Showing papers in "History: Reviews of New Books in 2015"

The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages: Wood, Ian, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 400 pp., $110.00, ISBN-978-0-19-965048-4, Publication Date: September 2013

Abstract: Professor Ian Wood, of the University of Leeds, is one of the most prolific and well-known scholars of the early Middle Ages from the UK. His numerous publications are well known, and he has made v...

Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921–1941: David-Fox, Michael, New York: Oxford University Press, 396 pp., $58.00, ISBN 978-0-19-979457-7, Publication Date: December 2011

Abstract: Cold War–era tensions cast further doubt on the propriety of men in domestic occupations, and such sentiments contributed to a decline in the employment of male flight attendants. Amid the civil rights fervor of the 1960s, however, stewards channeled their employment grievances into legal action, serving as central players in court cases such as Diaz v. Pan Am, which held it unlawful to deny jobs to male flight attendants on grounds of their sex. The emergence of HIV-AIDS undermined these advances, and Tiemeyer explores the epidemic’s influence on male flight attendants in the early 1980s. He writes of G€ar Traynor, a steward who successfully fought United Airlines’ decision to place him on leave following his AIDS diagnosis. Tiemeyer juxtaposes Traynor with Ga€etan Dugas, also known as “Patient Zero,” the flight attendant falsely believed to have brought AIDS to the United States. Tiemeyer debunks this mischaracterization of Dugas—spread primarily through Randy Shilts’s bestselling 1987 book And the Band Played On—in an effort to underscore the homophobic antagonism that stewards faced in the early AIDS era. Such hostility faded throughout the 1990s, and Tiemeyer concludes Plane Queer with attention to airlines’ increasing efforts at gay friendliness. Though he acknowledges the material benefits of new programs such as health insurance for domestic partners, Tiemeyer also notes their limitations amid ever-shrinking salaries, layoffs, and antiunion activity. His attention to these economic barriers reminds readers that the decline of overt sexism and homophobia has been insufficient to grant flight attendants a steady standard of living. Tiemeyer’s exploration of the roadblocks to economic justice in a neoliberal age marks one of Plane Queer’s vital contributions. In introducing readers to this unfamiliar set of workers, Tiemeyer adds new dimensions to a surprising array of historical subfields—among them, queer history; the history of sexuality; and labor, legal, cultural, and economic history. As Tiemeyer reveals, male flight attendants have long stood at the forefront of battles against sexism and homophobia. His ability to display stewards’ centrality to these social and political movements is a testament to his skill as a researcher. His diverse source materials—including comic strips, advertisements, steward uniforms, oral histories, and legal records—add color and variety to his writing. At times, however, the book’s wide methodological scope detracts from the clarity of its argument. Each chapter incorporates a new approach, and Tiemeyer’s abrupt stylistic shifts can muddle his narrative. The division of the chapters into multiple sections and Tiemeyer’s tendency to provide a long introduction for each new topic also diminish the book’s cohesiveness. Furthermore, some sections of Plane Queer lack contextual depth. For instance, in his detailed assessment of the Diaz case, Tiemeyer presents the 1960s civil rights movement as “a multipronged struggle, combating not only racism and sexism but also homophobia” (108). This is a compelling point, but Tiemeyer does little to support it. By limiting his discussion of the civil rights era to a narrow set of court cases, Tiemeyer neglects to illustrate the ways in which stewards’ legal activism has fit into broader civil rights discourse, or to contemplate how historians might put scholarship on queer activism into conversation with work on the African American freedom struggle. Ultimately, these critiques speak to the ambition of Tiemeyer’s study. If Plane Queer lacks focus and depth in places, it is because Tiemeyer has identified an exciting historical subject and is eager to explore its many rich components. This is a complex and highly readable narrative that brings a new cast of characters into numerous historiographical conversations. It will appeal to scholars, students, and general audiences alike.

Hunt for Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland

Abstract: Jan Grabowski's Hunt for the Jews builds on his previous study in Polish about the fate of rural Jews in occupied Poland. It also complements Jan Gross's recent works about the murder of Jews in Po...

The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom

Abstract: the storm clouds of war and impending genocide gathered in Europe, this solution offered scant hope to a people denied immigration around the world. Norwood’s view of the old left is marked by the same duality the old left exhibited toward Zionism: at times sympathetic, and at times harshly critical. There is no such ambivalence toward the post-1967 (Six Day War) new left, which the author writes “differed markedly from Communists of the previous generation in its indifference toward Jewish issues . . . these young radicals did not take anti-Semitism seriously” (207). Norwood especially condemns elements of Students for a Democratic Society for their alliance with anti-Israeli Arab groups and silence in the face of overtly antiSemitic pronouncements by Black Nationalist groups, including the post1966 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panthers, who infamously described Zionism as “Kosher Nationalism” (1). He charges members of the new left with ignoring Arab anti-Semitism, Egypt and Syria’s asylum for Nazi war criminals, the expulsion of Jews from Arab lands in 1948, Arab genocidal threats to drive the Jews into the sea, and Palestinian terrorism. Antisemitism and the American Far Left has numerous strengths and marked weaknesses. At its best, it is a scholarly and fascinating exploration of the left’s relationship to Zionism and Jewish identity and highlights disturbing examples of anti-Semitism. At its weakest, it often conflates opposition to Israel itself or hyperbolic political rhetoric with anti-Semitism. Radicals such as Noam Chomsky certainly have been outspoken in their criticism of Israel, but they have also upheld Israeli kibbutzim as a model for society. To sketch former President Jimmy Carter and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman as anti-Israel lacks nuance. Further, Norwood expresses no sympathy for Palestinian refugees after 1948 or Palestinians living under occupation after 1967. Norwood views Arab and Muslim opposition to Israel as solely motivated by anti-Semitism and concedes no legitimacy to Palestinian aspirations or suffering. A more balanced approach to the painfully complicated Middle East conflict would have made this an even stronger work.

Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History

Abstract: The editors of Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History, Darrin M. McMahon and Samuel Moyn, present essays written by some of the most prominent practitioners in the field on developments in...

Romantic Catholics: France's Postrevolutionary Generation in Search of a Modern Faith

Abstract: life experiences and broader cultural events shaped their writing and conclusions; this is a reminder that no historian, past or present, writes in a social or cultural vacuum. The early medieval origins of Europe have their place in forging the identity of the peoples of Europe and will continue to do so, now that Europe has entered a new phase, with the founding of the European Union. The book is organized under the following chapter headings in the following order: “300–700”; “The Franks and the State of France”; “The Old German Constitution”; “The Barbarians and the Fall of Rome”; “Empire and Aftermath”; “Nation, Class, and Race”; “The Lombards and the Risorgimento”; “Heirs of the Martyrs; Language, Law, and National Boundaries”; “Romans, Barbarians, and Prussians”; “Teutons, Romans, and ‘Scientific’ History”; “About Belgium: The Impact of the Great War”; “Past Settlements: Interpretations of the Migration Period from 1918–1945”; “Christian Engagement in the Interwar Period”; “The Emergence of Late Antiquity and Presenting a New Europe.” There are two areas that, in my view, should have been given more attention: Visigothic Hispania and the role of Christianity. I concur with the author that scholars from the Iberian Peninsula from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and first half of the twentieth century were marginal and few, at best. The discourse was dominated by English and Continental northern Europeans, with an exception here and there from southern Europe. The last two chapters, “The Emergence of Late Antiquity” and “Presenting a New Europe,” which treat the historiography of the past thirty years or so, are a missed opportunity to give their due to the many scholars, both within and outside of the Iberian Peninsula, working on late antique-Visigothic Spain. The historiography is voluminous and is ubiquitously published on both sides of the Atlantic by a new generation of young scholars of great talent in top tier scholarly publishing houses and journals. It has been quite a good while since Europe ended at the Pyrenees. Last, in his treatment of early medieval France, Wood mentions rightfully important conferences. A glaring omission, however, is the conference in 1997 titled Clovis: Histoire & me emoire: Actes du Colloque international d’histoire de Reims, organized by the eminent scholar Michel Rouche, which was attended, at one point, by both the President of France and Pope John Paul II, as well as a large numbers of scholars from both sides of the Atlantic. Of sixteen chapters, only chapter 14 considers the topic “Christian Engagement in the Interwar Period.” These slight deficiencies aside, the book should be on the shelf of every medievalist, and Professor Wood is to be congratulated for this important, well-written, engaging, and enlightening contribution to medieval historiography. The volume is clearly intended for medieval scholars, graduate students, and serious nonacademics, particularly those interested in the Germanic migrations, ethno-genesis, and social and political history.

