This is Karin Bowie’s second book about the history of public opinion in Scotland. Her first, in 2007, examined the period 1699-1707 in depth, covering the debate leading up to the Union of Parliaments.(1) The present book deals with a longer period, and has no single focus like the Union.
The Press and the People: Cheap Print and Society in Scotland, 1500-1785 / Adam Fox
Review Date: 25 March 2022
Early modern Scotland was awash with cheap print. Adam Fox, in the first dedicated study of the phenomenon in Scotland, gives readers some startling figures. Andro Hart, one of Edinburgh’s leading booksellers, died in 1622. In his possession, according to his inventory, were 42,300 unbound copies of English books printed on his own presses.
Cognitive Sciences and Medieval Studies: An Introduction / eds. Juliana Dresvina, Victoria Blud
Review Date: 26 March 2021
Cognitive Sciences and Medieval Studies breaks ground on very important, yet controversial, territory. As its title indicates, this volume primarily explores what we might call the principles of the mind or brain in European medieval society, in unique ways. The editorial introduction defines cognitive sciences as ‘an interdisciplinary field for the study and understanding of the mind’ (p.