Reviews

Strikingly Similar: Plagiarism and Appropriation from Chaucer to Chatbots by Roger Kreuz finds that copyright isn’t always a matter of black and white.

The Cancelled Prime Minister: The Extraordinary Rise and Tragic Fall of Ramsay MacDonald by Walter Reid finds the romance behind Labour’s great betrayer.

Compassion from the Kremlin often proved as short-lived as its critics. In Exit Stalin: The Soviet Union as a Civilization, 1953-1991, Mark B. Smith finds that terror was a feature rather than a bug.

Runes: A Concise History by Tom Birkett looks beyond the mythical baggage to find a writing system no less remarkable and mysterious.

Rather than a catalogue of a fanciful past, Folklore: A Journey Through the Past and Present by Owen Davies and Ceri Houlbrook is a field guide to a constantly changing Britain.

Hard Streets: Working-Class Lives in Charlie Chaplin’s London by Jacqueline Riding goes where few historians dare: south of the river.

In Elves and Fairies: A Short History of the Otherworld, Matthias Egeler follows the huldufólk from the wild places of Iceland, Britain, and Ireland to the domesticity of the bedtime story.

Demosthenes: Democracy’s Defender by James Romm looks for hope amid the sound and fury surrounding the great orator of ancient Athens.

On Pedantry: A Cultural History of the Know-It-All by Arnoud S.Q. Visser explores the long history of anti-intellectualism from the death of Socrates to the culture wars.

The Queenship of Mathilda of Flanders, c.1031-1083: Embodying Conquest by Laura L. Gathagan traces the material legacy of the Conqueror’s consort.