New Books In European Studies

What does the history of Liverpool tell us about the future of Britain? In Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain (Bloomsbury, 2025), Sam Wetherall, a Senior Lecturer in the History of Britain and the World at the University of York, tells the story of the city through the lens of ‘obsolesce’. This powerful framework structures a narrative that sees the story of Liverpool as both one of state ineffectiveness, indifference, and brutality, and one of solidarity and alternative forms of community and organising. The analysis is rich with details, ranging widely across the city’s rich social, cultural and economic story. Offering Liverpool as a blueprint for pessimism and optimism, the book is essential reading across the humanities, social scientists, and anyone interested in politics, culture and society today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) never signed a painting, and none of his supposed self-portraits can be securely ascribed to his hand. He revealed next to nothing about his life in his extensive writings, yet countless pages have been written about him that assign him an identity: genius, entrepreneur, celebrity artist, outsider. Addressing the ethical stakes involved in studying past lives, in Leonardo da Vinci: An Untraceable Life (Princeton University Press, 2025) Dr. Stephen J. Campbell shows how this invented Leonardo has invited speculation from figures ranging from art dealers and curators to scholars, scientists, and biographers, many of whom have filled in the gaps of what can be known of Leonardo’s life with claims to decode secrets, reveal mysteries of a vanished past, or discover lost masterpieces of spectacular value. In this original and provocative book, Dr. Campbell examines the strangeness of Leonardo’s words and works, and the distinctive premodern world of artisans and thinkers from which he

Oberbrechen: A German Village Confronts Its Nazi Past (Oxford UP, 2024) is a new title in OUP's Graphic History Series that chronicles the events of the Holocaust and its aftermath in a small village in rural Germany. Based on meticulous research and using powerful visual storytelling, the book provides a multilayered narrative that explores the experiences of both Jewish and non-Jewish villagers from the First World War to the present. Its focus on how "ordinary" people experienced this time offers a new and illuminating insight into everyday life and the processes of violence, rupture, and reconciliation that characterized the history of the twentieth century in Germany and beyond. The graphic narrative is accompanied by source documents published in English translation for the first time, an essay on the wider historical context, and an incisive reflection on the writing of this book—and of history more broadly. Kim Wünschmann is Director of the Institute for the History of the German Jews and teaches at t

In Predestination in Early Modern Reformed Theology (Reformation Heritage Books, 2024), Dr. Richard A. Muller delves into one of the most controversial doctrines of Reformed Theology: predestination. Muller carefully investigates key incidents that illustrate the doctrine's complexity and development by surveying Reformed thought on predestination in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Along the way, Muller challenges distorted ideas about the placement of predestination in theological systems, naïve readings of Calvin based solely on his Institutes, simplistic representations of supra- and infralapsarian debates, and uncharitable views of Reformed theologians as hyper-dogmatists obsessed with their own tradition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

In Citizen Marx: Republicanism and the Formation of Karl Marx’s Social and Political Thought (Princeton UP, 2024), Bruno Leipold argues that, contrary to certain interpretive commonplaces, Karl Marx’s thinking was deeply informed by republicanism. Marx’s relation to republicanism changed over the course of his life, but its complex influence on his thought cannot be reduced to wholesale adoption or rejection. Challenging common depictions of Marx that downplay or ignore his commitment to politics, democracy, and freedom, Leipold shows that Marx viewed democratic political institutions as crucial to overcoming the social unfreedom and domination of capitalism. One of Marx’s principal political values, Leipold contends, was a republican conception of freedom, according to which one is unfree when subjected to arbitrary power. Placing Marx’s republican communism in its historical context—but not consigning him to that context—Leipold traces Marx’s shifting relationship to republicanism across three broad period

