For a crowdsourced list of classic, entertaining book reviews, click here.
Here are links to the book reviews I have published since 2010:
"'A Vast Symphony of Stone,'" (review of "Viollet-le-Duc:
Drawing Worlds," exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery, New York City), The New York Review of Books, April 23, 2026.
“Who Built France?” (review of Mélanie Lamotte, By Flesh and Toil: How Sex, Race
and Labor Shaped the Early French Empire), The New York Review of Books, April 9, 2026.
Review of Dan Edelstein, The Revolution to Come: A History of an Idea from
Thucydides to Lenin, H-Diplo (Jervis Review Forum no. 165), February, 2026.
“We’re All Individuals!” (review of Lynn Hunt, The Revolutionary Self: Social Change and the
Emergence of the Modern Individual 1770-1800), The Nation, December 2025. Featured on “Arts & Letters Daily” website.
“A Baleful Legacy” (review of William Max Nelson, Enlightenment
Biopolitics: A History of Race, Eugenics, and the Making of Citizens), The New York Review of Books, November 6, 2025.
“`My Freedom, My Choice” (review of Sophia Rosenfeld, The Age of Choice: A
History of Freedom in Modern Life), The New York Review of Books, June 26, 2025.
“History’s Specter (review of Sean McMeekin, To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of
Communism), The Nation, December, 2024. Featured on “Arts & Letters Daily” website.
“A Reckoning for the Parisian Elite” (review of Simon Kuper, Impossible City:
Paris in the Twenty-First Century), The New Statesman, June 19, 2024
“Piety and Power” (review of Bronwen
McShea, La Duchesse: The Life of Marie de Vignerot—Cardinal Richelieu's Forgotten Heiress Who Shaped the Fate of France), The New York Review of Books, April 4, 2024.
“A Shower of Sparks” (review of Christopher Clark, Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame and the
Fight for a New World, 1848-1849), The Nation, November 13, 2023.
“Ego-Histories” (review of Enzo Traverso, Singular Pasts: The “I” in Historiography, and
Darrin M. McMahon, History and Human Flourishing, The New York Review of Books, June 22, 2023.
Review of Hervé Drévillon, Penser et écrire la guerre: Contre
Clausewitz. 1780-1837, Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales, vol. 77, no. 4
(2022).
“The Experiment” (review of Carolyn J. Eichner, The Paris Commune: A Brief History), The Nation, November 28, 2022.
“Paris Transformed” (review of Esther da Costa Meyer, Dividing Paris: Urban Renewal and Social Inequality,
1852–1870, New York Review of Books, August 18, 2022.
"Distant Moments"
(review of Joan Scott, On the Judgment of History), The Nation, May 9-16, 2022
Review of Patrice Gueniffey, Napoleon
and de Gaulle: Heroes and History, The Journal of Modern History, vol. 94, no. 1 (2022).
“The End of the Terror” (review of Colin Jones, The Fall of Robespierre: 24 Hours in
Revolutionary Paris), The New York Review of Books, March 10, 2022.
"A Flawed History of
Humanity" (review of David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity), Persuasion, November 19, 2021.
“Added
Fashion Value” (review of William Sewell, Jr., Capitalism and the Emergence of Civic Equality in Eighteenth-Century France), The London Review of Books, October 7,
2021.
“Whose Freedom?” (review of Tyler
Stovall, White Freedom: The Racial History of an Idea), The New York Review of Books, September 23, 2021.
“Web of Connections” (review of Emma Rothschild, An Infinite History: The Story of a Family in France over
Three Centuries), The Nation, September 6, 2021. Featured on “Arts & Letters Daily” website.
“A Haunted Patrimony” (review of James McAuley, The House of Fragile Things: Jewish Art
Collectors and the Fall of France), The New York Review of Books, July 1, 2021.
Review of Beatrice de Graaf, Fighting Terror after
Napoleon: How Europe Became Secure after 1815, H-Diplo electronic discussion list, May 7, 2021.
“Methods of Power”
(review of Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: How They Rise, Why They Succeed, How They Fall), The Nation, April 19, 2021. Featured on “Arts & Letters Daily” website.
