• Features
  • Reviews
  • Teaching
  • Watch & Listen
  • About

The past is never dead. It's not even past

Not Even Past

Politics

Review of Empire of Poverty. The Moral-Political Economy of the Spanish Empire, by Julia McClure (2025). 

Review of Stalin as Warlord, by Alfred J. Rieber (2022)

Review of Indigenous Autocracy: Power, Race, and Resources in Porfirian Tlaxcala, Mexico, by Jaclyn Ann Sumner (2024)

Review of Bolivia in the Age of Gas (2020) by Bret Gustafson

The Wars of Oppenheimer

Roundtable Review of The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink (2023) by William Inboden

Review of Going the Distance: Eurasian Trade and the Rise of the Business Corporation, 1400-1700 (2020) by Ron Harris

Prisoners of the Cold War

Review of Electric News in Colonial Algeria (2019) by Arthur Asseraf

Review of Radio for the Millions: Hindi-Urdu Broadcasting Across Borders (2023) by Isabel Huacuja Alonso

Review of Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914 (2010) by J. R. McNeill

Review of The Global Interior: Mineral Frontiers and American Power (2018) by Megan Black

Reimagining Reconstruction: Where Do We Go from Here?

Review of Wild by Design: The Rise of Ecological Restoration (2022) by Laura J. Martin

Roundtable Review of Jeremi Suri’s Civil War by Other Means

Review of Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America (2020), by Tanya Harmer

Review of Akira Kurosawa and Modern Japan (2022) by David Conrad

Humanizing Great Mother Russia: “Ekaterina” on Amazon Prime

Master of the Game

Review of Master of the Game: Henry Kissinger and the Art of Middle East Diplomacy (2021)

The End of Ambition : The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era

Review of The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era (2022)

The Approaching Storm

Review of The Approaching Storm: Roosevelt, Wilson, Addams, and their Clash over America’s Future (2021)

Digital Archive Review: The American Prison Writing Archive (APWA)

Optics of the State

Review of The Optic of the State: Visuality and Power in Argentina and Brazil (2007) by Jens Andermann

Republics of Knowledge, Democracy, and Race in Nineteenth-Century Spanish America (2020) by Nicola Miller

Review of From Angel to Office Worker: Middle-Class Identity and Female Consciousness in Mexico, 1890-1950 (2018) by Susie S. Porter

Film Review: La Llorona, Directed by Jayro Bustamante

It’s all Connected: Introducing Filmmaker Adam Curtis

Book cover of Greedy Bastards: One City's Texas-Size Struggle to Avoid a Financial Crisis by Sheryl Sculley

Greedy Bastards – One City’s Texas-Size Struggle to Avoid a Financial Crisis, by Sheryl Sculley (2020)

Digital Archive Review: Age of Revolutions and the Newberry French Pamphlet Collection

Digital Archive of Latin American and Caribbean Ephemera

Book cover of Terms of Inclusion: Black Intellectuals in Twentieth-Century Brazil by Paulina L. Alberto

Review of Terms of Inclusion: Black Intellectuals in Twentieth-Century Brazil (2011)

A Black Jurist in a Slave Society: Antonio Pereira Rebouças and the Trials of Brazilian Citizenship, translated by Kristin M. McGuire (2019)

The Insecurity State: Punjab and the Making of Colonial Power in British India by Mark Condos (2017)

Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World by Ussama Makdisi (2019)

Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All by Martha S. Jones (2020)

Who Killed Berta Cáceres? Dams, Death Squads, and an Indigenous Defender’s Battle for the Planet by Nina Lakhani (2020)

Film Review – Jojo Rabbit (Dir: Taika Waititi, 2019)

America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States by Erika Lee (2019)

Digital Archive Review – Más de 72

The King of Adobe: Reies López Tijerina, Lost Prophet of the Chicano Movement by Lorena Oropeza (2019)

The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War by Joanne B. Freeman (2018)

Review of The Middle East and the Making of the Modern World (2017), by Cyrus Schayegh

Red China’s Green Revolution: Technological Innovation, Institutional Change, and Economic Development under the Commune by Joshua Eisenman (2018)

Whisper Tapes: Kate Millett in Iran by Negar Mottahedeh (2019)

This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust (2008)

Imperial Boredom: Monotony and the British Empire by Jeffrey A. Auerbach (2018)

Digital Archive Review – Authorship and Advocacy: The Native American Petitions Dataverse

Anxieties, Fear, and Panic in Colonial Settings: Empires on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown edited by Harald Fischer-Tiné (2016)

The Habsburg Empire: A New History by Pieter Judson (2016)

African Catholic Decolonization and the Transformation of the Church by Elizabeth A. Foster (2019)

The Blackwell School in Marfa, Texas

Promiscuous Power: An Unorthodox History of New Spain by Martin Nesvig (2018)

Eisenstein’s “Ivan the Terrible” in Stalin’s Russia

When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting that Changed History, by Matthew Restall (2018)

The King’s Living Image: The Culture and Politics of Viceregal Power in Colonial Mexico by Alejandro Cañeque (2004)

A Poverty of Rights, Citizenship and Inequality in Twentieth-Century Rio de Janeiro by Brodwyn Fischer (2008)

Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala (2014)

Film Review – Dazed and Confused (Dir: Linklater, 1993)

Precarious Paths to Freedom: The United States, Venezuela, and the Latin American Cold War (2016)

Review of The Argentine Silent Majority: Middle Classes, Politics, Violence, and Memory in the Seventies (2014), by Sebastián Carassai

Film Review – The Miseducation of Cameron Post (Dir: Desiree Akhavan, 2018)

Of How a Hopi Ancient Word Became a Famous Experimental Film

Yugoslavia in the Shadow of War: Veterans and the Limits of State Building, 1903-1945 by John Paul Newman (2015)

A Nation of Outsiders: How the White Middle Class Fell in Love with Rebellion in Postwar America by Grace Elizabeth Hale (2011)

We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2017)

Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff (2018)

Historical Perspectives on Marshall (dir: Reginal Hudlin, 2017)

Book cover of By More Than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia Pacific Since 1783 by Michael J. Green

Rethinking American Grand Strategy in the Asia Pacific

The Battle of Chile

Victoria & Abdul: Simulacra & Simulation

Book cover of Angela Merkel: Europe's Most Influential Leader by Matthew Qvortrup

Angela Merkel: Europe’s Most Influential Leader (2016) by Matthew Qvortrup

Mapping the Country of Regions: The Chorographic Commission of Nineteenth-Century Colombia, by Nancy P. Appelbaum (2016)

The Man Who Loved Dogs, by Leonardo Padura (2013)

Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam, by Nick Turse (2013)

The Works of Steven Hahn

The Prague Spring Archive Project

Historical Perspectives on The Birth of a Nation (2016)

Seeds of Empire, By Andrew Torget (2015)

Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Soviet Central Asia, By Douglas Northrup (2003)

The End of White Christian America, by Robert P. Jones (2016)

The Enemy Within: Cold War History in FX’s The Americans

Trauma and Recovery, by Judith Herman (1992)

Americans Against the City, By Stephen Conn (2014)

Kissinger’s Shadow, by Greg Grandin (2015)

Global Indios: The Indigenous Struggle for Justice in Sixteenth-Century Spain, By Nancy van Deusen (2015)

A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence, by John E. Mack (1976)

Historical Perspectives on Michael Bay’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016)

Worldmaking: The Art and Science of American Diplomacy, by David Milne (2015)

Review of The Anatomy of Fascism (2004), by Robert Paxton

Killing a King, by Dan Ephron (2015)

Philip of Spain, King of England, by Harry Kelsey (2012)

Sir John Hawkins: Queen Elizabeth’s Slave Trader, by Harry Kelsey (2003)

Magical Realism on Drugs: Colombian History in Netflix’s Narcos

Five Books on the End of Empire, by Wm. Roger Louis

Honest Abe’s Archive: The New Archive (No. 21)

Genghis Khan and the Making of The Modern World, by Jack Weatherford (2004)

Faith Misplaced, by Ussama Makdisi (2010)

Age of Fracture, by Daniel T. Rodgers (2011)

Personal Memoirs, by Ulysses S. Grant (2003)

More to Read about Caste and South Asia

Past and Present in Modern China

Francisco de Miranda: A Transatlantic Life in the Age of Revolution 1750-1816, by Karen Racine (2002)

Among the Powers of the Earth: the American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire, by Eliga Gould (2012)

Historical Perspectives on Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises (2013)

Has Texas Seen its Last Liberal?

