New Books In European Studies

The world is in a midst of a renewable energy revolution, with the price of utility scale photo-voltaic solar power falling by nearly 90% between 2009 and 2019, and the price of wind power falling by 70% during the same period. Annual global investment in renewable electricity generation assets is now more than double that for fossil fuel and nuclear-powered generation facilities combined, and yet the pace of adoption varies greatly across countries. In this episode Kenneth Bo Nielsen, Assistant Professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo and coordinator of Norwegian Network for Asian Studies, moderates a discussion on the various barriers and opportunities countries in Asia and the Nordics face in trying to take advantage of this renewable energy revolution. He is joined by Paul Midford a Professor of Political Science in the Faculty of International Studies at Meiji Gakuin University, in Yokohama, Japan, Espen Moe, a Professor at the Department of Sociology and Political Science at Norwegian

In The Devil's Historians: How Modern Extremists Abuse the Medieval Past (University of Toronto Press, 2020), Amy S. Kaufman and Paul B. Sturtevant examine the many ways in which the medieval past has been manipulated to promote discrimination, oppression, and murder. Tracing the fetish for “medieval times” behind toxic ideologies like nationalism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, misogyny, and white supremacy, Kaufman and Sturtevant show us how the Middle Ages have been twisted for political purposes in every century that followed. The Devil’s Historians casts aside the myth of an oppressive, patriarchal medieval monoculture and reveals a medieval world not often shown in popular culture: one that is diverse, thriving, courageous, compelling, and complex. Amy S. Kaufman is a scholar of medieval studies and popular culture. Paul B. Sturtevant is Editor in Chief of The Public Medievalist and a Visitor Research Specialist at The Smithsonian Institution. Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Assistant Professor of Sociology

The city that sits on the River Foyle on the North side of the Irish isle in many ways has stood as a microcosm of the conflicts in Northern Ireland, even to the contestation over the name of Derry/Londonderry. In Derry City: Memory and Political Struggle in Northern Ireland (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020), Margo Shea examines the popular and cultural identity formations in this emblematic city over the century leading up to the sectarian clash known commonly as as "The Troubles." Throughout the period Shea examines, Irish nationalist communities developed a cultural memory that fostered a social identity and shared heritage as an alternative to the loyalist sanctioned commemorations, festivals, and community histories. Shea's study models a fruitful method of reading cultural history, especially of communities without recourse to political power and the usual means of archival representation. This book will be of interest for those interested in the formation of cultural identity and the development o

Meryl Altman's new book Beauvoir in Time, published by Brill Rodopi Press (2020), situates Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949) in its historical context and responds to criticism that muddles what she actually said about sex, race and class. She takes up three aspects of Beauvoir's work today’s feminists find problematic: the characterizations of the frigid woman and lesbians, the analogy of race and class that obscures Black and working-class women and her examples drawn from white middle-class experience. Charged with ethnocentrism, her contribution is distorted by not considering her place and time. Through close reading of Beauvoir's writing in many genres, alongside expansive criticism, Altman shows that what appears as a problem for feminist theory is best understood by a full consideration of Beauvoir’s engagement with Freudian, Marxist and anticolonial thinkers. Extremely helpful in understanding the place of The Second Sex within international feminist theory, Altman offers insights into how B

On January 10th, 1795, a very tired caravan arrives in Beijing. The travelers have journeyed from Canton on an accelerated schedule through harsh terrain in order to make it to the capital in time for the Qianlong Emperor’s sixtieth anniversary of his reign. The group is led by two Dutchmen: Isaac Titsingh and Andreas Everardus van Braam Houckgeest, who are there to represent the interests of the Dutch Republic at the imperial court. It’s a momentous occasion, especially after the disastrous British Embassy from George Macartney two years earlier. Little did they know that their embassy would be the last by Westerners in the traditional Chinese court. Their journey is the subject of Professor Tonio Andrade’s The Last Embassy: The Dutch Mission of 1795 and the Forgotten History of Western Encounters with China (Princeton University Press, 2021), published earlier this year: a rich and readable volume that tells the story of an event long-neglected by history and historians. In this interview, Tonio and I talk

