Book Reviews

Hendrik Hartog's Nobody’s Boy and His Pals is about one of the little-known social reformers of the United States, Jack Robbins. This book provides an engaging account of the Boys’ Brotherhood Republic and its legacy. Boys’ Brotherhood Republic...

Sarah Kay is a prolific writer on medieval European literature and the arts. The concept of song as logos and phone (text plus music) is most apparent in medieval song, where not only the performance of the song but its presentation in the...

Patrice Dutil and David MacKenzie provide a detailed and well-researched account of Canada's political and social landscape during World War I, focusing on the 1917 election and the issue of conscription. The book is commendable for its extensive...

Women Religious Crossing Between Cloister and the World: Nunneries in Europe and the Americas, ca. 1200-1700 is the result of a collaborative research project focused on the relationships between women and the “religious.” Edited by art historian...

As the title indicates, this book presents the music composed and performed in Florence during its most prolific and productive time: from the Middle Ages to the end of the Baroque. This 500-year time capsule saw Florence as a politically...

“Humsafar” is an Urdu word which means "companion." True to its name, this book acts as a friend to guide the audience through the complex world of Urdu poetry. Hitesh Gupta Aadil is an Urdu language and literature enthusiast and translator...

British author, Sophie Shorland, a former Research Fellow at the University of Warwick, takes a very friendly approach to describe the difficult life of King Charles II's Queen Consort, the Portuguese Catherine of Braganza. Shorland's audience...

From the outbreak of war in the 13 British North American colonies in 1775 to the conflicts that erupted throughout the Spanish New World colonies in the 1810s, revolutions convulsed the Atlantic World for half a century. The power and consequences...

To Nicholas Dames, the "chapter" has become a silent, invisible metronome of our lives. Beginning as an index for Latin encyclopedias and Greek legal codes, this simple tool for dividing text has spread far beyond its basic indexical function...

In The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World, Virginia Postrel expertly demonstrates how the history of textiles is the story of human progress. Although textiles have shaped society in many ways, their central role in the development...