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Historians are generally coy and diffident when it comes to engaging with the moral question despite it being a critical aspect of doing history. However, historians of empire cannot evade the moral question given the ethical dilemmas that imperialism posed for the men at its helm. To portray the colonists as hypocrites is too facile and cynical an explanation. So, what allowed the British colonists to manage the conscience that they indeed possessed? As Priya Satia boldly argues in Time's Monster: How History Makes History, the answer to this question resides in historicism, which became the new ethical idiom from the nineteenth century onward. It enabled the British colonists to assuage their conscience and made the empire an ethically thinkable reality. It helped whitewash colonial violence and generate public acceptance for colonization. The historians' power lay in anointing history as providence and in using it to paper over the cracks in the British conscience. Being able to narrate was itself a manifestation of power. It was only after the Second World War that history renounced its pact with power and a reimagination of the historical idiom emerged. Various shades of South Asian and Caribbean anti‐colonial leaders and postcolonial writers began to think beyond the historicist category of the empire. These efforts to dismantle the empire's historical narratives were paralleled by the writings of British historian E. P. Thompson, although he remained tied to the idea of history as progress. The moral question, however, remains unsettled. It endures for present‐day historians because the teleserials, nostalgic period dramas, and "great men" histories continue to hold sway over the public mind, generate debates about the "benefits" of the empire, and feed Britain's anti‐immigrant sentiments. Satia's book lies at the intersection of three sets of historiographies—histories of British political thought, postcolonial writings that highlight alternate conceptions of the past and the significance of orality, memory, and community history, and, lastly, histories of violence—all of which engage the moral question in some form or another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the book Challenging Traditional Classroom Spaces with YA Literature: Students in Community as Course Co‐Designers by Ricki Ginsberg (2022). Published amid increasingly contentious censoring of teachers' autonomy and students' rights to read in many districts across the United States, this book is a timely call for educators to rethink traditional curriculum choices and pedagogical approaches in the secondary literature classroom. Ginsberg makes a strong case for privileging engaging and relevant texts utilizing YA literature and centering students and their voices in communities of practice in the classroom. She offers a wide range of approaches to make this book relevant for teachers across the spectrum of autonomy, including impactful additions to existing curriculum for those in more constrained environments and a blueprint for a stand‐alone YA literature course for those with more flexibility. Geared toward an audience of secondary literature teachers with many practical pedagogical considerations and suggestions, the solid theoretical base makes this book a useful read for literacy researchers and administrators interested in promoting student‐centered pedagogical methods, leveraging meaningful communities of practice in classroom settings, and reaping the benefits of YA literature with secondary students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a critical re‐evaluation of C.S. Lewis's classic study of Christian love, The Four Loves (1960) that celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2020. After discussing important and neglected differences between the celebrated book and the largely forgotten radio talks which predate it, the paper asks and answers three important questions: Are there really four loves? What is the definition of love itself? What exactly is Charity? Lewis's answers to these questions are more eclectic than is generally assumed. The paper offers an appreciative rereading of The Four Loves that seeks to correct or at least challenge a number of longstanding misunderstandings about Lewis's taxonomy of love. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature and Fine Arts Lucey, Colleen. Love for Sale: Representing Prostitution in Imperial Russia. NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Cornell University Press, 2021. 270 pp. $49.95. ISBN 978‐1‐5017‐5886‐7. Leigh, Allison. Picturing Russia's Men: Masculinity and Modernity in 19th‐Century Painting. New York: Bloomsbury, 2020. 288 pp. $108.00. ISBN 978‐1‐5013‐4179‐3. Starikov, Konstantin, and Melissa L. Miller, eds. The Russian Medical Humanities: Past, Present, and Future. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2021. xx1 + 214 pp. $95.00. ISBN 978‐1‐4985‐9215‐4. Leving, Iurii. Poeziia v mertvoi petle: Mandel'shtam i aviatsiia. Moscow: Boslen, 2020. 224pp. R700.00. ISBN 978‐5‐91187‐366‐0. Pethö, Ágnes, ed. Caught In‐Between: Intermediality in Contemporary Eastern European and Russian Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020. 254 pp. £80.00. ISBN 978‐1‐4744‐3549‐9. Solovieva, Olga V., and Sho Kinishi, eds. Japan's Russia: Challenging the East‐West Paradigm. Amherst: Cambria Press, 2021. 560 pp. $69.99. ISBN 978‐1‐62196‐553‐4. History Tsyrempilov, Nikolay. Under the Shadow of White Tara: The Buriat Buddhists in Imperial Russia. Eurasian Studies Library 16. Leiden: Brill‐Schöningh, 2021. xviii + 220 pp. $124.00. ISBN 978‐3‐506‐76048‐7. Staliūnas, Darius, and Yoko Aoshima, eds. The Tsar, the Empire, and the Nation: Dilemmas of Nationalization in Russia's Western Borderlands, 1905–1915. Historical Studies in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2021. 408 pp. $95.00. ISBN 978‐963‐386‐365‐7. Alexandrov, Vladimir. To Break Russia's Chains: Boris Savinkov and His Wars against the Tsar and the Bolsheviks. New York: Pegasus Books, 2021. xiv + 562 pp. $29.95. ISBN 978‐1‐64313‐718‐6. Williams, Beryl. Late Tsarist Russia, 1881–1913. Routledge Studies in the History of Russian and Eastern Europe. New York: Routledge, 2021. $155.00. 240 pp. ISBN 978‐0‐3675‐4778‐3 Bykova, Marina F., Michael N. Forster, and Lina Steiner, eds. The Palgrave Handbook of Russian Thought. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. xxvii + 787 pp. $179.99. ISBN 978‐3‐030‐62981‐6. Barcz, Anna. Environmental Cultures in Soviet East Europe: Literature, History and Memory. Environmental Cultures. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. 256 pp. $115.00. ISBN 978‐1‐35‐009836‐7. Lyssakov, Pavel, and Stephen M. Norris, eds. The City in Russian Culture. Routledge Contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe. New York: Routledge, 2018. xii + 316 pp. $160.00. ISBN 978‐1‐138‐31023‐0. Farrow, Lee A. The Catacazy Affair and the Uneasy Path of Russian‐American Relations. Library of Modern Russia. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021. 216 pp. $115.00. ISBN 978‐1‐350‐10718‐2. Budnitskii, Oleg. Drugaia Rossiia: Issledovaniia po istorii russkoi emigratsii. Moscow: Novoe lituraturnoe obozrenie, 2021. 632 pp. R630.00. ISBN 978‐5‐4448‐1585‐4. Brunstedt, Jonathan. The Soviet Myth of World War II: Patriotic Memory and the Russian Question in the USSR. Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021. xvi + 306 pp. $39.99. ISBN 978‐1‐108‐49875‐3. Kozlov, Vladimir A., and Marina Kozlova. "Malen'kii SSSR" i ego obitateli: Ocherki sotsial'noi istorii sovetskogo okkupatsionnogo soobshchestve v Germanii. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2021. 288 pp. R480.00. ISBN 978‐5‐4448‐1560‐1. Ryan, James, and Susan Grant, eds. Revisioning Stalin and Stalinism: Complexities, Contradictions and Controversies. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. xiv + 250 pp. $115.00. ISBN 978‐1‐35012‐294‐9. Alexander, Rustam. Regulating Homosexuality in Soviet Russia, 1956–91: A Different History. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021. 264 pp. £80.00. ISBN: 978‐1‐5261‐5576‐4. Dumančić, Marko. Men Out of Focus: The Soviet Masculinity Crisis in the Long Sixties. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021. 321 pp. $75.00. ISBN 978‐1‐4875‐0525‐7. Social Sciences, Contemporary Russia, and Other Sibgatulina, Gulnaz. Languages of Islam and Christianity in Post‐Soviet Russia. Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics 46. Leiden: Brill, 2020. 220 pp. $140.00. ISBN 978‐90‐04‐42644‐3. Postoutenko, Kirill, and Darin Stephanov, eds. Ruler Personality Cults from Empires to Nation‐States and Beyond: Symbolic Patterns and Interactional Dynamics. Routledge Studies in Modern History. London: Routledge, 2020. 294 pp. $128.00. ISBN 978‐0‐36‐722535‐3. Weiss‐Wendt, Anton, and Nanci Adler, eds. The Future of Soviet Past: The Politics of History in Putin's Russia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021. 270 pp. $42.00 (paper). ISBN 978‐0‐253‐05762‐4. Bækken, Håvard. Law and Power in Russia: Making Sense of Quasi‐Legal Practices. Routledge Contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe Series. New York: Routledge, 2019. x + 217 pp. $160.00. ISBN 978‐1‐138‐57088‐7. Balmaceda, Margarita M. Russian Energy Chains: The Remaking of Technopolitics from Siberia to Ukraine to the European Union. Woodrow Wilson Center Series. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021. 440 pp. $35.00 (paper). ISBN 978‐0‐231‐19749‐6. Gustafson, Thane. Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2021. 336 pp. $39.95. ISBN 978‐0‐674‐24743‐7. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literatureand Fine Arts Jensen, Claudia, Ingrid Maier, and Stepan Shamin, with Daniel C. Waugh. Russia's Theatrical Past: Court Entertainment in the Seventeenth Century. Russian Music Studies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021. xviii + 295 pp. $38.00 (paper). ISBN 978‐0‐2530‐5634‐4. Balina, Marina, and Serguei A. Oushakine, eds. The Pedagogy of Images: Depicting Communism for Children. Studies in Book and Print. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021. 569 pp. $95.00. ISBN 978‐1‐4875‐0668‐1. Olenina, Ana Hedberg. Psychomotor Aesthetics: Movement and Affect in Modern Literature and Film. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. xliii + 366 pp. $36.95. ISBN 978‐0‐1900‐5126‐6. Toymentsev, Sergey, ed. ReFocus: The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021. xii + 278 pp. $110.00. ISBN 978‐1‐4744‐3723‐3. History Bushkovitch, Paul. Succession to the Throne in Early Modern Russia: The Transfer of Power 1450–1725. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021. xv + 397 pp. $120.00. ISBN 978‐1‐108‐47934‐9. Tairova‐Yakovleva, Tatiana. Ivan Mazepa and the Russian Empire. Translated by Jan Surer. Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research Monograph Series, vol. 11. Montreal: McGill‐Queen's University Press, 2020. xiv + 496 pp. $49.95 (paper). ISBN 978‐0‐2280‐0174‐4. Kizenko, Nadieszda. Good for the Souls: A History of Confession in the Russian Empire. Oxford Studies in Modern European History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. 327 pp. $100.00. ISBN 978‐0‐19‐289679‐7. Sartori, Paolo, and Danielle Ross, eds. Sharia in the Russian Empire: The Reach and Limits of Islamic Law in Central Eurasia, 1500–1900. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020. 448 pp. $130.00. ISBN 978‐1‐4744‐4429‐3. Eden, Jeff. God Save the USSR: Soviet Muslims and the Second World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. vii + 253 pp. $99.00. ISBN 978‐0‐19‐007627‐6. White, J. M. Unity in Faith? Edinoverie, Russian Orthodoxy, and Old Belief, 1800–1918. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020. xvii+ 271 pp. $35.00 (paper). ISBN 978‐0‐253‐04972‐8. Engel, Barbara Alpern. Marriage, Household, and Home in Modern Russia from Peter the Great to Vladimir Putin. The Bloomsbury History of Modern Russia Series. