Book reviews

Stefano Bloch applauds a brilliant account of what street art can reveal about people, places and politics

Carrie Tirado Bramen enjoys a wide-ranging analysis of an important concept that has recently been neglected by scholars

Nathan Abrams is impressed by a comprehensive attempt to survey the ways Nazi atrocities have been represented on screen

June Purvis enjoys a group biography that offers new insights into the role of British working-class women in the struggle for the vote 

Robert Eaglestone reflects on the limits of hagiography

Robert A. Segal is unconvinced by an argument about the depth of religious racism

Emma Rees is impressed by a disturbing study of how universities largely fail to address their employees’ grievances

Peter J. Smith gets drowned in the detail of an ambitious study of the playwright’s milieu

Geoffrey Cantor has mixed feelings about a bold attempt to put a 14th-century friar at the heart of our understanding of science

Lucy Bolton is intrigued by an analysis of changing racial attitudes based on the career of a great Hollywood icon

Ruby Guyatt enjoys a wide-ranging account of how developments in religion have often been shaped by changes in the climate

Martin Cohen takes issue with a polemic that seems to skate over some of the deeper dimensions of logic and scientific method

John Gilbey is intrigued and disturbed by an occasionally irreverent account of how environmental disaster haunts popular culture 

Susan McHugh enjoys a detailed analysis of how our relations with dogs reveal some essential truths about what it means to be human

John Barry enjoys a bold attempt to rethink our political priorities in the light of the ecological crisis

Peter J. Smith enjoys a powerful analysis of how the work of the Bard cuts through simplistic notions of national identity

Ann Hughes enjoys a richly detailed account of how Henry VIII imposed his power over the church

Richard J. Williams applauds an unusually optimistic case for environmentalism

Johann N. Neem enjoys a sharp historical analysis of why the humanities always seem to be overpromising on what they can do

Georgina Murray applauds a bold attempt to put gender at the heart of a wider political critique

R. C. Richardson enjoys a vivid account of how the French Revolution helped shape new ways of understanding the past

Angelia R. Wilson applauds an analysis seeking to bring far more diverse voices into the study of politics

Deborah D. Rogers is unconvinced by an ambitious attempt to apply the insights of neuroscience to centuries of literature

Geoffrey Alderman admires a definitive account of a wartime massacre that remains controversial today

Lincoln Allison is not wholly convinced by an analysis of the forces that shape history

Charlotte Jones enjoys a historical account of radical politics that may have important lessons for today

Stephen Mumford enjoys a brilliant analysis of what has gone wrong with the world’s most popular sport, which is less convincing on solutions

David Owen on a compelling case for interdisciplinary analysis of refugee economies

Lisa Hopkins enjoys a vivid picture of the part of London where Shakespeare once resided

Jan Machielsen considers the ‘cancel culture’ of the Counter-Reformation and its echoes today

Rebecca Buxton is thrilled by a rich and accessible collection that challenges the age-old assumption of male-dominated philosophy

Peter J. Smith admires a bold attempt to show how details of poetic form reflected deep political and religious divisions in early modern England

Robert Eaglestone finds much to admire in an unapologetic attempt to justify the humanities in their own terms

Jane O’Grady is frustrated by a minutely calibrated study of centuries of reflections on eroticism

Laura Harvey applauds an attempt to bring more humanistic modes of thinking into the ‘dismal science’

David A. Sanders enjoys a vivid account of the many crafty ways academics steal the words of others

Kalwant Bhopal is impressed by a sobering analysis of how racial attitudes shape even our most intimate interactions

Gabriel Paquette is impressed by an ambitious account of how a continent has kept trying to reinvent itself after major wars

Deborah D. Rogers learns how the privileged make college admissions processes work in their favour

Ruth Heholt discovers how supernatural fiction is deeply revealing about changing attitudes to class and gender 

Kristen Ghodsee applauds a journalist’s essay collection that offers sharp insights into post-communist eastern Europe

Jeremy MacClancy has mixed feelings about a wide-ranging attempt to create ‘mindful food citizens’

Robert Eaglestone relishes a business history that is as much of a page-turner as a novel 

Lincoln Allison enjoys a broad, sometimes speculative account of the mania for written constitutions that took hold in the 1750s

Martin Myers applauds a bold attempt to re-examine one of the sacred cows of liberal societies

James Stevens Curl has reservations about a broad overview of the development of Christianity through its architecture

Gabriel Paquette enjoys a bold attempt to offer solutions for universities threatened by shrinking student numbers and declining revenues

Anil Seth has mixed feelings about an ambitious study of consciousness that draws extensively on psychoanalysis

Ann Hughes enjoys a set of sharp, wide-ranging essays by a historian who revolutionised our understanding of early modern Europe

Robert A. Segal applauds a comprehensive survey of the distinctions and similarities between the three great Religions of the Book

Bryan Cheyette praises an ambitious account of the place of literature in addressing today’s fundamental issues of persecution and injustice 

Emily Michelson is fascinated by an illuminating study of how architecture expressed power and shaped people’s lives 

David Newman applauds a judicious study of the Middle Eastern politics of cartography

Matthew Broome is impressed by a study of our changing ideas about dementia that combines scientific and cultural analysis

Charlotte Jones is fascinated by a study of the places in between and their significance in contemporary fiction

Catherine Clinton enjoys a rich analysis of how the echoes of America’s bloodiest war still resound today

Nathan Abrams considers the many ways Nazi atrocities continue to echo through popular culture on screen

Devorah Baum applauds a timely attempt to take on the naysayers and give the French philosopher his due

Catherine Rottenberg enjoys a sharp analysis of the sexual politics behind the devices that provide domestic services

A. W. Purdue is impressed by a dazzling analysis of the human capacity for violence and how it has moulded our lives