‘Impossible Monsters’ by Michael Taylor review
Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War between Science and Religion by Michael Taylor revels in the tangles of Victorian thought.
Reviews
‘Deterring Armageddon’ by Peter Apps and ‘NATO’ by Sten Rynning review
As Deterring Armageddon: A Biography of NATO and NATO: From Cold War to Ukraine, a History of the World’s Most Powerful Alliance make clear, at almost every point in the last 75 years the alliance's future has looked uncertain.
‘Remembering Peasants’ by Patrick Joyce review
Remembering Peasants: A Personal History of a Vanished World by Patrick Joyce is a tender study of European rural life. But is this lost past closer than we think?
‘Sparta and the Commemoration of War’ and ‘The Killing Ground’ review
Two very different volumes, Sparta and the Commemoration of War and The Killing Ground: A Biography of Thermopylae, grapple with the myth of Sparta.
‘Revolusi’ by David Van Reybrouck review
Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World by David Van Reybrouck brings Southeast Asia’s ‘invisible revolution’ into the light.
‘Rites of Passage’ by Judith Flanders review
In Rites of Passage: Death & Mourning in Victorian Britain, Judith Flanders explores the commercialisation of grief and those who resisted the era’s conspicuous consumption.
‘Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe’ by Noel Malcolm review
Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe: Male-Male Sexual Relations, 1400-1750 by Noel Malcolm is an ambitious comparative study that raises plenty of questions.
‘Reading It Wrong’ by Abigail Williams review
Reading It Wrong: An Alternative History of Early Eighteenth-Century Literature by Abigail Williams argues that misunderstanding popular literature was a sign of its success.
‘As Gods Among Men’ by Guido Alfani review
Guido Alfani’s As Gods Among Men: A History of the Rich in the West explores how history’s wealthiest men made their fortunes, but says little about why they did so.
‘The Wild Men’, ‘The Men of 1924’ and ‘A Century of Labour’ review
On the centenary of Britain’s first Labour government, three recent histories cast a sympathetic eye over Ramsay MacDonald’s nine months in Number 10.