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. xiii + 268 pp. $29.95 (paper). ISBN 978‐1‐3500‐1446‐6. Friedman, Rebecca. Modernity, Domesticity and Temporality in Russia: Time at Home. London: Bloomsbury, 2020. 240 pp. $115.00. ISBN 978‐1‐3501‐1243‐8. Khalid, Adeeb. Central Asia: A New History from the Imperial Conquests to the Present. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021. 576 pp. $35.00. ISBN 978‐0‐691‐16139‐6. Miller, Chris. We Shall Be Masters: Russian Pivots to East Asia from Peter the Great to Putin. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2021. 384 pp. $29.95 (paper). ISBN 978‐0‐674‐91644‐9. Morrison, Alexander. The Russian Conquest of Central Asia: A Study in Imperial Expansion, 1814–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. 613 + xiv pp. $99.00. ISBN 978‐1‐107‐03030‐5. Laycock, Jo, and Francesca Piana. Aid to Armenia: Humanitarianism and Intervention from the 1890s to the Present. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020. 216 pp. £80.00. ISBN 978‐1‐5261‐4220‐7. Margolin, Julius. Journey into the Land of the Zeks and Back: A Memoir of the Gulag. Translated by Stefani Hoffman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 600 pp. $39.95. ISBN 978‐0‐1975‐0214‐3. Kis, Oksana. Survival as Victory: Ukrainian Women in the Gulag. Translated by Lidia Wolanskyj. Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2021. 652 pp. $94.00. ISBN 978‐0‐6742‐5828‐0. Holmes, Larry E. Revising the Revolution: The Unmaking of Russia's Official History of 1917. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2021. 220 pp. $28.00 (paper). ISBN 978‐0‐253‐05479‐1. Rendle, Matthew. The State versus the People: Revolutionary Justice in Russia's Civil War, 1917–1922. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. 336 pp. $85.00. ISBN 978‐0‐19‐884042‐8. Aronova, Elena. Scientific History: Experiments in History and Politics from the Bolshevik Revolution to the End of the Cold War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021. vii + 243 pp. $45.00. ISBN 978‐0‐226‐76138‐1. Fainberg, Dina. Cold War Correspondents: Soviet and American Reporters on the Ideological Frontlines. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020. viii + 359 pp. $64.95. ISBN 978‐1‐4214‐3844‐3. Smith, Alison K. Cabbage and Caviar: A History of Food in Russia. London: Reaktion Books, 2021. 352 pp. $39.00. ISBN 978‐1‐78914‐364‐5. Wegren, Stephen K., with Alexander Nikulin and Irina Trotsuk. Russia's Food Revolution: The Transformation of the Food System. Routledge Contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe Series. New York: Routledge, 2020. 240 pp. $128.00. ISBN 978‐0‐3674‐7424‐9. Social Sciences, Contemporary Russia, and Other Kivinen, Markku, and Brendan G. Humphreys, eds. Russian Modernization: A New Paradigm. New York: Routledge, 2020. 394 pp. $160.00. ISBN 978‐0‐367‐56725‐5. Zvonareva, Olga. Pharmapolitics in Russia: Making Drugs and Rebuilding the Nation. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2020. 204 pp. $95.00. ISBN 978‐1‐4384‐7991‐0. Harding, Luke. Shadow State: Murder, Mayhem and Russia's Remaking of the West. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2020. 336 pp. $28.99. ISBN 978‐0‐0629‐6600‐1. Bechev, Dimitar, Nicu Popescu, and Stanislav Secrieru, eds. Russia Rising: Putin's Foreign Policy in the Middle East and North Africa. New York: Bloomsbury, 2021. 224 pp. $29.95. ISBN 978‐0‐7556‐3664‐8. Channell‐Justice, Emily, ed. Decolonizing Queer Experience: LGBT+ Narratives from Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2020. 220 pp. $100.00. ISBN 978‐1‐7936‐3030‐8. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature and Fine Arts Ronner, Amy D. Dostoevsky as Suicidologist: Self‐Destruction and the Creative Process. Crosscurrents: Russian Literature in Context. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2020. xii + 341 pp. $120.00. ISBN 978‐1‐7936‐0781‐2. Hodge, Thomas. Hunting Nature: Ivan Turgenev and the Organic World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2020. 