Fact vs. fiction

In conjunction with the Institute of Historical Research's November conference Novel Approaches, their online Reviews in History has been comparing works of academic history with novels set in the same period

Julia Lovell (Birkbeck College, University of London)) compares Mao's last revolution by Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhols with Yu Hua's novel Brothers (Xiong di)

Click to read her REVIEWS

Mao's last revolution (Harvard UP, 2006) is available in SOAS Library at CC951.056 / 995530.
Click HERE to go to the catalogue entry
Brothers is available at the British Library

Dr Jenny Benham (from the IHR) compares Jonathan  Riley-Smith's classic The Crusades: a short history with the Swedish bestseller The Temple knight by Jan Guillou

Click to read her REVIEWS

The Crusades (2nd edition, 2005) is available in SOAS Library at NB909.07 / 933682
Click HERE to go to the catalogue entry
Try Foyles or Waterstones if you are intrigued by The Temple knight !

Law and politics of British colonial thought: book reviews

Compare reviews of Law and politics of British colonial thought: transpositions of Empire by Dr. Shaunnagh Dorsett (Faculty of Law, University of Wellington) and Ian Hunter

The book is "mainly concerned with British Law as it developed in settler colonies", commencing with Britain's North American territories and concentrating on the Anglophone colonies such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand, although there is a "lively" account of English barrister Travers Twiss and his support of the Belgian King Leopold in the establishment of the Congo Free State

• Reviews in History (Institute of Historical Research) - review by Dr. Jack Harrington (Open University)
• Settler Colonial Studies  - review by Professor Peter Karsten (Department of History, University of Pittsburg) [PDF]

Find the book in SOAS Library at A344.2 / 737200

Click here to link to the Library catalogue

Jerusalem: the biography (book review)

Simon Sebag Montefiore's "Jerusalem : the biography" was  published in the U.K earlier this year. The book examines the history of the city from the earliest times to the present day.

Read the latest review in the New York Times Sunday Book Review 


Find the book in SOAS Library at QJ956.944 / 734184

Click here to view the Library catalogue

Information skills for Historians

A quick reminder that there will be sessions looking at information resources for historians in Room E17 (Library) on

• Friday 4th November (10-11 a.m.)
• Friday 11th November (10-11 a.m.)

The sessions will look at topics such as electronic journals, databases (full-text and bibliographic), the Library's online subject guides, and looking for resources beyond SOAS

Please email ms28@soas.ac.uk and let me know if you would like to attend either of these sessions.

Imperial heights : book review

Eric Jenning's Imperial heights: Dalat and the making and undoing of French Indochina looks at the development of Dalat, some 100 miles northeast of the modern Ho-Chi Minh City on the Lang Bian Plateau, as a hill-station and spa for European colonialists in the early 20th century. By the 1920s, it was a "decidedly French social space".

Read the review by Michael Vann in the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and see the author's response to the review as well.

Find the book in SOAS Library at GG959.703 / 742279.
Link to the Library Catalogue from  here

Professor Eric Jennings  is based at the Department of History, University of Toronto
Associate Professor Michael Vann is based at the Department of History, California State University, Sacremento.

Women and trade-unionism in post-war Japan: book review

Dr. Christopher Gerteis' book Gender struggles: wage-earning women and male-dominated unions in post-war Japan was published by Harvard University Asia Center in 2009 as one of their East Asian Monographs series

Read the latest review (in Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol.37(2) 2011)

Dr Gerteis lectures on the history of contemporary Japan here at SOAS
The reviewer, Professor Robin LeBlanc, lectures on politics and law at the Washington and Lee University School of Law, Lexington (Virginia)

There are two copies available in SOAS Library at D331.478 / 987419.
 Link to the catalogue entry from HERE

Storytelling and oral history

A report from the BBC's Middle East website looks at the tradition of storytelling and the role of the professional storyteller  in the Middle East, and how history (ancient and modern) as well as contemporary events such as the Arab Spring are being adapted by the storytellers.

Click HERE to read the report

The report also includes videos of modern professional storytellers performing
But will the traditional art survive in competition with modern technology?