The Twentieth-Century Russia Reader, Edited by Alastair Kocho-Williams, Routledge, 2011, 350 pp., ISBN 9780415583091An excellent collection of essays that offers much for students. The essays have been published before but they are frequently in sources that students find difficult to access. Moreover, Kocho-Williams is to be congratulated for focusing on...

British Military Service Tribunals, 1916-1918, James McDermott, Manchester University Press, 2011, 256 pp., ISBN 9780719084775.A scholarly analysis of the Military Service Tribunals that throws great light on the nature of society and the workings of the state. The Tribunals were formed following the introduction of conscription in order to consider...

Pembrokeshire: Journeys and Stories, Trevor Fishlock and Jeremy Moore, 2011, Gomer Press, 156p, ISBN 9781848510869, £19-99.This book will interest those who have some experience of the Pembrokeshire countryside and coast but equally it sets the scene well for those who are not yet familiar with this south-western corner of Wales....

The Code-Breaker's Secret Diaries: The Perilous Expedition through plague ridden Egypt to uncover the Ancient Mysteries of the Hieroglyphs, J. F. Champollion (Gibson Square Books, 2009) 208pp., paperback, £8.99, ISBN 978 1 903933 83 1.This book is the result of the labours of several people - Dr. Joyce Tyldesley provides...

The Trials of Spinoza, Tariq Ali, (Seagull Books, 2011) 61pp., hardback, price together with a DVD, £13.00, ISBN 978 1 9064 9784 2.This is exquisitely produced, Tariq Ali originally wrote The Trials of Spinoza as a contribution to a series on philosophy for BBC Channel 4 TV and the DVD...

My Life with the Taliban, Abdul Salam Zaeef, edited by Alex Strick van Linscholen and Felix Kuehn (Hurst & Company, London, 2011, first published 2010) xlix, 331pp., hardback £20.00, ISBN 978 1 84904 0266. This is an important and indeed unique book.  It is the only insider account of the...

Enlightened Monks: The German Benedictines 1740-1803, Ulrich L. Lehner (Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2011) 266pp., hardback, £55.00, ISBN 978 0 199595 12 9.This is a revisionist study by an assistant professor of historical theology and church history at Marquette University, Milwaukee.  Traditionally the Benedictines have been regarded...

Radical Religion in Cromwell's England: A Concise History from the English Civil War to the End of the Commonwealth, Andrew Bradstock (I.B. Tauris, London and New York, 2011) xxvi, 189pp., paperback, £15.99, hardback, £52.50, ISBN 978 1 84551 7658 (paper), 978 1 8451 1 764 1(hard). The dozen illustrations in...

Abydos: Egypt's First Pharaohs and the cult of Osiris, David O'Connor (Thames and Hudson, 2011, first published 2009) 216pp., paperback, £18.99, ISBN 978 0 306 500 28900 6. David O'Connor of New York University has been excavating in Nubia and Egypt for forty years but his interest now centres on...

Hugh Small, The Passion of Florence Nightingale, Amberley, 2010, paperback, 160pp, £18.99, ISBN 9781445600642This revised edition of Hugh Small's controversial biography of Florence Nightingale published in 1998, which first revealed the constraints faced by Nightingale in seeking to highlight conditions in the military hospitals at Scutari during the Crimean War,...

E.H. Carter and RAF Mears, A History of Britain. The Age of Reason and the Industrial Revolution 1714-1832, Stacey International, 2010, hardback, 259pp, £10.00, ISBN 9781906768249This volume is the fifth volume of a ten-part publishing programme dealing with British history from the Celts to the twenty-first century scheduled for completion...

M.E. Chamberlain, The Scramble for Africa, 3rd edition, Pearson Education Limited, 2010, paperback, 153 pp, £15.19, ISBN 9781408220146This third revised edition of a classic contribution to the groundbreaking Seminar Studies in History is by a former editor of The Historian, Muriel Chamberlain, Emeritus Professor of History at Swansea University, has...

Peter N. Stearns, World History: the basics, Routledge, 2011, paperback, 202 pp, £11.99, ISBN 9780415582759This pocket-sized introduction to world history is part of a series of basic introductions to a wide range of subjects ranging from acting to world music. The cover blurb declaring the novelty of the approach asserts...

Robert Gottlieb, Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt, Yale University Press, 2010, hardback, 233 pp, £18.99, ISBN 9780300141276Robert Gottlieb's thoroughly researched and elegantly written biography of the energetic, idiosyncratic, iconic actress and international celebrity, who slept in a coffin, travelled with lion cubs and wore a hat festooned with a...

A History of the World in 100 Weapons, Chris McNab, Osprey Publishing, 2011, £25, 384 pages, ISBN 978-1-84908-520-5.The BBC and Neil McGregor may have had great success with "History of the World in 100 Objects" but Osprey Publishing has done Chris McNab no favours in giving this book a similar...

A Sense of Occasion: Mendelssohn in Birmingham in 1846 and 1847, Audrey Duggan, Brewin Books, 2011, 102p, ISBN 978-1-85858-449-2, £10-95.It is often the case that the provision of a particular building or an important cultural occasion or, indeed, the visit of an international figure creates a defining moment in the...

The Visions of Isobel Gowdie; Magic, Witchcraft and Dark Shamanism in Seventeenth-Century Scotland, Emma Wilby (Sussex Academic Press, Brighton, Portland and Toronto, 2010) xi, 604pp., hardback, £75.00, ISBN 978 1 84519179 5This is the first full-length examination of the famous confessions given by Isobel Gowdie at Auldearn in 1662 which...

The Medieval Gentry; Power, Leadership and Choice During the Wars of the Roses, Malcolm Mercer (Continuum, London & New York, 2010) ix, 173pp., hardback £65.00, ISBN 978 1 44119064 2This study has a bibliography of some fourteen pages listing sources, manuscript and printed, from London, Oxford and Dublin, primary and...

The History of Sexuality in Europe; A Sourcebook and reader, ed. Anna Clark, (Routledge, Oxford and New York, 2011) xii, 358pp., paperback, £26.99, hardback, £80.00, ISBN 978 0 415 78140 4 paperback, 978 0 415 78139 8, hardback  Anna Clark, Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, has edited this...

The Local; A History of the English Pub, Paul Jennings (The History Press, Stroud, first published 2007, paperback edition 2011) 288pp., paperback, £12.99, ISBN 978 0 7524 5939 4 Paul Jennings, who lectures in history at the University of Bradford, traces the evolution that very English institution, the pub, from...