Once described as a “German oddity”†, Ordoliberalism was one of a number of new liberalisms that emerged from the political maelstrom of the interwar period. But, unlike the other neoliberal splinters, Ordoliberalism – founded at the University of Freiburg by economist Walter Eucken and jurist Franz Böhm – was quickly tested in the real world. The West Germany rebuilt out of the ashes of war was founded on its principles: rules-based economics, independent agencies protected from politics and the state as arbiter. The country's recovery and successful reunification were a testament to Ordoliberalism’s effectiveness but, as the European Community became a union and created the euro, its other members were keener to import the success than the rules. When crisis struck from 2008, the EU's architecture was severely stress-tested and remains under strain in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Is the long EU political crisis due to Ordoliberalism or due to its non-implementation? Can and should Ordoliberalism ad

Andrew Jenks' book Collaboration in Space and the Search for Peace on Earth (Anthem Press, 2021) explores the era of space collaboration (from 1970 to the present). This period has been largely ignored by historians in favor of a focus on the earlier space race. The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, a key program and catalyst for Détente, marked the transition to the new age of space collaboration, which continued through the Soviet Interkosmos missions, the Mir-Shuttle dockings of the early 1990s, and on through the International Space Station. Europeans, Americans, and Russians envisioned space collaboration as a way to reconfigure political and international relations. The shift toward collaboration was a result of a new focus on safety, which displaced the earlier emphasis on risk-taking in the first phase of the space race, when military imperatives often overshadowed peaceful goals. Apollo-Soyuz (ignored by Cold War historians) was thus imagined as a test project for a docking mechanism that would allow a mann

Marching across occupied France in 1944, American GI Leroy Stewart had neither death nor glory on his mind: he was worried about his underwear. "I ran into a new problem when we walked," Stewart wrote, "the shorts and I didn't get along. They would crawl up on me all the time." Crawling underwear may have been a small price to pay for the liberation of millions of people, but in the utter wretchedness of the moment, it was quite natural for soldiers like Stewart to lose sight of that end.  In Sheer Misery: Soldiers in Battle in WWII (U Chicago Press, 2021), Mary Louise Roberts focuses on the corporeal experiences of the soldiers who fought in Belgium, France, and Italy during the last two years of the Second World War. In the horrendously unhygienic and often lethal conditions of the front line, their bodies broke down, stubbornly declaring their needs for warmth, rest, and good nutrition. Turning away from the accounts of high-level military strategy that dominate many WWII histories, Roberts instead relies

The Work of Politics: Making a Democratic Welfare State (Cambridge University Press 2020) advances a new understanding of how democratic social movements work with welfare institutions to challenge structures of domination. Steven Klein develops a novel theory that depicts welfare institutions as “worldly mediators,” or sites of democratic world-making fostering political empowerment and participation within the context of capitalist economic forces. Drawing on the writings of Weber, Arendt, and Habermas, and historical episodes that range from the workers' movement in Bismarck's Germany to post-war Swedish feminism, the book challenges us to rethink the distribution of power in society, as well as the fundamental concerns of democratic theory. Ranging across political theory and intellectual history, The Work of Politics provides a vital contribution to contemporary thinking about the future of the welfare state. Tejas Parasher is Junior Research Fellow in Political Thought and Intellectual History at King’s

The extra Calvinisticum, that the eternal Son maintains his existence beyond the flesh during his earthly ministry and perpetually, divided the Lutheran and Reformed traditions during the Reformation. K. J. Drake's book The Flesh of the Word: The Extra Calvinisticum from Zwingli to Early Orthodoxy (Oxford UP, 2021) explores the emergence and development of the extra Calvinisticum in the Reformed tradition by tracing its exposition from Ulrich Zwingli to early Reformed orthodoxy.  Rather than being an ancillary issue, the questions surrounding the extra Calvinisticum were a determinative factor in the differentiation of Magisterial Protestantism into rival confessions. Reformed theologians maintained this doctrine in order to preserve the integrity of both Christ's divine and human natures as the mediator between God and humanity. This rationale remained consistent across this period with increasing elaboration and sophistication to meet the challenges levelled against the doctrine in Lutheran polemics. The st

