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Book Review
The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome
The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome by Susan Wise Bauer is a sweeping and well-researched work that endeavours to present a coherent narrative of ancient history from its earliest beginnings to...
Book Review
Smoke and Ashes: Opium's Hidden Histories
Written in engaging language, Smoke and Ashes is a scholarly follow-up to the author’s famous Ibis trilogy, a collection of fiction that uses the opium trade as its backdrop. In Smoke and Ashes, the author draws on his years-long research...
Book Review
Thucydides: The War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians
Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is a timeless masterpiece of ancient historiography, offering a detailed and profoundly insightful account of one of antiquity's defining conflicts. Written with a precision and analytical depth...
Book Review
In Search of Japan's Hidden Christians: A Story of Suppression, Secrecy and Survival
Dougill writes about the history of Christianity in Japan writ large, before focusing more precisely on the history of Hidden Christians and their existence today. There is much for both the casual reader and the academic to enjoy here, as...
Book Review
Capital of Mind: The Idea of a Modern American University
Nelson, the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Educational Policy Studies and History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, takes the title of his work from a quote by German economist Friedrich List. List, an advocate...
Book Review
Fixers: Agency, Translation, and the Early Global History of Literature
In this book, Zrinka Stahuljak, a medieval historian, professor at UCLA, and interpreter during the war in Yugoslavia, focuses primarily on the theory of translation. Through proposing the term "fixers," a term loosely based on its journalistic...
Book Review
Creating the Qur’an: A Historical-Critical Study
Stephen J. Shoemaker’s Creating the Qur’an: A Historical-Critical Study is, in brief, an argument for placing the “closure” of the Qur’an, its development into the definitive form we know today, in 8th century Iraq and Syria, as opposed to...
Book Review
A Noble Ruin: Mark Antony, Civil War, and the Collapse of the Roman Republic
Despite Tatum's best efforts, it is hard to call this book a proper biography of Mark Antony. As the subtitle suggests, Tatum attempts to chronicle Mark Antony’s life, the multiple civil wars throughout it, and the broader narrative of the...
Book Review
American Vikings: How the Norse Sailed into the Lands and Imaginations of America
In a globalized world, the convergence of different nationalities and cultures often transforms societal notions of a shared identity. This sometimes results in debates regarding history, heritage, and cultural belonging, which make their...
Book Review
Destroying to Replace: Settler Genocides of Indigenous Peoples
Historical works on settler colonialism and genocide are voluminous, but there are relatively few, if any, works of synthesis geared to advanced high school and undergraduate students. Happily, the author Mohamed Adhikari, Professor of History...
