Clio's Book Reviews

Peter C. Mancall, Contested Continent: The Struggle for North America, c. 1000–1680 (Oxford University Press, 2026). Peter C. Mancall’s Contested Continent: The Struggle for North America, c. 1000–1680 is an ambitious and deeply impressive work …

Sarah Gold McBride, Whiskerology: The Culture of Hair in Nineteenth-Century America (Harvard University Press, 2025). What can something as ordinary as hair tell us about nineteenth-century America? As Sarah Gold McBride demonstrates in Whiskero…

Lisa Jacobson, Intoxicating Pleasures: The Reinvention of Wine, Beer, and Whiskey after Prohibition (University of California Press, 2024). Lisa Jacobson’s Intoxicating Pleasures: The Reinvention of Wine, Beer, and Whiskey after Prohibition begi…

Andrea Horbinski, Manga’s First Century: How Creators and Fans Made Japanese Comics, 1905–1989 (University of California Press, 2025). Andrea Horbinski’s Manga’s First Century: How Creators and Fans Made Japanese Comics, 1905–1989 tells the hist…

Christopher Bosso, Why SNAP Works: A Political History—and Defense—of the Food Stamp Program (University of California Press, 2023). Christopher Bosso’s Why SNAP Works: A Political History—and Defense—of the Food Stamp Program is a fascinating a…

Chloe Chapin, Suitable: The Sartorial Revolution and the Fashioning of Modern Men (Oxford University Press, 2026). The ubiquitous plain dark suit. We hardly think of it as fashion at all. But as Chloe Chapin argues in Suitable: The Sartorial Rev…

Anna O. Law, Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship: African Americans, Native Americans, and Immigrants (Oxford University Press, 2026). We tend to think of immigration as an inherently federal responsibility. But for most of the nat…