"I Wanted to Rule the World" (review of Alexander Mikaberidze, The Napoleonic Wars: A Global
History, The London Review of Books, December 3, 2020
"The Duchess and
the Jews" (review of Maurice Samuels, The Betrayal of the Duchess: The Scandal that Unmade the Bourbon Monarchy and Made France Modern), The New York Review of Books,
September 24, 2020
Review of Sudhir Hazareesingh, Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint
Louverture, The Guardian, August 28, 2020
Review of Yannick
Bosc, Le peuple souverain et la démocratie, H-France, June, 2020.
"Did Britain Win the American Revolution?" (review of Matthew Lockwood, To Begin the World
Over Again), The New York Review of Books, April 23, 2020.
"The
Contagious Revolution" (review of Julius Scott, The Common Wind , and Johnhenry Gonzalez, Maroon Nation), The New York Review of Books,
December 26, 2019.
“Lost Bearings” (review of Adam Gopnik, A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism), The
Nation, July 1-8, 2019.
“From Readers to Revolutionaries” (review of Robert Darnton, A Literary Tour de France: The World of Books on
the Eve of the French Revolution), The New York Review of Books, June 27, 2019.
“An Equal Say?” (review of
Sophia Rosenfeld, Truth and Democracy: A Short History), The Nation, February 11-18, 2019.
“The Many Lives of
Liberalism” (review of Dan Edelstein, On the Spirit of Rights, Helena Rosenblatt, The Lost History of Liberalism, and James Miller, Can Democracy
Work?), The New York Review of Books, January 17, 2019.
“The Popular Monarch” (review of Julian
Jackson, De Gaulle), The
Nation, September 24, 2018.
“Pity is
Treason” (review of Ronald Schechter, A Genealogy of Terror in Eighteenth-Century France), The New York Review of Books, June 28, 2018.
“The
PowerPoint Philosophe” (review of Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress), The Nation, April 2, 2018.
“Little Spartas” (review of Mike Rapport, The Unruly
City: Paris, London and New York in the Age of Revolution), The Nation. February 12, 2018. Featured on “Arts and Letters Daily” website.
“Le Pen’s Long Shadow” (review of Jonathan
Fenby, Modern France; Maurice Samuels, The Right to Difference; and Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg, Far Right Politics in Europe), The Nation,
April 24, 2017.
“Further, Father, Further!”
(review of Mita Choudhury, The Wanton Jesuit and the Wayward Saint), The
London Review of Books, November 10, 2016.
“Haiti’s Jacobin” (review of Philippe
Girard, Toussaint Louverture: A Revolutionary Life), The Nation, November 21, 2016.
Review of Richard J.
Evans, The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914, The Financial Times, August 19, 2016.
“Astonishing Scientific Advances” (review of Steve Jones, No Need for
Geniuses: Revolutionary Science in the Age of the Guillotine), The Guardian, May 21, 2016.
Review of Anders Engberg-Pedersen, The
Empire of Chance, in The American Historical Review, April 2016.
Review of Charly Coleman, The Virtues of
Abandon, in The Journal of Modern History, March 2016.
"A State Jew" (review of Pierre
Birnbaum, Léon Blum, in The London Review of Books, November 5, 2015
"History's Black Hole" (review of Timothy Snyder, Black Earth),
in The National Interest, September-October, 2015.
Review of Arnaud Guinier, L’honneur du
soldat, H-France, vol. 15, no. 89, June, 2015.
“Glory, Vanity, Liberty?”
(review of Patrice Gueniffey, Bonaparte; Andrew Roberts, Napoleon the Great; Jenny Uglow, In These Times), The Nation, June 15, 2015.
“Terror at the Dawn of Modern Europe” (review of Timothy Tackett, The Coming of the
Terror in the French Revolution and Adam Zamoyski, Phantom Terror), The Atlantic, May, 2015.
"The Fault is not in Our 'Stars,' but in Ourselves" (review of Antoine Lilti, Figures
publiques), Books & Ideas.net, January 8, 2015. French version in La vie des
idées: "Naissance du Star System," March 4,
2015.
