New Books in History

In his new book On Trial for Reason: Science, Religion, and Culture in the Galileo Affair (Oxford University Press, 2019), Maurice Finocchiaro shows that there were (and are) really two Galileo “affairs.” Galileo’s original trial and condemnation forms the first affair, the cultural history of controversies about the meaning of the original trial, forms the second. With scrupulous attention to evidence and the argumentation employed by various participants, Dr. Finocchiaro’s book is at once an accessible primer on a key event in the 16th- and 17th-century Scientific Revolution, and a thought provoking look at how the subsequent controversies resonate down to the present day.

Aaron Weinacht is Professor of History at the University of Montana Western, in Dillon, MT. He teaches courses on Russian and Soviet History, World History, and Philosophy of History. His research interests include the sociological theorist Philip Rieff and the influence of Russian nihilism on American libertarianism.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

George Perkins Marsh Prize winning environmental historian and geographer Joseph E. Taylor III's new book, Persistent Callings: Seasons of Work and Identity on the Oregon Coast (Oregon State University Press, 2019), takes an innovative approach to the history of fisheries and work in the Pacific Northwest. Focusing on the Nestucca river valley, Taylor shows how nature, culture, markets, and technology affected the "callings," or identities, of residents from pre-colonial times to the very recent past.

The first chapter gives readers a sense of the Nestucca Native Americans who developed ceremonies that centered on the region's abundant diadromous salmon populations. After this chapter, the book leaps to the second half of the nineteenth century when settler-colonists exterminated and removed Indians and began farming. Taylor shifts attention away from itinerate wage workers as the primary source of labor in the Pacific Northwest and centers his analysis instead on the families who took to the ocean as one of a number of economic survival strategies. After 1927, fishing in Nestucca slowly transformed from a subsistence activity to a form of recreation for tourists. The tourist were incursions in Nestucca but also a source of revenue for locals.

Using oral histories as evidence, Taylor spends a lot of time describing the minutia of fishing work; its physicality, technological stagnation, and its dangers. These details expose workers' connections to the landscape, connections which shaped their identities. The short book is a vital addition to environmental studies because of the way that Taylor seamlessly integrates environmental history into the history of one community. His method shows how and why environmental factors should be a part of all historical narratives.

Jason L. Newton is a visiting assistant professor of history at Cornell University. His book manuscript, Cutover Capitalism: The Industrialization of the Northern Forest, 1850-1950, is a history of the changing types of labor performed by people, trees, and the landscape in the American Northeast as that area industrialized. He has also published on nature, race, and immigration. He teaches classes on labor and the environment.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Ahmet T. Kuru’s new book Islam, Authoritarianism and Underdevelopment, A Global and Historical Comparison (Cambridge University Press, 2019) is a ground-breaking history and analysis of the evolution of the state in Muslim countries. Thoroughly researched and accessibly written, Kuru’s work traces the template of the modern-day state in many Muslim-majority countries to fundamental political, social and economic changes in the 11th century. That was when Islamic scholars who until then had by and large refused to surrender their independence to the state were co-opted by Muslim rulers. It was a time when the merchant class lost its economic clout as the Muslim world moved from a mercantile to a feudal economy. Religious and other scholars were often themselves merchants or funded by merchants.

The transition coincided with the rise of the military state legitimized by religious scholars who had little choice but to go into its employ. They helped the state develop a forced Sunni Muslim orthodoxy based on text rather than reason- or tradition based interpretation of Islam with the founding of madrassahs or religious seminaries that were designed to counter the rise of Shiite states in North Africa and counter less or unorthodox strands of the faith. Kuru’s history could hardly be more relevant. It lays bare the roots of modern-day, illiberal, authoritarian or autocratic states in the Muslim world that are characterized by some form of often rent-driven state capitalism and frequently expansionary in their effort to ensure regime survival and increase rents.

These states feature education systems that fail to develop critical thinking and religious establishments that are subservient to their rulers. Kuru’s book also in effect describes one of the original sources of the civilizational state that has become a fixture in the struggle to shape a new world order. With his book, Kuru has made an invaluable contribution to the understanding of the stagnation as well as the turmoil that has swept the Middle East and North Africa as well as the wider Islamic world.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Falklands War was in many ways the defining event in the premiership of Margaret Thatcher. In many ways it was also the last roar of the British Lion. An event shrouded in both nostalgia and patriotism, at the time and subsequently.

In his book, The Falklands War: An Imperial History (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Ezequiel Mercau a post-doctoral fellow of University College Dublin, revisits a decades-old debate about whether the Falklands dispute was (and remains) a last-ditch effort to hold on to the vestiges of Britain’s imperial & imperialist past. Taking Britain's painful process of de-colonisation as his starting point, he shows how the powerful Falklands lobby helped revive the idea of a 'British world', transforming a minor squabble into a full-blown war. Boasting original perspectives on the Falklanders, the Four Nations and the Anglo-Argentines, and based on a wealth of unseen material, he endeavors to shed new light on the British world, Thatcher's Britain, devolution, immigration and political culture – arguing that neither the dispute, the war, nor its aftermath can be divorced from the ongoing legacies of empire. Not everyone will agree with some of the novel and theoretical aspects of Ezequiel Mercau’s treatment, but all will agree that it is a most unusual and interesting treatment of the subject.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Crusader World (Routledge, 2015), edited by Adrian J. Boas, is a multidisciplinary survey of the current state of research in the field of crusader studies, an area of study which has become increasingly popular in recent years. In this volume Adrian Boas draws together an impressive range of academics, including work from renowned scholars as well as a number of though-provoking pieces from emerging researchers, in order to provide broad coverage of the major aspects of the period. This authoritative work will play an important role in the future direction of crusading studies.

This volume enriches present knowledge of the crusades, addressing such wide-ranging subjects as: intelligence and espionage, gender issues, religious celebrations in crusader Jerusalem, political struggles in crusader Antioch, the archaeological study of battle sites and fortifications, diseases suffered by the crusaders, crusading in northern Europe and Spain and the impact of Crusader art. The relationship between Crusaders and Muslims, two distinct and in many way opposing cultures, is also examined in depth, including a discussion of how the Franks perceived their enemies.

Arranged into eight thematic sections, The Crusader World considers many central issues as well as a large number of less familiar topics of the crusades, crusader society, history and culture. With over 100 photographs, line drawings and maps, this impressive collection of essays is a key resource for students and scholars alike.

Renee Garfinkel is a Jerusalem-based psychologist, writer, and Middle East commentator for the nationally syndicated TV program, The Armstrong Williams Show.. Write her at [email protected] or tweet @embracingwisdom

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Crusader World (Routledge, 2015), edited by Adrian J. Boas, is a multidisciplinary survey of the current state of research in the field of crusader studies, an area of study which has become increasingly popular in recent years. In this volume Adrian Boas draws together an impressive range of academics, including work from renowned scholars as well as a number of though-provoking pieces from emerging researchers, in order to provide broad coverage of the major aspects of the period. This authoritative work will play an important role in the future direction of crusading studies.

This volume enriches present knowledge of the crusades, addressing such wide-ranging subjects as: intelligence and espionage, gender issues, religious celebrations in crusader Jerusalem, political struggles in crusader Antioch, the archaeological study of battle sites and fortifications, diseases suffered by the crusaders, crusading in northern Europe and Spain and the impact of Crusader art. The relationship between Crusaders and Muslims, two distinct and in many way opposing cultures, is also examined in depth, including a discussion of how the Franks perceived their enemies.

Arranged into eight thematic sections, The Crusader World considers many central issues as well as a large number of less familiar topics of the crusades, crusader society, history and culture. With over 100 photographs, line drawings and maps, this impressive collection of essays is a key resource for students and scholars alike.

Renee Garfinkel is a Jerusalem-based psychologist, writer, and Middle East commentator for the nationally syndicated TV program, The Armstrong Williams Show.. Write her at [email protected] or tweet @embracingwisdom

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Ahmet T. Kuru’s new book Islam, Authoritarianism and Underdevelopment, A Global and Historical Comparison (Cambridge University Press, 2019) is a ground-breaking history and analysis of the evolution of the state in Muslim countries. Thoroughly researched and accessibly written, Kuru’s work traces the template of the modern-day state in many Muslim-majority countries to fundamental political, social and economic changes in the 11th century. That was when Islamic scholars who until then had by and large refused to surrender their independence to the state were co-opted by Muslim rulers. It was a time when the merchant class lost its economic clout as the Muslim world moved from a mercantile to a feudal economy. Religious and other scholars were often themselves merchants or funded by merchants.

The transition coincided with the rise of the military state legitimized by religious scholars who had little choice but to go into its employ. They helped the state develop a forced Sunni Muslim orthodoxy based on text rather than reason- or tradition based interpretation of Islam with the founding of madrassahs or religious seminaries that were designed to counter the rise of Shiite states in North Africa and counter less or unorthodox strands of the faith. Kuru’s history could hardly be more relevant. It lays bare the roots of modern-day, illiberal, authoritarian or autocratic states in the Muslim world that are characterized by some form of often rent-driven state capitalism and frequently expansionary in their effort to ensure regime survival and increase rents.

These states feature education systems that fail to develop critical thinking and religious establishments that are subservient to their rulers. Kuru’s book also in effect describes one of the original sources of the civilizational state that has become a fixture in the struggle to shape a new world order. With his book, Kuru has made an invaluable contribution to the understanding of the stagnation as well as the turmoil that has swept the Middle East and North Africa as well as the wider Islamic world.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

The Falklands War was in many ways the defining event in the premiership of Margaret Thatcher. In many ways it was also the last roar of the British Lion. An event shrouded in both nostalgia and patriotism, at the time and subsequently.

In his book, The Falklands War: An Imperial History (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Ezequiel Mercau a post-doctoral fellow of University College Dublin, revisits a decades-old debate about whether the Falklands dispute was (and remains) a last-ditch effort to hold on to the vestiges of Britain’s imperial & imperialist past. Taking Britain's painful process of de-colonisation as his starting point, he shows how the powerful Falklands lobby helped revive the idea of a 'British world', transforming a minor squabble into a full-blown war. Boasting original perspectives on the Falklanders, the Four Nations and the Anglo-Argentines, and based on a wealth of unseen material, he endeavors to shed new light on the British world, Thatcher's Britain, devolution, immigration and political culture – arguing that neither the dispute, the war, nor its aftermath can be divorced from the ongoing legacies of empire. Not everyone will agree with some of the novel and theoretical aspects of Ezequiel Mercau’s treatment, but all will agree that it is a most unusual and interesting treatment of the subject.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Steven Seegel’s Map Men: Transnational Lives and Deaths of Geographers in the Making of East Central Europe (University of Chicago Press, 2018) is an insightful contribution to the history of map making which is written through and by individual geographers/cartographers/map men. The book focuses primarily on four countries: Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Ukraine. When guiding his reader through the entanglements of transnational endeavors of making maps, Seegel zeroes in on personal stories of five, what he calls, characters/protagonists: Albrecht Penck, Eugeniusz Romer, Stepan Rudnyts’kyi, Isaiah Bowman, and Count Pal Teleki. An individual story is an archive of biographical data and statistics, but it also opens up an entire world of history and geography that provides an insight into geopolitical decisions which eventually change and impact lives of those who happen to be part of this map journey. Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Map Men offers a personalized version of how maps are drawn and made. At first glance, maps may seem stable and crystalized. However, as Seegel insightfully shows, this is an illusion: maps are fantasies, as he puts it in this interview. This understanding of maps does not in any way minimize the science that lies behind the map creating. However, what Map Men does is show the making of maps in their multiple and at times complex and intertwined processes: maps are points of references, but maps are also texts which invite a diversity of stories and interpretations.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Washington Post best-selling presidential historian and former senior White House aide Tevi Troy examines some of the juiciest, nastiest, and most consequential internecine administration struggles in modern American history. In doing so, he not only provides context on the administrations, the players, and their in-fighting but also show how those fights shaped the administrations in question, the presidents' historical reputations, and the policy landscape of modern America. In showing these fights, the book highlights tough tactics used by sharp-elbowed operatives to prevail in bureaucratic disputes, from leaks to delays in submitting items for review to moving rivals out of cherished office spaces.

Fight House: Rivalries in the White House from Truman to Trump (Regnery History, 2020) also looks at the presidents' role in all of this and questions long-standing assumptions about whether creative tension is really the best method of governing. Troy employs both his historical knowledge as well as his own high-level White House experience to inform his recommendations for the best ways to staff and organize a White House to ensure the best results for the president - and the American people.

Part riveting interpersonal history, part case study, and part analysis of the commanders in chief and their teams, Fight House is essential listening for students of the presidency and of the nation as a whole.

Marshall Poe is the editor of the New Books Network.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices