New History Books for July 2024

Here is a selection of anticipated new history books that will be released over the month ahead.

The Boundless River: Stories from the Realm of the Rhine by Mathijs Deen

MacLehose Press, 4 July, 2024

After last month's rush of military history books, many of them connected to the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, readers might well be looking for a refreshing alternative to carry them through the summer weeks. An excellent choice would be The Boundless River, a fluent and incisive mix of history and travelogue that is centred on one of Europe's great rivers.

Translated from Dutch, The Boundless River traces the Rhine back through history, to distant interglacial eras when hippos swam in its warm waters. Throughout human history, ever since, the river has remained a constant feature of European geography. Its significance, however, has often shifted. As Deen shows, the Rhine has been looked upon variously as 'a theatre of war, a border between nations, a bathing spot, a killer, a vital transport route'.

Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed by Maureen Callahan

Mudlark, 4 July, 2024

As early as third or fourth grade many US American school children study President John F Kennedy's inaugural address from 1961, which contains the celebrated line: 'Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country'.

The title of Maureen Callahan's powerful new book is drawn from this. But instead of guiding readers into the familiar world of tailored suits, bright white smiles and Cold War politics, her story engages with a concealed and sinister past. All families have cultures and Callahan, an investigative journalist, demonstrates how the Kennedy family's included a dangerously predatory streak towards women.

Time and again women's lives were ruined by contact with them. In the same way that Hallie Rubenhold's The Five sought to disrupt a familiar narrative by presenting the women's point of view, Ask Not takes a familiar story and adds a far more unsettling aspect to it.

All His Spies: The Secret World of Robert Cecil by Stephen Alford

Allen Lane, 4 July, 2024

Last month brought the publication of Susan Doran's grand study of the transition between the Tudors and the Stuarts, and for those intrigued by that story of early modern regime change, Stephen Alford's All His Spies will have a particular appeal.

In Alford's estimation, Robert Cecil was 'the most accomplished and formidable politician of his generation', and it was he who was chiefly responsible for managing the transition of 1603. Efficient and effective, Cecil operated with access to a vast network of spies. These helped him to navigate a series of threats and conspiracies, most notably the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

In this book, Alford aims to access Cecil's opaque world. As a result, All His Spies has an exciting sense of purpose and it is alive with the aura of a historian immersed in the archives.

The Betrayal of Thomas True by A.J. West

Orenda Books, 4 July, 2024

For readers looking for a historical novel ahead of the summer holidays, The Betrayal of Thomas True is a book that is well worth seeking out.

A.J. West, a BBC reporter turned thriller writer, made a name for himself with his prizewinning debut The Spirit Engineer. That book had the evocative historical setting of 1914 in Belfast, and it captured the heady aura of a society suspended between Edwardian opulence and total war. The Betrayal of Thomas True has a similar feel but it is set in a quite different era. Delving two centuries further back, it opens in London in the year 1715.

It is through this raw and boisterous world that West's protagonist, Thomas True, moves with a perilous secret. Readers will be primed for what to expect: high fashion and lowly neighbourhoods; the gallows at Tyburn and molly houses; love, heartbreak and betrayal.

Cloudspotting for Beginners by Gavin Pretor-Pinney & William Grill

Particular Books, 4 June, 2024

'One damp London night in the winter of 1802', Gavin Pretor Pinney informs us in the resplendent Cloudspotting for Beginners, at a London scientific club, a chemist called Luke Howard 'declared that we should give clouds Latin names like 'Cumulus', 'Cirrus', and 'Status'. So began a new system that has been in use ever since for classifying the skies.

Cloudspotting for Beginners is a reminder that everything has a history. A soothing, refreshing read that is elevated by the stylish illustrations of William Grill, the book also includes the story of Wilson Bentley in 1880. While Howard had gazed up at the clouds, Bentley instead stared down into a microscope, examining the enchanting forms of ice crystals that he had gathered. 'Snowflake Bentley' of Vermont, we learn, went on to take more than five thousand photographs of ice crystals during his lifetime.

Ex-Libris Editions: exclusive signed bookplates for your library

Our bookplate editions make for a great gift etc etc.

Shop Signed Books

The Busy Narrow Sea: A Social History of the English Channel by Robin Laurance

The History Press, 11 July, 2024

Of all the geographic spaces on planet Earth, one of the most intriguing is the English Channel. Between Dover and Calais, it is narrow enough that people can clearly look from one side to the other on a fine day. But within this little space, so much human history is contained.