Violence in Roman Egypt: A Study in Legal Interpretation

Abstract: analysis. Moreover, the book takes the labyrinthine worlds of diplomatic and ecclesiastical politics and presents them in the form of lucid narratives filled with drama and colorful personalities. The book has much to offer not only sinologists and church historians but also scholars and students of colonialism, nationalism, diplomacy, and French history. Ecclesiastical History is historical scholarship at its best.

True Relations: Reading, Literature, and Evidence in Seventeenth-Century England

Abstract: making of modern civil society in Britain, a split religion: moral rather than confessional, associational rather than parochial, benevolent rather than sacramental—a space perhaps where individuals may be improved, but not saved” (260). Voluntary associations within the Church of England not only revitalized English Protestantism, but also laid the foundation for a new era of Christian practice, worship, and identity. If I were to recommend one academic book to specialists, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates about the formation of Anglicanism and the role that the church played in the development of British civil society in the eighteenth century, it would be this book.

Refrigeration Nation: A History of Ice, Appliances, and Enterprise in America

Abstract: Refrigeration Nation: A History of Ice, Appliances, and Enterprise in America is an examination of the history of ice, refrigeration, and the process of creating and maintaining the business and te...

The Memoir of General Toussaint Louverture

Abstract: In April 1803, Toussaint Louverture died in the French prison of Fort de Joux. The memory of the former slave who led the Haitian Revolution before becoming the governor of Saint-Domingue would, ho...

Religion and State Formation in Postrevolutionary Mexico

Abstract: Building a state in the wake of social revolution is a most challenging prospect. In the case of the Mexican postrevolutionary state, historians have credited the presidency of Lazaro Cardenas (193...

Buying into the Regime: Grapes and Consumption in Cold War Chile and the United States: Tinsman, Heidi, Durham: Duke University Press, 376 pp., $26.95, ISBN 978-0822355359, Publication Date: January 2014

Abstract: visitors’ acceptance of Soviet superiority was, in his words, “the Holy Grail” of Soviet cultural diplomacy (25). Yet, as he effectively shows, the notion of Soviet superiority constantly evolved. In the 1920s, this notion was often future-oriented: the sights of homeless children on the streets, empty store shelves, and shabby infrastructure could not be easily concealed, but they could be contrasted with model communes, sanatoria, and other facilities. However exceptional, these models were real and were shown to Western visitors as glimpses of a new superior world. In the wake of the Great Depression and Soviet industrialization drives, Soviet notions of superiority evolved into what David-Fox calls Stalin’s “superiority complex” (285)—a rigid, institutionally reinforced stance that the Soviet Union, in its present state, was fully superior to the West and stood as a sole beacon to humanity. Hostility and a willingness to engage coexisted uneasily in the Soviet approach toward the West until the Great Terror of 1937–38 effectively curtailed cultural diplomacy and decimated VOKS. Western intellectuals’ public declarations of uncritical support for Stalin’s Soviet Union have long intrigued scholars, including, most notably, Francois Furet, Paul Hollander, David Engerman, and Tony Judt, who have offered a range of ideological, psychological, and sociological explanations. Instead of proposing another universal explanation, David-Fox points out that, privately, the same intellectuals were much more critical and cautious about Soviet policies and claims of superiority. He argues that they made their choice to accept “the code of friendship” (3) and keep these reservations to themselves for a broad variety of reasons: some believed in the supreme importance of fighting fascism, others were fascinated with promises of Soviet social engineering, and yet others held na€ıve hopes of exerting influence over Soviet leadership or were simply unwilling to break friendly ties with Stalinist Westernizers. The author’s point that “the Soviet experiment” was flexible enough to be appealing to a broad variety of people is reinforced by examples of avid interest in Soviet policies expressed by some on the extreme right in fascist Italy and Weimar Germany. He is less convincing in his assertion that the Soviets had a developed strategy of making overtures to the extreme right beyond infiltration or informationgathering. The book’s core argument is that cultural interactions with the West had a defining role in the construction, evolution, and self-conception of the Soviet system. Monitoring foreign visitors became part of the domestic surveillance system, showcasing models of socialist success to foreigners shaped Soviet domestic propaganda and aesthetic principles of Socialist Realism, and Stalin’s cult itself fused elements of domestic and international appeal. One could, indeed, argue that international success was part of the Soviet system’s existential rationale. What Western observers saw as one intriguing experiment was to their Soviet hosts the beginning of the inevitable future for the entire world. In sum, David-Fox’s impressive work expands our understanding of the Soviet Union and contributes to the promising effort of internationalizing Soviet history. It will undoubtedly attract the interest of a broad range of Russian and international history scholars.

