Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War

Marc Egnal (Hill and Wang)

A reinterpretation of the American Civil War from the 1820s through Reconstruction, which moves beyond the reigning orthodoxy that the American Civil War was waged over moral principles, to argue that economics was instead the main factor that moved the country to war.

Saladin

A. R. Azzam (Pearson)

A biography of Saladin, which explores the Islamic world that he lived in, transformed by the Sunni Revival in the 10th and 11th centuries, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the leader himself.

Insurance Fire Brigades 1680-1929: The Birth of the British Fire Service

Brian Wright (The History Press)

An insight into how insurance companies pioneered the fire service for almost 250 years, from 1680 with the foundation of the Fire Office in London, until 1929 when local authorities took control and the last insurance brigade put out its last fire.

The Georgian Star: How William and Caroline Herschel Revolutionized Our Understanding of the Cosmos

Michael D. Lemonick (Norton)

A biography of William Herschel, who accidentally discovered the planet Uranus in 1781, and his sister Caroline with whom he pioneered techniques that are still used by astronomers today.

Truth Machine: The Contentious History of DNA Fingerprinting

Michael Lynch, Simon A. Cole, Ruth NcNally, Kathleen Jordan (The University of Chicago Press)

An ethnographic account of DNA fingerprinting and its evolution, which considers court cases in the United States and United Kingdom beginning in the mid-1980s, when the practice was invented, until the present day.

Remembering the Roman People: Essays on Late-Republican Politics and Literature

T.P. Wiseman (Oxford University Press)

Ten linked essays on the political culture of the late Roman republic, which reject the assumption that the republic was always and necessarily an oligarchy and emphasise instead the interest and ideological standpoint of the Roman People as a whole.

The Ismaili Assassins: A History of Medieval Murder

James Waterson (Frontline Books)

A study of the origins, actions and enduring legacy of the Ismaili Assassins, an underground group of political killers, which provides an insight into the history of the Crusades and the early Islamic period.

The Grail Quest and the World of Arthur

ed. Norris J. Lacy (Boydell & Brewer)

A collection of essays which discuss quest themes in Arthurian literature, especially the quest for the Holy Grail. Covering topics from the Grail of the Crusaders to female desire in the Arthurian legend, they focus in particular on the incompatibility of the Arthurian world and the Grail quest.

White Men’s God: The extraordinary Story of Missionaries in Africa

Martin Ballard (Greenwood World Publishing)

A history of the modern missionary movement to Africa placed within the wider social and political context, from early attempts by German and English Protestant missionary societies to set up missions in West Africa, to the work of a wide range of other societies in different parts of Africa.

The Speculation Economy: How Finance Triumphed Over Industry

Lawrence E. Mitchell (Berrett-Koehler Publishers)

An insight into the origins of the giant modern corporation and the rise of the stock market in the first years of the twentieth century: by the early 1920s, the stock market had left behind its business origins and was the centre of the American economy.

Tudors and Stuarts on Film

ed. Susan Doran & Thomas S. Freeman (Palgrave Macmillan)

A study of films about the Tudor and Stuart period, which situates them in their historical contexts and examines the preoccupations of the filmmakers, their sources, the state of historical knowledge when the films were produced and their initial reception.

Vicarious Vagrants: Incognito Social Explorers and the Homeless in England, 1860-1910

ed. Mark Freeman & Gillian Nelson (The True Bill Press)

A collection of personal testimonies of incognito investigations of vagrancy written in the heyday of the incognito social explorer at the end of the nineteenth century, when men and women travelled in disguise among the poor in England and published accounts of their experiences.

The Unlikely Hero: George Scott Robertson

Dorothy Anderson (The History Press)

A biography of the adventurer, ethnographer, soldier, surgeon, businessman and politician George Scott Robertson, from the beginning of his career as a British Surgeon Major in Afghanistan during the Second Afghan War to his later life as a Liberal MP for Bradford Central.

Pirate Hunter: The Life of Captain Woodes Rogers

Graham A. Thomas (Pen & Sword)

A biography of Woodes Rogers (c.1679-1732), an adventurer, explorer, pirate hunter, the governor of the Bahamas and the man who rescued the real Robinson Crusoe, Alexander Selkirk.

The Russian Civil War 1918-22

David Bullock (Osprey Publishing)

A study of the Russian Civil War which examines the rival forces of the White, Red, Black and Green armies, Allied intervention, and its impact on society and the political geography of eastern and north eastern Europe, the Far East and Central Asia.

When the Whistle Blows: The Story of the Footballers’ Battalion in the Great War

Andrew Riddoch & John Kemp (Haynes Publishing)

The story of the experiences, on the pitch and in the trenches of the First World War, of the 17th Battalion the Middlesex Regiment, which was raised in December 1914, following complaints that professional footballers were ‘not doing their bit’.

Hungary: From Ninth Century Origins to the 1956 Uprising

C. A. Macartney

Transaction Publishers

A history of Hungary and its struggles against tyranny and invasion, from Arpád, who, in the ninth century, led the nomad Magyars out of a desperate crisis in the east and into the Danube Basin, to the revolution of 1956 and Janos Kadar and the ‘People’s Republic’.

Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to the Nation State

Lucy Riall
Palgrave Macmillan

An account of the controversial and wide-ranging transformations that followed the Risorgimento, which offers an insight into the meaning and appeal of Italian nationalism and a new interpretation of the unification of Italy.

The Earl and His Butler in Constantinople: The Secret Diary of an English Servant Among the Ottomans

Nigel & Caroline Webb

I.B. Tauris

Based on despatches and family letters and his butler’s diary, the story of George Hay, 8^th Earl of Kinnoull, a Scottish aristocrat who served as British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1729 to 1736, and his butler, Samuel Medley.

The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Early Modern Germany

Bridget Heal

Cambridge University Press

A study of Marian veneration during Germany’s Reformation and Counter-Reformation, from 1500 to 1648, which questions the view that the Virgin simply disappeared from Protestant devotional life to become a figurehead for the Catholic Church’s campaign of religious reconquest.

Max Weber: A Biography

Joachim Radkau
Polity Press

Based on previously unknown sources and embedded in the German history of the time, a biography of Max Weber which highlights the interrelations between Weber’s thought and his life experience.

In Love & War: The Lives of General Sir Harry & Lady Smith

David Rooney & Michael Scott

Pen & Sword

The story of the marriage between Captain Harry Smith and Juana, his aristocratic Spanish bride, who he met in 1812 in the aftermath of the capture of Badajoz by Wellington’s forces, and their imperial campaigns.

Peninsular Eyewitnesses: The Experience of War in Spain and Portugal 1808-1813

Charles Esdaile
Pen & Sword

The story of the British struggle against Napoleon in the Peninsula told through memoirs, letters and eyewitness testimony, which provides an inside view of military affairs, the guerrilla war and the impact of the fighting on the countryside and in the towns and cities.

British News Media and the Spanish Civil War

David Deacon

Edinburgh University Press

A study of the reporting of the Spanish Civil War, which examines the personalities, routines, pressures and structures that shaped news coverage of the war in Britain as it unfolded.