New Books in Western European Studies

In her book Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century (Oxford UP, 2022), Cambridge academic Helen Thompson gets beyond the ephemeral and analyses instead the role of more fundamental drivers of events – including the energy markets and the international monetary system. That’s one way in which her book is distinctive. It’s also a very broad book. While much of academic output has a very narrow focus, this book is unusual in attempting a sweeping overview of what’s happening in the world. What role has energy played in disrupting politics especially since the 1970s? How has the US dominance of the international financial system impacted international relations? And how has the EU influenced democratic development in Europe?Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

The Ambivalence of Gay Liberation: Male Homosexual Politics in 1970s West Germany (Oxford UP, 2021) explores ways of thinking, feeling, and talking about being gay in the 1970s, an influential decade sandwiched between the partial decriminalisation of male homosexuality in 1969, and the arrival of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the early 1980s. Moving beyond divided Cold War Berlin, it also focuses on lesser-known cities, such as Aachen, Cologne, Frankfurt, Münster, and Stuttgart, to name just a few of the 53 localities that were home to a gay group by the end of the 1970s. These groups were important, and this book tells their story.In 1970s West Germany gay liberation did not take place only in activist meetings, universities, and on street demonstrations, but also on television, in magazine editorial offices, ordinary homes, bedrooms, and beyond. In considering all these spaces and individuals, this book provides a more complex account than previous histories, which have tended to focus only on a social movement and only on the idea of 'gay pride'. By drawing attention to ambivalence, this book shows that gay liberation was never only about pride, but also about shame; characterized not only by hope, but also by fear; and driven forward not just by the pushes of confrontation, but also by the pulls of conformism. Ranging from the painstaking emergence of the gay press to the first representation of homosexuality on television, from debates over the sexual legacy of 1968 and the student movement to the memory of Nazi persecution, The Ambivalence of Gay Liberation is the first English-language book to tell the story of male homosexual politics in 1970s West Germany. In doing so, this book changes the way we think about modern queer history.Craig Griffiths is a Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Manchester Metropolitan University, where he teaches and researches queer history, the history of sexuality, and modern European history. He is an Associate of the Raphael Samuel History Centre, and a co-founder and co-convenor of the Seminar Series in the History of Sexuality at the Institute of Historical Research, London.Leslie Waters is a historian of modern Central and Eastern Europe and assistant professor at The University of Texas at El Paso. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Carolina López-Ruiz, an expert on Phoenician civilization, discusses the overlooked history of the Phoenicians in shaping the interconnected world of the Iron Age Mediterranean. She delves into their agency in trade, colonization, and cultural innovation, emphasizing their cultural contributions and historical legacy. The podcast explores the challenges in reconstructing their identity from limited written records, their role in the spread of the Phoenician alphabet, and their resilience amidst historical collapses.

The wars between 1792 and 1815 saw the making of the modern world, with Britain and Russia the key powers to emerge triumphant from a long period of bitter conflict. In his innovative book, The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: Strategies for a World War (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022), master historian, Jeremy Black focuses on the strategic contexts and strategies involved, explaining their significance both at the time and subsequently. Reinterpreting French Revolutionary and Napoleonic warfare, strategy, and their consequences, he argues that Napoleon’s failure owed much to his limitations as a strategist. Black uses this framework as a foundation to assess the nature of warfare, the character of strategy, and the eventual ascendance of Britain and Russia in this period. Rethinking the character of strategy, this is the first history to look holistically at the strategies of all the leading belligerents from a global perspective. It will be an essential read for military professionals, students, and history buffs alike.Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House’s International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

