New Books in Early Modern History
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network, an academic audio library dedicated to public education. Each episode features scholars discussing their recently published research with another expert in their field. The network offers over 150 channels and more than 28,000 episodes. Listeners can also subscribe to a free weekly Substack newsletter for informative content.
Episodes
Tatiana Seijas, "American Metropolis: The Making of Mexico City" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Mexico City was America's largest city in the seventeenth century – a genuine metropolis. In American Metropolis: The Making of Mexico City (Cambridge University Press, 2026), Dr. Tatiana Seijas reveals a rich tapestry of stories about essential workers who remade and transformed the city during this period. Her narrative style carries readers to a unique place and time with residents fr
Amy Blakeway, "War and Governance in Scotland, 1543-1559: Destruction, Reconstruction and Reform" (Edinburgh UP, 2026)
Drawing from local archives alongside national and international records, War and Governance in Scotland, 1543-1559: Destruction, Reconstruction and Reform (Edinburgh UP, 2026) by Dr. Amy Blakeway argues that warfare was the defining feature of government and politics in Scotland for the two decades following the death of James V. It demonstrates that beyond the direct effects of invasio
Caro Pirri, "Colonial Failure and Theatrical Form in Early Modern England: Stages of Unsettlement" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Today’s guest, Caro Pirri, is the author of Colonial Failure and Theatrical Form in Early Modern England: Stages of Unsettlement (Oxford University Press, 2025). This book explores how early modern colonial travel writing informed the London theater’s spatial and placemaking conventions. It suggests that what the stage found most compelling about narratives of colonial settlement was the
In The Scholar’s Workshop: Hidden Histories of Collaboration and Authorship
For centuries, many of the world’s most influential thinkers relied on helpers who performed tasks such as taking dictation, correcting, indexing, composing, and endless copying. In the Scholar’s Workshop: Hidden Histories of Collaboration and Authorship (Princeton UP, 2026) introduces readers to these unsung scribes, assistants, and collaborators, showing how the scholarly enterpri
Steven Veerapen, "Overlord: A New History of the Life and Reign of Henry VIII" (Simon & Schuster, 2026
Henry VIII is England’s most famous king. He is simultaneously the virtuous Renaissance prince gone wrong, the psychopathic, paranoid tyrant, the religious disruptor and the much-married glutton.
Overlord: The Life and Reign of Henry VIII (Birlinn, 2026) is a groundbreaking study of Henry’s life examines and destroys many of the long-repeated myths about this complex monarch: he was not part
Samuel Marquis, "Empire and Frontier: Colonel Peter Schuyler and the Valiant Iroquois in King William's War: 1689-1701" (Pegasus Books, 2026)
Empire and Frontier: Colonel Peter Schuyler and the Valiant Iroquois in King William's War: 1689-1701
(Pegasus Books, 2026) by Samuel Marquis presents a
powerful episode of early American history, revealing the very human
story of friendship and alliance between Colonel Peter Schuyler and the
Iroquois during King William’s War (1689–1701). Like Philbrick’s Mayflower and Gwynne’s Empire of the
Christopher Hodson and Brett Rushforth, "Beyond the Ocean: France and the Atlantic World from the Crusades to the Age of Revolutions" (Oxford UP, 2026)
In Beyond the Ocean: France and the Atlantic World from the Crusades to the Age of Revolutions (Oxford University Press,
2026), Christopher Hodson and Brett Rushforth reveal the vast and
complex world of France's Atlantic enterprises in the premodern era.
Drawing upon years of archival work, Hodson and Rushforth demonstrate
how France's overseas activities created its empire, intentionall
Bradford A. Bouley, "The Barberini Butchers: Meat, Murder, and Warfare in Early Modern Italy" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)
In 1644 four norcini
or pork butchers were accused of killing not pigs, but seven of their
fellow citizens, stripping the meat from the bones, then combining it
with pig to make sausages, which were then sold to Romans from their
shop behind the Pantheon. In the multiple pamphlets describing this
supposed crime, the authors of this accusation blamed residents of Rome
themselves, who had beco
Peter C. Mancall, "Contested Continent: The Struggle for North America, c. 1000-1680" (Oxford UP, 2026)
In Contested Continent: The Struggle for America, c.1000-1680 (Oxford University Press, 2026), the newest installment of the acclaimed Oxford History of the United States series, Peter C. Mancall
recounts how North America was forged from the experiences of millions
of Indigenous women and men as well as Europeans and Africans. This
history spans the continent from
Amélie Junqua and Geoffrey Day, "Too Good to Waste: Recycling Paper in the Eighteenth Century" (Bodleian Library, 2026)
Paper
was a precious commodity in the eighteenth century: every sheet was
made by hand. There was therefore a significant market in recycling
substandard paper from paper mills and discarded proofs and sheets from
printers and booksellers for secondary use, alongside a black market in
which stealing and receiving stolen paper took place on a vast scale. A
single piece of paper could be terme
Kit Chapman, "The Age of Alchemy: How Early Innovators Shaped Modern Chemistry" (Profile Books, 2026)
The first chemists were Sri Lankan forgers who crafted
unimaginably strong steel millennia before it should have been
possible. They were alchemists in Roman Egypt, who designed apparatus
still in use today. They were Stone Age leatherworkers, Tang Dynasty
herbalists and Mayan stoneworkers.