The Roar of the Lion: The Untold Story of Churchill's World War II Speeches

Abstract: “If words counted, we should win this war.” Winston Churchill's prediction is now the historical consensus. His speeches, and his capacity for speechmaking, are regarded by many people to have been...

Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979–89

Abstract: Rodric Braithwaite, who served as British ambassador to the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War, is well-positioned to write a superb reflective history of the Russian experience in that ill-fa...

Ecclesiastical Colony: China's Catholic Church and the French Religious Protectorate

Abstract: attention to some aspects of the war that have been generally neglected. For example, he devotes a chapter to the participation of Soviet women in the war, noting, in particular, just how little appreciation they received from fellow citizens on the home front, and even from soldiers serving alongside them in Afghanistan. The author also addresses life in the ranks for average soldiers and their progressive disillusionment. Having received less than a hero’s welcome on their return, many were also embittered by the dissolution of the Soviet Union they had pledged to defend. Despite its conspicuous strengths, Braithwaite’s book contributes little new to the analysis of combat operations or the overall tide of the fighting. In this regard, other studies by Les Grau, Mark Galeotti, or Makhmut Gareev, to name only several, offer far greater depth of coverage. In addition, perhaps because he considers the Soviet experience first and foremost, Braithwaite does not extensively review the spectacular scale of destruction wrought by Soviet forces in Afghanistan. For instance, estimates of the number of Afghan civilian casualties appear only in a short annex in the back. Meanwhile, although a short chapter relates accounts of a modest number of war crimes and their handling by the military leadership, this work does not attempt to convey the dimensions of the human catastrophe that drove more than five million Afghans into massive refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran. Nevertheless, this work stands as a significant contribution to the literature on the subject.

The Christian Monitors: The Church of England and the Age of Benevolence, 1680–1730

Abstract: strategy that eventually saw victory only after a long journey that traversed the Carolina countryside but failed to end the war. Thomas Pollock, one of the wealthiest men in North Carolina, president of the executive council, and interim governor, sought to control both the military and political aspects of this conflict but had mixed results. King Tom Blount, leader of the upper Tuscarora Indians, who did not participate in the war, tried to remain neutral but, finally, sided with the North Carolinians in an effort to retain his sovereignty. James Moore, another militia leader from South Carolina, ultimately saved the day in March 1714 and defeated the Tuscaroras. In his final chapter, La Vere not only tells readers what happened to each individual afterwards, but also reflects on the war’s causes, lessons, and ends by reminding readers that, despite this conflict and other challenges, Indians still reside in North Carolina today. Although La Vere’s unique approach to this topic works to some extent, it also obscures some of the finer details and important information that he has to share with his audience. For instance, in his chapter about de Graffenried, there is a lengthy section about John Lawson, who seems to deserve his own chapter. La Vere gives an excellent overview of Tuscarora life that takes up more than half of King Hancock’s chapter, but it gets slighted by the chapter’s title and focus. Similarly, he does an admirable job capturing the complexity of native politics, both among the Tuscaroras and with their neighbors, but this critical facet gets lost in the biographical rubric that he has chosen to use. Moreover, many characters, such as de Graffenried and Pollock, keep reappearing, so they are not contained in their one designated chapter but, rather, show up in almost all of them, causing confusion and repetition. In the end, it is a story well told but not clearly organized, much like the Tuscarora War itself.

