Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2015 - Social & Behavioral Sciences — History, Geography & Area Studies — Western Europe

The title of Chalmerss book captures the strength and uniqueness of this publication.  Some contextual information may cover familiar ground for readers well acquainted with the pivotal role of gender and reproduction in the ideology and practices of the Nazi Holocaust.  Chalmerss writing, however, reflects exhaustive research, clarity of thought, and unflinching engagement with complexities that have received inadequate prior attention.  The chronology of Nazi-era milestones and related medical and reproductive issues presented in the appendix makes the book accessible to readers at all levels of prior knowledge.  The result is a rare and complex analysis supported by well-chosen firsthand accounts.  Chalmers quotes extensively from women, including many who were imprisoned in ghettos and concentration camps.  Their voices tell of rape, forced abortions and infanticide, and long-term effects on survivors.  This makes for what is often painful reading, but it is essential for anyone wanting to understand better what Chalmers calls the integral place of Nazi policies towards reproduction aspects of life and sexuality in their linked goals of creating a Master Race.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

In this highly original work, which draws exhaustively on archival sources as well as the ideas of other scholars, Manz (Aston Univ., UK) shows that from 1871 to 1914, not only did Germans living in the new Reich become unified, but Germans living outside the new German empire began to form themselves into a diaspora with a new sense of common identity.  With support from the homeland, they founded German schools and joined the Pan-German League and the Central League for German Navy Clubs Abroad.  They not only resisted assimilation but also became strong defenders of German culture and German world power.  By 1914, advocates both within Germany and overseas frequently attracted unfavorable attention throughout the world, thanks to their racist and imperialistic rhetoric.  Perhaps the book's greatest merit is that it not only enriches knowledge of the Germany of William II, but helps readers better understand the policies of the National Socialists after 1933.  Manz covers an enormous amount of ground looking at various locations worldwide, and unpretentiously but deftly draws on contemporary migration theory.  This work, one of the best this reviewer has seen in over 30 years, is a model of historical scholarship and stylistic clarity, and belongs in every academic library.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

While aspects of Dublin's past, such as its early settlement by Vikings, the creation of the Georgian capital, and the Easter Rising of 1916, have been covered in specialized studies or as part of general histories of Ireland, there has been no recent scholarly study of its entire history.  Dickson (Trinity College Dublin) has written a coherent and analytical book integrating the city's people, built environment, and physical growth over time, stressing the themes of cultural hybridity, concentration of political power and resistance, and extremes of wealth and poverty.  After a prologue surveying the first millennium of Dublin's emergence as a town through 1600, the author concentrates on the political, economic, and religious continuities and discontinuities before and after the Union and into the era of independence through 2000, describing trade, crafts, art and architecture, housing, medicine, and education.  The individuals who shaped the city at each juncture are not lost in the discussion of guilds, societies, political parties, and social classes.  Dickson has synthesized a formidable body of research across a range of disciplines and draws on many primary sources as well.  Excellent illustrations, including color and black-and-white plates, maps, and photographs, complement the text.  This outstanding book is now the definitive work on Dublin's history.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All academic levels/libraries.

Eminent early modern historian Parker (Ohio State) has authored a splendid biography of Philip II, ruler of Spain and the worlds greatest empire (15561598).  In 19 short, highly readable chapters, the author examines Philips youth and education for his future role; work habits and efforts to control people and events; marriages and children; foreign relations and multiple enemiesthe Turks, the Dutch, the English, and, at times, the pope and the French; constant fiscal problems as a result of war on one or more fronts for all but six months of his rule; and deep religious faith and belief in miracles as a result of his engagement in Gods work.  Parker demonstrates that Philips obsessive-compulsive personality, inability to leave trivial matters to others, secrecy, willingness to employ spiritual blackmail, and duplicity produced both great results and major disasters in an age in which rapid, reliable communications with non-Iberian parts of the empire were impossible.  Based heavily on extensive research in primary sources and a cache of previously unknown documents, the book contains nearly 60 illustrations and figures.  Scholars, students, and general readers will enjoy this book.  All libraries should purchase it.Summing Up: Essential. All public and academic levels/librareis.

Spang (Indiana Univ.) insists that money in the Revolution cannot be understood outside the specific time of the Revolution and that money itself was part of revolutionary temporality.  Such a modest précis does less than justice to this rich and textured work.  The author in fact seeks to bridge the gap between the materialist and ideological schools explaining the origin of the French Revolution.  In studying the Revolutions famous monetary policies revolving around the assignats and their collapse in value, Spang reminds readers that monetary policy is both a political and an economic decision: a vital aspect of the material world that obviously reflects a political ideology.  The author insists that the "Terror" was not the product of madmen but was created by people whose lives and worlds had been traumatically ruptured by the collapse of, among other things, the microtechnology of daily trust that we call money.  Based on research in both departmental and French national archives, the volume is a fascinating treatment of one of the most complex episodes of the Revolution.  An important acquisition for European history collections.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

Renaissance historian Weinstein (emer., Arizona) has translated DallAglios Lassassino del Duca,published in Italy in 2011.  The author uses new archival documentation to reveal previously unknown details about the life and death of Lorenzino de Medici.  The focus is on Lorenzinos assassination of Alessandro de Medici, duke of Florence, in 1537; Lorenzinos life in exile over the next decade; and Lorenzinos own assassination in 1548.  The book's most striking aspect is DallAglios convincing revisionist narrative of the international context of the events: Lorenzino spent the years 15371548 active in diplomatic affairs that stretched across the Alps and the Mediterranean Sea.  Lorenzinos death was the result of actions by Charles V, ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, rather than a narrative centered on Florence and Duke Cosimo I.  DallAglio (Univ. of Leeds, England) unveils these murky events in an engaging, readable narrative of spies, intrigues, and assassins.  The translation is lively, and the book is not only accessible to but also enjoyable for students and scholars.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All academic levels/libraries.

