Category: European History

Why the Crusades Matter

Why the Crusades Matter

Christopher Tyerman— The crusades offer features to fascinate and disturb modern audiences. Surviving evidence–literary, archival, archaeological, visual and material–allows access in some detail to individual experiences as well as large… READ MORE

Feeling the Past to Touch the Future

Feeling the Past to Touch the Future

Henry Petroski— The bubonic epidemic known as the Great Plague broke out in London in 1665 and lasted for two years. During that time, citizens who could escape to the… READ MORE

The Cookery Book

The Cookery Book

Helen Fry— During wartime women were a valuable source of intelligence-gathering because they could move much more freely in occupied countries than men. They used their “invisibility” to gather and… READ MORE

Understanding the Impossible

Understanding the Impossible

Carlos Eire — Levitating saints raise questions that no historian should avoid. Never mind the metaphysical questions, that floating ten-ton anvil that historians dare not touch, much less acknowledge. Aside… READ MORE

Walter Jens’s Tragedies

Walter Jens’s Tragedies

Michael H. Kater— Walter Jens was the first among a group of young West German novelists who attempted to come to grips with the Third Reich. As a twenty-seven-year-old, in 1950… READ MORE

The Challenge of Casanova

The Challenge of Casanova

Leo Damrosch— Everyone knows that Casanova was a seducer. He belongs to that rare company of mortals whose personal names have floated free from history, and we know what a… READ MORE

“Out of Sight, Out of Mind”

“Out of Sight, Out of Mind”

Sean M. Kelley— You’ve probably never heard of William Vernon, a lifelong resident of Newport, Rhode Island, but he was one of the biggest slave owners in American history. According… READ MORE

The Lake District and Atlantic Slavery

The Lake District and Atlantic Slavery

Nicholas Radburn— If you think about locations transformed by the transatlantic slave trade, you’ll likely recall American plantations or former slaving forts on the coast of West Africa. You are… READ MORE

The Wagner Group Explained

The Wagner Group Explained

John Mauceri— Among the many confusions about the private Russian army known as the Wagner Group is how to pronounce its name. Reporters and pundits seem to vacillate between “Wag-ner”… READ MORE

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