Book Reviews

Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov is best known in the West as the general who led imperial Russian forces to victory over Napoleon during his 1812 invasion of Russia. In Russian culture, Kutuzov became – almost immediately after his death in...

We may not always know why we are drawn to a bygone era or long-dead personality, but once hooked, the well rarely runs dry. Perhaps the reason, for many, is simple escapism. The vanished worlds and characters of the past draw us in precisely...

Nicknamed "The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street," the Bank of England is probably the most historically influential British financial organization. In Virtuous Bankers: A Day in the Life of the Eighteenth-Century Bank of England, Anne L. Murphy...

The book's first three chapters reconstruct the background of the Alexandrian War from the perspectives of Pompey, Cleopatra, and Caesar. Readers unfamiliar with the history of Ptolemaic Egypt will be glad to know that the important beats...

Empire' is a common concept in the field of world history. Historians often specialize in one specific empire, such as the British Empire, the Russian Empire, or the Chinese dynasties. Going beyond this unidirectional approach, Sanjay Subrahmanyam...

Divided into twelve chapters, the book is a journey through Cleopatra Selene II's life and times. While Selene's life and reign have been studied by other authors, Cleopatra's Daughter: From Roman Prisoner to African Queen is the first full...

Christopher Iannini’s Fatal Revolutions: Natural History, West Indian Slavery, and the Routes of American Literature successfully ties seemingly disparate themes of slavery, American literature, and natural history together. By focusing on...

In May 1830, the United States government, under Andrew Jackson's presidency, passed an act to systematically expel Native American communities from their homelands. Jackson's political agenda, known as the 'Indian Removal', stretched throughout...

A stereotype in past research toward Native American history is that Native American communities had simple and primitive cultures and were mostly 'reactors' to European colonialism. Robert Michael Morrissey, in People of the Ecotone: Environment...

This is the story of the "informal networks" established and maintained by mobile traders from the modern geographical region of Afghanistan who move goods across Eurasia in the 21st century. Magnus Marsden builds upon the historical and...