History

Looking at past crises can help us come to terms with our own, argues scholar of plague that ravaged 18th-century Prague

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

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

Director of new Kent centre sets out how British resources and researchers can contribute to Indigenous studies

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

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

Research centre meant to support ‘politically useful ideas’ such as Orbán’s claim of Turkic ancestry for nation as government pivots away from EU, scholars claim

Historian says he has been unable access notes and part-written books, but Swansea says it has been providing files

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

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 

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 

As the monumental follow-up to his best-selling Capital in the Twenty-First Century is published, the celebrated French economist speaks to Matthew Reisz about why a detailed historical analysis of inequality boosts the case for redistribution – and why academics should join the public debate

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 

Laurel Leff

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

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

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

Apparently benign aspirations have their historical origins in concern about high levels of admission of certain minorities, says Kate Eichhorn

Book of the week: there’s something for everyone in this provocative study of sex, power and conflict, says Joanna Lewis

Madawi Al-Rasheed questions certain aspects of a survey of the events that convulsed the Arab world in 2011

The author of The Outsiders: Refugees in Europe since 1492 discusses tracing the rises and falls of empires in atlases, understanding the pain of mass displacements and the pleasure of simultaneously reading and listening to music

A. W. Purdue is sceptical about an analysis of the great debates about sexual and other freedoms that marked the dawn of a more permissive era

David Bell enjoys a lively overview of an era by ‘the doyen of post-war British history’

Book of the week: Andrew Palmer is impressed by a bold survey of literature on both sides of the Iron Curtain

Tributes paid to a pioneering feminist scholar who ‘made conversation glitter’

Bryan Cheyette considers an intriguing account of the stories we tell ourselves about slavery

Giulia Miller is intrigued by a little-known episode in early Israeli history

Mateusz Zatoński is disappointed by an ambitious overview of the development of smoking

Jonathan Mirsky is fascinated by a book that calls into question some of the unexamined received wisdom about China under Mao

Sarah Kinkel is very impressed by a detailed account of how navigators learned their skills

Ann Hughes applauds a compelling analysis of the ways that Tudor England was open to the world

Peter J. Smith enjoys a vivid, if perhaps idealised, account of life in one of the world’s great breweries

Tributes paid to ‘a brilliant, warmly sympathetic scholar-critic’ whose experience of war informed his work

Amanda Power considers some of the deeper attitudes that can still inhibit academics from fully engaging in essential policy issues

Ellen T. Armour applauds a powerful account of the role photography played in the struggles over slavery

Book of the week: Angelia Wilson applauds a bold new analysis of how the Republican Party’s determination to appeal to patriarchal, racist and religious voters reshaped politics in the US

Academics’ deep identification with their work means that the failure of a book proposal, grant application or promotion request can cut deeply. But in a competitive profession, such knock-backs are inevitable. Here, six academics recall their most traumatic rejection – and how they got over it

Geoffrey Alderman has reservations about a sweeping study of half a millennium of Jewish history

Miryam Sivan questions an attempt to show that the image of the traumatised soldier was used to cleanse the American army of its guilt

Book of the week: A. W. Purdue is impressed by a bold attempt to rethink the relationship between solidarity and ambition

‘Under these circumstances, high world rankings are just not going to happen,’ professor warns

Jonathan Mirsky applauds a bold attempt to take the long view of Chinese history

Steven Groarke reflects on the strange process of trying to preserve a historical instant for posterity

Geoffrey Cantor on a pioneering natural philosopher whose conflicts with doctrine became the stuff of myth

Book of the week: Rachel Moss is intrigued by a bold attempt to demonstrate that the medieval world is much larger than we tend to think

Shane McCorristine considers the illicit and sometimes horrifying ways teaching institutions used to secure corpses for trainee doctors to learn anatomy

Book of the week: Lara Douds applauds a brilliant dissection of Western prejudices about the Russians

Jill Liddington’s research into Anne Lister’s diaries inspired the television series Gentleman Jack. John Morgan speaks to her about making a difference locally and the lost tradition of extramural university teaching

Elizabeth Cobbs is unconvinced by a lively revisionist account of what the American Revolution did to the wider world

Tributes paid to founder of world-system analysis