batesJust occasionally the monastic silence that prevails in the IHR Digital office is broken by the gentle chiming of hushed conversation (work-related of course). In one such interlude this morning I mentioned today’s reviews, and expressed my concern that perhaps a history of guano might be a bit specialist. Not a bit of it! My colleagues were gushing in their excitement and interest, and could ‘barely wait’ for this afternoon’s email to come out. You think you know people…

Anyway, first of all this week we have Beth Tompkins Bates’ The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry. Oliver Ayers and the author discuss a deeply thought-provoking book that covers a topic of clear importance to the story of black civil rights and 20th-century American history more broadly (no. 1590, with response here).

cushmanNext up is the aforementioned Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History by Gregory T. Cushman. Jim Clifford has been talking about this book and recommending it to others since he started reading it, and believes it to be a model for future research in global environmental history (no. 1589).

dixonThen we turn to Leif Dixon’s Practical Predestinarians in England, c. 1590–1640. James Mawdesley thinks the author has produced a book of worth, and has clearly spent much time thinking about printed works which (to be blunt) are sometimes not the easiest for the modern mind to comprehend (no. 1588).

gettyFinally, Practicing Stalinism: Bolsheviks, Boyars, and the Persistence of Tradition by J. Arch Getty, which Andy Willimott believes offers a fascinating and highly readable account that will challenge scholars to complicate their understanding of the Russian and Soviet political world (no. 1587).

Oh, and as an extra treat we have also received a response form the author to our recent review of Ignacio de Loyola by Enrique García Hernán, which you can find here.