The Enlightenment is usually
credited with the origins of chemistry, but in truth, the science
Jeremy D. Popkin, "The First Emancipation: The Forgotten History of Abolition in Revolutionary France" (Princeton UP, 2026)
The First Emancipation: The Forgotten History of Abolition in Revolutionary France (Princeton UP, 2026) is a dramatic account of how slavery and race profoundly influenced the course of the French Revolution and had a central impact on the lives of key leaders, including Mirabeau, Robespierre, Toussaint Louverture, and Napoleon. Acclaimed historian Jeremy D. Popkin brings this often-forgotten sto
Peter Ross, "Insatiable Appetites: Eating Out in Georgian London" (Bodleian Library, 2026)
In Insatiable Appetites: Eating Out in Georgian London (Bodleian Library, 2026) by Dr. Peter Ross, step into the kitchens, streets
and chop houses of Georgian London—one day, one city, countless
appetites. From dawn until past midnight, Londoners dined at taverns,
coaching inns, oyster rooms, confectioners, coffee shops, chocolate
houses, soup shops
and dining rooms. For the poor, the streets
Christopher de Bellaigue, "The Golden Throne: The Curse of a King" (Bodley Head, 2025)
What does a 16th century ruler reveal about the nature of power, past and present?
Istanbul, 1538. The greatest of the Ottoman Sultans is at the pinnacle of world power, while his family and future are at the mercy of their own dynastic law: whichever of his five sons succeeds him must eventually kill all the others. So why not get a head start?For the next fifteen years, as Suleyman the Magnific
Benjamin J. Nourse, "The Power of Publishing in Early Modern Tibetan Buddhism"(Lexington Books, 2025)
The Power of Publishing in Early Modern Tibetan Buddhism (Lexington Books, 2025) is a rich exploration of the history of Tibetan books during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Looking at this ‘golden age’ of book production, Benjamin Nourse focuses on two core topics: What was driving Tibetan publishing in the eighteenth century, and what happened as a result of that growth? How
Cleo Nisse, "Venetian Canvas and the Transformation of Painting" (Princeton UP, 2026)
Between
the fifteenth and early seventeenth centuries, European painting
underwent a profound transformation as artists increasingly painted on
canvas instead of wood or walls. Nowhere was more important to this
shift than Venice, where painters experimented with canvas with
remarkable creativity and innovation. In Venetian Canvas and the Transformation of Painting (Princeton
University Pres
Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer, "Boundaries of Belonging: Sectarianism and Statecraft in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Examining sectarian divergence in the early modern Middle East, Ayşe
Baltacıoğlu-Brammer's study provides a fresh perspective on the
Sunni–Shi'i division. Drawing on Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and European
sources, Boundaries of Belonging: Sectarianism and Statecraft in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire
(Cambridge University Press, 2026) explores the paradox of an Ottoman
state that combined rig
Jake Dyble, "Managing Maritime Risk in Early Modern Europe: General Average in Law and Practice in Seventeenth-Century Tuscany" (Boydell Press, 2025)
Commercial seafaring, both dangerous and with large amounts of capital at stake, was the source of the risk-management institutions that still undergird the global economy today. A key institution of early modern risk management was General Average, a procedure used to redistribute extraordinary costs arising from a maritime venture between all financially interested parties. For example, should o
Timothy McCall, "Making the Renaissance Man: Masculinity in the Courts of Renaissance Italy" (Reaktion Books, 2023)
Looking beyond the marble elegance of Michelangelo's David, the pugnacious, passionate, and--crucially--important story of Renaissance manhood.
Timothy McCall's book Making the Renaissance Man: Masculinity in the Courts of Renaissance Italy (Reaktion, 2023) explores the images, objects, and experiences that fashioned men and masculinity in the courts of fifteenth-century Italy. Across the peninsu
Denise Z. Davidson, "Surviving Revolution: Bourgeois Lives and Letters" (Cornell UP, 2025)
Denise Z. Davidson joins Jana Byars to talk about Surviving Revolution: Bourgeois Lives and Letters (Cornell UP, 2025). The book explores how two wealthy and well-connected families with roots in Lyon responded to the French Revolution and the resulting transformations. In building a new political system based on liberty, equality, and fraternity, the French Revolution encouraged both individuals
Marissa Nicosia, "Shakespeare in the Kitchen" (Routledge, 2026)
Audiences and scholars alike have long remarked that Shakespeare’s poems and plays record the pleasures and perils of the table. Shakespeare in the Kitchen (Routledge, 2026) by Dr. Marissa Nicosia asks what Shakespeare’s works can tell us about Renaissance culinary recipes, and what these recipes can tell us about Shakespeare’s works.
Dr. Nicosia explores how Shakespeare’s works reveal tensions n
Sophie Rose, "Intimacy and Social (Dis)Order in Dutch Colonial Expansion: Regulating Sex, Marriage, and Family Life, 1600–1800" (Brill, 2025)
Explosive sexual scandals, bitter domestic conflicts, and dramatic changes in fortune. Sex, marriage, and family life were matters of enormous consequence in the highly complex societies that formed across the early modern Dutch overseas empire. This was not only true for the colonial authorities that administered settlements on behalf of the Dutch East and West India Companies (VOC and WIC), but
Paola De Santo, "The Ambassador and the Courtesan: Political Bodies in Renaissance Italy" (U Delaware Press, 2026)
Paola de Santo joins Jana Byars to talk about her new book, The Ambassador and the Courtesan: Political Bodies in Renaissance Italy (U Delaware Press, 2026). Drawing on literature, legal texts, and archival materials, The Ambassador and the Courtesan offers a comparative analysis of these two emerging roles in the early modern period and in Renaissance Italian society. While these two figures may
Raffaele Danna, "The Craft of Indo-Arabic Numerals: How Practical Arithmetic Shaped Commerce and Mathematics in Western Europe, 1200–1600" (Harvard UP, 2026)
In the thirteenth-century Mediterranean, commerce transformed as merchants shifted from Roman to Indo-Arabic numerals—an alternative that better facilitated complex calculations. It has long been known that this transition stemmed from Europe’s increasing exchanges with India, Persia, and the Arabic world. Yet much remains to be understood about how Indo-Arabic numerals—and the practical arithmeti
Tiffany Jo Werth, "The Lithic Imagination from More to Milton" (Oxford UP, 2024)
The Lithic Imagination from More to Milton (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Tiffany Jo Werth explores how stones, rocks, and the broader mineral realm play a vital role in early modern England's religious and cultural systems, a role that, in turn, informs the period's poetic and visual imagination. The scale of the human lifespan and the gyre-like turns of England's long Reformation provide
Vin Nardizzi, "Marvellous Vegetables in the English Renaissance" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
Today, I interview Vin Nardizzi, Professor of English at the University of British Columbia, about his new monograph Marvellous Vegetables in the English Renaissance (U Toronto Press, 2025), published by the University of Toronto Press. Vin Nardizzi is the author of Wooden Os: Shakespeare’s Theatres and England’s Trees (University of Toronto, 2013). He is also the co-editor of Queer Renaissance Hi
Yair Mintzker, "I, Wandering Jew: A Five-Century History of Our Modern Condition" (Princeton UP, 2026)
The story behind the mythical figure of "the Wandering Jew" is one of the most fascinating tales in European history. In I, Wandering Jew, National Jewish Book Award-winning historian Yair Mintzker traces the tale back to its source, follows its many metamorphoses through five centuries, and relates it to the fraught present moment.
According to a mysterious pamphlet published in 1602, the Wander
Francis Young, "Fairies: A History" (John Wiley & Sons, 2026)
Many people think they know what fairies are, what a fairy looks like, and how a fairy is expected to behave. Dr. Francis Young's Fairies: A History (Polity, 2026) demonstrates that the truth about belief in fairies is far stranger than clichéd images of tiny figures with wings and wands.Before the rise of the 'small winged fairy' in the nineteenth century, the category of fairies included a vast
Penny Roberts, "Huguenot Networks: Truth and Secrecy in Sixteenth-Century Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Huguenot Networks: Truth and Secrecy in Sixteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge UP, 2025), Penny Robert's latest book, takes us into the world of secret intelligence gathering during the French Wars of Religion. Robert's discovery of the interrogation record of a Huguenot merchant, Jean Tivinat, arrested in May 1570 for attempting to secretly carry letters to England, unspools into a broader story
Mark A. Johnson, "American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon" (U Georgia Press, 2026)
In American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon (U Georgia Press, 2026), Dr. Mark A. Johnson asks (and answers) a seemingly simple question: How has bacon overcome centuries of religious prohibition, cultural contempt, and dietary advice to become a twenty-first-century culinary and cultural powerhouse? Starting in early modern Britain and tracing the story of bacon through the colonial era, t
Karen L. Bowen and Dirk Imhof, "The Burgeoning European Print Trade: The Distribution of Prints Via the Plantin-Moretus Press of Antwerp" (Harvey Miller, 2025)
Karen L. Bowen and Dirk Imhof join Jana Byars to talk about their new book, The Burgeoning European Print Trade: The Distribution of Prints Via the Plantin-Moretus Press of Antwerp (Harvey Miller, 2025). The European print trade is an evocative topic. Not only art historians, but social, cultural, and economic historians all agree that it was of vital importance in the Early Modern Period, as the
Dominik Berrens, "Naming New Things and Concepts in Early Modern Science: The Case of Natural History" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Naming new discoveries is central to science, and for centuries, Latin dominated this process. The resulting terminology still shapes modern science, yet the influences behind its creation have remained largely unexplored. Naming New Things and Concepts in Early Modern Science: The Case of Natural History (Cambridge University Press, 2026) by Dr. Dominik Berrens is the first comprehensive explorat
Wout Saelens, "Fossil Consumerism: Energy, Ecology and Everyday Life in the Early Modern Low Countries" (Leuven UP, 2026)
Fossil Consumerism: Energy, Ecology and Everyday Life in the Early Modern Low Countries (Leuven UP, 2026) by Dr. Wout Saelens explores how the homes of ordinary city dwellers sparked our modern dependence on fossil fuels. Drawing on a rich variety of sources, including probate inventories, household manuals, personal journals, medical treatises and contemporary artwork, it reveals how households i
Allan Greer, "Canada in the Age of Rum" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2026)
Awash in a sea of rum describes the years between the 1670s and the 1830s in the colonies that would later become Canada. Millions of litres of the sugar-based liquor were imported every year to supply a comparatively small population of colonists and Indigenous people. Why rum, and why so much?Rum was cheap and plentiful. Intimately connected to the West Indian slave plantation complex, rum shipp
Gijs Kruijtzer, "Justifying Transgression: Muslims, Christians, and the Law - 1200 to 1700" (de Gruyter, 2023)
How do people justify what others see as transgression? Taking that question to the Persian-Muslim and Latin-Christian worlds over the period 1200 to 1700, Justifying Transgression: Muslims, Christians, and the Law - 1200 to 1700(de Gruyter, 2023) shows that people in both these worlds invested considerable energy in worrying, debating, and writing about proscribed practices. It compares how peopl
Claire Goldstein, "Sun King's Cosmos: Comets and the Cultural Imagination of Seventeenth-Century France" (Northwestern UP, 2025)
In the Sun King's Cosmos: Comets and the Cultural Imagination of Seventeenth-Century France (Northwestern University Press 2025) explores the relationship between sensory experience, state ideology, and artistic form, examining literature and art inspired by comets that unsettled the heliocentric order to which French politics and culture aspired.
Guest Claire Goldstein Professor of French and Di
Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Adrian Masters, "The Radical Spanish Empire: How Paperwork Politics Remade the New World" (Harvard UP, 2026)
The Radical Spanish Empire: How Paperwork Politics Remade the New World by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Adrian Masters (Harvard UP, 2026) is a groundbreaking history of political struggle in the Spanish New World, where commoners and elites alike challenged the social order through the remarkable power of paperwork.
As Spanish conquistadors swept through the New World, the Crown envisioned that a
Jon Stobart, "Life in the Georgian Parsonage: Morals, Material Goods and the English Clergy" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
An innovative approach in the field of material culture and consumption studies, Life in the Georgian Parsonage: Morals, Material Goods and the English Clergy (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Jon Stobart looks at the houses, consumption and lifestyle of Church of England clergy in the long 18th century, linking moral debates and popular representations of the clergy to the material culture of their house
Michael Bycroft, "Gems and the New Science: Matter and Value in the Scientific Revolution" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
In Gems and the New Science: Matter and Value in the Scientific Revolution (U Chicago Press, 2026), Dr. Michael Bycroft argues that gems were connected to major developments in the “new science” between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. As he explains, precious and semiprecious stones were at the center of dramatic shifts in natural knowledge in early modern Europe. They were used to investi
Leah Astbury, "Making Babies in Early Modern England" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Leah Astbury's new book, Making Babies in Early Modern England (Cambridge UP, 2025), explores the ideals and realities that governed generation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Astbury uses the family as her unit of study to understand how people approached fertility, pregnancy, preparing for birth, delivery, and the recovery process, as well as early infant care. As she argues, making
Anna-Luna Post, "Galileo’s Fame: Science, Credibility, and Memory in the Seventeenth Century" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2025)
From the beginning of Galileo’s career, well before the publication of the Sidereus Nuncius, his contemporaries took pains to shape his reputation and fame. They were fully aware that their efforts would shape the course of his career; they also knew that they would profit from helping him. With Galileo’s Fame: Science, Credibility, and Memory in the Seventeenth Century (U Pittsburgh Press, 2025),
Richard Schoch, "Shakespeare’s House: A Window onto his Life and Legacy" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
In the wide realm of Shakespeare worship, the house in Stratford-upon-Avon where William Shakespeare was born in 1564 – known colloquially as the 'Birthplace' – remains the chief shrine. It's not as romantic as Anne Hathaway's thatched cottage, it's not where he wrote any of his plays, and there's nothing inside the house that once belonged to Shakespeare himself. So why, for centuries, have peopl
Jane Ohlmeyer, "Making Empire: Ireland, Imperialism, and the Early Modern World" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Empire and imperial frameworks, policies, practices, and cultures have shaped the history of the world for the last two millennia. It is nation states that are the blip on the historical horizon. Making Empire: Ireland, Imperialism, and the Early Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2023) by Dr. Jane Ohlmeyer re-examines empire as process—and Ireland's role in it—through the lens of early modern
Mélanie Lamotte, "By Flesh and Toil: How Sex, Race, and Labor Shaped the Early French Empire" (Harvard UP, 2026)
From the beginning of the seventeenth century, French colonies and trading posts sprawled across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In the first pan-imperial history of the early French Empire in the English language, Mélanie Lamotte shows how an increasingly cohesive legal culture came to govern the lives of enslaved and free people of African, Malagasy, South Asian, and Native American descent. She
Shelley Puhak, "The Blood Countess: Murder, Betrayal, and the Making of a Monster" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
There have long been whispers, coming from the castle; from the village square; from the dark woods. The great lady-a countess, from one of Europe's oldest families-is a vicious killer. Some even say she bathes in the blood of her victims. When the king's men force their way into her manor house, she has blood on her hands, caught in the act of murdering yet another of her maids. She is walled up
Sara Pennell & Jon Stobart, "Auctions and the Consumption of Second-Hand Goods in Georgian England" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Auctions and the Consumption of Second-Hand Goods in Georgian England (Bloomsbury, 2026) by Dr. Sara Pennell & Professor Jon Stobart provides the first comprehensive examination of household auctions as the key mechanism for recirculating household goods through the 18th and early 19th century. Dr. Pennell and Dr. Stobart contextualise and historicise the importance of used goods to consumer choic
Lynneth Miller Renberg, "Women, Dance and Parish Religion in England, 1300-1640: Negotiating the Steps of Faith" (Boydell & Brewer, 2022)
In Women, Dance and Parish Religion in England, 1300-1640: Negotiating the Steps of Faith (Boydell & Brewer, 2022) Dr. Lynneth Miller Renberg presents a lively exploration of the medieval and early modern attitudes towards dance, as the perception of dancers changed from saints dancing after Christ into cows dancing after the devil.
The devil’s cows, impudent camels, or damsels animated by the d
Elaine M. Fisher, "The Meeting of Rivers: Translating Religion in Early Modern India" (Oxford UP, 2025)
In The Meeting of Rivers: Translating Religion in Early Modern India (Oxford UP, 2025), Elaine Fisher reconstructs Vīraśaiva origins from unstudied multilingual archives, overturning the conventional narrative of a monolingual Kannada bhakti movement protesting Sanskrit Brahmanism. The evidence reveals Vīraśaivism as multilingual from inception—its anti-caste inheritance deriving from Sanskrit Śa
Marc Mierowsky, "A Spy Amongst Us: Daniel Defoe's Secret Service and the Plot to End Scottish Independence" (Yale UP, 2026)
In 1706, Edinburgh was on the brink of a popular uprising. Men and women took to the streets to protest the planned union with England, fearing the end of Scottish sovereignty. But unbeknownst to the mob, a spy was in their midst—the English writer Daniel Defoe, now bankrupt and thrice pilloried, had turned a government agent.
In A Spy Amongst Us: Daniel Defoe's Secret Service and the Plot to End
Ian Smith, "Black Shakespeare: Reading and Misreading Race" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
In Black Shakespeare: Reading and Misreading Race (Cambridge University Press, 2022), Ian Smith urges readers of Othello, The Merchant of Venice, and Hamlet to develop “racial literacy.” Through both wide social influences and specific professional pressures, Shakespearean critics have been taught to ignore, suppress, and explain away the racial thinking of the plays, a set of evasion strategies t
Thomas Kuehn, "Patrimony and Law in Renaissance Italy" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Thomas Kuehn, Professor Emeritus at Clemson University talks about his new book, Patrimony and Law in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and share's the knowledge produced in a long and fruitful career. Family was a central feature of social life in Italian cities. In the Renaissance, jurists, humanists, and moralists began to theorize on the relations between people and property
Andrew Billing, "Animal Rhetoric and Natural Science in Eighteenth-century Liberal Political Writing" (Routledge, 2023)
Animal Rhetoric and Natural Science in Eighteenth-century Liberal Political Writing: Political Zoologies of the French Enlightenment (Routledge, 2024) shows how our tendency to read French Enlightenment political writing from a narrow disciplinary perspective has obscured the hybrid character of political philosophy, rhetoric, and natural science in the period. As Michèle Duchet and others have sh
Arnoud S. Q. Visser, "On Pedantry: A Cultural History of the Know-it-All" (Princeton UP, 2025)
A lively and entertaining cultural history of a supremely annoying intellectual vice Intellectuals have long provoked scorn and irritation, even downright aggression. Many learned individuals have cast such hostility as a badge of honor, a sign of envy, or a form of resistance to inconvenient truths. On Pedantry: A Cultural History of the Know-it-All (Princeton University Press, 2025) offers an al
Debra Kaplan and Elisheva Carlebach, "A Woman Is Responsible for Everything: Jewish Women in Early Modern Europe" (Princeton UP, 2025)
In small villages, bustling cities, and crowded ghettos across early modern Europe, Jewish women were increasingly active participants in the daily life of their communities, managing homes and professions, leading institutions and sororities, and crafting objects and texts of exquisite beauty. In their book, A Woman Is Responsible for Everything: Jewish Women in Early Modern Europe (Princeton UP,
Saundra Weddle, "The Brothel and Beyond: An Urban History of the Sex Trade in Early Modern Venice" (Penn State UP, 2026)
Saundra Weddle joins fellow Venetianist Jana Byars to talk about her pathbreaking new release, The Brothel and Beyond: An Urban History of the Sex Trade in Early Modern Venice (Penn State UP, 2026). This book deepens our understanding of women’s engagement in urban life through a close study of Venice’s sex trade. Centering questions of gender, agency, and mobility, it reveals how sex workers were
Olivia Weisser, "The Dreaded Pox: Sex and Disease in Early Modern London" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, venereal disease, or the 'pox,' was a dreaded diagnosis throughout Europe. Its ghastly marks, along with their inexorable link to sex, were so stigmatizing that it was commonly called 'the secret disease.' How do we capture everyday experiences of a disease that so few people admitted having? In The Dreaded Pox: Sex and Disease in Early Modern London (C
Toby Green, "The Heretic of Cacheu: Crispina Peres and the Struggle over Life in Seventeenth-Century West Africa" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
The Heretic of Cacheu: Crispina Peres and the Struggle over Life in Seventeenth-Century West Africa (U Chicago Press, 2025) by Professor Toby Green tells the extraordinary story of seventeenth-century West African slave trader Crispina Peres to explore the shifting, sophisticated world in which she lived.
In 1665, Crispina Peres, the most powerful trader in the West African slave-trafficking port
Karin Wulf, "Lineage: Genealogy and the Power of Connection in Early America" (Oxford UP, 2025)
In eighteenth-century America, genealogy was more than a simple record of family ties—it was a powerful force that shaped society. Lineage: Genealogy and the Power of Connection in Early America (Oxford UP, 2025) by Dr. Karin Wulf delves into an era where individuals, families, and institutions meticulously documented their connections. Whether driven by personal passion or mandated by churches, l
Simon Devereaux, "Execution, State and Society in England, 1660–1900" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Execution, State and Society in England, 1660–1900 (Cambridge UP, 2023) by Dr. Simon Devereaux provides the first comprehensive account of execution practices in England and their extraordinary transformation from 1660 to 1900. Agonizing execution rituals were once common. Male traitors were hanged, disembowelled while still alive, then decapitated and quartered. Female traitors were burned alive.
Nena Vandeweerdt, "Women and Work Through a Comparative Lens: Gender and the Urban Labor Markets of Premodern Brabant and Biscay" (Leuven UP, 2025)
Women and Work Through a Comparative Lens: Gender and the Urban Labor Markets of Premodern Brabant and Biscay explores women's economic roles in late medieval and early modern Europe, particularly through the lens of craft guilds and regional comparisons with the aim emphasising the visibility of women’s economic activities in premodern Europe. The book explains the nature of guilds at this perio
Alison Rowlands, "Witchcraft Narratives in Germany: Rothenburg, 1561-1652" (Manchester UP, 2026)
Alison Rowlands, professor of Early Modern European History at the University of Essex, joins Jana Byars to talk about her classic book, Witchcraft Narratives in Germany, Rothenberg, 1561- 1652, out Manchester UP 2003. This conversation took place on the occasion of a new edition, this time a paperback release, in January 2026 Witchcraft Narratives in Germany: Rothenburg, 1561-1652 (Manchester UP
Amanda G. Madden, "Civil Blood: Vendetta Violence and the Civic Elites in Early Modern Italy" (Cornell UP, 2025)
Civil Blood: Vendetta Violence and the Civic Elites in Early Modern Italy (Cornell UP, 2025) is a study of the practice of vendetta among the civic elites in sixteenth-century Italy and illustrates the complex and integral role that vendetta violence played in civic life and state formation on the winding path to state centralization. At many temporal, geographic, and political points in early mod
Elwin Hofman et al. eds., "The Business of Pleasure: A History of Paid Sex in the Heart of Europe" (Leuven UP, 2022)
Elwin Hofman joins Jana Byars to talk about the volume he edited with Magaly Rodríguez García & Pieter Vanhees, The Business of Pleasure: A History of Paid Sex in the Heart of Europe (Leuven UP, 2022). In 2022, the Belgian parliament made a landmark decision by approving the decriminalisation of sex work. This move positioned the small nation as the first country in Europe - and the second globall
Sam Fullerton, "Sexual Politics in Revolutionary England" (Manchester UP, 2026)
Samuel Fullerton joins Jana Byars to talk about Sexual Politics in Revolutionary England (Manchester UP 2024) to celebrate its paperback release. It recounts a dramatic transformation in English sexual polemic that unfolded during the kingdom's mid-seventeenth-century civil wars. In early Stuart England, explicit sexual language was largely confined to manuscript and oral forms by the combined reg
Noam Sienna, "Jewish Books in North Africa: Between the Early Modern and Modern Worlds" (Indiana UP, 2025)
Author Noam Sienna unveils a vast Sephardic world created by these books. This literary network transcended geographical boundaries, connecting Jewish communities from Fez and Tunis to Salonica, Jerusalem, and Livorno. By examining cultural centers and tracing the journey of these texts, Sienna provides depth to our understanding of a remarkably global and worldly book culture, and its evolving ro
Scott W. Gregory, "Bandits in Print: The Water Margin and the Transformations of the Chinese Novel" (Cornell UP, 2023)
Bandits in Print: "The Water Margin" and the Transformations of the Chinese Novel (Cornell UP, 2023) uses the classic novel The Water Margin (Shuihu Zhuan) to examine the world of print in early modern China. Scott W. Gregory traces the way this beloved novel about outlaw heroes, honor, corruption, and brotherhood was adapted and changed by different editor-publishers. While in other contexts prin
Matthijs Lok, "Europe Against Revolution: Conservatism, Enlightenment, and the Making of the Past" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Contemporary Europe seems to be divided between progressive cosmopolitans sympathetic to the European Union and the ideals of the Enlightenment, and counter-enlightened conservative nationalists extolling the virtues of homelands threatened by globalised elites and mass migration.
Europe Against Revolution: Conservatism, Enlightenment, and the Making of the Past (Cambridge UP, 2023) seeks to unco
Marcy Norton, "The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492" (Harvard UP, 2024)
In The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492 (Harvard University Press, 2024), Dr. Marcy Norton offers a dramatic new interpretation of the encounter between Europe and the Americas that reveals the crucial role of animals in the shaping of the modern world.
When the men and women of the island of Guanahani first made contact with Christopher Columbus and his crew on October 12, 1492, t
Clare Griffin, "Mixing Medicines: The Global Drug Trade and Early Modern Russia" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022)
Clare Griffin's book Mixing Medicines: The Global Drug Trade and Early Modern Russia (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022) introduces the reader to the dynamic and complex world of early modern Russian medical drugs, from the enthusiasm for newly imported American botanicals to the disgust at Western European medicines made from human corpses.
