Support Kritika | Support H-Net | Buy Books Here | Join the NBN and NBN en Español on Patreon | Visit New Books Network en Español!
Interviews with scholars of medieval history about their new books.
Matthew Thomas Miller's new book Feeling like Lovers: Affect in Medieval Sufism (U California Press, 2026), and is available as an open access book (s…
Constructing the Medieval Maritime State: Identity, Violence, and Connection in the Mediterranean (Oxford University Press, 2026) by Professor Travi…
What do we talk about when we talk about Europe? Is it defined by geography? Or is it politics, or shared culture? In Europe: A New History (Allen Lan…
The Kiss: A History of Passion and Power (Reaktion, 2026) by Professor Katie Barclay tells the surprising history of our most intimate gesture: th…
Born in 1102, Empress Matilda combined the blood of two dynasties: the house of Wessex and their conquerors, the dukes of Normandy. As a widowed Germa…
The first chemists were Sri Lankan forgers who crafted unimaginably strong steel millennia before it should have been possible. They were alchemists i…
In the bustling market towns and growing cities of medieval England between 1200 and 1600, public works were the lifelines of urban society. In …
In his new book The Public House in Central Europe: Inns, Tavern, and Alehouses in Cracow during the Jagiellonian Dynasty (Lexington Books, 2024), Pet…
Karl Whittington joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, Queer Making: On Artists and Desire in Medieval Europe (Pennsylvania State University Pr…
In the Middle Ages, hell was useful because it was vaguely defined. Canonical scriptures scarcely mention hell, leaving much to the imaginations of …
Dr. Shirley's monograph, Religion, Gender, and Politics in Medieval Sri Lanka: The Reconstruction of Buddhist Kingship, ca. 1070-1215, is now availabl…
From about the middle of the first millennium of the Common Era through to the fifteenth century, Southeast Asian societies underwent a political tran…
The end of the fourteenth century was a time of upheaval and contested authority among the traditional institutions of medieval Europe. In response to…
Meanings of Antiquity: Myth Interpretation in Premodern Japan (Harvard UP, 2023) is the first dedicated study of how the oldest Japanese myths, record…
The history of medieval Britain through twelve remarkable illuminated manuscripts. Illumino: A History of Medieval Britain in Twelve Illuminated Manu…
A major new look at Africa’s influence on European culture and how colonization remade Africa in the image of a medieval Europe. Virgil. Chaucer.…
In the thirteenth-century Mediterranean, commerce transformed as merchants shifted from Roman to Indo-Arabic numerals—an alternative that better facil…
Slavery was a key part of pre-modern Islamic society, spanning from soldiers to concubines. And one of the most revealing repositories of evidence we …
Many people think they know what fairies are, what a fairy looks like, and how a fairy is expected to behave. Dr. Francis Young's Fairies: A History (…
In Offa: King of the Mercians (Yale UP, 2026), Professor Rory Naismith presents an authoritative biography of Offa of Mercia, revealing his importance…