by Atar David Jennifer Derr takes her readers down the Egyptian Nile River, past its newly constructed dams and flowing into its irrigation canals, providing them with the opportunity to dive into the complexity of British colonialism in Egypt in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Following their invasion of Egypt in 1882, the […]
Science/Medicine/Technology
Paris, Capital of Modernity by David Harvey (2006)
by Isabelle Headrick The rule of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte was bracketed by two violent revolutions in the French capital: the Revolution of 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871. Elected as president in 1848, he staged a coup three years later and, like his famous uncle, anointed himself emperor of the “Second Empire.” Bonaparte amassed an […]
Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the U.S.-Mexico Divide by C.J. Alvarez (2019)
By Alejandra C. Garza The U.S.-Mexico border is a constant subject in today’s news. Debates over immigration and the building of a wall along the border keep the spotlight fixed on the land and water that stretches from California to Texas on the U.S. side and Baja California to Tamaulipas in Mexico. As a native […]
Red China’s Green Revolution: Technological Innovation, Institutional Change, and Economic Development under the Commune by Joshua Eisenman (2018)
by Horus Tan The People’s Commune was both a collective farm and a local institution that managed almost all economic and political activities in rural China. It was introduced in China in 1958 and abolished in 1983. Many scholars suggest that the People’s Commune was unproductive because its remuneration system was too egalitarian. According to […]
The Habsburg Empire: A New History by Pieter Judson (2016)
By Jonathan Parker This excellent work by historian Pieter Judson shows how the Hapsburg empire was a modernizing force that sustained a complex but often mutually beneficial relationship with the various nationalist movements within its borders. To support this argument, Judson synthesizes an impressive number of existing works on narrower topics into a cohesive narrative […]
Collecting the World: Hans Sloane and the Origins of the British Museum by James Delbourgo (2017)
by Diana Heredia López A biography of an English scientist during the early Enlightenment may not seem like cutting edge scholarship.. In Collecting the World, James Delbourgo tells the multifaceted story of Hans Sloane, an Englishman who amassed a collection of nearly eighty thousand natural objects and curiosities through his work in natural history, commerce, […]
How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS, by David France (2016)
By John Carranza In the 1980s, the United States experienced a new disease that seemed to target young, gay men living in New York City and San Francisco. From the beginning, those doctors and scientists willing to treat members of the gay community remained perplexed as to why these men, their ages ranging from their […]
Great Books on Women’s History: United States
Not Even Past asked the UT Austin History faculty to recommend great books for Women’s History Month. The response was overwhelming so we will be posting their suggestions throughout the month. Here are some terrific book recommendations on women and gender in the United States. Penne Restad recommends: Jill Lepore, The Secret History of Wonder Woman (2014). […]
This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age, by William Burrows (1998)
The Soviet Union appeared handily ahead in space. They launched the first successful satellite, put the first man and woman in space, performed the first space walk, and sent the first satellites out of earth’s gravitation and to the moon. And yet the United States still “won” the Space Race.
The Professor and the Madman, by Simon Winchester (2005)
The nineteenth century in Britain was a time of grand figures, grand projects, and Imperial expansion. Imperialism was spreading the English language across the globe, yet there was still not a definitive guide to the language.