Reviews

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.

Padraic X. Scanlan levels familiar charges against British colonialism and capitalism in Rot: A History of the Irish Famine. Is there more to the story?

Epic of the Earth: Reading Homer’s Iliad in the Fight for a Dying World by Edith Hall sees the signs of environmental collapse amid the adventures of Achilles.

Scholars and Their Kin: Historical Explorations, Literary Experiments, edited by Stéphane Gerson, has historians scaling their family trees.