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 […]
Did Race and Racism Exist in the Middle Ages?
For generations, race studies scholars—historians and literary critics alike—believed that race and its pernicious spawn racism were modern-day phenomena only.
Watch: Beyond ‘Crisis’ and Headlines: The History of Humanity as a History of Migration
On Monday, September 18, 2017, José C. Moya of Barnard College delivered a talk considering migration not as a current concern or “crisis” but as an intrinsic element of the human condition. Moya discusses migration as the very origin of our species, of its “racial” and cultural diversity, its global dispersion, and an engine of opportunity, innovation, and socioeconomic […]
Angela Merkel: Europe’s Most Influential Leader (2016) by Matthew Qvortrup
by Augusta Dell’Omo With a sly smile, Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, lets his black Labrador Koni off the leash and it immediately begins to approach German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. Merkel, who was bitten by a dog in 1995, attempts to hide her visible discomfort, lips pursed and legs tightly crossed. Putin, well aware of […]
Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich by Norman Ohler (2016)
By Natalie Cincotta A German novelist and screenwriter, Norman Ohler first happened upon the topic of drug use in the Third Reich through a Berlin-based DJ, who told him that drugs were widespread at the time. Intending to write a novel on the subject, Ohler went into the archives in search of historical detail for […]
Humanity: A History of European Concepts in Practice From the Sixteenth Century to the Present, edited by Fabian Klose and Mirjam Thulin (2016)
This review was originally published on the Imperial & Global Forum on May 22, 2017. By Ben Holmes (University of Exeter) What does it mean to belong to the human race? Does this belonging bring with it particular rights as well as responsibilities? What does it mean to act with humanity? These are some of […]
Jerónimo Antonio Gil and the Idea of the Spanish Enlightenment, By Kelly Donahue-Wallace (2017)
By Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra How can the life of an artisan who specialized in punchcutting and engraving help us shed light on “the idea of the Spanish Enlightenment”? Donahue-Wallace offers an illuminating perspective on the Enlightenment through the biography of an expert medal caster, Jerónimo Antonio Gil, whose career took him from provincial Zamora to Madrid […]
Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler, by Stefan Ihrig (2016)
By Kelly Douma, Penn State University Stefan Ihrig closes this book with a quote that encompasses his argument from Raphael Lemkin, the father of the word genocide: “Genocide is so easy to commit because people do not want to believe it until after it happens.” All the signs and symptoms of Nazi-perpetrated genocide existed throughout […]
Looking Into the Katyn Massacre
By Volha Dorman U.S. government officials have often been hesitant to take the Soviet Union to task on their humanitarian crimes. This reluctance to confront Moscow was usually an effort to avoid worsening already poor relations. After World War II, for example, the U.S. was willing to let Soviet war crimes committed during the war go […]
A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks, by Stewart Gordon (2015)
By Cynthia Talbot The world’s attention was captured in 2012 by the disaster that befell the Costa Concordia, a cruise ship that ran aground off the coast of Italy leading to 32 deaths. This shipwreck is the most recent one covered in A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks, whose expansive gaze covers much of […]
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