Apprenticeship dominated training and skill formation in early modern Europe. Years spent learning from a skilled master were a nearly universal experience for young workers in crafts and trade. In England, when apprenticeship reached its peak, as many as a third of all teenage males would serve and learn as apprentices. In The Market for Skill: Apprenticeship and Economic Growth in Early Modern England (Princeton University Press, 2025), Dr. Patrick Wallis shows how apprenticeship helped reshape the English economy. Some historians see apprenticeship as a key ingredient in the industrial revolution; others agree with Adam Smith in seeing it as wasteful and conservative. Dr. Wallis shows that neither of these perspectives is entirely accurate. He offers a new account of apprenticeship and the market for skill in England, analyzing the records of hundreds of thousands of individual apprentices to tell the story of how apprenticeship worked and how it contributed to the transformation of England. Wallis detail

Rough Music: Folk Customs, Transgression and Alternative Britain (Reaktion, 2025) by Liz Williams explores transgression and shame in British folklore and customs from ancient Britain to the present day. From Bonfire Night to Wassail, Morris dancing, Mari Lwyd and Twelfth Night, along with events like street football and the Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake, Liz Williams reveals the roots and roles of violence, mockery, protest and public shaming. She also looks at alternative culture and modern protests, such as the Battle of the Beanfield and the Stonehenge Free Festival, as well as interaction between racism and traditions involving blackface, alongside the emergence of all-female Morris sides.This engaging book offers an entertaining and revealing look at British folklore and culture. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of t

Hasidism, Haskalah, Zionism (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023) reveals how political and literary dialogues and conflicts between the Hebrew literature of the Hasidism, the Jewish Enlightenment, and Zionism interacted with each other in the nineteenth century. Hannan Hever uses postcolonial theories and theories of nationality to analyze how Jews used literature to make sense of hostility directed toward Jews from their European “host” countries and to set forth their own ideas and preferences regarding their status, control, and treatment. In doing so, Hever theorizes the Enlightenment’s intellectual aims and cultural influences, tracking how the models of integration crucial to Haskalah gave way to Jewish nationalism in the twentieth century. The readings in this book are theoretically informed, setting forward novel claims based on detailed textual analyses of hasidic tales, Haskalah satires, and Zionist narratives. Thus, this book tackles a major interpretative problem visible at the core of modern Hebrew lite

In Enlightenment Biopolitics (U Chicago Press, 2024), historian William Max Nelson pursues the ambitious task of tracing the context in which biopolitical thought emerged and circulated. He locates that context in the Enlightenment when emancipatory ideals sat alongside the horrors of colonialism, slavery, and race-based discrimination. In fact, these did not just coexist, Nelson argues; they were actually mutually constitutive of Enlightenment ideals. In this book, Nelson focuses on Enlightenment-era visions of eugenics (including proposals to establish programs of selective breeding), forms of penal slavery, and spurious biological arguments about the supposed inferiority of particular groups. The Enlightenment, he shows, was rife with efforts to shape, harness, and “organize” the minds and especially the bodies of subjects and citizens. In his reading of the birth of biopolitics and its transformations, Nelson examines the shocking conceptual and practical connections between inclusion and exclusion, equal

Murder in a cathedral, horrific illnesses and deformities, narrow escapes from injury and death, a vengeful dragon, a wandering eyeball, a bawdy monk and other sinners redeemed—the accounts of miracles performed by the Virgin Mary gathered and translated in The Miracles of Mary in Twelfth-Century France (Cornell UP, 2024) provide vivid glimpses into medieval life and beliefs. Bruce L. Venarde provides fluent translations of the first five collections of Marian miracle narratives from France, written in the second quarter of the twelfth century and never before available in English. The stories recorded in these collections—by Herman of Tournai; Hugh Farsit; Haimo of Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives; John, son of Peter; and Gautier of Compiègne—offer descriptions of travel, living conditions, medical knowledge, conflict between and among lay and religious authorities, and the burgeoning cult of the Virgin Mary, which had only recently become important in Western Europe. Including notes, tables, and maps that orient and

