Pekka Hämäläinen, “The Comanche Empire” (Yale UP, 2008)
In his book, The Comanche Empire (Yale University Press, 2008), Pekka Hämäläinen refutes the traditional story that Indians were bit players or unfortunate victims of the white man’s conquest of the American West. Old maps that divided America into Spanish, French, and British territories, Hämäläinen argues, are “fictions” insofar as they entirely miss great indigenous contenders of military, economic, and political power. Such a one were the Comanches who fought, traded, and cooperated—o...
Kelsy Burke, “Christians Under Covers: Evangelicals and Sexual Pleasure on the Internet” (U California Press, 2016)
How do we conceptualize religious conservatives and their relationship with sex? And how do Christians use digital media for sexual knowledge and pleasure? In her new book, Christians Under Covers: Evangelicals and Sexual Pleasure on the Internet (University of California Press, 2016), Kelsy Burke tackles these issues and more. Using “virtual ethnography” consisting of analysis of website content and interviews with website users online, Burke explores the ways in which evangelicals maintain ...
William D. Godsey, “The Sinews of Habsburg Power: Lower Austria in a Fiscal-Military State, 1650-1820” (Oxford UP, 2018)
During the 17th and 18th centuries, Austria established itself as one of the dominant powers of Europe, despite possessing much more limited fiscal resources when compared to its counterparts. In The Sinews of Habsburg Power: Lower Austria in a Fiscal-Military State, 1650-1820 (Oxford University Press, 2018), William D. Godsey uses the financial support provided by one region of the Habsburg’s empire to understand how it maintained its status during a time of change in the nature of military ...
David Edgerton, “Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth-Century History” (Allen Lane, 2018)
David Edgerton’s Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth Century History (Allen Lane, 2018) argues the United Kingdom had a distinctive national moment characterized by a strong state, powerful military armed with advanced weapons, and dedicated to developmental economics. Far from repeating older claims that Britain did not have a nationalism or was not sufficiently nationalistic, Edgerton shows a country that is increasingly interventionist, militaristic, and devoted to science a...
Adrienne Rose Bitar, “Diet and the Disease of Civilization” (Rutgers UP, 2018)
Diet books are a multi-billion dollar industry and in Diet and the Disease of Civilization (Rutgers University Press, 2018), Adrienne Rose Bitar explores the narratives of those books. Bitar looks at the ways in which diet books not only present American’s with dieting advice, but also create cultural narratives about how we should live. Through the exploration of hundreds of diet books over the past century (and sometimes more), Bitar examines four popular diets, viewing them as narratives f...
William Kuby, “Conjugal Misconduct: Defying Marriage Law in the Twentieth-Century United States” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
William Kuby is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga. His book Conjugal Misconduct: Defying Marriage Law in the Twentieth-Century United States (Cambridge University Press, 2018) examines the complicated legal and cultural history of heterosexual marriage. Long before the controversy over same-sex marriage, Americans found multiple ways to object to certain heterosexual marriages and divorce. The commercialization of courtship through advertisements ...
Lynne Viola, “Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial: Scenes from the Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine” (Oxford UP, 2017)
What happened inside NKVD interrogation rooms during the Great Terror? How did the perpetrators feel when the Soviet state turned on them in 1938 during “the purge of the purgers?” In her newest book, Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial: Scenes from the Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine (Oxford University Press, 2017), Dr. Lynne Viola dives into the previously secret records of the Ukrainian SSR NKVD (Stalinist-era secret police). She gives readers an intimate look at the arrest, interrogation and t...
Eric Winsberg, “Philosophy and Climate Science” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that there is a warming trend in the global climate that is attributable to human activity, with an expected increase in global temperature (given current trends) of 1.5- 4.5 degrees Celsius (2.7-7.2 degrees Fahrenheit). But how do climate scientists reach these conclusions? In Philosophy and Climate Science (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Eric Winsberg presents the elements of climate science in an accessible but rigorous...
Guy Laron, “The Six-Day War: The Breaking of the Middle East” (Yale UP, 2017)
The title of Guy Laron’s The Six-Day War: The Breaking of the Middle East (Yale University Press, 2017) says it all. As Laron notes in this interview, the fact that the war led to ongoing conflicts in the Middle East is an accepted interpretation of the war’s meaning. However, through his research Laron has provided a new lens by which to understand the war. Using a holistic perspective that situates the war in the context of the Cold War and the economic development of the non-western worl...
Alexander Bevilacqua, “The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment” (Harvard UP, 2018)
In The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment (Harvard University Press, 2018), Alexander Bevilacqua uncovers a different side of the European Enlightenment, at least with regards to its engagement with Arabic and Islam. Instead of polemics, he tells the story of books and ideas moved across continents and studied in Europe, where they were considered a serious object of engagement. He first tracks the movement of books to Europe, then the translation of Arabic’s mos...