WHE Books for Review

Zhihui Zou
Zhihui Zou
Last updated 
Greetings! This is the list of books currently available to review at World History Encyclopedia.

For publishers and book authors: if you would like your books to be considered for review by World History Encyclopedia, please email the Book Review Editor Zhihui Zou at zhihui.zou@worldhistory.org with information about the book. Note that we cover the history of any subgenre, people, location, or topic before 1939.

For current and prospective book reviewers: if you would like to review any of the following titles (marked as “Available for Review”), please email the Book Review Editor Zhihui Zou at zhihui.zou@worldhistory.org. We also welcome our reviewers to suggest a book not on this list to review or to review books you have already read.

Books available for review:

Format: Author. Book title. Publisher, Year


  1. Nicholas Dames. The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century. Princeton University Press, 2023. Available for Review.
  2. Finbarr Barry Flood and Beate Fricke. Tales Things Tell: Material Histories of Early Globalism. Princeton University Press, 2023. Available for Review.
  3. Wilt L. Idema (translator). The Emperor of China in a House of Ill Repute: Songs of the Imperial Visit to Datong by Pu Songling. Oxford University Press, 2023. Available for Review.
  4. Jan De Meyer (translator). Master Incapable; A Medieval Daoist on the Liberation of the Mind. Oxford University Press, 2023. Available for Review.
  5. Beata Grant (translator) An Anthology of Poems by Buddhist Nuns of Late Imperial China. Oxford University Press, 2023. Available for Review.
  6. Elizabeth Smithrosser (translator). The Misadventures of Master Mugwort: A Joke Book Trilogy from Imperial China. Oxford University Press, 2023. Available for Review.
  7. Ruth W. Dunnell, Stephen H. West, and Shao-yun Yang (translators). Daoist Master Changchun’s Journey to the West: To the Court of Chinggis Qan and Back. Oxford University Press, 2023. Available for Review.
  8. Karen Sullivan. Eleanor of Aquitaine: As It Was Said. University of Chicago Press, 2023.  Available for Review.
  9. Anthony Kaldellis. The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium. Oxford University Press, 2023. Available for Review.
  10. Maurizio Isabella. Southern Europe in the Age of Revolutions. Princeton University Press, 2023. Available for Review.
  11. Cole M. Bunzel. Wahhābism: The History of a Militant Islamic Movement. Princeton University Press, 2023. Available for Review.
  12. Michael Sonenscher. After Kant: The Romans, the Germans, and the Moderns in the History of Political Thought. Princeton University Press, 2023. Available for Review.
  13. Sylvana Tomaselli. Wollstonecraft: Philosophy, Passion, and Politics. Princeton University Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  14. Jonathan Kingdon. Origin Africa: A Natural History. Princeton University Press, 2023. Available for Review.
  15. Peter Bellwood. The Five-Million-Year Odyssey: The Human Journey from Ape to Agriculture. Princeton University Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  16. Byron J. Nordstrom. Scandinavia since 1500: Second Edition. University of Minnesota Press, 2023.
  17. Anthony M. Cummings. Music in Golden-Age Florence, 1250–1750: From the Priorate of the Guilds to the End of the Medici Grand Duchy. University of Chicago Press, 2023. Available for Review.
  18. Divya Cherian. Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia. University of California Press, 2023. Available for Review.
  19. S. Frederick Starr. The Genius of their Age: Ibn Sina, Biruni, and the Lost Enlightenment. Oxford University Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  20. Marc Van De Mieroop. Before and after Babel: Writing as Resistance in Ancient Near Eastern Empires. Oxford University Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  21. Khairudin Aljunied. Shapers of Islam in Southeast Asia: Muslim Intellectuals and the Making of Islamic Reformism. Oxford University Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  22. Victor Zhu. America's Theologian Beyond America: Jonathan Edwards, Israel, and China. Oxford University Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  23. Paul Rahe. Sparta's Sparta’s Sicilian Proxy War: The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta, 418-413 B.C. Encounter Books, 2023. Available for Review.
  24. Andrei Zorin. The Emergence of a Hero: A Tale of Romantic Love in Russia around 1800. Oxford University Press, 2023. Available for Review.
  25. Kevin Kenny. The Problem of Immigration in a Slaveholding Republic: Policing Mobility in the Nineteenth-Century United States. Oxford University Press, 2023. Available for Review.
