History Book Reviews

In 1066 and All That (1930), a parody book of English history, Cnut is described as a "bad king," who "became a good king." While this is a simplistic overview, it captures the essence of the portrait Ryan Lavelle paints in Cnut: The North...

With Tamta’s World: The Life and Encounters of a Medieval Noblewoman from the Middle East to Mongolia, Anthony Eastmond, currently the AG Leventis Professor of Byzantine Art at The Courtauld Institute of Art, offers us a vivid account of...

The Colony and the Company by Malick W. Ghachem is an articulately written and intellectually ambitious work that offers a compelling historical lens through which readers can examine the early foundations of the Caribbean’s most influential...

Racism is often considered a question of thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. The accused racist will sometimes deploy the tired old defense that he or she "has black friends," a defense that only makes sense if racism is exclusively defined...

Ordinarily, when one considers a book about ancient Egypt, one might think about discussions surrounding the culture, language, religion, and surviving architecture. Not so, in this case. Empress of the Nile: The Daredevil Archaeologist Who...

Alexander von Humboldt: A Concise Biography by Andreas W. Daum, published by Princeton University Press and translated by Robert Savage, offers a compact yet thoughtful introduction to one of the most compelling figures in world history...

It is, I imagine, quite difficult to write a compelling work of historical fiction. Not only do you have to have mastered the traditional components of good storytelling - plot, character, dialogue, etc. - but you also have to become intimately...

Centered on the period of the American Civil War, Relics of War: The History of a Photograph is unique in that, rather than focusing merely on the political facets of the War, it examines the impact it had on the lives of the common people...

“There was in Mercia in fairly recent times a certain vigorous king called Offa, who terrified all the neighbouring kings and provinces around him,” said Bishop Asser, a Welsh monk, in the 9th century, describing the peak of the “Mercian...

General readers would find this elegantly written work stimulating, while college and university faculty would welcome this as a much-needed textbook for their Indian history or world civilization courses. Audrey Truschke traverses a vast...