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Book Review
Empires of Ancient Eurasia: The First Silk Roads Era, 100 BCE – 250 CE
In the book's Introduction, Craig Benjamin writes that, between the 2nd century BCE and the mid-3rd century CE, the Silk Roads linked together many cultures and communities throughout Afro-Eurasia. This is the “First Silk Roads Era,” which...
Book Review
Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States
A popular perception both in and out of academia is this: a few millennia ago, agriculture let hunter-gatherers settle down and form permanent societies and governments, which provided better living conditions compared to unsettled nomadic...
Book Review
Reading Medieval Ruins: Urban Life and Destruction in Sixteenth-Century Japan
Although this is a wonderful read for anyone having a deep infatuation with Japanese history, it mostly appeals to a scholar or a reader who is somewhat familiar with the topic. This, however, should not discourage any passionate readers...
Book Review
The American West: A New Interpretive History (Second Edition)
When the first edition of The American West: A New Interpretive History, penned by Professor Robert V. Hine (1921 - 2015) and Professor John Mack Faragher, was published in 2000, it was an instant success despite the field of the American...
Book Review
Expansion and Global Interaction: 1200-1700
Before he passed away in 2020, David Ringrose was Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, San Diego. He was an expert on the history of Spain while also having an interest in world history at large. As the book's Preface...
Book Review
Warriors of Japan: As Portrayed in the War Tales
Paul Varley, who passed away in 2015, was a professor of Japanese history at Columbia University for many years before coming to the University of Hawai’i. He specialized in the Kamakura and Muromachi periods. Varley's book, Warriors of Japan...
Book Review
Japan in World History (New Oxford World History series)
This is a volume in the New Oxford World History series. The aim of the series is to provide an account of world history that is broader than the old approach that tends to focus only on Europe and North America. The author of Japan in World...
Book Review
China in World History (New Oxford World History series)
This is a volume in the New Oxford World History series. According to the Editor’s Preface, the aim of this series is to "offer readers an informed, up-to-date and lively history of the world" that avoids the ethnocentric bias of traditional...
Book Review
The Story of Tutankhamun: An Intimate Life of the Boy who Became King
The Story of Tutankhamun by egyptologist Garry J. Shaw is a brilliantly written new biography of the boy king, spanning from his birth and early life under his father Akhenaten’s new religious regime, all the way up to his death and the discovery...
Book Review
Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything
Behind the Scientific Revolution was a revolution in mindset and perspective. During the Middle Ages, the search for new knowledge in Europe was constrained by a theocratic society. The Renaissance helped to remove some of those limits and...