The Anglophone military history of the Great War runs something like this: French generals callously massacred their own infantry in fruitless offensives in 1914-15; the French poilus heroically held Verdun in 1916; and in 1917, an exhausted French Army came near to collapse, only to be rescued by a revitalized British Army, the Americans, and the tanks.  Greenhalghs impressive new work provides an important corrective to this myth.  The French Army was, in fact, the linchpin of the entire Allied effort, and the story of its victory is central to understanding the real war.  Based on printed primary sources as well as archival research, the volume offers not only a comprehensive history of the armys operations on multiple fronts, but adds significant detail on the mobilization of French manpower to sustain a war of attrition fought primarily on French soil.  Greenhalgh (Univ. of New South Wales, Australia) also offers frank evaluations of Frances generals, of the 1917 crisis, of inter-allied relations, and of the French Armys vastly underappreciated role in the 1918 campaign.  This fine book is an important corrective to most Great War narratives.  Bottom line: mandatory for modern history collections.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

This handbook is a gem.  Organizing the revolutionary epoch into six phases, editor Andress (Univ. of Portsmouth), a much-published scholar of the revolution, has assembled an impressive cast of specialists to provide a superb reference work that doubles as a good read for anyone interested in this massive and complex subject.  The 37 essays, based on primary sources as well as the revolutions most famous interpretations, essentially follow a standard, useful format: in each, the author seeks to define an issue, discuss the key historiography that surrounds each topic, affords the author an opportunity to explain and add his or her two cents, and suggests avenues of needed or neglected research.  The quality of the essays is uniformly high.  No brief review can adequately summarize the volumes impressive coverage, but Part V, The New Republic, with its treatment of the Terror, and Part VI, After Thermidor, dealing with the themes of continuity and the periods long-term impact on France, Europe, and the world, help highlight the authors ability to review, explain, and question.  Each essay also includes a list of recommended readings.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

This excellent survey of French history since the French Revolution is transnational in three respects: it situates France in a broader European context; it focuses on the French empire, including ways that the colonies and empire-building affected metropolitan France; and it gives considerable attention to French relations with, and images of, the US.  Despite the breadth of his book, Stovall (French history, Univ. of California Santa Cruz) successfully maintains a tight narrative, using the concept of universalism to tie the strands together.  Like the US (that other major power that proclaimed universal notions of human rights while neglecting to give most inhabitants those rights until the 20th century), France has long experienced a tension between the promise and the reality of universalism.  Organizing his book traditionally by political eras, Stovall nevertheless explores the ironies of universal rights in light of widespread French, European, and Western assumptions about class, gender, and race as they have evolved since the 18th century.  Transnational France is thus a sophisticated work, laying out the methodological and theoretical questions that preoccupy historians today but doing so in a way completely accessible to students.  Beautifully written, with precise and telling examples, the book sets a new standard for national histories.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

This account of the Nazi occupation of Paris tells a familiar story with originality, erudition, and nuance.  One of the volumes great strengths is its balance:  Rosbottom (Amherst College)  seeks to recount the four harrowing years of the citys captivity from the perspective of both the French and their German masters.  Informed by archival collections and printed primary sources, the book illustrates the complex and contradictory attitudes that shaped a depressing and at times terrifying mentalité that united Parisians and Germans in unexpected ways.  Both felt the burden of captivity: the French, in the shame of their abject defeat; the Germans, in their submission to Paris the seductress.  Both veered between savage resistance cum retribution and intimate collaboration.  Should Parisians grudgingly do business, fraternize, or avoid all contact with their captors?  For their part, Germans went to see Picasso at his studio; they read Camus; they were depressed at the disdain their captives never fully concealed.  They also tortured and killed those who dared resist their occupation.  No book in English better captures the terror, boredom, deprivation, and humiliation that was occupied Paris.  An important addition for modern history collections.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

Esdaile (Univ. of Liverpool, UK) examines, refines, and refutes long-standing artistic and literary images of Spanish women as heroines, victims, and auxiliaries in Spains patriotic struggle against French domination, 18081814.  The author, the foremost authority on the war, seeks to present its reality for women who willingly participated in or were unable to escape it.  After an excellent chapter evaluating the place of women in Spanish society in 1808, he considers female camp followers who trailed armies in which their husbands and lovers served.  Their number included the inevitable swarm of prostitutes, but also many impoverished women of peasant and artisan families who imagined life with British, French, or Spanish soldiers as a means of bettering their existence.  The remainder of the book focuses on real or alleged heroines, survivors, nuns, and the British liberators.  Esdaile also notes the wars modest contribution to feminism in Spain.  Extraordinarily informative notes enrich the text.  Drawn principally from published memoirs and other primary sources, Esdailes latest work complements his The Peninsular War (CH, Feb'04, 41-3583) and Fighting Napoleon (CH, Jan'05, 42-3023), and contributes to understanding an understudied topic.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All academic and large public libraries.