  26. Michael Denis Higgins. The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
    Science, Engineering and Technology    . Oxford University Press, 2023. Available for Review.
  27. Stephen J. Shoemaker. Creating the Qur’an: A Historical-Critical Study. University of California Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  28. Asad Q. Ahmed. Palimpsests of Themselves: Logic and Commentary in Postclassical Muslim South Asia. University of California Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  29. Yigal Bronner and Charles Hallisey (editors), David Shulman (translator). Sensitive Reading: The Pleasures of South Asian Literature in Translation. University of California Press, 2022.
  30. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht. Prose of the World: Denis Diderot and the Periphery of Enlightenment. Stanford University Press, 2021. Available for Review.
  31. Simon Reader. Notework: Victorian Literature and Nonlinear Style. Stanford University Press, 2021. Available for Review.
  32. Joseph W. Peterson. Sacred Rivals: Catholic Missions and the Making of Islam in Nineteenth-Century France and Algeria. Oxford University Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  33. Mary B. Cunningham. The Virgin Mary in Byzantium, c.400–1000 Hymns, Homilies and Hagiography. Cambridge University Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  34. Bas van Bavel et al. Disasters and History: The Vulnerability and Resilience of Past Societies. Cambridge University Press, 2020. Available for Review.
  35. Laura Viidebaum. Creating the Ancient Rhetorical Tradition. Cambridge University Press, 2021. Available for Review.
  36. Bill Arnott. Gone Viking III: The Holy Grail. Rocky Mountain Books, 2023.
  37. David Baillargeon and Jeremy E. Taylor (editors). Spatial Histories of Occupation: Colonialism, Conquest and Foreign Control in Asia. Bloomsbury, 2022, Available for Review.
  38. Sari Nauman and Helle Vogt (editors). Private/Public in 18th-Century Scandinavia. Bloomsbury, 2021. Available for Review.
  39. Jeremy E. Taylor (editor). Visual Histories of Occupation: A Transcultural Dialogue. Bloomsbury, 2021. Available for Review.
  40. Alun Withey. Concerning Beards: Facial Hair, Health and Practice in England, 1650–1900. Bloomsbury, 2021. Available for Review.
  41. Scott Kugle. Hajj to the Heart Sufi Journeys Across the Indian Ocean. University of North Carolina Press, 2021. Available for Review.
  42. Zachary Valentine Wright. Realizing Islam: The Tijaniyya in North Africa and the Eighteenth-Century Muslim World. University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Available for Review.
  43. Ballard C. Campbell. The Paradox of Power: Statebuilding in America, 1754-1920. University Press of Kansas, 2021. Available for Review.
  44. Paul M. Rego. Lyman Trumbull and the Second Founding of the United States. University Press of Kansas, 2022. Available for Review.
  45. Peter Mason. Ulisse Aldrovandi: Naturalist and Collector. Reaktion Books, 2023. Available for Review.
  46. Benjamin J. Wetzel. American Crusade: Christianity, Warfare, and National Identity, 1860–1920. Cornell University Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  47. Martha Rampton. Trafficking with Demons: Magic, Ritual, and Gender from Late Antiquity to 1000. Cornell University Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  48. Sara Kay. Medieval Song from Aristotle to Opera. Cornell University Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  49. E. Natalie Rothman. The Dragoman Renaissance: Diplomatic Interpreters and the Routes of Orientalism. Cornell University Press, 2021. Available for Review.
  50. Jean Barman. Sophie Morigeau: Free Trader, Free Woman, Nineteenth Century Indian Entrepreneur. University of Nebraska Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  51. Susan Elizabeth Ramírez. In Praise of the Ancestors: Names, Identity, and Memory in Africa and the Americas. University of Nebraska Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  52. Will Fowler. The Grammar of Civil War: A Mexican Case Study, 1857–61. University of Nebraska Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  53. Stephen Davis. French Protestantism’s Struggle for Survival and Legitimacy (1517–1905). Wipf and Stock, 2023. Available for Review.
  54. Panagiotis Manafis. (Re)writing History in Byzantium: A Critical Study of Collections of Historical Excerpts. Routledge, 2020. Available for Review.
  55. Joep Schenk. The Rhine and European Security in the Long Nineteenth Century: Making Lifelines from Frontlines. Routledge, 2021. Available for Review.
  56. Aistė Čelkytė. The Stoic Theory of Beauty. Edinburgh University Press, 2020. Available for Review.
  57. Michael Quinn. Bentham. Polity Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  58. Clare Anderson (editor). A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies. Bloomsbury, 2018. Available for Review.
  59. Terje Tvedt. Water and Society; Changing Perceptions of Societal and Historical Development. I. B. Tauris, 2021. Available for Review.
  60. Samuel K. Fisher. The Gaelic and Indian Origins of the American Revolution: Diversity and Empire in the British Atlantic, 1688-1783. Oxford University Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  61. Baukje van den Berg. Homer the Rhetorician: Eustathios of Thessalonike on the Composition of the Iliad. Oxford University Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  62. Kylie M. Murray. The Making of the Scottish Dream Vision. Oxford University Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  63. Swapna M. Banerjee. Fathers in a Motherland: Imagining Fatherhood in Colonial India. Oxford University Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  64. N. Bryant Kirkland. Herodotus and Imperial Greek Literature: Criticism, Imitation, Reception. Oxford University Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  65. Jennie Batchelor. 'The Lady's Magazine' (1770-1832) and the Making of Literary History. Edinburgh University Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  66. Marius M. Carriere Jr.. The Know Nothings in Louisiana. University Press of Mississippi, 2019. Available for Review.
  67. Christopher P. Atwood (editor). The Rise of the Mongols: Five Chinese Sources. Hackett, 2021. Available for Review.
  68. Erik Jensen. The Greco-Persian Wars: A Short History with Documents. Hackett, 2021. Available for Review.
  69. Jurgen Buchenau and Timothy Henderson (editors and translators). The Mexican Revolution: A Documentary History. Hackett, 2022. Available for Review.
  70. Thomas Rosén. Russian in the 1740s. Academic Studies Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  71. Jūratė Kiaupienė, translated by Jayde Will. Between Rome and Byzantium: The Golden Age of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s Political Culture. Academic Studies Press, 2020. Available for Review.
  72. Mónica Manrique, translated by Justin Peterson. The Project of Return to Sepharad in the Nineteenth Century. Academic Studies Press, 2020. Available for Review.
  73. Susan Layton. Contested Russian Tourism: Cosmopolitanism, Nation, and Empire in the Nineteenth Century. Academic Studies Press, 2021. Available for Review.
  74. Josiah Osgood. Uncommon Wrath: How Caesar and Cato’s Deadly Rivalry Destroyed the Roman Republic. Basic Books, 2022. Available for Review.
  75. Christopher Laing Hill. Figures of the World: The Naturalist Novel and Transnational Form. Northwestern University Press, 2020. Available for Review.
  76. Jennifer Eun-Jung Row. Queer Velocities: Time, Sex, and Biopower on the Early Modern Stage. Northwestern University Press, 2020. Available for Review.
  77. Ulrik Langen and Frederik Stjernfelt. The World's First Full Press Freedom: The Radical Experiment of Denmark-Norway 1770–1773. De Gruyter, 2022. Available for Review.
  78. Charles Freeman. The Children of Athena: Greek Intellectuals in the Age of Rome. Head of Zeus, 2023.  Available for Review.
  79. Gregory Michael Nixon. The Diomedia. KDP, 2023. Available for Review. (historical novel.
  80. David Konstan (editor). Emotions across Cultures: Ancient China and Greece. De Gruyter, 2022. Available for Review.
  81. Anthony J. Miano. The Changing of the Gods. Author House, 2022. Available for Review.
  82. Mercedes Pérez Vidal (editor). Women Religious Crossing between Cloister and the World: Nunneries in Europe and the Americans, ca. 1200–1700. Arc Humanities Press, 2022. Available for Review.
  83. Silvia De Ascaniis and Lorenzo Cantoni (editors). Handbook on Heritage, Sustainable: Tourism and Digital Media. Edward Elgar, 2022. Available for Review.


Books Already been Assigned for Review:

Michael Zuckert. A Nation So Conceived: Abraham Lincoln and the Paradox of Democratic Sovereignty. University Press of Kansas, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Ulrike Strasser. Missionary Men in the Early Modern World: German Jesuits and Pacific Journeys. Amsterdam University Press, 2020. Assigned for Review.
W. Jeffrey Tatum. A Noble Ruin: Mark Antony, Civil War, and the Collapse of the Roman Republic. Oxford University Press, 2023. Assigned for Review.
Eckart Frahm. Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World’s First Empire. Basic Books, 2023. Assigned for Review.
Stefan Eklöf Amirell, Bruce Buchan, and Hans Hägerdal (editors). Piracy in World History. Amsterdam University Press, 2021. Assigned for Review.
Malyn Newitt. Navigations: The Portuguese Discoveries and the Renaissance. Reaktion Books, 2023. Assigned for Review.
Mohamed Adhikari. Destroying to Replace: Settler Genocides of Indigenous Peoples. Hackett, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Ulbe Bosma. The World of Sugar: How the Sweet Stuff Transformed Our Politics, Health, and Environment over 2,000 Years. Harvard University Press, 2023. Assigned for Review.
Peter K. Andersson. Fool: In Search of Henry VIII's Closest Man. Princeton University Press, 2023. Assigned for Review.
Jessie Hewitt. Institutionalizing Gender: Madness, the Family, and Psychiatric Power in Nineteenth-Century France. Cornell University Press, 2020. Assigned for Review.
Michael Lobban. Imperial Incarceration: Detention without Trial in the Making of British Colonial Africa. Cambridge University Press, 2021. Assigned for Review.
Chris Wickham. The Donkey and the Boat: Reinterpreting the Mediterranean Economy, 950–1180. Oxford University Press, 2023. Assigned for Review.
Yanna Yannakakis. Since Time Immemorial: Native Custom and Law in Colonial Mexico. Duke University Press, 2023. Assigned for Review.
Mark Gregory Pegg. Beatrice's Last Smile: A New History of the Middle Ages. Oxford University Press, 2023. Assigned for Review.
Katharine Cleland. Irregular Unions: Clandestine Marriage in Early Modern English Literature. Cornell University Press, 2021. Assigned for Review.
(Historical fiction) Jack Jewers. The Lost Diary of Samuel Pepys. Moonflower Press, 2022.  Assigned for Review.
Rory Naismith. Making Money in the Early Middle Ages. Princeton University Press, 2023. Assigned for Review.
Jakob Norberg. The Brothers Grimm and the Making of German Nationalism. Cambridge University Press, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Helen J. Nicolson. Women and the Crusades. Oxford University Press, 2023. Assigned for Review.
Kate Cooper. Queens of a Fallen World: The Lost Women of Augustine's Confessions. Basic Books, 2023. Assigned for Review.
Martyn Whittock. American Vikings: How the Norse Sailed into the Lands and Imaginations of America. Pegasus Books, 2023. Assigned for Review.
Daniel Leonhard Purdy. Chinese Sympathies:  Media, Missionaries, and World Literature from Marco Polo to Goethe. Cornell University Press, 2021. Assigned for Review.
Jean-Michel Johnston. Networks of Modernity: Germany in the Age of the Telegraph, 1830–1880. Oxford University Press, 2021. Assigned for Review.
Marco Beretta (editor). A History of Chemistry: Volume 1 - In Antiquity. Bloomsbury, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Adrian Goldsworthy. The Fall of Carthage: The Punic Wars 265-146 B.C.. Cassell, 2020.  Assigned for Review.
J. P. Daughton. In the Forest of No Joy: The Congo-Océan Railroad and the Tragedy of French Colonialism. WW Norton, 2023. Assigned for Review.
J. Michelle Coghlan. Sensational Internationalism: The Paris Commune and the Remapping of American Memory in the Long Nineteenth Century. Edinburgh University Press, 2016. Assigned for Review.
Philipp Robinson Rössner. Managing the Wealth of Nations: Political Economies of Change in Preindustrial Europe. Bristol University Press, 2023. Assigned for Review.
Ann E. Lucas. Music of a Thousand Years: A New History of Persian Musical Traditions. University of California Press, 2019. Assigned for Review.
Qitao Guo. Huizhou: Local Identity and Mercantile Lineage Culture in Ming China. University of California Press, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Timothy R. Pauketat. Gods of Thunder: How Climate Change, Travel, and Spirituality Reshaped Precolonial America. Oxford University Press, 2023. Assigned for Review.
Greg Woolf. The Life and Death of Ancient Cities: A Natural History. Oxford University Press, 2020. Assigned for Review.
M. Antoni J. Ucerler. The Samurai and the Cross: The Jesuit Enterprise in Early Modern Japan. Oxford University Press, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Ann Oakley. Women, Peace, and Welfare: A Suppressed History of Social Reform, 1880-1920. Bristol University Press, 2019. Assigned for Review.
Elizabeth Andrews Bond. The Writing Public: Participatory Knowledge Production in Enlightenment and Revolutionary France. Cornell University Press, 2021. Assigned for Review.
Peter Der Manuelian. Walking Among Pharaohs: George Reisner and the Dawn of Modern Egyptology. Oxford University Press, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Egidio Ivetic. History of the Adriatic: A Sea and Its Civilization. Polity Press, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Mark Stoll. Profit: An Environmental History. Polity Press, 2023. Assigned for Review.
Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin. How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth. Polity Press, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Richard Hingley. Conquering the Ocean: Roman Invasion of Britain. Oxford University Press, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Xin Wen. The King’s Road: Diplomacy and the Remaking of the Silk Road. Princeton University Press, 2023. Assigned for Review.
Krzysztof Kościelniak. Between Constantinople, the Papacy and the Caliphate: The Melkite Church in the Islamicate World, 634–969. Routledge, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Magnus Marsden. Beyond the Silk Roads: Trade, Mobility and Geopolitics across Eurasia. Cambridge University Press, 2021. Assigned for Review.
Alexander Etkind (Translated by Sara Jolly). Nature's Evil: A Cultural History of Natural Resources. Polity Press, 2021. Assigned for Review.
Stanley Burstein (editor). The Essential Greek Historians. Hackett, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Carl Rollyson. William Faulkner Day by Day. University Press of Mississippi, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Sofia Zoitou. Staging Holiness: The Case of Hospitaller Rhodes (ca. 1309–1522). Brill, 2021. Assigned for Review.
Mary Knight. The Sicilian Sorceress. Mary Knight Communications, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Robert J. Abbott. Policemen of the Tsar: Local Police in an Age of Upheaval. Central European University Press, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Nicolas Morton. The Mongol Storm: Making and Breaking Empires in the Medieval Near East. Basic Books, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Yulian Wu. Luxurious Networks Salt Merchants, Status, and Statecraft in Eighteenth-Century China. Stanford University Press, 2017. Assigned for Review.
Ali Humayun Akhtar. 1368: China and the Making of the Modern World. Stanford University Press, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Konrad Hirschler. A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture: The Library of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī . Edinburgh University Press, 2020. Assigned for Review.
Pasi Väliaho. Projecting Spirits: Speculation, Providence, and Early Modern Optical Media. Stanford University Press, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Ian Worthington. Athens After Empire: A History from Alexander the Great to the Emperor Hadrian. Oxford University Press, 2021. Assigned for Review.
Christian Niederhuber. Roman Imperial Portrait Practice in the Second Century AD: Marcus Aurelius and Faustina the Younger. Oxford University Press, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Ulrich L. Lehner. The Inner Life of Catholic Reform: From the Council of Trent to the Enlightenment. Oxford University Press, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Greg Woolf. Rome: An Empire's Story (Second Edition). Oxford University Press, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Philip Freeman. Hannibal: Rome's Greatest Enemy. Pegasus Books, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Alexander Mikaberidze. Kutuzov: A Life in War and Peace. Oxford University Press, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Sherif Boraie (editor). Alexandrea ad Aegyptum. The American University in Cairo Press, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Michael P. Fronda. Between Rome and Carthage: Southern Italy during the Second Punic War. Cambridge University Press, 2010. Assigned for Review.
Amanda H. Podany. Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East. Oxford University Press, 2022. Assigned for Review.
Edward J. Watts. The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome: The History of a Dangerous Idea. Oxford University Press, 2021. Assigned for Review.
Paul Lockhart. Firepower: How Weapons Shaped Warfare. Basic Books, 2021. Assigned for Review.
Nigel Pickford. Samuel Pepys and the Strange Wrecking of the Gloucester: The Shipwreck that Shocked Restoration Britain. Pegasus Books, 2023. Assigned for Review.