Every month, we offer our readers the opportunity to review some of the latest history publications and to have their review published on the History Today Books Blog. Here is our selection for March. To submit a review, please send an email to Kathryn Hadley (k.hadley[at]historytoday.com) specifying your choice of book. We will then send you the book with a one-month deadline to send us your review. Books will be sent on a first come first served basis. (Unfortunately, we are unable to send out books to the USA).The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism, Joyce Appleby (Norton)
This introduction to capitalism, from its origins in a series of isolated changes in farming, trade and manufacturing in early-modern England to the present, approaches capitalism as a culture, as important for its ideas and values as for its inventions and systems.
Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry, Geoffrey Jones (Oxford University Press)
This history of the global beauty industry, from its emergence in the 19th century to the present day, charts the growth of today’s global giants, such as Avon, Coty, Estee Lauder and L’Oreal, revealing how successive generations of entrepreneurs built brands which shaped perceptions of beauty and the business organisations needed to market them.
Kennedy vs. Carter, Timothy Stanley (University Press of Kansas)
This reexamination of the primaries of the 1980 US presidential election contends that Edward Kennedy’s insurgent campaign was more popular than historians have presumed and was defeated primarily by historical accident rather than by its perceived radicalism.
Defying Empire, Thomas M. Truxes (Yale University Press)
An account of illicit trading by New York City merchants, some of whom became America’s Founding Fathers, during the Seven Years’ War, also known as the French and Indian War (1754-63).
Morris Minor, Martin Wainwright (Aurum)
To mark the 60th anniversary of the Morris Minor, designed by Sir Alec Issigonis in 1948, a history of Britain’s first mass-appeal car.
Parties and People: England, 1914-1951, Ross McKibbin (Oxford University Press)
A reinterpretation of British politics in the first days of universal suffrage, which explores the political culture of the time and reveals how class became one of the principal determinants of political behaviour.
Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, and Religion, 1250-1750, Euan Cameron (Oxford University Press)
This account of Western Europe’s long, complex dialogue with its own folklore and popular beliefs charts the rise, diversification, and decline of popular superstition in the European mind, from debates over the efficacy of charms and spells, to belief in fairies and demos.
Caesar’s Druids, Miranda Aldhouse-Green (Yale
University Press)This history of Europe’s ancient Druids explores the various roles that Druids played in British and Gallic society during the first centuries BC and AD, as a highly complex, intellectual and sophisticated group whose influence transcended religion and reached into the realms of secular power and politics.
The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, Tim Judah (Yale University Press)
This third edition of Tim Judah’s account, first published in 1997, is updated to cover the overthrow of Milosevic, the assassination of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindic, the proclamation of independence by Kosovo and the arrest of Radovan Karadzic.
Catherine the Great, Simon Dixon (Profile Books)
Dixon’s biography of Catherine II of Russia (1728-1796) was shortlisted for the 2009 Longman-History Today Book of the Year Award.
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