An accessible book to draw on popular interest in transport history, routes, vehicles and experiences. Transport history is social and industrial national history. Passengers and freight will be covered including all types of transport from walking and packhorses, that predominated for much of national history, both of which tend to be underrated, to changes brought by improvements to road transport from the Romans to medieval bridgebuilders and eighteenth-century turnpikes, and, in parallel, river, coastal and canal travel, again from the Romans to the eighteenth century. The story moves to the age of rail, motoring and lastly air. All forms overlap. as well as being sequential. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Imprisonment was rarely used as punishment in Britain before 1800. The criminal justice system was based on terror and deterrence, sentencing convicts to the gallows at home and transportation overseas, with prisons serving primarily as holding spaces for the accused until the case against them was resolved. A major shift began in the late eighteenth century when imprisonment became an end in itself: a means to reform as well as to discipline criminal offenders. To Detain or to Punish: Magistrates and the Making of the London Prison System, 1750–1840 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025) by Dr. Kiran Mehta revisits this revolutionary moment as it played out in the metropolis of London. Dr. Mehta charts how Londoners, through their interactions with police, magistrates, and judges, became prisoners, and then follows them into the prison, revealing how these institutions were managed and experienced. Local authorities’ increased use of imprisonment, for punishment as well as for detention, sparked the wholesa

Boaters of London is an ethnography that delves into the process of becoming a boater, adopting an alternative lifestyle on the water and the political impact that this travelling population has on the state. London and the Southeast of England in general is home to many people and families who live on narrowboats, cruisers and barges, along a network of canals and rivers. Many of these 'boaters' move from place to place every two weeks and form itinerant communities in the heart of some of the UK’s most crowded urban spaces. Boaters of London delves into the process of becoming a boater and the political impact of this travelling population on the state, the volume examines an alternative style of living and the potential of a life spent afloat. Ben Bowles is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at SOAS, University of London. He is also Course Lecturer at Fordham University, London Campus, and Research Fellow at the Open University’s Centre for Policing Research and Learning. His research interests include econom

Questions about the meaning of womanhood and femininity loomed large in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French culture. In Playing Cleopatra: Inventing the Female Celebrity in Third Republic France (LSU Press, 2024), Dr. Holly Grout uses the theater—specifically, Parisian stage performances of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra by Sarah Bernhardt, Colette, and Josephine Baker—to explore these cultural and political debates. How and why did portrayals of Cleopatra influence French attitudes regarding race, sexuality, and gender? To what extent did Bernhardt, Colette, and Baker manipulate the image of Cleopatra to challenge social norms and to generate new models of womanhood? Why was Cleopatra—an ancient, mythologized queen—the chosen vehicle for these spectacular expressions of modern womanhood? In the context of late nineteenth-century Egyptomania, Cleopatra’s eroticized image—as well as her controversial legacy of female empowerment—resonated in new ways with a French public engaged in reassessing f

From Kensington to the East End, under candlelight, gas lamp and then neon signs, London is both a bustling physical metropolis and a stirring psychic encounter. The most depraved depictions of London in fiction, film, poetry, television and theatre have irrevocably merged with the reality of its dark history, creating a phantasmagoria defined by murder, vice and the unnatural. In this panoptic look at the capital at its most eerie and macabre, Dr. Clive Bloom takes a tour of Gothic London's uncanny literature, arcane events and its infamous and imagined geographies. From David Bowie to T S Eliot, Thomas de Quincey to Aleister Crowley, the prophetess Joanna Southcott to the 'ghosts' of Abba and the worlds of Neil Gaiman and Clive Barker, these are the figures that populate a city lost in fog and blind alleys, where the dead can be raised, the living sacrificed and the clandestine thrive.  Suturing together fact and fantasy, London Uncanny: A Gothic Guide to the Capital in Weird History and Fiction (Bloomsbury

