Humanities

John Gilbey on a stimulating discussion of the definition of a widely used term

Richard Bosworth on the ‘bad air’ of Rome and how it influenced artists and travellers

Ursula King hails a committed effort to advance interfaith relations

A rogue’s gallery stopped the ‘crippler’, but for how long? asks Helen Bynum

Alec Ryrie on an intriguing book that doesn’t do what it says on the tin

Ulrike Zitzlsperger on the changing nature of heritage and the consequent effects on national identities in European nations

Benson P. H. Lau on a study of Modern architect Le Corbusier’s religious thinking and architecture

Bryony Randall lauds an insightful and overdue study of literary representations of parenting

Gary Day on a sympathetic study of influential literary critic F. R. Leavis and how the teaching of literature has changed

We can’t hear ourselves think over all this music, warns David Revill

Richard Follett on slavery and the power of literacy

Simon Underdown on a key battle between science and religion

Marxist intellectual is no Bill Bryson, Peter J. Smith discovers

Joanna Bourke on a harrowing look at the darkness in human hearts

Lucy Wooding on how women’s reading of the Bible was central to their lives and inspired a wealth of literature

K. E. Gover finds an explanation of modern art fails to enlighten

Jennifer Altehenger on a family who lived through interesting times

Valerie Sanders relishes this considered study of a quietly worthy class of men

Linnie Blake discusses a new theory of the spectator in the post-cinema age

Jane Stabler on how the great poet proved to be a great administrator

Mary Evans relishes this re-evaluation of an installation artwork that depicts a collection of famous women

Roger Morgan on the interwoven histories of European nations over six centuries

Robert J. Mayhew lifts off with a true balloon enthusiast

Nithikul Nimkulrat discusses an ‘indispensable means of working’

Judith Weingarten on an island emporium in the midst of a sea of sand

Alex Danchev applauds a study of one of the 20th century’s greatest thinker-painters

Jon Turney on the generator of the AC power grid

The interwoven tale of the fight over rubber and a visionary surveyor captivates Robert Mayhew

Rationality yields to sentimentality in an Occupy Wall Street-inspired call for direct action, Fred Inglis finds

Pamela Klassen measures hospitals’ sacred dimensions

Marta Filipová on compelling tales of a city’s artistic, intellectual and political cultures

Cheryl Lawther on a history of the conflict and peace process and how the past continues to affect current attitudes

Tara Brabazon on a rare and evocative exploration of how to cope with digital overload

Willy Maley finds men behaving badly in this compelling account of a literary coupling

Joanna Bourke reflects on torturers, murderers and the paradoxes of portraying suffering and trauma

Timothy Mowl enjoys an accessible study that wears its learning lightly

Eva Shan Chou on a groundbreaking attempt to assess the later work of one of China’s literary greats

Fiona Reid on the military life’s inherent brutality

A critique of the US-as-empire is a good call, says J. Simon Rofe

Philip Kemp on how the American film industry reacted variously to the rise of fascism in Germany

Biancamaria Fontana on the influences that shaped a French aristocrat’s ambiguous view of democracy from his studies of the American model

James Stevens Curl on a summary of Kircher’s hieroglyphic studies in the context of 17th-century scholarship on paganism and oriental languages

Jane O’Grady on how the rise of love as a central value of modern society is leading us to the brink of second humanism

Jelena Obradovic-Wochnik on a study of the process of researching the Bosnian wars

Barbara Graziosi on a renowned reviewer’s disciplinary skirmishes

Stephen Halliday on a forgotten tragedy of the First World War

Shelley King on asking questions, realist fiction and female subjectivity in Victorian novels

Robert Eaglestone on the experiences of a Holocaust survivor and how he rebuilt his life afterwards

Chris Knight on an anthropologist whose theories were embraced then shunned by the US military

Susan Hogan on a challenge to analyses of 19th-century politics that marginalise the role of women

Alec Ryrie on a persuasive account of demoniacs and how society perceived and dealt with them

Tim Birkhead on the first comprehensive documenter of North American birds

Robert Eaglestone extols a great historian’s insights into a great and disquieting writer

Neil Rennie on the 18th-century fascination with exotic visitors and the cultural exchange that took place

Kate North recommends an analysis of the use of apparently contradictory concepts in selected texts over the past 15 years

Margaret Weitekamp on a historical study of the relationship between religion and spaceflight

Les Gofton ventures into the shadowy suburban world of competing cultures

Sheila Rowbotham on a crisp portrait of a restless thinker who was neither infallible nor prophetic

David Revill on diverse art forms that focus on, literally, nothing

Lucy Wooding discusses a fresh examination of fervent belief