We begin this week with Susan Dunn-Hensley’s Anna of Denmark and Henrietta Maria: Virgins, Witches, and Catholic Queens. Aidan Norrie and the author discuss an interesting, if sometimes simplistic, reconsideration of these two queens (no. 2253, with response here).
Next up is Experiencing Empire: Power, People, and Revolution in Early America, edited by Patrick Griffin. Hunter Harris praises an insightful collection of essays, covering consumerism and the American Revolution, with the central theme of the collection being the experience of empire itself (no. 2252).
Then we have Graham Peck’s Making an Antislavery Nation: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Battle over Freedom. John Hammond believes this book elucidates overlooked or underemphasized dimensions of the shifting set of beliefs about freedom and slavery that cohered into Lincoln’s ideological vision of an anti-slavery nation (no. 2251).
Finally we have The Election of 1860: “A Campaign Fraught with Consequences” by Michael F. Holt. Aaron Astor enjoys a slender, nuanced and highly readable account of a grand democratic exercise unlike anything witnessed on that scale in the world (no. 2250).