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Calder Walton’s engrossing history of a century of rival spookery offers lessons for the present
A lively and provocative new study explores the powerful forces influencing the region in a disorderly, multipolar world
In two piercing accounts, Sergei Medvedev and Jade McGlynn expose the manipulation of history used to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
Hans Kundnani offers a stinging critique of the EU as a bloc rooted in ‘imperial amnesia’
Unseen boundaries are the ones with the most life-changing consequences, argues Maxim Samson’s illuminating collection of case studies
A gripping retelling of a well-known story that inspired Melville and Golding captures the barbarity of survivors of an 18th-century shipwreck
An intimate history of sexuality in central Asia; and a sweeping account of 45 centuries of nomadic tribes in the region
An intricate account brings out the contrasts and commonalities in the lives of John Dillon and Charles Stewart Parnell
A new school textbook forms part of a wider effort to make society proud of a state-designed version of the past
Paul Baker has written a stimulating history of a sensibility that is easier to recognise than to define
A fast-paced history blends the writer’s own experiences with an examination of the region’s political and cultural contradictions and commonalities
Tiya Miles traces a simple cotton sack across generations of enslaved women to tell a powerful story of love and survival
Henrik Meinander’s balanced biography cuts through historical myths to reassess the towering, controversial statesman
From Ancient Rome to China’s Huawei, two new titles look to history as a guide for the geopolitical shape of things to come
A bravura sweep through an age of peace, politics, bloodshed and barbarians
The historian recounts his experience of growing up in Iraq, Israel and England — and brilliantly evokes a lost world
Two books paint a portrait of a brilliant generation falling prey to barbarism under the Third Reich
A masterful account of the 1945 treason case that forced a reckoning with four years of Nazi collaboration
Private contractors and paramilitary forces have stained modern European history with blood and terror
No genteel history of textiles, Aarathi Prasad’s book is a tour of the money-spinning activities of insects and arachnids
Tony Barber selects his best mid-year reads
The historian examines how medical knowledge and political force intersect to fight epidemic disease
Putin’s war on Ukraine exposes not only a rift between Russia and the west, but also divisions within eastern Europe
The author finds that a relative’s 18th-century diary offers a window to the past and a context for his own life
Two books by leading historians do a fine job in charting the path from fanaticism and violence to national reconciliation
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