Faculty Books

View a selection of recently published books by Department of History faculty.

Book cover for Plentiful Country

Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York

Acclaimed historian Tyler Anbinder presents for the first time the Famine generation’s individual and collective tales of struggle, perseverance, and triumph.

Book cover for Mungo Park's Ghost

Mungo Park's Ghost: The Haunted Hubris of British Explorers in Nineteenth-Century Africa

Telling the full story of two failed British expeditions for the first time, Dane Kennedy argues that they provide fresh insight into British ambitions in Africa.

Book cover of The Tarikh-i Ḥamidi

The Tarikh-i Ḥamidi: A Late-Qing Uyghur History

The Tarikh-i Ḥamidi is an epic and tragic history from the region of Xinjiang in northwest China, the homeland of the Muslim-majority Uyghur people.

To Trust the People with Arms book cover

To Trust the People with Arms: The Supreme Court and the Second Amendment

To Trust the People with Arms explores the remarkable and complex legal history of how the right to bear arms was widely accepted during the nation's founding, was near extinction in the late...

Book cover for The Multiracial Promise

The Multiracial Promise: Harold Washington's Chicago and the Democratic Struggle in Reagan's America

Drawing on a rich array of archives and oral history interviews, Gordon K. Mantler offers a bold reexamination of the Harold Washington movement and moment.

Book cover for Merits of the Plague

Merits of the Plague

History's Joel Blecher co-edited the first English translation of the preeminent meditation on plagues and pandemics from the Islamic medieval world.

Book cover of Community Still Matters

Community Still Matters: Uyghur Culture and Society in Central Asian Context

Eric Schluessel presents a multidisciplinary overview of Uyghur studies today, highlighting contributions from Uyghur diaspora and exile scholars.

Book cover for They Believed That?

They Believed That?: A Cultural Encyclopedia of Superstitions and the Supernatural around the World

William E. Burns covers a range of superstitious, supernatural, and otherwise unusual beliefs from the ancient world to the early 19th century.

Book cover for Realigners

Realigners: Partisan Hacks, Political Visionaries, and the Struggle to Rule American Democracy

History’s Timothy Shenk offers an eye-opening account of the American political tradition, from the drafting of the Constitution to the storming of the Capitol.

Book cover for A Continent Erupts

A Continent Erupts: Decolonization, Civil War, and Massacre in Postwar Asia, 1945–1955

History's Ronald Spector provides, for the first time, a comprehensive military history and analysis of conflicts that swept Asia following World War II.