Clio's Book Reviews

Geoffrey Plank, The Last Place in Europe: A History of Gibraltar. Oxford University Press, 2026. Gibraltar has been besieged repeatedly, conquered by competing powers, and defended at enormous expense despite the fact that it possesses few natur…

Lloyd D. Barba and Sergio M. González, Sanctuary in America: How Activists Defied the Government and Defended Immigrants—And Why It Still Matters (Oxford University Press, 2026). In July 1980, as twenty-six Salvadorans crossed the Sonoran Desert…

Aimee Loiselle, Beyond Norma Rae: How Puerto Rican and Southern White Women Fought for a Place in the American Working Class (University of North Carolina Press, 2023). For millions of Americans, the image of actress Sally Field standing alone a…

Megan Kate Nelson, The Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier (Scribner, 2026). Few stories are as enduring and central to American national identity as the frontier. In The Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the Amer…

Mary Beth Norton, “I Humbly Beg Your Speedy Answer”: Letters on Love and Marriage from the World's First Personal Advice Column (Princeton University Press, 2025). Mary Beth Norton’s I Humbly Beg Your Speedy Answer offers a fascinating, deeply h…

Pamela D. Toler, The Dragon from Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany (Beacon Press, 2024). Pamela Toler’s The Dragon from Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany demonstrates the particular…

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…