How germs shape history
Jonathan Kennedy’s Pathogenesis reveals how diseases have built and broken empires and economies.
ByHistory books
Discover all the New Statesman’s latest articles and reviews of history books. Here you can find expert opinion on the best reads for 2022.
From Guy Gunaratne to the science of allergies: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring M John Harrison's Wish I Was Here and Jonathan Miles on the French Riviera.
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Europe’s false dawn
After the revolutions of 1848, liberals helped create a conservative international order that has shaped the world since.
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The plain-speaking philosophers
Nikhil Krishnan’s A Terribly Serious Adventure shows how Oxford’s “ordinary language” movement, pioneered by JL Austin and Gilbert Ryle, looked…
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Soldiers in love
Men at War, Luke Turner’s tender account of servicemen’s transgressive private lives, transforms our understanding of the Second World War.
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Fantasies and fever dreams
How Quinn Slobodian, the author of Crack-Up Capitalism, came back down to earth.
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Nigel Biggar’s whitewashing of empire
The historian is right that Britain’s colonial legacy is morally complex. So why is his defence of it so simplistic?
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Britain’s original culture wars
A new history of the 17th century reminds us how bitter ideological conflicts have shaped our democracy.
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The sex lives of medieval women
They were once considered far more lascivious than men – so how did women become the meeker sex?
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Babi Yar: a harrowing masterpiece of Ukraine under Nazi rule
Anatoly Kuznetsov’s classic account of the 1941 massacre of Ukrainians is republished as Kyiv suffers the ravages of war again.
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From Cariad Lloyd to Ayòbámi Adébáyò: new titles reviewed in short
Also featuring Tomorrow Perhaps the Future by Sarah Watling and Away From Beloved Lover by Dee Peyok.
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Ghosts of the Cultural Revolution
Tania Branigan’s Red Memory shows how Xi Jinping’s China is erasing the violence and tyranny of Mao’s purges from history.
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How the world turned global
Jonathan Sperber’s The Age of Interconnection surveys the second half of the 20th century but fails to explain the ideas…
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Why Rome had no culture wars
The clash between Caesar and Cato offers lessons for today, but also reveals the gulf between modern and classical thought.
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Books of the year 2022
New Statesman writers and guests choose their favourite reading of the year.
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What politicians get wrong about war
From Kosovo to Ukraine, Lawrence Freedman’s book Command explores the catastrophes that occur when state and military strategy collide.
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Decoding Adam Smith
A new history of The Wealth of Nations shows how the Scottish thinker’s legacy became an economic battleground.
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How the Treasury quietly runs Britain
A new history of the department shows that, as Liz Truss discovered to her cost, its “abacus economics” has never…
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How oil become the world’s most contested resource
Keith Fisher’s A Pipeline Runs Through It charts how oil revolutionised transport and war, and continues to shape today’s geopolitics.
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The long shadow of Chairman Mao
How China’s uneven ascent has been driven by debt and the Communist Party’s obsessive pursuit of social stability.
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