Reviews

‘I Humbly Beg Your Speedy Answer’: Letters on Love and Marriage from the World’s First Personal Advice Column by Mary Beth Norton reveals the 17th-century origins of the agony aunt.

How did a Gulf backwater become a global powerbroker? Saudi Arabia: A Modern History by David Commins explores the uneasy alliance between oil, autocracy, and Wahhabism.

In Language and Social Relations in Early Modern England Hillary Taylor listens in the archives for the voices of ordinary people.

Long overshadowed by Lindbergh, The Big Hop: The First Non-Stop Flight Across the Atlantic and Into the Future by David Rooney returns Alcock and Brown to aviation's top flight.

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.