320 pp. $39.95. ISBN 978‐150‐175‐084‐7. Hurlt, E., and K. Tender. Izobilie i askeza v russkoi literature: Stolknoveniia, perekhody, sovpadeniia. Nauchnaia biblioteka. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2020. 376 pp. R336.00. ISBN 978‐5‐4448‐1215‐0. Gratchev, Slav N., ed. The Poetics of the Avant‐garde in Literature, Arts, and Philosophy. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2020. xii + 234 pp. $105.00. ISBN 978‐1‐7936‐1574‐9. Zotova, Yelena. Wingless Desire in Modernist Russia: Envy and Authorship in the 1920s. Crosscurrents: Russia's Literature in Context. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2021. xiv + 281 pp. £92.00. ISBN 978‐1‐7936‐0558‐0. Meyer, Priscilla. Nabokov and Indeterminacy: The Case of The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. Studies in Russian Literature and Theory. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2018. x + 188 pp. $39.95 (paper). ISBN 978‐0‐8101‐3743‐1. Lipovetskii, M., and A. de Lia Fortel', eds. Vladimir Sharov: Po tu storonu istorii. Sbornik statei i materialov. Nauchnaia biblioteka. Moscow: Novoe literatunoe obozreniia, 2020. 704 pp. R900.00. ISBN 978‐5‐4448‐1224‐2. Rulyova, Natasha. Joseph Brodsky and Collaborative Self‐Translation. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. 216 pp. £ 90.00. ISBN 978‐1‐50‐136392‐4. Hicks, Jeremy. The Victory Banner over the Reichstag: Film, Document, and Ritual in Russia's Contested Memory of World War II. Russian and East European Studies. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020. xv + 285 pp. $45.00. ISBN 978‐0‐8229‐4650‐2. Majsova, Natalija. Soviet Science Fiction Cinema and the Space Age: Memorable Futures. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2021. xxxvi + 219 pp. $100.00. ISBN 978‐1‐7396‐0931‐1. Blasing, Molly Thomasy. Snapshots of the Soul: Photo‐Poetic Encounters in Modern Russian Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021. 328 pp. $55.00. ISBN 978‐1‐5017‐5369‐5. History Steller, Georg Wilhelm. Eastbound through Siberia: Observations from the Great Northern Expedition. Translated and annotated by Margritt A. Engel and Karen E. Willmore. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020. xxv + 220 pp. $32.00 (paper). ISBN 978‐0‐253‐04778‐6. Issiyeva, Adalyat. Representing Russia's Orient: From Ethnography to Art Song. AMS Studies in Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. 432 pp. $55.00. ISBN 978‐0‐1900‐5136‐5. Hartley, Janet M. The Volga: A History of Russia's Greatest River. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021. 400 pp. $35.00. ISBN 978‐0‐300‐24564‐6. Arel, Maria Salomon. English Trade and Adventure to Russia in the Early Modern Era: The Muscovy Company, 1603–1649. Empires and Entanglements in the Early Modern World. New York: Lexington Books, 2019. 362 pp. $121.00. ISBN 978‐1‐4985‐5023‐9. Dysa, Kateryna. Ukrainian Witchcraft Trials: Volhynia, Podolia, and Ruthenia 17th–18th Centuries. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2020. x + 254 pp. $75.00. ISBN 978‐615‐5053‐11‐5. Halperin, Charles J. Ivan IV and Muscovy. Bloomington: Slavica, 2020. viii + 407 pp. $34.95 (paper). ISBN 978‐0‐89357‐501‐4. Bushnell, John. Russian Peasant Bride Theft. Routledge Studies in the History of Russia and Eastern Europe. New York: Routledge, 2021. 230 pp. $44.05 (e‐book). ISBN 978‐1‐003‐13206‐6. Bergman, Jay. The French Revolutionary Tradition in Russian and Soviet Politics, Political Thought, and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. 568 pp. £85.00. ISBN 978‐0‐19‐884270‐5. Marzek, Wiktor. Rising Subjects: The 1905 Revolution and the Origins of Modern Polish Politics. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020. xv + 294 pp. $50.00. ISBN 978‐0‐8229‐4612‐0. Douds, Lara, James Harris, and Peter Whitewood, eds. The Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution: Illiberal Liberation, 1917–41. Library of Modern Russia. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. x + 319 pp. $34.95. ISBN 978‐1350‐11789‐1. Daniel, Wallace L. Women of the Catacombs: Memoirs of the Underground Orthodox Church in Stalin's Russia. NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021. 