Still fighting the history wars
Debates about Britain’s colonial legacy are not just a product of Brexit or woke politics – empire has always been…
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.
Europe’s race delusions
Built on imperial amnesia and competing nationalisms, the EU has never been the beacon of inclusion it claims to be.
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The 14 best books to help you understand Vladimir Putin’s Russia
This list offers the most incisive books on the past and present of Russia and its president.
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From Ferdinand Mount to Isabel Waidner: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring Crisis Actor by Declan Ryan and Women We Buried, Women We Burned by Rachel Louise Snyder.
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The rise of Waterstones Dad
How the self-made man got lost in the marketplace of ideas.
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Pathologies of a president
A new book revisits Freud’s analysis of Woodrow Wilson to ask: how much do leaders’ psychologies shape our politics?
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How germs shape history
Jonathan Kennedy’s Pathogenesis reveals how diseases have built and broken empires and economies.
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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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