Reviews

Reading It Wrong: An Alternative History of Early Eighteenth-Century Literature by Abigail Williams argues that misunderstanding popular literature was a sign of its success.

Guido Alfani’s As Gods Among Men: A History of the Rich in the West explores how history’s wealthiest men made their fortunes, but says little about why they did so.

On the centenary of Britain’s first Labour government, three recent histories cast a sympathetic eye over Ramsay MacDonald’s nine months in Number 10.

Pacy and even-handed, Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia by Gary J. Bass is unlikely to be bettered as a portrait of the Tokyo trials.

American Journey: On the Road with Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and John Burroughs by Wes Davis falls short of examining the consequences that followed the wanderlust.

Daughter of the Dragon: Anna May Wong’s Rendezvous with American History by Yunte Huang explores the discrimination beneath Hollywood’s glamour.

Mary Fulbrook’s Bystander Society: Conformity and Complicity in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust holds the ambivalent accountable.

In the Shadow of Quetzalcoatl: Zelia Nuttall & the Search for Mexico’s Ancient Civilizations by Merilee Grindle depicts a woman ahead of her time, yet very much a product of it.

In Theoderic the Great: King of Goths, Ruler of Romans, Hans-Ulrich Wiemer fully reinforces his vision of Theoderic as a man grappling with challenges which still confront us today.

New books by Natasha Wheatley and Richard Cockett explain how for all its apparent anachronism the Hapsburg empire, and its capital, shaped the modern world.