Recent publications

February 2024
Lauren Benton

  In an account spanning from Asia to the Americas, Lauren Benton shows how imperial violence redefined the very nature of war and peace. Instead of preparing lasting peace, fragile truces ensured an easy return to war. Serial conflicts and armed interventions projected a de facto state of...
October 2019
Paul Freedman

  For centuries, skeptical foreigners—and even millions of Americans—have believed there was no such thing as American cuisine. In recent decades, hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizza have been thought to define the nation’s palate. Not so, says food historian Paul Freedman, who demonstrates that there...
September 2020
Nurfadzilah Yahaya

  This wide-ranging, geographically ambitious book tells the story of the Arab diaspora within the context of British and Dutch colonialism, unpacking the community’s ambiguous embrace of European colonial authority in Southeast Asia. In Fluid Jurisdictions, Nurfadzilah Yahaya looks at...
October 2019
Frank Snowden

  This sweeping exploration of the impact of epidemic diseases looks at how mass infectious outbreaks have shaped society, from the Black Death to today. In a clear and accessible style, Frank M. Snowden reveals the ways that diseases have not only influenced medical science and public health, but...
April 2023
Ned Blackhawk

  A sweeping and overdue retelling of U.S. history that recognizes that Native Americans are essential to understanding the evolution of modern America   The most enduring feature of U.S. history is the presence of Native Americans, yet most histories focus on Europeans and their descendants. The...
April 2020
Valerie Hansen

  People often believe that the years immediately prior to AD 1000 were, with just a few exceptions, lacking in any major cultural developments or geopolitical encounters, that the Europeans hadn’t yet reached North America, and that the farthest feat of sea travel was the Vikings’ invasion of...
March 2023
Ben Kiernan, Ned Blackhawk

  Volume II documents and analyses genocide and extermination throughout the early modern and modern eras. It tracks their global expansion as European and Asian imperialisms, and Euroamerican settler colonialism, spread across the globe before the Great War, forging new frontiers and impacting...
August 2020
Alan Mikhail

Long neglected in world history, the Ottoman Empire was a hub of intellectual fervor, geopolitical power, and enlightened pluralistic rule. At the height of their authority in the sixteenth century, the Ottomans, with extraordinary military dominance and unparalleled monopolies over trade routes,...
February 2023
Matthew Jacobson

  A deep dive into racial politics, Hollywood, and Black cultural struggles for liberation as reflected in the extraordinary life and times of Sammy Davis Jr.   Through the lens of Sammy Davis Jr.’s six-decade career in show business—from vaudeville to Vegas to Broadway, Hollywood, and network TV—...
October 2020
John Witt

  From yellow fever to smallpox to polio to AIDS to COVID-19, epidemics have prompted Americans to make choices and answer questions about their basic values and their laws. In five concise chapters, historian John Fabian Witt traces the legal history of epidemics, showing how infectious disease...