In the past decade, adventurous travelers have flocked to the island nation of Iceland to enjoy its many wonders: stunning nature and wildlife, innovative and unique cuisine, a compelling history that includes Vikings, and the rich literary tradition rooted in the Icelandic Sagas, which is still vibrantly alive today in this well read nation.Once in Iceland, travelers may also note that Iceland has one of the happiest populations with one of the highest rates of acceptance for LGBTQIA individuals, and with no military, Iceland is also one of the more peaceful nations on the planet.Iceland is also a great place to be a woman in 2022. Just how and why that is, and whether Iceland’s proximity to gender parity can serve as a model for other nations, is explored in a marvelous new book by Iceland’s current first lady, Canadian born Eliza Reid. “Secrets of the Sprakkar Iceland’s Extraordinary Women and How They Are Changing the World” explores Iceland’s unique history, people, politics, and of course nature, and how these have enabled women to pursue the equality that they know to be their right.In the pages of Secrets of the Sprakkar: What the Outstanding Women of Iceland Know about Equality (Sourcebooks, 2022), Reid introduces us to several extraordinary “sprakkar” or powerful women. This is an ancient Icelandic word that perfectly describes the pioneering politicians, medieval heroines, stand-up comedians, fishermen, search and rescue team leaders, and immigrants to Iceland, like Reid herself who populate the book. As Reid delves into the stories of these extraordinary women, she tells her own story of immigrating to Iceland for love, having a family, and forging her own professional path as the founder of the Popular Iceland Writers Retreat.Life threw Reid and her husband Guðni Jóhannesson a curve ball in 2016: Jóhannesson, a professor of history, was invited to be a pundit on Icelandic TV in the run up to the presidential election following the explosive Panama Papers. And then, as Reid recounts, the phone began to ring. Jóhannesson was elected president and Reid assumed the very public role of First Lady. In “Secrets of the Sprakkar,” she muses about the oddity of the role, but her decision to embrace it with dignity and enthusiasm. She speaks eloquently about how it is important for Iceland’s growing community of immigrants to hear her speak in public forums with an accent, just as they do, and know that what she — and they — have to say is important.“Secrets of the Sprakkar” is a slim volume that packs a big punch: part history, part political science, rooted in social observation of a society that has actively pursued gender parity and may well be closing in on it. But above all, this is a love letter to Iceland, from its still-besotted First Lady.Eliza Reid is a Canadian-Icelandic writer, co-founder of Iceland Writers Retreat, and has been Iceland’s First Lady since 2016. Reid was educated at the University of Toronto and Oxford University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

