History 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.

Jonathan Kennedy’s Pathogenesis reveals how diseases have built and broken empires and economies.

By Kathleen Jamie

Also featuring M John Harrison's Wish I Was Here and Jonathan Miles on the French Riviera.

By Sophie McBain, Christiana Bishop, Michael Prodger and Ellen Peirson-Hagger

After the revolutions of 1848, liberals helped create a conservative international order that has shaped the world since.

By Samuel Moyn

Nikhil Krishnan’s A Terribly Serious Adventure shows how Oxford’s “ordinary language” movement, pioneered by JL Austin and Gilbert Ryle, looked…

By Thomas Nagel

Men at War, Luke Turner’s tender account of servicemen’s transgressive private lives, transforms our understanding of the Second World War.

By Erica Wagner

How Quinn Slobodian, the author of Crack-Up Capitalism, came back down to earth.

By Gavin Jacobson

The historian is right that Britain’s colonial legacy is morally complex. So why is his defence of it so simplistic?

By Tomiwa Owolade

A new history of the 17th century reminds us how bitter ideological conflicts have shaped our democracy.

By Rowan Williams