New Books In European Studies

For working-class life writers in nineteenth century Britain, happiness was a multifaceted emotion: a concept that could describe experiences of hedonic pleasure, foster and deepen social relationships, drive individuals to self-improvement, and lead them to look back over their lives and evaluate whether they were well-lived. However, not all working-class autobiographers shared the same concepts or valorizations of happiness, as variables such as geography, gender, political affiliation, and social and economic mobility often influenced the way they defined and experienced their emotional lives. The Happiness of the British Working Class (Stanford UP, 2023) employs and analyzes over 350 autobiographies of individuals in England, Scotland, and Ireland to explore the sources of happiness of British working people born before 1870. Drawing from careful examinations of their personal narratives, Jamie L. Bronstein investigates the ways in which working people thought about the good life as seen through their ex

What are the origins of the hostile environment against immigrants in the UK? In We’re Here Because You Were There: Immigration and the End of Empire (Verso, 2021), Patel retells Britain's recent history in an often shocking account of state racism that still resonates today. In a series of post-war immigration laws from 1948 to 1971, arrivals from the Caribbean, Asia and Africa to Britain went from being citizens to being renamed immigrants. In the late 1960s, British officials drew upon an imperial vision of the world to contain what it saw as a vast immigration “crisis” involving British citizens, passing legislation to block their entry. As a result, British citizenship itself was redefined along racial lines, fatally compromising the Commonwealth and exposing the limits of Britain’s influence in world politics. Combining voices of so-called immigrants trying to make a home in Britain and the politicians, diplomats and commentators who were rethinking the nation, Ian Sanjay Patel excavates the reasons why

Lenora Hanson's The Romantic Rhetoric of Accumulation (Stanford UP, 2022) provides an account of the long arc of dispossession from the British Romantic period to today. Lenora Hanson glimpses histories of subsistence (such as reproductive labor, vagrancy and criminality, and unwaged labor) as figural ways of living that are superfluous—simultaneously more than enough to live and less than what is necessary for capitalism. Hanson treats rhetorical language as an archive of capital's accumulation through dispossession, in works by S.T. Coleridge, Edmund Burke, Mary Robinson, William Wordsworth, Benjamin Moseley, Joseph Priestley, and Alexander von Humboldt, as well as in contemporary film and critical theory. Reading riots through apostrophe, enclosure through anachronism, superstition and witchcraft through tautology, and the paradoxical coincidence of subsistence living with industrialization, Hanson shows the figural to be a material record of the survival of non-capitalist forms of life within capitalism.

Deanne Williams's newest book, Girl Culture in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: Performance and Pedagogy (Bloombury, 2023), is a groundbreaking study of the girl actor in the medieval and early modern world, demonstrating the existence of the girl performer in England long before the Restoration. Challenging existing academic assumptions about the supposed male dominance of the early modern stage, this book reveals girls' participation in a host of areas, from medieval religious drama to pageants and royal entries under the Tudors, country house entertainments, and Jacobean masques. Williams situates her historical study of the girl actor within the wider contexts of 'girl culture', including singing, translating, and writing. By examining the impact of the girl actor in Shakespeare's various constructions of girlhood– those girl characters which play upon the precedent of the performing girl in the medieval world– Girl Culture in the Middle Ages and Renaissance argues that girls' actively shaped culture in t

When uprisings against colonial rule broke out across the world after 1945, Britain responded with overwhelming and brutal force. Although this period has conventionally been dubbed "postwar," it was punctuated by a succession of hard-fought, long-running conflicts that were geographically diffuse, morally ambiguous, and impervious to neat endings or declarations of victory. Ruthless counterinsurgencies in Malaya, Kenya, and Cyprus rippled through British society, molding a home front defined not by the mass mobilization of resources, but by sentiments of uneasiness and the justifications they generated. Age of Emergency: Living with Violence at the End of the British Empire (Oxford UP, 2023) traces facts and feelings about violence as torture, summary executions, collective punishments, and other ruthless methods were employed in "states of emergency." It examines how Britons at home learned to live with colonial warfare by examining activist campaigns, soldiers' letters, missionary networks, newspaper stori

Among the conflicts that convulsed Europe during the nineteenth century, none was more startling and consequential than the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. Deliberately engineered by Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the war succeeded in shattering French supremacy, deposing Napoleon III, and uniting a new German Empire. But it also produced brutal military innovations and a precarious new imbalance of power that together set the stage for the devastating world wars of the next century. In Bismarck's War: The Franco-Prussian War and the Making of Modern Europe (Basic Book, 2023), historian Rachel Chrastil chronicles events on the battlefield in full, while also showing in intimate detail how the war reshaped and blurred the boundaries between civilian and soldier as the fighting swept across France. The result is the definitive history of a transformative conflict that changed Europe, and the history of warfare, forever. AJ Woodhams hosts the "War Books" podcast. You can subscribe on Apple here and on

