Books

Ruby Guyatt considers the ‘eruptive public spaces’ where conflict can flare up between scholars and the faith groups they study

Heike Bauer is intrigued by a study of women who lived as men that raises important questions about gender identities today

The historian and author of Information Hunters on the literary puzzles that inspired her historical sleuthing, the librarians and archivists whose work supported the Allies in wartime Europe, and the thorny issues around preserving documentation

Claire Horn applauds a study of artificial approaches to ‘family-making’ that does equal justice to both the science and social context

Book of the week: Richard Larschan enjoys a wide-ranging survey of the deep intellectual insights and disputes thrown up by the experience of travel 

Geoffrey Cantor praises a bold historical overview that offers useful pointers to how we can face up to the technological challenges of today

Lisa Hopkins considers how Tudor princesses severely limited their food intake as a way of asserting their status

James Stevens Curl considers the elusive notion of ‘grace’ and how it impregnated the art of the Renaissance and beyond

David Wheeler learns the lessons of a charismatic university president’s success

Suzanne Franks on what the decline of traditional media means for our ability to hold power to account

Book of the week: Tara Shears enjoys an impassioned hymn to the vocation and insights of the physicist

Our regular look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Gail Marshall considers a wide-ranging exploration of readers’ desire to find life lessons in books of many kinds

Simon Ditchfield is intrigued by a tale of gambling, conversion and betrayal in Renaissance Italy 

David Newman assesses a provocatively idealistic argument for rethinking our assumptions about national frontiers

Georgie Wemyss considers how the UK’s legislation about immigration is still entangled with its imperial history

Adam Kucharski, author of The Rules of Contagion, on books that piqued his interest in mathematics, and those that showed how maths could be applied to serve public health by modelling infectious diseases – and happiness

Rachel Moss is both amazed and puzzled by a vast new study of a giant of world literature

A look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Stephen Mumford puts his head to the business factors and fantasy finances at the heart of the beautiful game

Bryan Cheyette welcomes a comparative study of those persecuted under Stalin and Hitler despite its gaps

Book of the week: Emma Rees salutes a wide-ranging study of women who passed as men or found other means to serve in combat

Jane O’Grady is intrigued by an analysis of the psychological depths plumbed by the fiction of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy 

Shane O’Mara considers the many different and always inadequate metaphors we have used to analyse our mental functioning 

Simon Young is not totally convinced by a wide-ranging account of the development of belief in witchcraft

Geoffrey Alderman is impressed by a study of the origins and development of a vile calumny against the Jews 

Rivka Isaacson is thrilled by the bold work produced at the frontiers between art and science

The professor of European history and author of Migrant City on first encountering English at school, studying London as an ethnic immigrant capital, and intersections of race and politics

Richard Joyner enjoys an account of a largely neglected phase in the life of the greatest modern physicist 

Book of the week: Nick Hillman sifts through the arguments in a bold attempt to determine the future of higher education

Andrew Palmer is unimpressed by a critic whose style falls far short of the writer he so admires

A look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Book of the week: Rosa Mucignat enjoys a bold attempt to create a cooperative open-ended discussion about a publishing phenomenon

James Stevens Curl is thrilled by a guide to how we can recover the essential principles of creating liveable cities

Kathryn M. Rudy enjoys a useful summary of recent research on how the instruments of Christ’s Passion were displayed and venerated in the Middle Ages 

Charlotte Jones is fascinated by a bold attempt to link mathematical innovations with developments in Victorian fiction

Robert Eaglestone risks getting a bit ‘meta’ in reviewing a book about the failures of reviewers

Book of the week: Constantine Sandis admires a subtle and judicious analysis of the communications skills of our fellow creatures

Laurel Leff

Danny Dorling is impressed by an in-depth account that challenges much of the received wisdom (and stereotypes) about social housing

Nicholas Till enjoys a detailed analysis of the ‘phenomenal appeal’ of one of the great names in opera

Scholars have striking stories to tell, Matthew Reisz concludes from his experience judging a prize for academics seeking to bring their work to a wider readership

Richard J. Williams praises a complex even-handed analysis of what has happened to our cities  

John Shand has mixed feelings about a book using horror film scenarios to teach moral philosophy

Steven Groarke is unconvinced by an overview of 1970s challenges to mainstream approaches to mental health

Simon Young enjoys an oblique but revealing account of a pioneering group of ‘psy’ researchers

Book of the week: Lynne Segal applauds a bold attempt to forge a comprehensive philosophy of resistance

Nathan Abrams is impressed by a new approach to one of the great masters of 20th-century cinema

Esther Leslie is impressed by a rich and detailed study of a haunting artist

A look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Book of the week: Victoria Bateman is impressed by the clear and wide-ranging insights of a Nobel-winning economist and public intellectual

Michael Marinetto learns some crucial lessons about good writing and research 

Robin Wilson enjoys a lively account of how we learned that we’ll never be able to square the circle or meet a number of other challenges posed by the ancient Greeks

Giulia Miller has mixed feelings about an ambitious but confusing analysis of animation’s engagement with atrocity

Book of the week: Lincoln Allison is surprised by the amount of common ground he, as a traditionalist academic, now shares with the ‘innovatory managers’ he once quarrelled with 

Zoë Waxman is intrigued by a poignant but little-known strand of refugee history

Christopher Hill considers the tangled history of migration into Europe and the complex lessons for today

Joad Raymond applauds a stimulating account of how mapping shaped our understanding of Europe and the world beyond

Erin Maglaque enjoys a comprehensive new study of a central figure in Italian humanism

The cultural historian, whose latest book The Imposteress Rabbit Breeder explores the case of an 18th-century woman said to have given birth to rabbits, discusses libraries, women’s bodies and how they interact with culture to shape female lives