English has borrowed more words from French than from any other modern foreign language. French words and phrases—such as à la mode, ennui, naïveté and caprice—lend English a certain je-ne-sais-quoi that would otherwise elude the language. Richard Scholar examines the continuing history of untranslated French words in English and asks what these words reveal about the fertile but fraught relationship that England and France have long shared and that now entangles English- and French-speaking cultures all over the world. Émigrés: French Words That Turned English (Princeton UP, 2020) demonstrates that French borrowings have, over the centuries, “turned” English in more ways than one. From the seventeenth-century polymath John Evelyn’s complaint that English lacks “words that do so fully express” the French ennui and naïveté, to George W. Bush’s purported claim that “the French don’t have a word for entrepreneur,” this unique history of English argues that French words have offered more than the mere seasoning o

The Western Front evokes images of mud-spattered men in waterlogged trenches, shielded from artillery blasts and machine-gun fire by a few feet of dirt. This iconic setting was the most critical arena of the Great War, a 400-mile combat zone stretching from Belgium to Switzerland where more than three million Allied and German soldiers struggled during four years of almost continuous combat. It has persisted in our collective memory as a tragic waste of human life and a symbol of the horrors of industrialized warfare. In this history, military historian Nick Lloyd captures the horrific fighting in The Western Front: A History of the First World War (Liveright, 2021). As Lloyd reveals, far from a site of attrition and stalemate, the Western Front was dynamic and defined by extraordinary scientific and tactical innovation. It was on the Western Front that the modern technologies—machine guns, mortars, grenades, and howitzers—were refined and developed into effective killing machines. It was on the Western Front

Painting by Numbers: Data-Driven Histories of Nineteenth-Century Art (Princeton UP, 2021) presents a groundbreaking blend of art historical and social scientific methods to chart, for the first time, the sheer scale of nineteenth-century artistic production. With new quantitative evidence for more than five hundred thousand works of art, Diana Seave Greenwald provides fresh insights into the nineteenth century, and the extent to which art historians have focused on a limited—and potentially biased—sample of artwork from that time. She addresses long-standing questions about the effects of industrialization, gender, and empire on the art world, and she models more expansive approaches for studying art history in the age of the digital humanities. Examining art in France, the United States, and the United Kingdom, Greenwald features datasets created from indices and exhibition catalogs that—to date—have been used primarily as finding aids. From this body of information, she reveals the importance of access to t

Today on New Books in History, Rod Phillips, Professor of History at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, talks about his book, French Wine: A History, out in 2016 with the University of California Press, and published in paperback in 2020. For centuries, wine has been associated with France more than with any other country. France remains one of the world’s leading wine producers by volume and enjoys unrivaled cultural recognition for its wine. If any wine regions are global household names, they are French regions such as Champagne, Bordeaux, and Burgundy. Within the wine world, products from French regions are still benchmarks for many wines. French Wine is the first synthetic history of wine in France: from Etruscan, Greek, and Roman imports and the adoption of wine by beer-drinking Gauls to its present status within the global marketplace. Rod Phillips places the history of grape growing and winemaking in each of the country’s major regions within broad historical and cultural contexts. Examining a ran

“What are we thinking about when we think about music in non-naturalistic terms?” asks Benjamin Steege—Assistant Professor of Music Theory, Columbia University—in his new book An Unnatural Attitude: Phenomenology in Weimar Musical Thought (University of Chicago Press, 2021). This deceptively subtle question exercised the minds of some of Europe's most delicate musical thinkers at a time of great social and political upheaval, and continues to be of interest to musicologists today. Putting a little-discussed set of German-language primary sources into historical context (among others, the writing of Günther Anders (né Stern), Gustav Güldenstein, and Herbert Eimert) and expertly introducing them to an Anglophone audience, Steege explains the shared interests of a post–World War I constellation of musical thinkers whose disinterest in psychological and music-historical orthodoxy coalesces into a vital, if not entirely homogeneous, program for the phenomenology of music. Enriched by convincing music-analytical ex