Engineering Philadelphia: The Sellers Family and the Industrial Metropolis

Abstract: Both the rise and decline of industrial Philadelphia, as explained by Dominic Vitiello, assistant professor of city planning and urban studies at the University of Pennsylvania, have depended to a ...

Experiencing Power, Generating Authority: Cosmos, Politics, and the Ideology of Kingship in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia: Hill, Jane A., Philip Jones, and Antonio J. Morales, eds., Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 480 pp., $69.95, ISBN 978-1-934536-64-3, Publication Date: November 2013

Abstract: This volume combines the works of thirteen authors who have contributed to an engaging and multifaceted approach to better understanding the ruling institutions in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Ex...

Antisemitism and the American Far Left

Abstract: Antisemitism and the American Far Left, by Stephen H. Norwood, seeks to trace the growth of the contemporary anti-Israel movement in America to positions that have evolved on the radical left over ...

Cultures of Commemoration: War Memorials Ancient and Modern

Abstract: Cultures of Commemoration is a volume of the Proceedings of the British Academy published by Oxford University Press It grew out of a symposium on commemorative war memorials held at the British A

Osterhammel, Jürgen The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century

Abstract: This is a very big book, encompassing a huge range of historical topics in some 919 pages (approximately 440,000 words) of text, with a bibliography of almost 100 pages, including more than 2,700 e...

Staying Afloat: Risk and Uncertainty in Spanish Atlantic World Trade, 1760–1820

Abstract: films in Hollywood, and the antiNazism with which Hollywood eventually engaged. Collectively, they do not reveal an industry-wide “pact with Hitler,” as the book’s subtitle suggests; instead, they show that the moguls of three studios followed the directives of censors who, themselves, were under the influence of Nazis. To this, Urwand attaches copious amounts of evidence from German and US sources that implicate other industry leaders in appeasing Nazism. The result is a provocative, significant, and highly readable attack on the idea that 1930s Hollywood was synonymous with antifascism. There are many villains throughout Urwand’s book. At times, Urwand’s attacks on Louis B. Mayer seem partially based on hearsay found in the archives, but he augments this hearsay with astute speculation about the historical record. Of all the studio heads, Urwand targets none more than Mayer. Urwand also skillfully portrays how Nazis fixated on the studio system to the point of using Consul Georg Gyssling as their censor. Hollywood accepted him; Gyssling’s relationships are reconstructed as Urwand masterfully dissects his censorship, film by film. Will Hays’s acquiescence to Gyssling surprises; the persistence of the notoriously antisemitic Joseph Breen, interjecting himself on behalf of Gyssling’s agenda, stupefies. The concluding chapter introduces the book’s hero: screenwriter-turnedactivist Ben Hecht. In many ways, Urwand has channeled the tenacity and worldview of the man who, in the 1940s, condemned American Jews he deemed too timid in their anti-Nazism. According to Urwand, Hecht “saw Hollywood as one of the great Jewish achievements. The only problem, in his view, was that the studio heads did not share his pride. In fact, they had removed all images of Jews from the screen” (245), Urwand argues that this removal occurred off-lot by German censors and in-house by studios editing with their ears and eyes focused on preserving the German market. With no sympathetic images of Jews onscreen, audiences never would learn to accept them offscreen, an idea that played into the Nazis’ hands. Indeed, Germans allowed American films to be shown in their theatres every year of the decade, because they felt Hollywood promoted many values they wanted modeled for their audiences— Nazi values. Urwand reveals that appeasing German anti-Semitism had even graver consequences than subjecting American audiences to essentially Nazified movies. Forced to keep their local profits in Germany, Fox and Paramount used their revenue to create nationalistic newsreels: propaganda furthering Nazi aims. Worse, Urwand portrays MGM (in the month after Kristallnacht) discovering it could smuggle money by laundering it through the armaments industry that enabled Hitler’s war machine to conquer Europe and kill its Jews. These three studios used the term collaboration in their German correspondence, and Urwand indignantly pillories them for kowtowing and remaining in Germany when most studios left the market. Should all of Hollywood be accused? Urwand musters compelling evidence that, over time, all studio heads tried to comply with the culture of censorship and erased Judaism from the screen in the 1930s. His own evidence, however, suggests that a more nuanced interpretation of negotiation could have been highlighted. Regardless, with its focus on moguls and their profit motive, his thesis holds, even if his title aggrandizes. Thomas Doherty’s 2013 book Hollywood and Hitler, 1933–1939 (Columbia University Press) competes with Urwand’s. Some films appear in both, and each author includes significant films the other avoided, but they have written different histories. Doherty defines Hollywood broadly, so as to look beyond the titans and write sympathetically about Urwand’s antithesis: how Hollywood developed its antifascist politics. Urwand’s focus, informed by Neal Gabler’s An Empire of their Own (Anchor, 1988), laments that Hollywood’s studio heads wished “to see themselves as Americans rather than Jews” and lambasts them for having “had no desire to defend their Jewish heritage. They preferred . . . to let the people hate Jews” (218), and hate led to death. For Urwand, the depths of archives around the world revealed that every major studio head either essentially or actively collaborated with Nazis to contribute to the Holocaust’s rise, protraction, and (as argued in a short epilogue) long absence in postwar Hollywood cinema. Only in 1959 did Hollywood revisit the Holocaust with an inescapably Jewish subject: Anne Frank (315). For Urwand, Hollywood never turned truly antifascist in its golden age.