Mick Brown’s The Nirvana Express: How the Search for Enlightenment Went West (Oxford UP, 2023) is a riveting account about the West's engagement with Eastern spirituality across a century. It traces the life of multiple characters that intersected across time and space to create a network of interlinking stories about saints, salesmen and scoundrels all involved in spirituality. From Edwin Arnold, whose epic poem about the life of the Buddha became a best-seller in Victorian Britain, to the occultist and magician Aleister Crowley; and from spiritual teachers Jiddu Krishnamurti, Meher Baba and Ramana Maharshi to the controversial guru Rajneesh, The Nirvana Express is an exhilarating, sometimes troubling journey through the West's search for enlightenment. Archit Nanda is PhD scholar in Comparative Literature at Queen Mary University of London. 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 Enlightenment's Most Dangerous Woman: Émilie du Châtelet and the Making of Modern Philosophy (Oxford UP, 2024) introduces the work and legacy of philosopher Émilie Du Châtelet. As the Enlightenment gained momentum throughout Europe, Châtelet broke through the many barriers facing women at the time and published a major philosophical treatise in French. Due to her proclamation that a true philosopher must remain an independent thinker rather than a disciple of some supposedly great man like Isaac Newton or René Descartes, Châtelet posed a threat to an emerging consensus in the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment's Most Dangerous Woman highlights the exclusion of women from colleges and academies in Europe and the fear of rupturing the gender-based order. Andrew Janiak is Professor of Philosophy and Bass Fellow at Duke University. Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwor

English Women’s Spiritual Utopias, 1400-1700: New Kingdoms of Womanhood (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) uncovers a tradition of women’s utopianism that extends back to medieval women’s monasticism, overturning accounts of utopia that trace its origins solely to Thomas More. As enclosed spaces in which women wielded authority that was unavailable to them in the outside world, medieval and early modern convents were self-consciously engaged in reworking pre-existing cultural heritage to project desired proto-feminist futures.  The utopianism developed within the English convent percolated outwards to unenclosed women's spiritual communities such as Mary Ward's Institute of the Blessed Virgin and the Ferrar family at Little Gidding. Convent-based utopianism further acted as an unrecognized influence on the first English women’s literary utopias by authors such as Margaret Cavendish and Mary Astell. Collectively, these female communities forged a mode of utopia that drew on the past to imagine new possibilities for th

Serving Aristocracy: Negotiation, Learning, and Mobility in an Early Modern Knowledge Community (Routledge, 2025) by Dr. Anna Nilsson Hammar & Dr. Svante Norrhem is the history of social negotiation and mobility in an early modern knowledge community, centred on the aristocratic De la Gardie family and their sphere of manors and estates in seventeenth-century Sweden. Focusing on underprivileged women and men and the knowledge community that shaped their interactions, social negotiations, and mobility, this book documents ordinary people’s lives and work in an aristocratic sphere. It uses the De la Gardie bureaucracy’s meticulous records to full effect, charting servants’ experiences, learning, and agency. The unique collection of petitions provides an invaluable insight into how servants viewed their own backgrounds, personal predicaments, and hopes for the future, and how they negotiated their work and wage. It reveals the aristocratic estate organization not only as a workplace, but also as a training groun

The 1832 Reform Act was a landmark moment in the development of modern British politics. By overhauling the country’s ancient representative system, the legislation reshaped constitutional arrangements at Westminster, reinvigorated political relationships between the center and the provinces, and established the political structures and precedents that both shaped and hindered Britain’s slow lurch towards democracy by 1928. Mapping the State: English Boundaries and the 1832 Reform Act (U London Press, 2024) leads to a fundamental rethinking of the 1832 Reform Act by demonstrating how boundary reform and the reconstruction of England’s electoral map by the little-known 1831–1832 boundary commission underpinned this turning point in the development of the British political nation. Eschewing traditional approaches to the 1832 Reform Act, it draws from a significant new archival discovery­­—the working papers of the boundary commission—and a range of innovative quantitative techniques to provide a major reassessm