This history is the matter that Robin Laurance has converted into a brightly written and sweeping new book. The emphasis here, as in Deen's book on the Rhine (above) is on social history. Readers will find stories of 'artists captivated by its light; writers inspired by its power; tunnellers relishing its challenges'.

One of Laurance's most intriguing moments of focus is the turn of the nineteenth century when the English Channel was all that lay between Great Britain and the imperial ambitions of Napoleon Bonaparte. As he memorably stated: 'Let us be masters of the Channel for six hours and we are masters of the world'.

Son of Prophecy: The Rise of Henry Tudor by Nathen Amin

Amberley Publishing, 15 June, 2024

At the start of the 1480s, few people saw the Tudors coming. Years of tumult, known to us today as the Wars of the Roses, had left the country wretchedly divided but if a settled future was to be glimpsed then it was most likely to be glimpsed in the two sons of King Edward IV. Hardly anyone would have regarded Henry Tudor, a relatively insignificant Welsh nobleman, as a coming power.

Son of Prophecy explains how England moved from this moment to the point, after the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, when Henry took the crown. It is an origin story, then, not only for Henry himself but for the whole House of Tudor, which would dominate the politics of England throughout the sixteenth century.

Henry VII may be less known than his son or granddaughter, but he remains an intriguing and important figure in English history. Shrewd, decisive and a skilled administrator, this book follows him back to an earlier point in his life when, as Nathen Amin points out, he was a solitary figure in Wales; 'a son of prophecy'.

Paris '44: The Shame and the Glory by Patrick Bishop

Viking, 25 July, 2024

In the weeks after the D-Day landings, when the Allied forces confronted the Nazis in the Battle of Normandy, peoples' minds began to fix on Paris. It was here, in one of Europe's greatest capitals, where the German triumphs of 1940 had culminated. The picture of the Führer with the Eiffel Tower rising in the haze behind him framed an astonishing historical moment.

How Paris passed back into French hands; who was there and what they did, is the subject of Patrick Bishop's new book: Paris '44. The liberation of Paris in August 1944 is most closely connected in popular retellings with Charles de Gaulle. But here Bishop searches beyond the political leader and finds many more figures—among them Pablo Picasso and J.D. Salinger— and a great variety of different stories, all of which are presented in this invigorating, suspenseful narrative history.

Clay: A Human History by Jennifer Lucy Allan

White Rabbit, 25 July, 2024

As Deen follows the flowing waters of the Rhine and Pretor Pinney gazes upwards at the formation of clouds (both mentioned above), the author Jennifer Lucy Allan invites us to look down at the ground beneath our feet. It is here that we find clay, a material that, as anyone who picks us this provoking book will learn, is something with a very long and illuminating history.

Just when humans started to dig out clay, to form it into shapes and fire it into firmness, is very difficult to say. But by the time of the Ancient Egyptians, interactions with clay were so commonplace that potters were being depicted in tomb paintings, working at their wheels. Such pictures suggest clay's practical value, but Allan is as interested in the other dimensions of its use. 'This book', it proclaims, 'is a love letter to clay, the material that is at the beginning, middle and end of all of our lives; that contains within it the eternal, the elemental, and the everyday.'

Ravenous: A Life of Barbara Villiers, Charles II's Most Infamous Mistress by Andrea Zuvich

Pen & Sword, 30 July, 2024

After the destructive years of Civil War, early modern England entered one of its most flamboyant and hedonistic periods. The great figure at the heart of this time is, of course, King Charles II who returned from exile to become lusting, feasting, gambling 'merrie monarch'. Not far from the king during these years, was the subject of Andrea Zuvich's fine new biography. Barbara Villiers.

Billed as the king's 'most infamous mistress', readers new to Villiers will encounter her for the first time, gazing lustfully out from the front cover. This was certainly Villiers's chief persona, but Zuvich is interested in tracing the life that lies behind her celebrity too. Villiers' story is one of high class, fashion, and politics. Promoted as an object of desire, she was predictably damaged by the culture that consumed her. Throughout, however, Zuvich contends that Villers retained a 'ravenous' zest for life in all its forms.

Unseen Store

Unseen Histories relies on your patronage to operate. A small portion from every print sale is reinvested into Unseen Histories to bring the past to life.

SHOP PRINTS