Based on a unique set of previously unused sources, this book is t
John Samuel Harpham, "Intellectual Origins of American Slavery: English Ideas in the Early Modern Atlantic World" (Harvard UP, 2025)
The period from 1550 to 1700 was critical in the development of slavery across the English Atlantic world. During this time, English discourse about slavery revolved around one central question: How could free persons be made into slaves? John Samuel Harpham shows that English authors found answers to this question in a tradition of ideas that stretched back to the ancient world, where they were m
Danielle Alesi, "Eating Animals in the Early Modern Atlantic World: Consuming Empire, 1492-1700" (Taylor & Francis, 2025)
Eating Animals in the Early Modern Atlantic World: Consuming Empire, 1492-1700 (Amsterdam University Press, 2025) by Dr. Danielle Alesi examines how the perceived edibility of animals evolved during the colonization of the Americas. Early European colonizers ate a variety of animals in the Americas, motivated by factors like curiosity, starvation, and diplomacy. As settlements increased and became
Sheiba Kian Kaufman, "Persian Paradigms in Early Modern English Drama" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Persian Paradigms in Early Modern English Drama examines the concept of early modern globality and the development of European toleration discourse through English representations of Persian monarchs and Persianate conceptions of hospitality as paradigms of interreligious and intercultural hospitality for early modern and Shakespearean drama.
English playwrights depict Persia and its legendary mo
Rachel Midura, "Postal Intelligence: The Tassis Family and Communications Revolution in Early Modern Europe" (Cornell UP, 2025)
Rachel Midura joins Jana Byars to talk about Postal Intelligence: The Tassis Family and Communications Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cornell UP, 2025) connects and situates histories of the post and government intelligence alongside print technology and state power in the wider context of the early modern communications revolution. In the sixteenth century, postal services became central to d
Stuart Carroll, "Enmity and Violence in Early Modern Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Stuart Carroll's Enmity and Violence in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2023) transforms our understanding of Europe between 1500 and 1800 by exploring how ordinary people felt about their enemies and the violence it engendered. Enmity, a state or feeling of mutual opposition or hostility, became a major social problem during the transition to modernity. He examines how people use
Andrew S. Curran, "Biography of a Dangerous Idea: A New History of Race from Louis XIV to Thomas Jefferson" (Other Press, 2026)
An engaging investigation of how 13 key Enlightenment figures shaped the concept of race, from the acclaimed author of Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely. Over the first decades of the 18th century, Christianity began to lose its grip on the story of humankind. Yet centuries of xenophobia, religious intolerance, and proto-biological ideas did not simply disappear. This raw material was increas
Kerry Brown, "The Great Reversal: Britain, China and the 400-Year Contest for Power" (Yale UP, 2024)
In the sixteenth century, Queen Elizabeth I tried to send several letters to her Chinese counterpart, the Wan Li Emperor. The letters tried to ask the Ming emperor to conduct trade relations with faraway England; none of the expeditions carrying the letters ever arrived.
It’s an inauspicious beginning to the four centuries of foreign relations between China and what eventually became Britain, cove
Marion Gibson, "Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials" (Scribner, 2023)
Witchfinder General, Salem, Malleus Maleficarum. The world of witch-hunts and witch trials sounds archaic and fanciful, these terms relics of an unenlightened, brutal age. However, we often hear ‘witch-hunt’ in today’s media, and the misogyny that shaped witch trials is all too familiar. Three women were prosecuted under a version of the 1735 Witchcraft Act as recently as 2018.
In Witchcraft: A Hi
Stephanie Barczewski, "How the Country House Became English (Reaktion, 2023)
How the Country House Became English (Reaktion, 2023) by Dr. Stephanie Barczewski is an exploration of the evolution of the quintessentially English country house.
Country houses have come to be regarded as quintessentially English, not only in terms of their architectural style but because they appear to embody national values of continuity and insularity. The histories of country houses and Engl
Shlomo Pereira, "Monuments de Papel E Pergaminho: Hebrew Printing in Portugal at the End of the 15th Century" (Chabad Portugal Press, 2025)
Rabbi Professor Shomo Pereira discussed his book "Monuments of Paper and Parchment: Hebrew Printing in Portugal in the Late 15th Century." He explained that while Portugal lacks physical Jewish monuments due to natural disasters, earthquakes, and persecution, the book highlights the country's rich Jewish history through its manuscript and printing heritage of the late 15th century. He explained ho
Hilary Davidson, "A Guide to Regency Dress: from Corsets and Breeches to Bonnets and Muslins" (Yale UP, 2025)
In A Guide to Regency Dress: from Corsets and Breeches to Bonnets and Muslins (Yale UP 2025), celebrated dress historian Dr. Hilary Davidson brings together nearly 20 years of research on Regency fashion in an illustrated guide for the first time. All the elements of the Regency wardrobe of both men and women—from coats, gowns and undergarments to shoes, accessories, beauty, hair and jewellery—are
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