Recent Reviews

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18 March 2024 (529 words)
Going to Church in Medieval England (Nicholas Orme)
- parish churches: people, practices, paraphernalia, ...
12 February 2024 (597)
The Indus (Andrew Robinson)
- a mysterious "lost" civilisation
12 November 2023 (199)
Insurrecto (Gina Apostol)
- metafiction and massacre: scripting the Philippines
9 November 2023 (241)
The Matter of Everything: A History of Discovery (Suzie Sheehy)
- from Röntgen to the Large Hadron Collider
1 October 2023 (129)
*When I Sing, Mountains Dance (Irene Sola)
- renewal and compassion after violence in the Catalan Pyrenees
19 September 2023 (187)
Scots & Catalans (J.H. Elliott)
- a history of two nations within states
3 July 2023 (518)
Before Religion (Brent Nongbri)
A History of a Modern Concept
19 June 2023 (175)
Women Dreaming (Salma)
- a divorce in a poor Muslim village in Tamil Nadu
30 March 2023 (515)
Edible Insects and Human Evolution (Julie J. Lesink)
- ethnography, primatology, paleontology, nutrition, ...
23 March 2023 (333)
Cycling for Sustainable Cities (Ralph Buehler, John Pucher)
The Politics of Cycling Infrastructure (Peter Cox, Till Koglin)
Spaces and (In)Equality
24 February 2023 (114)
Dear Reader (Paul Fournel)
- an old-fashioned publisher faces change
9 February 2023 (477)
Emergent Tokyo (Jorge Almazan)
- yokochō alleyways, zakkyo buildings, undertrack infills, ankyo streets + dense low-rise neighbourhoods
6 January 2023 (368)
In the City of Bikes (Pete Jordan)
The Story of the Amsterdam Cyclist
4 January 2023 (153)
Still Born (Guadalupe Nettel)
- a novel of many motherhoods
7 December 2022 (438)
About Our Schools: Improving on Previous Best (Brighouse, Waters)
- the past, present and future of the English school system
26 November 2022 (351)
The Golden Rhinoceros (François-Xavier Fauvelle)
Histories of the African Middle Ages
1 November 2022 (288)
Bolt From the Blue (Jeremy Cooper)
- an epistolary novel of London's avant-garde art scene
25 October 2022 (591)
Empires of the Word (Nicholas Ostler)
A Language History of the World
15 September 2022 (242)
Three Apples Fell from the Sky (Narine Abgaryan)
- life revives in an Armenian mountain village
1 September 2022 (635)
In Praise of Walking (Shane O'Mara)
The New Science of How We Walk and Why It's Good for Us
8 August 2022 (157)
Surreal Numbers (D.E. Knuth)
- a lightly dramatised exploration
6 July 2022 (451)
Amsterdam: A Brief Life of the City (Geert Mak)
- from polders to provocations
27 June 2022 (405)
How Dead Languages Work (Coulter H. George)
- a linguistic, historical + literary potpourri covering six languages
25 May 2022 (714)
**The Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs (Camilla Townsend)
- using indigenous Nahuatl sources
26 April 2022 (280)
The Road to Middle-Earth (Tom Shippey)
J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (Tom Shippey)
5 April 2022 (365)
*Atlas of the Invisible (James Cheshire, Oliver Uberti)
Maps and Graphics That Will Change How You See the World
3 March 2022 (234)
The Travelling Cat Chronicles (Hiro Arikawa)
- a road-trip around Japan with a cat
8 February 2022 (717)
Fire and Ice (Natalie Starkey)
The Volcanoes of the Solar System
26 January 2022 (205)
Autumn Rounds (Jacques Poulin)
- an exceptionally gentle novel, a quiet romance
3 January 2022 (299)
Tomb of Sand (Geetanjali Shree)
- from family comedy to the politics of partition
17 December 2021 (309)
The Pursuit of Italy (David Gilmour)
A History of a Land, Its Regions and Their Peoples
15 November 2021 (268)
*Manaschi (Hamid Ismailov)
- a Kyrgyz story, modern and traditional
18 October 2021 (401)
Britain Begins (Barry Cunliffe)
- from the Ice Age to the Norman Conquest
3 September 2021 (318)
**Lectures on the Philosophy of Mathematics (Joel David Hamkins)
- from numbers and rigor to incompleteness and set theory
2 September 2021 (157)
The English Civil Wars 1640-1660 (Blair Worden)
- a straightforward but insightful account
7 August 2021 (351)
*Combinatorics and Graph Theory (Harris, Hirst, Mossinghoff)
- from the elementary to the infinite
31 July 2021 (293)
Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 (Cho Nam-Joo)
- a woman's life in modern South Korea
14 July 2021 (647)
The Miracle Pill (Peter Walker)
Why a sedentary world is getting it all wrong
23 June 2021 (211)
Everything Like Before (Kjell Askildsen)
- stories of estrangement and misunderstanding
6 June 2021 (265)
*Tokyo Ueno Station (Yu Miri)
- down and out in Tokyo and Fukushima
18 May 2021 (659)
*Jellyfish: A Natural History (Lisa-Ann Gershwin)
- a fascinating survey with stunning photos
27 April 2021 (539)
Viruses, Plagues, and History (Michael B. A. Oldstone)
Past, Present, and Future
Viruses: A Very Short Introduction (Dorothy H. Crawford)

Full chronological listing (long)