During the Irish Civil War, events of late 1922 and early 1923 together with waves of 'dishonourable' killings created poisoned relations between Republicans and 'Free Staters' which would last for several generations. The most enduring of these controversies, a policy of summary executions carried out by the Provisional Government from November 1922, continues to surround the argument. John O'Donovan's book An Introduction to the Irish Civil War (Mercier Press, 2022) offers a fresh perspective on the causes, development and consequences of the Irish Civil War. Triggered by the signing of the Anglo-Treaty, there were those that would accept nothing less than complete Irish independence. Very few IRA commanders active in the field supported the Treaty and, as happens often in the dissection of civil wars, controversy over the conduct of both sides figures heavily within the text, where, at a local and national level, it left bitter legacies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Suppor

Drag: A British History (University of California Press, 2023) is a groundbreaking study of the sustained popularity and changing forms of male drag performance in modern Britain. With this book, Jacob Bloomfield provides fresh perspectives on drag and recovers previously neglected episodes in the history of the art form. Despite its transgressive associations, drag has persisted as an intrinsic, and common, part of British popular culture--drag artists have consistently asserted themselves as some of the most renowned and significant entertainers of their day. As Bloomfield demonstrates, drag was also at the center of public discussions around gender and sexuality in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Victorian sex scandals to the "permissive society" of the 1960s. This compelling new history demythologizes drag, stressing its ordinariness while affirming its important place in British cultural heritage. Jacob Bloomfield is a Zukunftskolleg Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Konstanz and an H

The Earthly Paradise was a vibrant symbol at the heart of medieval Christian geographies of the cosmos. As humanity’s primal home now lost through the sins of Adam of Eve, the Earthly Paradise figured prominently in Old French tales of lands beyond the mundane world. This study proposes a fresh look at the complex roles played by the Earthly Paradise in three medieval French poems: Marie de France’s The Purgatory of St. Patrick, Benedeit’s Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot, and Guillaume de Lorris’s The Romance of the Rose.  By examining the literary, cultural, and artistic components that informed each poem, Spiritual and Material Boundaries in Old French Verse: Contemplating the Walls of the Earthly Paradise (Medieval Institute Publications, 2023) advances the thesis that the exterior walls of the Earthly Paradise served evolving purposes as contemplative objects that implicitly engaged complex notions of economic solidarity and idealized community. These visions of the Earthly Paradise stand to provide a s

Throughout the early modern period, political theorists in France and England drew on the works of Plutarch to offer advice to kings and princes. Elizabeth I herself translated Plutarch in her later years, while Jacques Amyot's famous translations of Plutarch's The Parallel Lives led to the wide distribution of his work and served as a key resource for Shakespeare in the writing of his Roman plays, through Sir Thomas North's English translations.  Rebecca Kingston's Plutarch's Prism: Classical Reception and Public Humanism in France and England, 1500–1800 (Cambridge UP, 2022) explores how Plutarch was translated into French and English during the Renaissance and how his works were invoked in political argument from the early modern period into the 18th century, contributing to a tradition she calls 'public humanism'. This book then traces the shifting uses of Plutarch in the Enlightenment, leading to the decline of this tradition of 'public humanism'. Throughout, the importance of Plutarch's work is highlight

McManus presents an intellectual history of the conservative and reactionary tradition, stretching from Aristotle and Filmer to Alexander Dugin and Patrick Deneen. Providing a comprehensive critical genealogy of the intellectual political right, McManus traces its core to a nostalgia for the hierarchical cosmos of antiquarian and scholastic thinking. The yearning for a shared vision of the universe where each part of reality has its place maps onto the conservative admiration for orderly political and social stratification. It stamps even the more moderate forms of liberal conservatism which emerged in the aftermath of the revolutionary 18th century, as the political right struggled to accept and later master first the politics of liberal capitalism and later universal suffrage. In its most radical forms this nostalgia for an orderly and hierarchical existence can harden into a resentment at the perceived shallowness of liberal modernity. McManus argues for those who support the project of modernity to commit

Neil Tarrant challenges conventional thinking by looking at the longer history of censorship, considering a five-hundred-year continuity of goals and methods stretching from the late eleventh century to well into the sixteenth. Unlike earlier studies, Defining Nature's Limits: The Roman Inquisition and the Boundaries of Science (U Chicago Press, 2022) engages the history of both learned and popular magic. Tarrant explains how the church developed a program that sought to codify what was proper belief through confession, inquisition, and punishment and prosecuted what they considered superstition or heresy that stretched beyond the boundaries of religion. These efforts were continued by the Roman Inquisition, established in 1542. Although it was designed primarily to combat Protestantism, from the outset the new institution investigated both practitioners of “illicit” magic and inquiries into natural philosophy, delegitimizing certain practices and thus shaping the development of early modern science. Describi

Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has already raised more than $27,000,000. In this interview, Andy Hunter, founder and CEO discusses his journey to creating one of the most revolutionary new organizations in the book world. Bookshop has found a way to retain the convenience of online book shopping while also supporting independent bookstores that are the backbones of many local communities.  Andy Hunter is CEO and Founder of Bookshop.org. He also co-created Literary Hub. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

