New Books in History

Kelly M. Duke Bryant, "Negotiating Childhood: French Colonialism and African Children in Senegal, 1848-1940" (U Mass Press, 2026)

Ian J. McNiven, "Sentient Seas: Archaeologies of Seascapes and Maritime Rituals" (UP Florida, 2026)

Richard Bell, "The American Revolution and the Fate of the World" (Penguin, 2025)

Brendan Greeley, "The Almighty Dollar: 500 Years of the World's Most Powerful Money" (Crown, 2026)

The U.S. dollar originated not as a product of American sovereignty, but as a global silver coin—the Joachimsthaler—that circulated extensively before the United States existed. This currency achieved international dominance through its utility for merchants and high-volume production, rather than through state backing...

Martin Fitzgerald, "The Umbrella Man and Other Stories: What We Talk about When We Talk about the JFK Assassination" (Biteback Publishing, 2026)

Robert G Parkinson, "Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier" (Norton, 2024)

Rod Phillips, "Cats: A History" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2026)

Jeffrey A. Marx, "Jewish Firebugs: Arson and Antisemitism from the Civil War to World War I" (NYU Press, 2026)

Peter C. Mancall, "Contested Continent: The Struggle for North America, c. 1000-1680" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Paul Helseth and David P. Smith eds., "New Perspectives on Old Princeton, 1812-1929" (Routledge, 2024)

Daniel Rood, "In the Shadow of the Great House: A History of the Plantation in America" (Norton, 2026)

Gullah-Geechee Diasporas: Knowledge, Culture, and Black Lowcountry Legacies

Lauren Duval, "The Home Front: Revolutionary Households, Military Occupation, and the Making of American Independence" (UNC Press, 2025)

Ted Powell, "Churchill and the Crown" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Stephen Robertson, "Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935" (Stanford UP, 2024)

Xian Aubin Wang, "Islam and Maoism in Southern Yunnan: State Violence and Resistance, 1949–2024" (Cornell UP, 2026)

The history of Southern Yunnan’s Muslim communities under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) reveals a complex trajectory of state violence, religious identity, and local resistance from 1949 to 2024. Historian Xian Aubin Wang examines the 1975 Shadian massacre, where the People's Liberation Army razed villages and kill...

Thomas Paine at the Semiquincentennial: A Conversation with Gregory Claeys

Kate Dannies, "Conscripting Breadwinner Soldiers in the Late Ottoman Empire: Family, Law and War" (Edinburgh UP, 2026)

Jonathan Schneer, "Nine Days in May: The General Strike Of 1926" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Chiara Formichi, "Domestic Nationalism: Muslim Women, Health, and Modernity in Indonesia" (Stanford UP, 2025)

Domestic nationalism in 20th-century Indonesia centers on the intersection of gender, health, and political agency. Colonial authorities utilized the scientific theory of "tropical hygiene" to stigmatize indigenous practices and assert Euro-American superiority, yet Indonesian women—particularly the literate elite—recl...