Seeing John Donne Speak: The New Archive (No. 14)

Visitors of the Nile: The New Archive (No. 13)

Harper’s Weekly’s Portrayal of the Civil War: The New Archive (No. 11)

Persuasion, Propaganda, and Radio Free Europe: The New Archive (No. 9)

Hungary 1956. Crimea 2014? The New Archive (No. 7)

iTunes Remembers Black History: The New Archive (No. 5)

Visualizing Emancipation(s): Mapping The End of Slavery in America

A Rebellion Remembered: The Irish Easter Rising’s New Digital Archive

“12 Years a Slave” and the Difficulty of Dramatizing the “Peculiar Institution”

Henry Wallace’s 1948 Presidential Campaign and the Future of Postwar Liberalism by Thomas W. Devine (2013)

Great Books on Islam in American Politics & History

The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War, by James Mann (2010)

Divided Together: The United States and the Soviet Union in the United Nations, 1945-1965, by Ilya Gaiduk (2013)

42 (2013)

Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject by Saba Mahmood (2004)

Why is Anne Hathaway So Sad? The History Behind “Les Misérables” (2012)

The Emancipation Proclamation and its Aftermath

Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained (2012)

What’s Missing from ‘Argo’ (2012)

A Historian Views Spielberg’s Lincoln (2012)

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 by Hunter S. Thompson (1973)

Book cover of The Politics of the Veil by Joan Wallach Scott

The Politics of the Veil by Joan Wallach Scott

Book cover of Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation Through Popular Culture by Ziad Fahmy

Ordinary Egyptians: Creating The Modern Nation Through Popular Culture by Ziad Fahmy (2011)

Foundations of Despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo Regime, and Modernity in Dominican History by Richard Lee Turits (2004)

Patrons, Partisans, and Palace Intrigues: The Court Society of Colonial Mexico 1702-1710 by Christoph Rosenmüller (2008)

Movie poster of the movie The Descendants

The Invisible History of Hawaii in Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants”

For Greater Glory (2012)

The Fiery Trial by Eric Foner (2011)

The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan by Ayesha Jalal (1985)

Book cover of The Decline, Revival and Fall of the British Empire by John Gallagher

The Decline, Revival and Fall of the British Empire by John Gallagher (1982)

Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography (Volume I: 1889-1947) by Sarvepalli Gopal (1976)

Che: A Revolutionary Life by Jon Lee Anderson (2010)

Wavell: the Viceroy’s Journal by Archibald Percival Wavell, ed. Penderel Moon (1973)

Film Review – A Separation (2011)

African American History Online

Movie poster of the movie Camila: Love Against All Odds

Camila (1984)

From Baseball to Politics

The Dictator’s Seduction: Politics and the Popular Imagination in the Era of Trujillo by Lauren Derby (2009)

The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government by David K. Johnson (2006)

Governing the Tongue: The Politics of Speech in Early New England by Jane Kamensky (1999)

Movie poster of the movie J. Edgar

J. Edgar (2011)

Movie poster of the movie When the Mountains Tremble: The Astonishing Story of Rigoberta Menchú, Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize

Two documentaries on Guatemala’s violent civil war

Iranophobia: The Logic of an Israeli Obsession by Haggai Ram (2009)

Movie poster of the movie Amigo

Film Review – Amigo (2011)

Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property (2002)

Book cover of Plaza of Sacrifices: Gender, Power, and Terror in 1968 Mexico by Elaine Carey

Plaza of Sacrifices: Gender, Power, and Terror in 1968 Mexico by Elaine Carey (2005)

Book cover of The Doubtful Strait/El estrecho dudoso by Ernesto Cardenal and translated by John Lyons

The Doubtful Strait/El Estrecho Dudoso by Ernesto Cardenal (1995)

Scum of the Earth by Arthur Koestler (1941)

Life and Nothing But (1989)

Book cover of Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary by Bertrand M. Patenaude

Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary by Bertrand M. Patenaude (2009)

The Help

Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York by Samuel Zipp (2010)

Gender and Decolonization in the Congo: The Legacy of Patrice Lumumba by Karen Bouwer

Gender and Decolonization in the Congo: The Legacy of Patrice Lumumba (2010)

Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion by Edward L. Larson (2006)

Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice, Abridged Edition by Raymond Arsenault (2011)

Book cover of Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India by Joseph Lelyveld

Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and his Struggle with India by Loseph Lelyveld (2010)

Day of Wrath (1943)

Book cover of Midnight's Children with a New Introduction by the Author by Salman Rushdie

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (1980)

Book cover of The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860-1914 by Ilham Khuri-Makdisi

The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860-1914 by Ilham Khuri-Makdisi (2010)

Stencil of Che Guevara in gray on yellow background

Che’s Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image by Michael Casey (2009)

Movie poster of the movie Vatel

Death and Decadence: Vatel (2000)

Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America by Rick Perlstein (2008)

Book cover of Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamic Turn by Asef Bayat

Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn by Asef Bayat (2007)

The Wilsonian Moment by Erez Manela (2007)

Everyday Crimes: The Shop on Main Street (1965)

Book cover of American Africans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era by Kevin K. Gaines

African Americans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era by Kevin K. Gaines (2007)

Great Books on Egypt in the Modern World

Thurgood (2011)

Great Books on Africa and the U.S.

Movie poster of the movie Johnny Tremain: He Answered Freedom's Call

Rebel With a Cause: Johnny Tremain (1957)

Book cover of The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan by Yasmin Khan

The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan by Yasmin Khan (2008)

Book cover of Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism Second Edition by Zachary Lockman

Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism by Zachary Lockman (2004)

Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet by James Mann (2004)

Book cover of Latin America's Cold War by Hal Brands

Latin America’s Cold War by Hal Brands (2010)

Righteous Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny after Reconstruction by Michele Mitchell (2004)

Book cover of Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco (1988)

A Tale of Two Murders: Passion and Power in Seventeenth-Century France by James Farr (2005)

The Old Man and the New Man in Revolutionary Cuba

Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba’s Struggle with the Superpowers after the Missile Crisis by James G. Blight & Philip Brenner (2002)

Book cover of Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington and Africa 1959-1976 by Piero Gleijeses

Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976 by Piero Gleijeses (2002)

The Age of Reagan: A History, by Sean Wilentz (2008)

Book cover of Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs in Texas: Mexican Workers and Job Politics During World War II by Emilio Zamora

“Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs in Texas; Mexican Workers and Job Politics during World War II” by Emilio Zamora (2009)

Great Books on Slavery, Abolition, and Reconstruction

Recent Posts

  • NEP’s Archive Chronicles: A Brief Guide Through Some Archives in Gaborone and Serowe, Botswana
  • Review of Hierarchies at Home: Domestic Service in Cuba from Abolition to Revolution (2022), by Anasa Hicks
  • Agency and Resistance: African and Indigenous Women’s Navigation of Economic, Legal, and Religious Structures in Colonial Spanish America
  • NEP’s Archive Chronicles: Unexpected Archives. Exploring Student Notebooks at the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire (IFAN) in Senegal
  • Review of No Place Like Nome: The Bering Strait Seen Through Its Most Storied City
NOT EVEN PAST is produced by

The Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

We are supported by the College of Liberal Arts
And our Readers

Donate
Contact

All content © 2010-present NOT EVEN PAST and the authors, unless otherwise noted

Sign up to receive our MONTHLY NEWSLETTER

  • Features
  • Reviews
  • Teaching
  • Watch & Listen
  • About