The concept of madness as a challenge to communities lies at the core of legal sources. Aleksandra Pfau, Medieval Communities and the Mad: Narratives of Crime and Mental Illness in Late Medieval France (Amsterdam University Press, 2020) considers how communal networks, ranging from the locale to the realm, responded to people who were considered mad. The madness of individuals played a role in engaging communities with legal mechanisms and proto-national identity constructs, as petitioners sought the king’s mercy as an alternative to local justice. The resulting narratives about the mentally ill in late medieval France constructed madness as an inability to live according to communal rules. Although such texts defined madness through acts that threatened social bonds, those ties were reaffirmed through the medium of the remission letter. The composers of the letters presented madness as a communal concern, situating the mad within the household, where care could be provided. Those considered mad were usually

The well-known Admiral Horatio Nelson fought all of his most historically significant battles after he lost his right arm and the sight in one eye. With this notable exception, however, disabled members of the military on active duty remain largely invisible. Teresa Michals' book Lame Captains and Left-Handed Admirals: Amputee Officers in Nelson's Navy (U Virginia Press, 2021) reveals that at least twenty-four other Royal Navy officers reached the rank of Commander or higher through continued service after the loss of a limb. It focuses on the lives and careers of three particularly distinguished amputee officers: Admiral Sir Michael Seymour, Admiral Sir Watkin Owen Pell, and Admiral Sir James Alexander Gordon. Given that the number of talented and ambitious naval officers far exceeded the number of ships the Royal Navy had to give them throughout the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, we might expect that contracting any physical impairment would disqualify an officer from further command positions and promo

In A Vital Frontier: Water Insurgencies in Europe (Duke University Press, 2023)) Andrea Muehlebach examines the work of activists across Europe as they organize to preserve water as a commons and public good in the face of privatization. Traversing social, political, legal, and hydrological terrains, Muehlebach situates water as a political fault line at the frontiers of financialization, showing how the seemingly relentless expansion of capital into public utilities is being challenged by an equally relentless and often successful insurgence of political organizing. Drawing on ethnographic research, Muehlebach presents water protests as a vital politics that comprises popular referenda, barricades in the streets, huge demonstrations, the burning of utility bills, and legal disputes over transparency and contracts. As Muehlebach documents, Europe’s water activists articulate their own values of democracy and just price, raising far-reaching political questions about private versus common property and financin

James VI and I has long endured a mixed reputation. To many, he is the homosexual King, the inveterate witch-roaster, the smelly sovereign who never washed, the colourless man behind the authorised Bible bearing his name, the drooling fool whose speech could barely be understood. For too long, he has paled in comparison to his more celebrated – and analysed – Tudor and Stuart forebears. But who was he really? To what extent have myth, anecdote, and rumour obscured him? In this new biography The Wisest Fool: The Lavish Life of James VI and I (Birlinn, 2023) by Dr. Steven Veerapen, James’s story is laid bare, and a welter of scurrilous, outrageous assumptions penned by his political opponents put to rest. What emerges is a portrait of James VI and I as his contemporaries knew him: a gregarious, idealistic man obsessed with the idea of family, whose personal and political goals could never match up to reality. With reference to letters, libels and state papers, it casts fresh light on the personal, domestic, int

Is the raw material of literature the paper, ink, vellum, paphyrus, and increasingly electronic data that it is inscribed on? Or is the stuff of literature the storehouse of tropes, techniques, and plots that authors draw from? And what kind of labor is the process of transforming that matter into literature? Earlier this year, Taylor Cowdery published an academic study on just this subject. The title of Taylor’s book is Matter and Making in Early English Poetry: Literary Production from Chaucer to Sidney (Cambridge University Press, 2023). Through case studies of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Gower’s Confessio Amantis, Thomas Hoccleve’s Series, and Thomas Wyatt’s poetry, Taylor captures a wide discourse around creativity and originality. Taylor is Associate Professor of English and Robert M. Lumiansky Fellow at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Taylor also serves as the Director of the Program in Medieval and Early Modern Studies, and Taylor’s writing has been published in ELH, Studies in the Age

In 1939, a number of German Jewish refugee children, brought over on the Kindertransport, found themselves in Abergele, North Wales. Their temporary new home? Gwrych Castle, where a Hachshara was being set up: a residential 'training centre' aimed at preparing the Jewish children for life on a kibbutz in Israel, where they hoped to be reunited with their families. In Escape to Gwrych Castle: A Jewish Refugee Story (U of Wales Press, 2023), Andrew Hesketh explores the lesser-told history of the children who lived in this North Wales castle, bringing together their personal memories and experiences to create a unique picture of their experiences. He also explores the history of the building itself, from its origins in the 19th century up to its use in I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! In 2020. Nathan Abrams is a professor of film at Bangor University in Wales. His most recent work is on film director Stanley Kubrick. To discuss and propose a book for interview you can reach him at n.abrams@bangor.ac.uk. Twit

The British National Health Service - free for all - used to be the envy of the world. But today the NHS is malfunctioning. More and more people are resorting to private care – is not unusual now for Brits to travel to Turkey or Lithuania to get hip replacements and the like – so should Britain now give up on the NHS and move to a European model of healthcare… Dr Gavin Francis has just written a book on the NHS: Free For All: Why the NHS is Worth Saving (Profile Books, 2024). Listen to him in conversation with Owen Bennett Jones. Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies