By Jonathan Parker This excellent work by historian Pieter Judson shows how the Hapsburg empire was a modernizing force that sustained a complex but often mutually beneficial relationship with the various nationalist movements within its borders. To support this argument, Judson synthesizes an impressive number of existing works on narrower topics into a cohesive narrative […]
Science/Medicine/Technology
Collecting the World: Hans Sloane and the Origins of the British Museum by James Delbourgo (2017)
by Diana Heredia López A biography of an English scientist during the early Enlightenment may not seem like cutting edge scholarship.. In Collecting the World, James Delbourgo tells the multifaceted story of Hans Sloane, an Englishman who amassed a collection of nearly eighty thousand natural objects and curiosities through his work in natural history, commerce, […]
How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS, by David France (2016)
By John Carranza In the 1980s, the United States experienced a new disease that seemed to target young, gay men living in New York City and San Francisco. From the beginning, those doctors and scientists willing to treat members of the gay community remained perplexed as to why these men, their ages ranging from their […]
Great Books on Women’s History: United States
Not Even Past asked the UT Austin History faculty to recommend great books for Women’s History Month. The response was overwhelming so we will be posting their suggestions throughout the month. Here are some terrific book recommendations on women and gender in the United States. Penne Restad recommends: Jill Lepore, The Secret History of Wonder Woman (2014). […]
This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age, by William Burrows (1998)
The Soviet Union appeared handily ahead in space. They launched the first successful satellite, put the first man and woman in space, performed the first space walk, and sent the first satellites out of earth’s gravitation and to the moon. And yet the United States still “won” the Space Race.
The Professor and the Madman, by Simon Winchester (2005)
The nineteenth century in Britain was a time of grand figures, grand projects, and Imperial expansion. Imperialism was spreading the English language across the globe, yet there was still not a definitive guide to the language.
Digital History: A Guide by Daniel J. Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig (2006): New Archive (No. 18)
In the past years, the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media has produced a myriad of digital tools and scholarly reflections on the impact of using digital media and computer technologies to democratize history.
Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment, by Daniela Bleichmar (2012)
by Christina Marie Villarreal The European Enlightenment occurred as an ongoing dialogue of ideas—a discourse composed of voices from around the globe. As Daniela Bleichmar demonstrates, southern Europe, long ignored in scholarship on the Enlightenment, had a crucial voice in the conversation. In Visible Empires, Bleichmar claims that Imperial Spain, more than any other contemporary […]
The Making of Man-Midwifery: Childbirth in England 1660-1770, by Adrian Wilson (1995)
Prior to the mid-eighteenth century, childbirth, from labor to the lying-in chamber (a darkened room where the mother rested for one month after delivery) was an exclusively female space. With few exceptions, male surgeons only intervened to extract a possibly dead baby in order to save a mother’s life.
Shores of Knowledge: New World Discoveries and the Scientific Imagination, by Joyce Appleby (2013)
by Jorge Cañizares Esguerra Shores of Knowledge has gotten its share of uncritical, rave reviews from Bill Moyers to the Washington Post. I wrote the following review for a small academic, European journal, Centaurus. There it will be read only by a handful of specialists, if I’m lucky. I want to make this review available […]