Last books for June!

Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone, Stanislao G. Pugliese (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
A biography of Ignazio Silone (1900-78), a founding member of the Italian Communist Party and the author of Fontamara, the most widely translated work of anti-fascism in the 1930s which he wrote following his expulsion from the PCI.

Enemies and Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth-Century Valencia, Debra Blumenthal (Cornell University Press)
A study of the social and human dimensions of slavery in the religiously and ethnically pluralistic society of the city of Valencia in the late 15th century, which charts the varied experiences and daily lives of Muslim, Eastern and black Africans from capture to freedom.

Replenishing the Earth, James Belich (Oxford University Press)
A study of the anglophone ‘settler boom’ in North America, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand between the early 19th and 20th centuries, which considers the sources of its success and how it laid the basis of British and American power in the 19th and 20th centuries.

American Heroes, Edmund S. Morgan (Norton)
American Heroes celebrates the lives and principles of ordinary Americans and considers the legacy of prominent colonial leaders such as William Penn, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, challenging traditional notions of American individuality and idealism.

Fighting for Football, George Myerson (Aurum)
A biography of the forgotten sporting hero and one of British football’s leading figures, Tim Coleman, who spent the finest years of his footballing life with Arsenal, led the first players’ strike, joined up with the Footballers’ Battalion and received the Military Medal for bravery.

Theatreland: A journey through the heart of London’s theatre, Paul Ibell (Continuum)
A history of the London stage, from Shakespeare’s bankside playhouses to today’s West End, and a study of the current state of London’s theatre district, which reveals the considerable debt which today’s theatre owes to the artistic achievements of the past.