History Book List ·

New Terrains in Southeast Asian History

Edited by Abu Talib Ahmad and Tan Liok Ee

At a watershed moment in the scholarly approach to the history of this important region, New Terrains in Southeast Asian History captures the richness and diversity of historical discourse among Southeast Asian scholars.…

South Africa’s Environmental History

Cases and Comparisons

Edited by Stephen Dovers, Ruth Edgecombe and Bill Guest

Environmental history in southern Africa has only recently come into its own as a distinct field of historical inquiry. While natural resources lie at the heart of all environmental history, the field opens the door to a wide range of inquiries, several of which are pioneered in this collection.…

Cultivating Coffee

The Farmers of Carazo, Nicaragua, 1880–1930

By Julie A. Charlip

Many scholars of Latin America have argued that the introduction of coffee forced most people to become landless proletarians toiling on large plantations. Cultivating Coffee tells a different story: small and medium-sized growers in Nicaragua were a vital part of the economy, constituting the majority of the farmers and holding most of the land.…

Mau Mau and Nationhood

Arms, Authority, and Narration

Edited by E. S. Atieno Odhiambo and John Lonsdale

Fifty years after the declaration of the state of emergency, Mau Mau still excites argument and controversy, not least in Kenya itself. Mau Mau and Nationhood is a collection of essays providing the most recent thinking on the uprising and its aftermath.…

Eroding the Commons

The Politics of Ecology in Baringo, Kenya, 1890s-1963

By David M. Anderson

Colonial Baringo was largely unnoticed until drought and localized famine in the mid-1920s led to claims that its crisis was brought on by overcrowding and livestock mismanagement. In response to the alarm over erosion, the state embarked on a program for rehabilitation, conservation, and development.…

Smugglers, Secessionists, and Loyal Citizens on the Ghana-Togo Frontier

The Life of the Borderlands since 1914

By Paul Nugent

The first integrated history of the Ghana-Togo borderlands, Smugglers, Secessionists, and Loyal Citizens on the Ghana-Togo Frontier challenges the conventional wisdom that the current border is an arbitrary European construct, resisted by Ewe irredentism.…

Political Power in Pre-Colonial Buganda

Economy, Society, and Warfare in the Nineteenth Century

By Richard Reid

Blessed with fertile and well-watered soil, East Africa's kingdom of Buganda supported a relatively dense population and became a major regional power by the mid-nineteenth century. This complex and fascinating state has also long been in need of a thorough study that cuts through the image of autocracy and military might.…

Ohio on the Move

Transportation in the Buckeye State

By H. Roger Grant

Few American states can match the rich and diverse transportation heritage of Ohio. Every major form of public conveyance eventually served the Buckeye state. From the “Canal Age” to the “Interurban Era,” Ohio emerged as a national leader.…

A Modern History of the Somali

Nation and State in the Horn of Africa

By I. M. Lewis

This latest edition of A Modern History of the Somali brings I. M. Lewis's definitive history up to date and shows the amazing continuity of Somali forms of social organization. Lewis's history portrays the ingeniousness with which the Somali way of life has been adapted to all forms of modernity.…

Writing a Wider War

Rethinking Gender, Race, and Identity in the South African War, 1899–1902

Edited by Greg Cuthbertson, Albert Grundlingh and Mary-Lynn Suttie

A century after the South African War (1899-1902), historians are beginning to reevaluate the accepted wisdom regarding the scope of the war, its participants, and its impact. Writing a Wider War charts some of the changing historical constructions of the memorialization of suffering during the war.…

John Reed and the Writing of Revolution

By Daniel W. Lehman

John Reed (1887-1920) is best known as the author of Ten Days That Shook the World and as champion of the communist movement in the United States. Still, Reed remains a writer almost systematically ignored by the literary critical establishment, even if alternately vilified and lionized by historians and by films like Warren Beatty's Reds.…

Framing the Polish Home

Postwar Cultural Constructions of Hearth, Nation, and Self

Edited by Bożena Shallcross

As the subject of ideological, aesthetic, and existential manipulations, the Polish home and its representation is an ever-changing phenomenon that absorbs new tendencies and, at the same time, retains its centrality to Polish literature, whether written in Poland or abroad.…

Ohio Is My Dwelling Place

Schoolgirl Embroideries, 1800-1850

By Sue Studebaker

One of the most intriguing cultural artifacts of our nation's past was made by young girls—the embroidery sampler. In Ohio Is My Dwelling Place, American decorative arts expert Sue Studebaker documents the samplers created in Ohio prior to 1850, the girls who made them, their families, and the teachers who taught them to stitch.…

Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia

The Reformist Intellectuals of the Early Twentieth Century

By Bahru Zewde

In this exciting new study, Bahru Zewde, one of the foremost historians of modern Ethiopia, has constructed a collective biography of a remarkable group of men and women in a formative period of their country's history.…

Stepping Forward

Black Women in Africa and the Americas

Edited by Catherine Higgs, Barbara A. Moss and Earline Rae Ferguson

A unique and important study, Stepping Forward examines the experiences of nineteenth- and twentieth-century black women in Africa and African diaspora communities from a variety of perspectives in a number of different settings.…

Creating Germans Abroad

Cultural Policies and National Identity in Namibia

By Daniel Joseph Walther

When World War I brought an end to German colonial rule in Namibia, much of the German population stayed on. The German community, which had managed to deal with colonial administration, faced new challenges when the region became a South African mandate under the League of Nations in 1919.…

Potent Brews

A Social History of Alcohol in East Africa, 1850–1999

By Justin Willis

In this first general history of alcohol and drinking in East Africa, Justin Willis's central theme is power—from customary beliefs in alcohol as a symbol of authority and a means of enhancement and privilege, to the use of power in advertising, and discourse on the consumption of modern bottled beers and spirits.…

Southern Marches of Imperial Ethiopia

Essays in History and Social Anthropology

Edited by Donald L. Donham and Wendy James

This pioneering book, first published to wide acclaim in 1986, traces the way the Ethiopian center and the peripheral regions of the country affected each other. It looks specifically at the expansion of the highland Ethiopian state into the western and southern lowlands from the 1890s up to 1974.…

An American Colony

Regionalism and the Roots of Midwestern Culture

By Edward Watts

The Old Northwest—the region now known as the Midwest—has been largely overlooked in American cultural history, represented as a place smoothly assimilated into the expanding, manifestly-destined nation.…

Taking Root

Narratives of Jewish Women in Latin America

By Marjorie Agosín

In Taking Root, Latin American women of Jewish descent, from Mexico to Uruguay, recall their coming of age with Sabbath candles and Hebrew prayers, Ladino songs and merengue music, Queen Esther and the Virgin of Guadalupe.…