In this wide-ranging and authoritative book, the first of its kind in English, Christopher Wood tracks the evolution of the historical study of art from the late middle ages through the rise of the modern scholarly discipline of art history. Synthesizing and assessing a vast array of writings, episodes, and personalities, this original account of the development of art-historical thinking will appeal to readers both inside and outside the discipline. A History of Art History (Princeton UP, 2019) shows that the pioneering chroniclers of the Italian Renaissance—Lorenzo Ghiberti and Giorgio Vasari—measured every epoch against fixed standards of quality. Only in the Romantic era did art historians discover the virtues of medieval art, anticipating the relativism of the later nineteenth century, when art history learned to admire the art of all societies and to value every work as an index of its times. The major art historians of the modern era, however—Jacob Burckhardt, Aby Warburg, Heinrich Wölfflin, Erwin Pano

Today on the podcast, Ruth Mazo Karras, the Lecky Professor of History at Trinity College Dublin talks about her new book, Thou Art the Man: The Masculinity of David in the Christian and Jewish Middle Ages, out this year, 2021 with University of Pennsylvania Press. "How do we approach the study of masculinity in the past?" Ruth Mazo Karras asks. Medieval documents that have come down to us tell a great deal about the things that men did, but not enough about what they did specifically as men, or what these practices meant to them in terms of masculinity. Yet no less than in our own time, masculinity was a complicated construct in the Middle Ages. In Thou Art the Man, Karras focuses on one figure, King David, who was important in both Christian and Jewish medieval cultures, to show how he epitomized many and sometimes contradictory aspects of masculine identity. For late medieval Christians, he was one of the Nine Worthies, held up as a model of valor and virtue; for medieval Jews, he was the paradigmatic king

Any study of the Crusades — the religious wars waged by Latin Catholics to recapture the Holy Land — is primarily an exploration of men and their military deeds, with scant consideration of women, save perhaps the redoubtable Eleanor of Aquitaine who accompanied her husband, King Louis VII of France, on the Second Crusade. But the history of the Christian Crusader states established after the success of the First Crusade is a different matter. From 1099 to 1187, the four polities, known collectively as “Outremer” or “the lands beyond the sea” — the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Principality of Antioch, and the Counties of Tripoli and Edessa — were more often ruled by queens, princesses, and countesses in their own right. The captivating story of these women is the subject of Queens of Jerusalem: The Women Who Dared to Rule (Hachette, 2021) by Katherine Pangonis. In taking up the story of Queen Melisende of Jerusalem, her rebel sister, Princess Alice of Antioch, and their descendants, Pangonis set herself the chal

Today I talked to Rob Tempio, the editor of a wonderful collection of books from Princeton University Press called "Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers." The series presents the timeless and timely ideas of classical thinkers in lively new translations. Enlightening and entertaining, these books make the practical wisdom of the ancient world accessible for modern life. The titles of the various volumes gives you a good idea of what's on offer.  How to Drink (Obsopeous) How to Be Content (Horace) How to Be a Bad Emperor (Suetonius) How to Think about God (Cicero) How to Win an Argument (Cicero) How to Be Free (Epicutetus) How to Run a Country (Cicero) How to Grow Old (Cicero)  How to Keep your Cool (Seneca) There are 19 pearls of Ancient Wisdom currently in the series with more to come. Enjoy!  Marshall Poe is the founder and editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming

The highest literacy rates worldwide, free universal healthcare, social security, strong economies —these are traits commonly associated with the Nordic countries. They also reflect the equally renowned, well-developed system of education available to the residents of each country. Despite the similarities, each country’s education system is distinct, thanks to their differing historical experiences and shifts in political climates. And the complexities of each system unfold neatly on pages of the school textbooks that have been used in each country throughout this time. In this episode, Merethe Roos and Henrik Edgren, two of the editors of “Exploring Textbooks and Cultural Change in Nordic Education 1536–2020”talk about delving deep into the centuries-old history of the education systems in the Nordic countries through their school textbooks, right from the era of the Reformation in the 16th century and through the subsequent educational acts that shaped the systems in each country. Their book encapsulates t