Apologies for the absence of reviews last week – your deputy editor was indulging his spiritual side, tramping part of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. Mind you, given that I was staying in hotels and having my luggage ferried by the travel company every day, I did feel a little spiritually inferior when I got to Santiago and came across this fellow.
Anyway, on with the reviews, and we begin with Anti-Semitism and the American Far Left by Stephen H. Norwood. Stan Nadel and the author discuss a book which makes an important contribution to the history of the American left and to debates over anti-Zionism and Antisemitism (no. 1582 , with response here).
Then we have Katarzyna Cwiertka’s edited collection Food and War in Mid-Twentieth-Century East Asia. Mark Swislocki enjoys this compelling set of essays, which exemplifies the promise of food studies (no. 1581).
Next up is Disunited Kingdoms: Peoples and Politics in the British Isles: 1280-1460 by Michael Brown, which Katherine Basanti hails as a significant addition to the promising historiography encompassing late medieval and early modern European, British and Irish socio-political affairs (no. 1580).
Finally we turn to Adam Kosto’s Hostages in the Middle Ages, and Shavana Musa believes the versatility of this book means that it will be of interest to both well-established historians and those new to the field (no. 1579).