Reviews

The Writer’s Lot: Culture and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France by Robert Darnton discovers a literary flowering in the shadow of the guillotine.

Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire by Sarah E. Bond assembles a case for the power of the worker in ancient Rome.

Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus by Elaine Pagels finds that the son of God is more than the sum of his parts.

The Alienation Effect: How Central European Émigrés Transformed the British Twentieth Century by Owen Hatherley follows in the footsteps of those who fled fascism.

The Illegals: Russia’s Most Audacious Spies and the Plot to Infiltrate the West by Shaun Walker sheds light on the Soviet Union’s undercover intelligence gathering.

America, América: A New History of the New World by Greg Grandin finds a place for Latin America and its ideals in the story of the United States.

The Sun Rising: James I and the Dawn of a Global Britain by Anna Whitelock offers a panoramic view of Jacobean foreign policy.

In The World of the Cold War: 1945-1991 Vladislav Zubok argues that circumstance rather than ideology shaped the clash between communism and capitalism.

Hitler’s Deserters: Breaking Ranks with the Wehrmacht by Douglas Carl Peifer surfaces the stories of those who sought to sit out the Second World War.

In Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain, Sam Wetherell discovers a city of slavery, ships, soccer, and socialism, whose fortunes rose and fell with the tide.