Reviews

Can Vietdamned: How the World’s Greatest Minds Put America on Trial by Clive Webb rescue Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre’s activism from irrelevance?

Historians may no longer talk of a single Celtic culture, but in The Celts: A Modern History Ian Stewart crafts a unified history of a changing idea.

The Soldier’s Reward: Love and War in the Age of the French Revolution and Napoleon by Jennifer Ngaire Heuer and Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France by Andrea Mansker reveal romance in a time of revolt.

This Land of Promise: A History of Refugees and Exiles in Britain by Matthew Lockwood and Multicultural Britain: A People’s History by Kieran Connell foreground the castaways in our island story.

Friends in Youth: Choosing Sides in the English Civil War by Minoo Dinshaw views the conflict through the sad case of Bulstrode Whitelock and Edward Hyde.

The Great Siege of Malta by Marcus Bull upends the myth of the Knights of Malta and their last stand of 1565. 

A tool for tyrants... or their undoing? The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages by Shane Bobrycki crafts a history for the medieval mob.

The Brothers Grimm: A Biography by Ann Schmiesing brings folklore’s most famous double act out of the shadowy realm of legend.

The Price of Victory: A Naval History of Britain: 1815-1945 by N.A.M. Rodger looks above decks for the story of the modern Royal Navy.

In Augustus the Strong: A Study in Artistic Greatness and Political Fiasco, Tim Blanning looks for a legacy for the ‘incorrigible Saxon’.