Book Reviews

Globalization is a current buzzword in business, communications, and politics, especially in this early part of the 21st century. Traditional American historical interpretations focus on the post-World War II era of the 1950s and 1960s as...

Some people like to believe that the Ottoman Empire was Europe’s ultimate “other.” Several European nations, not least the Serbs and the Hungarians, consider themselves those who held the Ottomans at bay. Some still consider the two sieges...

Writing a biography of Dante Alighieri is not an easy task even for the most talented historians. In narrating the life of the great Florentine poet, universally considered the initiator of Italian literature, scholars often excessively focus...

Strategos: Born in the Borderlands, by Gordon Doherty, is a novel following the incredible exploits of Apion, a Byzantine boy living among Seljuk farmers in the lawless area at the edge of Byzantium in the 1040’s CE. Set in Anatolia (modern-day...

As the title suggests, Caroline Elkins's book tells the history of what historians call the “second British Empire” - the imperial developments that took shape after the disastrous loss of the rebellious American colonies in 1783 - through...

In 2015, Cambridge University Press published a seven-volume series titled "The Cambridge World History." The series aimed to offer a comprehensive account of a variety of cultures and communities as they are understood today. The range of...

Before he passed away in 2020, David Ringrose was Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, San Diego. He was an expert on the history of Spain while also having an interest in world history at large. As the book's Preface...

This is a volume in the New Oxford World History series. The aim of the series is to provide an account of world history that is broader than the old approach that tends to focus only on Europe and North America. The author of Japan in World...

This is a volume in the New Oxford World History series. According to the Editor’s Preface, the aim of this series is to "offer readers an informed, up-to-date and lively history of the world" that avoids the ethnocentric bias of traditional...

Behind the Scientific Revolution was a revolution in mindset and perspective. During the Middle Ages, the search for new knowledge in Europe was constrained by a theocratic society. The Renaissance helped to remove some of those limits and...