The publication of the National Atlas of Finland in 1899 marks the beginning of the era of the modern national atlas. It is a period that coincides neatly with the twentieth century. The modern national atlas mirrors and embodies some of the important themes of this turbulent century, including the complex connections between nation, state… Read More John Rennie Short (2022): The Rise and Fall of the National Atlas in the Twentieth Century: Power, State and Territory. Anthem Press: London.

Catherine Horel has undertaken a comparative analysis of the societal, ethnic, and cultural diversity in the last decades of the Habsburg Monarchy as represented in twelve cities: Arad, Bratislava, Brno, Chernivtsi, Lviv, Oradea, Rijeka, Sarajevo, Subotica, Timișoara, Trieste, and Zagreb. By purposely selecting these cities, the author aims to counter the disproportionate attention that the… Read More Catherine Horel (2023): Multicultural Cities of the Habsburg Empire. Imagined Communities and Conflictual Encounters. CEU Press: Budapest, Vienna, New York.

Writing with authority and brio, Giulio Boc­caletti—honorary research associate at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, Univer­sity of Oxford—shrewdly combines environmental and social history, beginning with the earliest civ­ilizations of sedentary farmers on the banks of the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates Rivers. Even as he describes how these societies were made… Read More Giulio Boccaletti (2021): Water: A Biography. Pantheon: London.

What is—and what was—“the world”? Though often treated as interchangeable with the ongoing and inexorable progress of globalization, concepts of “world,” “globe,” or “earth” instead suggest something limited and absolute. This innovative and interdisciplinary volume concerns itself with this central paradox: that the complex, heterogeneous, and purportedly transhistorical dynamics of globalization have given rise to… Read More Helge Jordheim and Erling Sandmo (eds.) (2019): Conceptualizing the World: An Exploration Across Disciplines (Time and the World: Interdisciplinary Studies in Cultural Transformations, 4). Berghahn: New York and Oxford.

In achtzehn exemplarischen Inselerkundungen – von der faktualen Isla Juan Fernandez über das historische Formosa und das berühmte Pitcairn bis zur fiktionalen Pip‘s Island – erzählen Roland Borgards, Lena Kugler und Mira Shah eine Geschichte des pazifischen Inselmeers. Zwei Themenbereiche tauchen auf diesen Pazifischen Passagen immer wieder auf: Zum einen liefern die Autor:innen Fragmente der… Read More Roland Borgards, Lena Kugler und Mira Shah (2023): Pazifische Passagen. Ein Insularium des Großen Ozeans. Wallstein: Göttingen.

Wie werden Beobachtungen zu Zahlen, Daten zu wissenschaftlichen Erzählungen, und wie befeuern Daten und Messungen die Fiktionen der Literatur? – Gloria Meynen nimmt uns mit auf eine Reise zu den Anfängen der Klima- und Meereswissenschaften, zum schmalen Streifen zwischen Land und Meer, den fluiden Grenzen zwischen Science und Fiction. Die einsame Insel ist ein Schauplatz… Read More Gloria Meynen (2020): Inseln und Meere Zur Geschichte und Geografie fluider Grenzen. Matthes & Seitz: Berlin.