"Shameless,
Lucifer and Pug-Nose" (review of Michael Kwass, Contraband), The London Review of Books, January 8, 2015.
Review of
Hervé Drévillon, L'individu et la guerre. H-France, December 2014. Response by Drévillon here.
"The Humanist as Hero" (review of Jean Guéhenno, Diary of the Dark Years, 1940-1944,
ed. David Ball), The New Republic, October 13, 2014.
"The Bourgeois Eric
Hobsbawm" (review of Eric Hobsbawm, Fractured Times), The National Interest, September-October, 2014.
"A Very Different French Revolution" (review of Jonathan Israel, Revolutionary
Ideas), The New York Review of Books, July 10, 2014. Israel-Bell Exchange, The New York Review, October 9, 2014
"When French Irrationality was Deadly" (review of Frederick
Brown, The Embrace of Unreason: France, 1914-1940), The New Republic, June 9, 2014.
"The French Intifada" (review of Andrew Hussey, The French Intifada: The Long
War Between France and its Arabs), The Guardian, February 28, 2014.
"The President as Narcissist" (review of Philip Short, Mitterrand: A
Study in Ambiguity), The Guardian, November 28, 2013.
Review of Marie-Pierre Rey, L'effroyable tragédie: Une nouvelle
histoire de la campagne de Russie, H-France, November, 2013.
"The Global Turn" (review of Emily Rosenberg et al., A
World Connecting), The New Republic, October 7, 2013.
"Come and See For Yourself" (review of Lucien Jaume, Tocqueville: The Aristocratic Sources of
Liberty), The London Review of Books, July 18, 2013.
"Is War Civilized?" (review of James Whitman, Verdict of
Battle), The New Republic, March 3, 2013.
“The Conductor” (review of Peter McPhee, Robespierre: A Revolutionary
Life), The Book: An Online Review at the New Republic, April 5, 2012.
“Poker Lessons From Richelieu: A Portrait of the Statesman as Gambler”
(review of Jean-Vincent Blanchard, Eminence: Cardinal Richelieu and the Rise of France), Foreign Affairs, vol. 91, no. 2 (March/April 2012), pp. 156-60.
Review of Thomas Kaiser and Dale Van Kley, eds., From Deluge to Deficit, H-France, February, 2012.
“Where Do We Come From?” (review of Jonathan Israel, Democratic
Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights, 1750-1790), The New Republic, March 1, 2012.
“The Dreyfus Affair Told From the Catholic Point of View” (review of Piers Paul
Read,The Dreyfus Affair), The Guardian, February 18, 2012.
Review of Roger Chickering and Stig Förster (eds.), War in an Age of Revolution,
1775-1815, The English Historical Review, vol. 126, no. 523 (2011), pp. 1546-48.
“Conspiracy Porn” (review of Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery), The
New Republic, December 1, 2011.
“Simple Facts and Plain Truths” (review of Sophia Rosenfeld, Common Sense: A Political
History), The London Review of Books, October 20, 2011.
“La Même Chose” (review of David McCullough, The Greater Journey: Americans in
Paris), The Book: An Online Review at the New Republic, July 2, 2011.
“The New Normal” (review of Alan Riding, And the Show Went On), The New
Republic, March 3, 2011.
“Does This Man Deserve Tenure?” (review of Mark Taylor, Crisis on
Campus), The Book: An Online Review at the New Republic, September 6, 2010.
“Hope and Play“ (review of Natalie Zemon Davis, A Passion for History), The Book: An Online Review at
the New Republic, August 25, 2010.
“Pogroms of Words” (review of Frederick Brown, For the Soul of France), The New
Republic, June 24, 2010.
“Was Tolstoy Right?” (review of Dominic Lieven, Russia Against Napoleon), The Book: An Online Review
at the New Republic, May 12, 2010.
“Visions” (review of Larissa Juliet Taylor, The Virgin Warrior), The Book: An Online Review at the New
Republic, January 11, 2010.
