History

Sharon Wheeler relishes the detailed research in this true crime tale

An engaging account of an unruly city, but why so little on Empire, wonders Danny Dorling

Peter J. Smith on the literary giants who have drawn inspiration from their nocturnal perambulations

Biancamaria Fontana finds out how the telling of fibs went from being a sin to a social skill

Jelena Obradovic-Wochnik baulks at the questionable assertions in a polemic about traveller communities

Joanna Lewis on the assassination of the nation’s first democratically elected leader

A German lawyer’s experience brings home the horrors of early Nazification, writes Hester Vaizey

Peter Wothers revels in a treasure trove of ‘wrong’ chemistry and great history

News of the death of the iconic disc has been greatly exaggerated, says Hillegonda C. Rietveld

Donald M. MacRaild on the English colonists’ determination to hold on to their identity in the New World

Robert Gellately on an examination of the role of the Wehrmacht leadership

Janet Sayers admires a detective-like tale of the psychoanalyst and her involvement with Jung and Freud

There’s a piggy in the middle of this gripping tale of depilation, finds Emma Rees

Simon Underdown on the complicated process by which science replaced religion as means of explaining the world

Call it a ‘hypercane’ or a ‘weather bomb’, we’re as much at its mercy as ever, writes Philip Hoare

Jonathan Mirsky on one family’s memories of life in a Shanghai alleyway, from Mao to the modern day

Alec Ryrie welcomes a study of an Elizabethan scholar that dispels a posthumous Puritan label

Robert Gellately on how Hitler’s forces tried to forge alliances with Muslims during the Second World War

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones on the Persian king who has always been sidelined by Alexander the Great

Richard Bosworth on the revolutionaries, Romantics, tourists and Fascists that have shaped the Italian city

Katharine Reeve on the fundamental impact of paper on human life, work and culture

A cross-class relationship burns bright in a study of an experiment in ethical living, says Nadia Valman

A tale of the priest, the boy, his aunt and her arrest in 1762 is first-rate micro-history, says Alec Ryrie

David Salter is moved by reflections on changing attitudes to mortality across cultures and time

Philip Hoare on an alternative look at Britain - from hidden canal systems to ancient energy circuits

Hester Vaizey on the political and religious divisions across a lesser known part of the Iron Curtain

Clare Griffiths on a fresh perspective of social and public history through the author’s personal investigation of her own genealogy

Roger Morgan lauds a biography charting Labour statesman’s rise from a colliery to the Cabinet

Clare Griffiths on the things that were remembered and the things that were forgotten about the crisis

Ana Carolina Hosne on a 17th-century figure who had ‘imperial ambitions’ for the Society of Jesus

Alex Danchev considers a history of a small but influential group of cultural ‘hijackers’

Giulia Miller writes on the weird backstory to a female superhero, from women’s suffrage to lie detectors

Clare Brant on a form of writing that offers a unique insight into the private lives of women

Vladimir Tismaneanu lauds a posthumous and provocative work that reflects on the past but also on the current European predicament

The history of vaccinations in the US has as much to do with politics as medicine, says Helen Bynum

The Anglo-Jewish MP makes for a fascinating biographical subject, writes James Stevens Curl

A study of the Soviet leader is a brilliant portrait of a man of contradictions, says Robert Gellately

Jeremy Black on a significant study of the far-reaching effects of one diplomatic summit

The veteran right-wing academic sets out his belief system. By A. W. Purdue

Jane Shaw on the folkloric, religious and medical matters surrounding a child miraculously forgoing food

Niamh Gallagher on an exploration of the pre-revolutionary world and how the dreams of young radicals turned to nightmares

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones on a merging of the sexy myth of superwomen and history of nomadic fighters

Rachel Hoffman on a reconceptualisation of conspiracy theory and its role in the modern world

Farzana Shaikh on a retread of a historian’s former work on Pakistan

Is globalisation the next paradigm for a ‘discipline in crisis’? Richard Bosworth reviews the evidence

Roger Morgan on the German city that enjoyed a golden age of culture that it never managed to reclaim

Richard Williams on Hugh Hefner’s attention to the enhancement of pleasure through erotic design

Jonathan Mirsky on the attempts to impose thought reform on prisoners in pre-Communist China

Angela Smith on stories of the lives of 11 creatives interwoven to give an overview of the Great War from a range of perspectives

First-person accounts add complexity to popular notions of East Germany, writes Ulrike Zitzlsperger

Andrew Blake appreciates a new view of the relationship between Empire and cultural hybridity

Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman on an intricate history of the role of America on the global stage

Biancamaria Fontana on the tangled connections between historical events and mental illness

Mary Evans on a study of the US feminist movement from the 19th century

Richard Bosworth lauds a study of a complex and enduringly valuable work of scholarship

Lynne Segal on an Israeli scholar’s persuasive arguments against his country’s myths of identity

Roger Morgan on an exploration of the current state of our political institutions

Rachel Moss praises an elegant account that sets a charismatic Maid of Orleans in political context

A comprehensive but compact new history of the war is reviewed by R. C. Richardson

Vladimir Tismaneanu on a book that argues against the self-righteousness of neoliberalism