The Whig interpretation of Europe
Roderick Beaton’s spirited history of the Continent cannot square its idealism with the bloody story that it tells
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.
Surviving forced labour in wartime Berlin
Ian Buruma’s account of his father’s years in a German factory accounts department is moving but limited in scope
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The Rasputin legend
He dazzled the tsar and tsarina with his virile charisma. But, as Antony Beevor shows, he also inspired their demise
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Labour’s original sinner
The Party is still reliving the story of Ramsay MacDonald
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The violence at the heart of the CCP
Frank Dikötter charts the rise of Chinese communism through its brutality. But does he undervalue the role of ideas?
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The dark side of the Enlightenment
Capitalism is far from the only extractive force in human history
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Syria, from the Ottomans to al-Qaeda
The country is still haunted by a long and fractured past
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Was this French cowboy the first fascist?
The eccentric life of Marquis de Morès, anti-Semitic rabble-rouser
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Islam is the engine of world history
The religion may have transformed every corner of the globe, but it was also radically changed in the process
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The interwar years were as bewildering as the present
Alwyn Turner’s new history reassures us that the past is not, as many imagine, any cosier or more patriotic than…
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Recovering the lost history of Gaza
Decades of conflict and displacement have obliterated the history of one of the world’s oldest human settlements
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How not to talk about capitalism
The more it penetrates our daily lives, the less we seem to understand the “system that runs the world”
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Islam is part of European history
Historians’ dismissal of the continent’s Muslim legacy is helping to feed contemporary divisions
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Who killed the social housing dream?
A new history of Britain’s tower blocks reveals the ways architecture and ideology have combined to ensure residents are always…
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The price of revolution
Jason Burke chronicles how radical activists in the 1970s found violent new ways to pursue their causes
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An Afghan hotel that has seen it all
Lyse Doucet’s The Finest Hotel in Kabul is a vivid and personal display of Afghanistan’s turbulent political history
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The liberating power of vodou
Slave risings across the Caribbean, argues Sudhir Hazareesingh’s new book, drew less on Enlightenment ideas than African spirit lore
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Christopher Marlowe’s stage fright
Stephen Greenblatt’s attempt to reconstruct the playwright’s story is brilliant – but Marlowe the man remains a mystery
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The struggle for Greenland
As Elizabeth Buchanan’s new history shows, Donald Trump is not the first foreigner to covet the Arctic territory. But his…
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Christianity’s political ascent
Alice Roberts’ history of the late Roman empire dispels the notion of a faith for the poor and oppressed –…
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