The Diplomatic Enlightenment: Spain, Europe, and the Age of Speculation (Brill, 2021) reconfigures the study of the origins of the Enlightenment in the Spanish Empire. Challenging dominant interpretations of the period, this book shows that early eighteenth-century Spanish authors turned to Enlightenment ideas to reinvent Spain’s role in the European balance of power. And while international law grew to provide a legal framework that could safeguard peace, Spanish officials, diplomats, and authors, hardened by the failure of Spanish diplomacy, sought instead to regulate international relations by drawing on investment, profit, and self-interest. The book shows, on the basis of new archival research, that the Diplomatic Enlightenment sought to turn the Spanish Empire into a space for closer political cooperation with other European and non-European states and empires.Edward Jones Corredera is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He completed his doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge in 2020.Alexandra Ortolja-Baird is Lecturer in Digital History and Culture at the University of Portsmouth. She tweets at @timetravelallie. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Today I talked to Ulrich Gutmair about his book The First Days of Berlin: The Sound of Change (John Wiley and Sons, 2021).Berlin in the early 1990s, right after the fall of the Berlin Wall: this is the place to be. Berlin-Mitte, the central district of the city, with its wastelands and decaying houses, has become the centre of a new movement. Artists, musicians, squatters, club owners, DJs and ravers are reclaiming the old city centre and bringing it back to life. This interregnum between two systems – the collapse of the old East Germany, the gentrification of the new Berlin – lasts only a few years. West Berliners, East Berliners and new residents from abroad join together to create music, art and fashion, to open bars and clubs and galleries, even if only for a few weeks. In the months following the fall of the Wall, there is a feeling of new beginnings and immense possibilities: life is now, and to be in the here and now feels endless. The phrase ‘temporary autonomous zone’ is circulating, it describes the idea – romantic and naive but, in the circumstances, not absurd – that, at a certain moment in history, you can actually do whatever you want.Ulrich Gutmair moved to West Berlin as a student in autumn 1989: two weeks later the Wall came down. He spent the next few years studying during the day in the West and exploring the squats, bars and techno clubs in the East at night. He fell in love with House and Techno and raved at Tresor, Elektro, Bunker and many other places that in the meantime have almost disappeared from collective memory. Ten years later he decided to write a book about that period in between, when one regime was brought down and a new one wasn’t yet established. When utopia was actually a place to inhabit for a moment.Craig Sorvillo is a PhD Candidate at the University of Florida. He can been contacted on twitter @craig_sorvillo or via email at craig.sorvillo@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Sarah Farmer's Rural Inventions: The French Countryside After 1945 (Oxford University Press, 2020) is a history of national, regional, and local transformations during the period known as the Trente Glorieuses in France from 1945 to 1975. Rural communities and landscapes did not disappear during these years, but existed in complex relationship to urban populations, spaces, economies, and culture. "Modernization" was also a phenomenon in the countryside in various ways and the myth of an unchanging peasant world was just that. Examining state infrastructural and agricultural plans and projects; a rising French and international interest in second, "country" homes; utopian rural experiments and environmental activisms; peasant autobiographies; and (sometimes) nostalgic representations of rural life and landscapes in photographs and other visual sources, the book considers a range of objects and perspectives from/on the French countryside. Packed with compelling stories, actors, and arguments about some of the fundamental contradictions that structured French society during this period, the book challenges us to question our assumptions about what we mean when we say or think "rural" and "postwar" together.Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and its empire. If you have a recent title to suggest for the podcast, please send her an email (panchasi@sfu.ca). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

In his new book, Democracy, Nazi Trials, and Transitional Justice in Germany, 1945-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Dr. Devin O. Pendas examines how German courts conducted Nazi trials in the immediate postwar context. His work combines close readings of legal discourses in conjunction with very human stories to present a narrative of both irony and tragedy. In a masterful comparison of all four occupation zones, this book successfully musters historical data to challenge and overturn standard conceptualizations of “transitional justice.” It thus belongs definitively in the repertoire of legal scholars, political scientists, historians, and international relations theorists.Eric Grube is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at Boston College. He studies modern German and Austrian history, with a special interest in right-wing paramilitary organizations across interwar Bavaria and Austria."Casualties of War? Refining the Civilian-Military Dichotomy in World War I", Madison Historical Review, 2019. "Racist Limitations on Violence: The Nazi Occupation of Denmark", Essays in History, 2017. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

In her new book, The Jews of Denmark in the Holocaust: Life and Death in Theresienstadt Ghetto (Routledge, 2020), Silvia Goldbaum Tarabini Fracapane uses previously unexplored personal accounts and archival documentation in order to examine life and death in the Theresienstadt ghetto, seen through the eyes of the Jewish victims from Denmark. The book covers an important aspect of the experience of Danish Jews during the Holocaust, one that has long stood in the shadow of the hegemonic story regarding the rescue of the Danish Jews in October 1943. Silvia Goldbaum Tarabini Fracapane’s book covers all aspects of the Danish Jews’ experience with Theresienstadt, from their deportation through their relationships and life in the ghetto to their return to Denmark and their postwar lives.Silvia Goldbaum Tarabini Fracapane is a historian and an independent scholar. She obtained her PhD in modern history from Technical University Berlin, and she has an MA in comparative literature from University of Copenhagen. Her research focuses primarily on everyday life in the Theresienstadt ghetto seen from the perspective of Danish ghetto inmates.Christian Axboe Nielsen is associate professor of history and human security at Aarhus University in Denmark. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies