The IHR’s Reviews in History publishes weekly commentaries on new books. Our reviews are longer than those in many academic journals and focus on titles published in the last 6-12 months. Many reviews also include responses from the book’s author.
Reviews in History began in 1996 and now includes reviews on over 2400 books, searchable by theme. We’ve also recently introduced a new angle to the service: inviting short notes from readers on a recent book, article or essay that’s impressed and which you recommend to others.
Below you’ll find a selection of the most recent Reviews in History, published over the past couple of months. Titles includes new studies of Peterloo, Renaissance art crime, threats to modern democracy and eighteenth-century scandal published by — among others — OUP, Yale, Harvard, South Carolina, MUP, and UPenn.
New reviews are posted each Friday and are sent by email: signing up for next week’s is easy.
The Imposteress Rabbit Breeder: Mary Toft and Eighteenth-Century England / Karen Harvey
In the harvest season of 1726, Mary Toft was found to have given birth to 17 rabbits in Godalming, Surrey. Sarah Fox reviews a highly personal story that charts huge social and cultural changes in English history.
***
How the Old World Ended: The Anglo-Dutch-American Revolution 1500-1800 / Jonathan Scott
Tim Hasker reviews this expansive look at how the intertwining of Anglo-Dutch-American politics, economics, and religion laid the unlikely foundations for the Industrial Revolution.
***
Colonial Ecology, Atlantic Economy: Transforming Nature in Early New England / Strother E. Roberts
Rachel Winchcombe reviews a significant contribution to the ecological history of early modern America, compellingly grounded in the mundanity of everyday life.
***
Colonial Ecology, Atlantic Economy: Transforming Nature in Early New England / Strother E. Roberts
Rachel Winchcombe reviews a significant contribution to the ecological history of early modern America, compellingly grounded in the mundanity of everyday life.
***
The Grim Years: Settling South Carolina, 1670–1720
Bradford J. Wood reviews this narrative of neglected histories, tracing the graphic story of South Carolina’s tumultuous beginnings.
***
Colonial Ecology, Atlantic Economy: Transforming Nature in Early New England / Strother E. Roberts
Rachel Winchcombe reviews a significant contribution to the ecological history of early modern America, compellingly grounded in the mundanity of everyday life.
***
The Grim Years: Settling South Carolina, 1670–1720
Bradford J. Wood reviews this narrative of neglected histories, tracing the graphic story of South Carolina’s tumultuous beginnings.
***
Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Régime to the Present Day / Sheri Berman
Brian Girvin reviews a welcome and original study on how difficult it is to secure democracy.
***
Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean 1800-1850: Stammering the Nation / Konstantina Zanou
Michalis Sotiropoulos reviews this “testament to the bigness of small stories”, which proposes different genealogies for the history of nationalism, liberalism, revolution, and modernity.
***
Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America / W. Caleb McDaniel
Angela F. Murphy reviews a Pullitzer Prize winning study of an enslaved woman, Henrietta Wood, and her quest for justice.
***
Automobility and the City in Twentieth-Century Britain and Japan / Simon Gunn, Susan C. Townsend
Guy Ortolano reviews this vital study of a system linking drivers in Birmingham to commuters in Nagoya, and both to an oil economy stretching from Dallas to Riyadh.
***
A Convert’s Tale: Art, Crime, and Jewish Apostasy in Renaissance Italy / Tamar Herzig
Allegra Baggio Corradi reviews this full-colour portrait of the equally raw and embellished life of a prominent Jewish Renaissance artist who, charged with a scandalous crime, renounced his faith.
***
Peterloo. The English Uprising / Robert Poole
Janette Martin reviews Robert Poole’s Peterloo alongside a new graphic novel on the same subject, finding there is much to be gained by reading them side-by-side.
***
The Cato Street Conspiracy: Plotting, counter-intelligence and the revolutionary tradition in Britain and Ireland / eds. Jason McElligott, Martin Conboy
Robert Poole reviews this edited collection, which assesses the seriousness and scope of a radical 1820 plot to assassinate the British cabinet in the wake of the ‘Peterloo massacre’.
***
If you could recommend one recent History book to others, what would it be – and why? We’re looking to start something new at the IHR: inviting you to submit short pieces on a book or article that’s really impressed you — and which others should know about. Find out more