Anne Lawrence-Mathers, "The Magic Books: A History of Enchantment in 20 Medieval Manuscripts" (Yale UP, 2025)
Medieval Europe was preoccupied with magic. From the Carolingian Empire to Renaissance Italy and Tudor England, great rulers, religious figures, and scholars sought to harness supernatural power. They...
12 Dec 20251h
Rachel Jean-Baptiste, "Multiracial Identities in Colonial French Africa: Race, Childhood, and Citizenship" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Despite increasingly hardened visions of racial difference in colonial governance in French Africa after World War I, interracial sexual relationships persisted, resulting in the births of thousands o...
11 Dec 202557min
Dan Edelstein, "The Revolution to Come: A History of an Idea from Thucydides to Lenin" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Political thinkers from Plato to John Adams saw revolutions as a grave threat to society and advocated for a constitution that prevented them by balancing social interests and forms of government. The...
10 Dec 202556min
Michael Staunton, "Thomas Becket and His World" (Reaktion Books, 2025)
Thomas Becket and His World (Reaktion Books, 2025) explores the turbulent life and violent death of Thomas Becket, one of the most controversial figures of the Middle Ages. From a London merchant’s s...
10 Dec 20251h 12min
Ayoush Lazikani, "The Medieval Moon: A History of Haunting and Blessing" (Yale UP, 2025)
When they gazed at the moon, medieval people around the globe saw an object that was at once powerful and fragile, distant and intimate—and sometimes all this at once. The moon could convey love, beau...
6 Dec 202537min
Chad Augustine Córdova, "Toward a Premodern Posthumanism: Anarchic Ontologies of Earthly Life in Early Modern France" (Northwestern UP, 2025)
What good is aesthetics in a time of ecological crisis? Toward a Premodern Posthumanism: Anarchic Ontologies of Earthly Life in Early Modern France (Northwestern UP, 2025) shows that philosophical aes...
6 Dec 202557min
Mark Griffiths, "Checkpoint 300: Colonial Space in Palestine" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
Checkpoint 300, the highly securitized border facility between occupied Bethlehem and Jerusalem, is a central feature of Israeli control of Palestinian land and life. An apparatus of turnstiles, overc...
3 Dec 202548min
Matt Houlbrook, "Songs of Seven Dials: An Intimate History of 1920s and 1930s London" (Manchester UP, 2025)
How has central London changed in the last 100 years? In Songs of Seven Dials An Intimate History of 1920s and 1930s London (Manchester UP, 2025), Matt Houlbrook, a Professor of Cultural History at t...
2 Dec 202550min
