For tenure-track scholars in history, publishing a book is one of the key parts of earning tenure.1 But many contingent scholars publish books as well, especially those on the job market, where search committees want to see candidates who are engaged and “productive.”2
As few historians make any significant money on their writing, just knowing that people have read their books can mean a lot to an author. Here are some books released in 2021 by historians working off the tenure track that you might consider as you do your end-of-the-year shopping.
Agnes Arnold-Forster, The Cancer Problem: Malignancy in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Oxford University Press)
The Cancer Problem offers the first medical, cultural, and social history of cancer in nineteenth-century Britain [and] argues that it was in the nineteenth century that cancer acquired the unique emotional, symbolic, and politicized status it maintains today . . . this book reframes our conceptualization of the relationship between medicine and modern life and reshapes our understanding of chronic and incurable maladies, both past and present.
Kevin C. Brown, Devils Hole Pupfish: The Unexpected Survival of an Endangered Desert Fish in the Modern American West (University of Nevada Press)
Drawing on archival detective work, interviews, and a deep familiarity with the landscape of the surrounding Amargosa Desert, [Brown] shows how the seemingly isolated Devils Hole pupfish has persisted through its relationships with some of the West’s most important institutions: federal land management policy, western water law, ecological sciences, and the administration of endangered-species legislation.
Brian Bunk
, From Football to Soccer. The Early History of the Beautiful Game in the United States (University of Illinois Press)
Across North America, native peoples and colonists alike played a variety of kicking games long before soccer’s emergence in the late 1800s. Brian D. Bunk examines the development and social impact of these sports through the rise of professional soccer after World War I. As he shows, the various games called football gave women an outlet as athletes and encouraged men to form social bonds . . . From Football to Soccer refutes the notion of the U.S. as a land outside of football history.
Patrice Dabrowski
, The Carpathians: Discovering the Highlands of Poland and Ukraine (Cornell University Press)
The set of microhistories in this book occur from about 1860 to 1980, a time in which nations and states concerned themselves with the “frontier at the edge.” Discoverers not only became enthralled with what were perceived as their own highlands but also availed themselves of the mountains as places to work out answers to the burning questions of the day. Each discovery led to a surge in mountain tourism and interest in the mountains and their indigenous highlanders.
Mia Martin Hobbs, Return to Vietnam: An Oral History of American and Australian Veterans’ Journeys (Cambridge University Press)
Between 1981 and 2016, thousands of American and Australian Vietnam War veterans returned to Việt Nam. This comparative, transnational oral history . . . shows how veterans returned in search of resolution, or peace, manifesting in shifting nostalgic visions of ‘Vietnam.’ Different national war narratives shaped their returns: Australians followed the ‘Anzac’ pilgrimage tradition, whereas for Americans the return was an anti-war act.
Leila McNeil
and Anna Reser, Forces of Nature: The Women Who Changed Science (Frances Lincoln)
From the ancient world to the present women have been critical to the progress of science, yet their importance is overlooked, their stories lost, distorted, or actively suppressed. Forces of Nature sets the record straight and charts the fascinating history of women’s discoveries in science . . . In this thoroughly researched, authoritative work, you will discover how women have navigated a male-dominated scientific culture–showing themselves to be pioneers and trailblazers.
Daniel R. Meister
, The Racial Mosaic: A Pre-History of Canadian Multiculturalism (McGill-Queen’s University Press)
Canada is often considered a multicultural mosaic, welcoming to immigrants and encouraging of cultural diversity. Yet this reputation masks a more complex history . . . In this groundbreaking study of the pre-history of Canadian multiculturalism, Daniel Meister demonstrates how early ideas about cultural diversity in Canada were founded upon, and coexisted with, settler colonialism and racism, despite the apparent tolerance of a variety of immigrant peoples and their cultures.
Einav Rabinovitch-Fox
, Dressed for Freedom: The Fashionable Politics of American Feminism (University of Illinois Press)
Often condemned as a form of oppression, fashion could and did allow women to express modern gender identities and promote feminist ideas. Einav Rabinovitch-Fox examines how clothes empowered women, and particularly women barred from positions of influence due to race or class . . . A fascinating account of clothing as an everyday feminist practice, Dressed for Freedom brings fashion into discussions of American feminism during the long twentieth century.
Tanya Roth
, Her Cold War: Women in the US Military, 1945-1980 (University of North Carolina Press)
While Rosie the Riveter had fewer paid employment options after being told to cede her job to returning World War II veterans, her sisters and daughters found new work opportunities in national defense. The 1948 Women’s Armed Services Integration Act created permanent military positions for women with the promise of equal pay. Her Cold War follows the experiences of women in the military from the passage of the Act to the early 1980s.
Joanna Sliwa
, Jewish Childhood in Kraków: A Microhistory of the Holocaust (Rutgers University Press)
Jewish Childhood in Kraków is the first book to tell the history of Kraków in the second World War through the lens of Jewish children’s experiences. Here, children assume center stage as historical actors whose recollections and experiences deserve to be told, analyzed, and treated seriously. Sliwa scours archives to tell their story, gleaning evidence from the records of the German authorities, Polish neighbors, Jewish community and family, and the children themselves.
David Wight
, Oil Money: Middle East Petrodollars and the Transformation of US Empire, 1967–1988 (Cornell University Press)
In Oil Money, David M. Wight offers a new framework for understanding the course of Middle East–US relations during the 1970s and 1980s: the transformation of the US global empire by Middle East petrodollars . . . [the book] utilizes extensive declassified records from the Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations, the IMF, the World Bank, Saddam Hussein’s regime, and private collections to make plain the political economy of US power.