252 pp. $24.95. ISBN 978‐1‐5017‐5440‐1. Fitzpatrick, Sheila. White Russians, Red Peril: A Cold War History of Migration to Australia. New York: Routledge, 2021. xiii + 355 pp. $160.00. ISBN 978‐1‐032‐01659‐7. Goff, Krista A. Nested Nationalism: Making and Unmaking Nations in the Soviet Caucasus. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2021. 336 pp. $49.95. ISBN 978‐1‐50‐175327‐5. Baberowski, Jörg. Der bedrohte Leviathan: Staat und Revolution in Rußland. Carl‐Schmitt‐Vorlesungen, Band 3. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2021. 126 pp. €26.90. ISBN 978‐3‐428‐18227‐3. Johnson, Ian Ona. Faustian Bargain: The Soviet‐German Partnership and the Origins of the Second World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. ix + 350 pp. $29.95. ISBN 978‐0‐19‐067514‐1. Iunge, Mark. Chekisty Stalina: Moshch' i bessilie. "Berievskaia ottepel'" v Nikolaevskoi oblasti Ukrainy. Translated by Andrei Savin. Moscow: AIRO XXI, 2017. ii + 350 pp. ISBN 978‐5‐91022‐384‐8. Nakachi, Mie. Replacing the Dead: The Politics of Reproduction in the Postwar Soviet Union. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. xiv + 327 pp. $39.95. ISBN 978‐0‐19‐063513‐8. Galley, Mirjam. Building Communism and Policing Deviance in the Soviet Union: Residential Childcare, 1958–91. BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies. Philadelphia: Routledge, 2020. 240 pp. $160.00. ISBN 978‐0‐367‐69469‐2. Rowe, Lars. Industry, War and Stalin's Battle for Resources: The Arctic and the Environment. London: I. B. Tauris, 2021. 240 pp. £85.00. ISBN 978‐1‐7845‐3795‐1. Schlögel, Karl. The Scent of Empires: Chanel No. 5 and Red Moscow. Translated by Jessica Spengler. Boston: Polity Press, 2021. 220 pp. $25.00. ISBN 978‐1‐5095‐4659‐6. Plokhy, Serhii. Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2021. 464 pp. $35.00. ISBN 978‐0‐393‐54081‐9. Orlov, I. B., and A. D. Popov. Olimpiiskii perepolokh: Zabytaia sovetskaia modernizatsiia. Moscow: Izdatel'skii dom Vysshei shkoly ekonomiki, 2020. 480 pp. R396.00 (e‐book). ISBN 978‐5‐7598‐2165‐6. Frank, Allen J. Gulag Miracles: Sufis and Stalinist Repression in Kazakhstan. Studies and Texts on Central Asia 2. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2019. 153 pp. €22.00. ISBN 978‐3‐7001‐8334‐1. Giusti, Maria Teresa. Stalin's Italian Prisoners of War. Translated by Riccardo James Vargiu. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2021. 388 pp. $95.00. ISBN 978‐963‐386‐355‐8. Miklashevskaya, Ludmila. Gender and Survival in Soviet Russia: A Life of Terror in the Shadow of Stalin's Terror. Edited and Translated by Elaine MacKinnon. Library of Modern Russia. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. xii + 267 pp. $115.00. ISBN 978‐1‐350‐13920‐6. Vincent, Mark. Criminal Subculture in the Gulag: Prisoner Society in the Stalinist Labour Camps, 1924–53. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. xiv + 221 pp. £76.50. ISBN 978‐1‐7883‐1189‐2. Social Sciences, Contemporary Russia, and Other Stoner, Kathryn E. Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. 344 pp. $29.95. ISBN 978‐0‐19‐086071‐4. Kochtcheeva, Lada V. Russian Politics and Response to Globalization. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. 250 pp. $84.99. ISBN 978‐3‐030‐39144‐7. Laruelle, Marlene. Is Russia Fascist? Unraveling Propaganda East and West. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021. 264 pp. $39.95. ISBN 978‐1‐5017‐5413‐5. Tynkkynen, Veli‐Pekka. Energy of Russia: Hydrocarbon Culture and Climate Change. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019. 168 pp. $89.95. ISBN 978‐1‐78897‐859‐0. Gresh, Geoffrey F. To Rule Eurasia's Waves: The New Great Power Competition at Sea. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020. 376 pp. $40.00. ISBN 978‐0‐300‐23484‐8. Magyar, Bálint, and Bálint Madlovics. The Anatomy of Post‐Communist Regimes: A Conceptual Framework. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2020. xxvi + 808 pages. $125.00. ISBN 978‐963‐386‐371‐8. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1829, August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, who was later to write "Das Lied der Deutschen," published one of the first scholarly articles on what was known as the Gaunersprache (rogues' language), Rotwelsch. His article included a poem in Rotwelsch he had written himself. Against the backdrop of Hoffmann's nationalist persuasion and participation in the nationalist project of Germanistik, this paper discusses the question of why he turned to writing in a language he portrays in the same article as hybrid and criminal. Informed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's concept of minor literature, this analysis of the poem itself and of its publication context concludes that Hoffmann participates in an older tradition of inverted minor literature in Rotwelsch, that is, a literature that a majority constructs within a minor language. Thus, Hoffmann's poem appears as an attempt at naturalizing Germanness by ascribing the artificial and deterritorializing aspects of any language to the Other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My former colleague and mentor, Prof. David Boyce, loved Vaclav Smil's ([3]) I How the World Really Works i . Here is Smil's thesis in a nutshell: Complete decarbonization of the global economy by 2050 is now conceivable only at the cost of unthinkable global economic retreat, or as a result of extraordinarily rapid transformations relying on near-miraculous technical advances. To be sure, Smil is no climate change denier. [Extracted from the article]

The book "Economies, Institutions and Territories: Dissecting Nexuses in a Changing World" explores the complex relationship between economies, institutions, and territories. It argues that these components are constantly changing and influencing each other, with post-industrial economies and environmental factors adding to the complexity. The book addresses various issues such as the embedding of economic processes at the local level, the stress on boundaries between state and market, and the emergence of new elites. It is divided into four sections and contains case studies from around the world. While the book does not address the impacts of digital capitalism, it offers valuable insights for future studies in economics, economic geography, and economic sociology. [Extracted from the article]

The book "Land: How the hunger for ownership shaped the modern world" by Winchester explores the history and consequences of land ownership. It emphasizes that land is not an immutable entity and can be shaped by both nature and human intervention. The book provides examples such as land reclamation in the Netherlands and the impact of climate change on land. It also delves into the conflicts that have arisen from land ownership, including border disputes and territorial conquests. The author argues that land ownership is a human construct and discusses the relative and absolute aspects of owning land. The book highlights the constructive and destructive aspects of land ownership and its impact on society and the environment. [Extracted from the article]

As Anthony W. Orlando claims in his book, "Where we live isn't just a building and a plot of land. The concentration of Black families in inner cities and the flight of White families to the suburbs had important effects not only on the quality of housing in Black neighbourhoods but also on the opportunities their residents faced. Given that banks gave the loans to the safest homebuyers, other institutional lenders emerged: building and loan associations. [Extracted from the article]

Chapter 10, "Addressing Unevenness" is the most attractive part here: it connects behavioural theory to (regional) economic development, transformation, and well-being. Chapter 8 is the crowning achievement to which the two preceding chapter built up: they provided an analysis how "culture and personality can be measured and examined as a process of co-evolution" (p. 191), and chapter 8 links the resulting "human agency potential" to entrepreneurship and innovation. Although these chapters read like earlier papers or reports that have now been integrated into the book, they still provide valuable inpiration for how the connection from agents to regions actually can work. [Extracted from the article]

