History

‘This is a regime that believes you should govern by clubbing people,’ says Frank Dikötter

James Stevens Curl enjoys a brief survey of changing British attitudes to the saying of final farewells

The author of Cricket Country on childhood reading, reflecting on the relationship between sport and society, and his favourite fiction genre

The historian on what we can learn from the study of the past, how different nations view their heritage, and whether capitalism is here to stay

Robert Gellately is unconvinced by the emphases in a new interpretation of Hitler’s life and career

Barry Reay assesses a book charting the complexities of the history of sexuality

Book of the week: Jane O’Grady assesses a bold analysis of how ‘modernity’ failed to live up to the ideals of the Enlightenment

Jorell Meléndez-Badillo considers a globe-spanning study of the political philosophy that explores it at the intellectual and the street level

Rachel Moss praises a pioneering analysis that vividly captures the ‘fragmentary’ quality of both the experience of mothering a child and the historical record about it

Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes has often been at the centre of contemporary political battles over the country’s communist past

Julie Michelle Klinger enjoys a compelling account of one strand of the global space race

The author of An Appeal to the Ladies of Hyderabad: Scandal in the Raj on gods, villains and Bond, libertine Britons in colonial India, and capturing ephemeral events

Book of the week: Clare Brant enjoys a lively account of a turning point in British history

Zoë Waxman considers an analysis of the age-old tendency to report people next door to the authorities

Book of the week: Kerry Brown applauds a nonagenarian’s analysis of ‘one of the world’s key relationships’

Clive Bloom considers the development of a particularly disturbing form of crime

R.C. Richardson assesses a wide-ranging study of how historians present themselves and are perceived by others

Asking people to prepare for a 10-week course that might not run is too much, says an anonymous early career academic

Sarah Kinkel assesses a wide-ranging survey of buccaneers over the ages

Bryan Cheyette is intrigued by an account that accentuates the positive as well as the negative aspects of ghetto life

Efforts to make college cheaper should not detract from attempts to improve the other side of the value-for-money equation, says Kevin Vanzant

UCL centre, about to welcome new director, shows how slavery shaped UK – with implications for universities

Commies, wizards, women…Alice Gorman is delighted by an account that overturns most of what we thought we knew about the early US space effort

Book of the week: Kasia Boddy enjoys an analysis of one of the greatest sporting events of all time

Newly arrived undergraduates are typically too immature to be trusted with the conduct of their own lives, says Felipe Fernández-Armesto 

The Wolfson History Prize winner talks about her work on the failure to bring to justice the perpetrators of Nazi atrocities, and the connection between her family history and research

Universities in most nations are now obliged to prioritise graduate career prospects, but how it should be approached depends on your view of the meaning of education. Academics need to think that through much more clearly, says Tom Cutterham

Whatever the romance, students and academics will not flock to a remote part of north-east India, says Pushkar

Ben Higgins enjoys a richly detailed account of the 17th-century Europe’s ‘most important centre of print’

Joanna Bourke has reservations about an attempt to track the changing meanings of terror

Peter J. Smith raises a glass to ‘conviviality’ in life and literature

The literature expert on online abuse, decolonising the curriculum and Cambridge’s role in the slave trade

The author of Brexit in History: Sovereignty or a European Union? on extroversion and introversion, political decision making and Bohemian fairy tales

Fragmentary, first-person accounts are challenging the staid traditions of the monograph, event hears

Tributes paid to leading scholar of French colonial history

The expert on ancient Syria was forced to flee his homeland – but has been able to continue his work thanks to a German scholarship

Jonathan Mirsky applauds an analysis that links age-old traditions of thought with politics today

Geoffrey Alderman considers the ambiguities of the synthesis between German and Jewish culture in the 19th and 20th centuries

R.C. Richardson considers how the events of the 1640s and 1650s were recalled by the next generations

Book of the week: Cheryl A. Wall praises an account of the ‘too fast girls’ who carved out free lives for themselves in New York and Philadelphia

They are full of self-esteem and love social media yet crave high grades and safe spaces. What to make of today’s students? asks Felipe Fernández-Armesto

Marketing concepts shed new light on ‘the first modern celebrity’ even if some threads are missed, says Liz Schafer

Liz Gloyn enjoys a bold attempt to tell the story of a fascinating but largely forgotten woman

Ruth Finnegan praises a book celebrating the agency of Africans across the centuries

Tributes paid to ‘most influential Irish historian of his generation’

Lennard Davis on a study of a decade of managerial evolution rather than student revolution

It is no coincidence that Jewish refugee scholars were pioneers in a new field, says Zoë Waxman

Book of the week: A riveting tale of India’s imposition of exceptional powers has new resonance for Priyamvada Gopal

Why was the Russian empress drawn to a French intellectual opponent? asks Yvonne Sherratt

Wholesome female entertainers for male soldiers reinforced rigid gender roles, finds David Ulbrich

Georgina Laragy on how common cause came to be consigned to the corner of people’s minds

Charles Townshend on a timely survey of those who never accepted the ‘peace process’ in Ireland and see the border as a provocation

The Roehampton historian discusses the pleasures of archival research, snobbery about television history, and the importance of illuminating the lives of early modern women

Leo Mellor on the artistic ways in which the conflicts of the past century are recalled and reimagined

Human rights are rooted in the ancient concept of a universal natural law, observes Jane O’Grady

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Rachel Moss on how classrooms of the Middle Ages schooled boys in emotional intelligence

Protesters allegedly called researchers ‘dirty Jews’ and ‘traitors’ in latest intimidation of scholars who emphasise Polish role in the Holocaust

Book of the week: Fears that something fascist-like will rise again permeate the moment, writes Robert Eaglestone

Hester Vaizey on how regimes employed different temporal signatures to legitimate their authority