Chasing Sound: Technology, Culture, and the Art of Studio Recording from Edison to the LP

Abstract: neoliberalism in Chile—the country typically referenced as the model of US capitalism in Latin America. Tinsman does not embrace neoliberalism. Instead of privileging a narrative in which Latin America figures as the powerless victim of US imperialism, she highlights the connection between local actors and greater historical processes. Without ever denying US dominance in the hemisphere, Tinsman emphasizes the reciprocal impact that Chile and the United States had on each other. Gender is central to that story. Using rich oral histories, chapter 2 discusses how Pinochet’s neoliberal policies dismantled the Chilean agrarian reform’s land redistribution and left many rural families impoverished, necessitating women’s entry into the workforce of the booming grape industry. Women fruit workers used their income to make their own purchases, mainly household appliances, clothing, and the occasional cosmetic item. These forms of consumption correlated to the regime’s gendered consumer culture. At the same time, women’s daily struggles with their husbands over their new purchasing power significantly challenged the male-dominated family structure the regime touted, and which men had enjoyed until then. The final chapter contests widespread assertions that women were more vulnerable to consumerism’s lure than men. The opposition stressed consumer culture as capitalist anathema tied directly to Pinochet. Indeed, the dictator boasted of the growth of consumerism as proof of the regime’s success. Tinsman demonstrates how women fruit workers forged powerful prodemocracy movements through feminist and human rights organizations, increased union leadership, and formed soup kitchens and other cooperatives where their consumption benefitted their communities and served as a space for connecting their personal experiences to social problems. Tinsman has joined the lived experiences and consumption practices of Chilean rural fruit workers seamlessly to the escalation and contestation of neoliberalism and military rule in Chile, as well as the politics of US consumer demand for fresh, healthy foods. Nonspecialists, graduate students, and undergraduates will read this important book easily and with enthusiasm. Specialists in Chilean, Latin American, US, labor, gender, and transnational history will agree that Buying into the Regime is on the cutting edge of historical research. It is a brilliant example of linking local actors to larger historical processes, both within national borders and beyond them.

Nationalism in the Troubled Triangle: Cyprus, Greece and Turkey

Abstract: The area of the eastern Mediterranean has long been rich soil not only for the development of rivalries, clashes, and conflicts, but also for a vast amount of scholarship on the countries involved ...

The Roman Inquisition on the Stage of Italy, c. 1590–1640

Abstract: This meticulously researched volume by Thomas Mayer continues the work he began in The Roman Inquisition: A Papal Bureaucracy. In the first volume, he focused on the role of the pope and the actual...

Faisal I of Iraq

Abstract: This volume combines the works of thirteen authors who have contributed to an engaging and multifaceted approach to better understanding the ruling institutions in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Experiencing Power, Generating Authority stemmed from a conference of the same name that presented a comparative analysis of material records left by various periods of Egyptian and Mesopotamian culture. Edited by Jane A. Hill, Philip Jones, and Antonio J. Morales, who provide a very valuable introduction, the reader includes three distinct sections, which display the full breadth of approaches to examining ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian kingship—a topic that follows from the seminal work of Henri Frankfort’s Kingship and the Gods (University of Chicago Press, 1948). The first section aims to tackle the relationship between kingship and the cosmos. Chapters by Morris, Charpin, Frahm, Morenz, and Scurlock highlight the role of the king in maintaining the equilibrium that is cosmic balance, while also ensuring political stability in his dominion. Notably, the chapters by Morris and Morenz, both predominantly about Egypt, focus on analyzing the creation and subsequent promulgation of the image of the king, especially in regard to Protodynastic and Early Dynastic monumental evidence. Charpin’s interpretation, although focused on the solar image of the king during the Old Babylonian Period, highlights similarities to Egypt, especially to the king’s divine connection to judgement. Section 2 focuses on the political and social structures in Egypt and Mesopotamia, with the authors posing different methods through which the king’s authority was generated and applied. Although Moreno Garc ıa’s examination of state administration in relation to kingship in Egypt includes material that has been raised elsewhere, it presents a much-appreciated discussion of the integration of central and provincial elites before the Middle Kingdom, highlighting the notion of regionalism. The chapter by B arta focuses on kingship through monumental architecture until the end of the Egyptian Old Kingdom, providing a balanced discussion of how the royal office developed, how it was presented, and what eroded its authority. Pongratz-Leistan suggests that the Assyrian scholars of the Sargonid period played a key role in shaping power by creating the authority for kingship. The political elites could choose to ignore these scholars, though their cultural definition of universal order and judgement was inescapable. Dickson examines early state formation through the royal tombs of Ur from Early Dynastic Mesopotamia. His novel use of conflict theory and his comparative analysis of Early Dynastic Egypt provoke interesting thoughts. The third section explores the relationship between kingship and the physical environment. These chapters focus on the human manipulation and interpretation of the landscape. Roaf shows that the Mesopotamian kings had the ability to shape the landscape through the construction of monuments and through their command of resources, as a visible demonstration of power. Ataç’s comparative analysis of Neo-Assyrian and Egyptian concepts of geography provides a worthwhile discussion of the ideology of kingship in relation to interacting with and control over the physical environment. Lloyd’s chapter underlines the notion that the Egyptians understood events in the Eastern Desert as part of a numinous connection between the king and the landscape, which could be played out and recorded through expeditions. Some aspects of this publication are certainly useful, especially the numerous cross-cultural comparisons. Though both Egypt and Mesopotamia were diverse in their cultural makeup, the essays here highlight how similar cultures can be, even when geographically separated. Some of the chapters become a little repetitive, as certain authors have also provided lengthy discussions of the same topics in other volumes, such as Ancient Egyptian Administration (BRILL, 2013). Therefore, some analyses do not offer overtly new approaches; rather, they reinforce existing notions. Nevertheless, this does not detract from the overall aim of the book, which is to draw together a discussion of three areas of kingship in Egypt and Mesopotamia and present them in one collated volume as a well-thought-out collection of topics that do justice to kingship in the ancient Near East. What the contributions do divulge, and, indeed, emphasize, is that crosscultural comparison exposes the complex and diverse approaches that kings in Egypt and Mesopotamia used to unify and govern their realms. Though some of the chapters are advanced, this volume, with its useful organization and worthwhile contributions from all of its authors, is certainly useful for both budding and experienced academics. Every student of ancient political process, the ideology and presentation of kingship, or the relationship of regal interactions with their surroundings should read Experiencing Power, Generating Authority.

Streetlife: The Untold History of Europe's Twentieth Century

Abstract: In Streetlife: The Untold History of Europe's Twentieth Century, Leif Jerram, senior lecturer in urban history at the University of Manchester, takes his reader on a sweeping and thoughtful tour th

Serna, Laura Isabel Making Cinelandia: American Films and Mexican Film Culture before the Golden Age

Abstract: Laura Isabel Serna's Making Cinelandia: American Films and Mexican Film Culture before the Golden Age examines how Mexicans in Mexico and Mexican American migrants in the United States appropriated...