The book represents an ideal follow up to Edward Glaeser's (2011) I The triumph of the city i , where an optimistic view about the way urbanites currently benefit from living in cities was presented and documented. For each of those future strategies and policy options, Glaeser and Cutler provide guidelines based on their reading of the present crisis, in the light of their prior applied studies dealing with urban life from an urban and health economics perspective. Nevertheless, a sound policy reaction must be designed, lest funding for local policies substantially shrinks and the urban policies suggested in Glaeser and Cutler's book are literally choked. [Extracted from the article]

It led to housing advocates such as Catherine Bauer voicing their opinion about housing as 'a fundamental right to which every citizen is entitled, the provision of which becomes a responsibility of government' (p. 119). The first part (chapter 1) contains the discussion of important concepts such as "housing justice" and the "materials" of justice on which a theory of justice is built and that distinguish one theory from another. In his beautifully crafted book, Casey J. Dawkins deals with the issue of "housing justice", a very topical issue in times of severe problems of housing affordability and homelessness in the United States and in much of the rest of the developed world. [Extracted from the article]

Princeton University Press has published recently, along with the book revised here, some authored books which focus on contemporary socio-economic issues, with the scope to build a fairer, wealthier, and better society: I What we owe each other: A new social contract for a better society i ([5]), by Minouche Shafik; I The inglorious years: The collapse of the industrial order and the rise of digital society i ([2]), by Daniel Cohen; and I The republic of beliefs: A new approach to law and economic i s ([1]), by Kaushik Basu. The titles of the chapters are also very suggestive, and reflect their content: for example, chapter 4, "Half a century of policy mistakes", chapter 5, "Scapegoating Globalisation", chapter 10, "A tax policy for the left behind", and also for the rest of the chapters. The book begins with an interesting preface that describes the impact of the pandemic on society, by intensifying many of the inequalities described in this book. [Extracted from the article]

Furthermore, whilst the coverage of important diseases did include a spiroplasma disease, I Spiroplasma citri i , it is notable that no phytoplasma diseases were included, despite these being currently more problematic worldwide than spiroplasmas. The topic of phytopathogenic bacteria and plant diseases is a huge one, with hundreds of research papers published worldwide every month in this field, so the author, Professor B. S. Thind, formerly of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, India, is to be commended on this impressive book. This pathogen is recognized as a significant threat to many other plant species beyond grapevine and citrus, such as in olive plantations in Europe, so by including it under its species name it might have made it clearer that this is a broad host-range pathogen. [Extracted from the article]

Invisible China: How the urban-rural divide threatens China's rise Second, on several occasions, the authors say things like "the entire world will be much better off with a thriving China" (p. 154) and "a growing, thriving China is good for the world" (p. 178). This status is very difficult to change, it detrimentally affects citizens with rural I hukou i status, and, most importantly, one's I hukou i status affects virtually every aspect of one's life. [Extracted from the article]