Trousson, Raymond / Vercruysse, Jeroom (dir.), Dictionnaire general de Voltaire. (Champion classiques, references et dictionnaires 18) 1272 p. 2020:10 (Champion, FR) <670-9>
ISBN 978-2-38096-016-7 paper ¥7,064.- (税込) EUR 38.00

Nightingale, Carl H., Earthopolis: A Biography of Our Urban Planet. 300 pp. 2022:5 (Cambridge U. Pr., UK) <666-3211>
ISBN 978-1-108-42452-3 hard ¥7,811.- (税込) GB￡ 27.00 *

This is a biography of Earthopolis, the only Urban Planet we know of. It is a history of how cities gave humans immense power over Earth, for good and for ill. Carl Nightingale takes readers on a sweeping six-continent, six-millennia tour of the world's cities, culminating in the last 250 years, when we vastly accelerated our planetary realms of action, habitat, and impact, courting dangerous new consequences and opening prospects for new hope. In Earthopolis we peek into our cities' homes, neighborhoods, streets, shops, eating houses, squares, marketplaces, religious sites, schools, universities, offices, monuments, docklands, and airports to discover connections between small spaces and the largest things we have built. The book exposes the Urban Planet's deep inequalities of power, wealth, access to knowledge, class, race, gender, sexuality, religion and nation. It asks us to draw on the most just and democratic moments of Earthopolis's past to rescue its future.

Thiessen, Nadja, Gefaehrdung staedtischer Infrastruktur durch Hochwasser: Wahrnehmungen und Bewaeltigungsstrategien in Mannheim und Dresden 1918-1989. (Historical Catastrophe Studies / Historische Katastrophenforschung 2) 300 S. 2023 (de Gruyter, GW) <666-3212>
ISBN 978-3-11-073854-4 hard ¥24,736.- (税込) EUR 99.95 *

Zavagno, Luca, The Byzantine City from Heraclius to the Fourth Crusade, 610-1204: Urban Life after Antiquity. (Palgrave Pivot / New Approaches to Byzantine History and Culture) 214 pp. 2021:10 (Palgrave Macmillan, UK) <666-3214>
ISBN 978-3-030-84306-9 hard ¥27,221.- (税込) EUR 109.99 *

This book explores the Byzantine city and the changes it went through from 610 to 1204. Throughout this period, cities were always the centers of political and social life for both secular and religious authorities, and, furthermore, the focus of the economic interests of local landowning elites. This book therefore examines the regional and subregional trajectories in the urban function, landscape, structure and fabric of Byzantium's cities, synthesizing the most cutting-edge archaeological excavations, the results of analyses of material culture (including ceramics, coins, and seals) and a reassessment of the documentary and hagiographical sources. The transformation the Byzantine urban landscape underwent from the seventh to thirteenth centuries can afford us a better grasp of changes to the Byzantine central and provincial administrative apparatus; their fiscal machinery, military institutions, socio-economic structures and religious organization. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of the history, archaeology and architecture of Byzantium.

Klaiber, Ingrun, Krieg in der Stadt: Ulm und seine Bevoelkerung waehrend der Koalitionskriege (1792 - 1815). (Forschungen zur Geschichte der Stadt Ulm 37) 590 S. 2021:9 (Kohlhammer, GW) <666-3208>
ISBN 978-3-17-041310-8 hard ¥14,602.- (税込) EUR 59.00 *

Zwischen 1792 und 1815 bestimmten die Koalitionskriege das Leben in der schwaebischen Stadt Ulm. Die vorliegende Studie untersucht systematisch den Krieg vor Ort in all seinen Facetten. Dabei stehen subjektive Erfahrungen im Vordergrund: Wie begegnen die Ulmer den Erlebnissen, die die Kriegsfuehrung um 1800 mit sich bringt? Wie deuten und verarbeiten sie das Erlebte, um es in ihren Alltag zu integrieren? Wie reagieren sie auf einmarschierende Truppen, militaerische Verpflichtungen und politische und territoriale Veraenderungen? Die Auswertung zeitgenoessischer Chroniken gewaehrt einen breiten Einblick in die Lebenswelt der Ulmer im Krieg, von individuellen und gruppenspezifischen Erfahrungen bis hin zu staedtischen Massnahmen. Gleichzeitig wird aufgezeigt, wie die bewegten Jahre um 1800 die damalige Chronistik beeinflussten und eine neue Gattungsart entstand.

Lev Ari, Lilach, Contemporary Jewish Communities in Three European Cities: Challenges of Integration, Acculturation and Ethnic Identity. 190 S. 2022:4 (de Gruyter, GW) <666-3209>
ISBN 978-3-11-069872-5 hard ¥20,529.- (税込) EUR 82.95 *

Contemporary Jewish identity, integration and acculturation in Europe has become an urgent topic in view of the current wave of antisemitism and reliable research on the present state of Jewish identity is scarce. Lilach Lev Ari has chosen three ethnically diverse communities ? Paris, Brussels, and Antwerp ? that can shed a light on the identity and acculturation of the Jewish minority in Europe. To understand patterns of social integration of native-born and immigrant Jews in the three host societies she applies the correlational quantitative method and has conducted semi-structured interviews. The study can promote further understanding of Jewish continuity within the non-Jewish host societies in a situation, when there is a concern about the resilience and strength of the Jewish communities vis-a-vis new waves of antisemitism.

Merrill, Elizabeth (ed.), Creating Place in Early Modern European Architecture. (Visual and Material Culture, 1300-1700) 376 pp. 2021:12 (Amsterdam U. Pr., NE) <666-3210>
ISBN 978-94-6372-802-7 hard ¥38,476.- (税込) GB￡ 133.00 *

The importance of place - as a unique spatial identity - has been recognized since antiquity. Ancient references to the 'genius loci', or spirit of place, evoked not only the location of a distinct atmosphere or environment, but also the protection of this location, and implicitly, its making and construction. This volume examines the concept of place as it relates to architectural production and building knowledge in early modern Europe (1400-1800). The places explored in the book's ten essays take various forms, from an individual dwelling to a cohesive urban development to an extensive political territory. Within the scope of each study, the authors draw on primary source documents and original research to demonstrate the distinctive features of a given architectural place, and how these are related to a geographic location, social circumstances, and the contributions of individual practitioners. The essays underscore the distinct techniques, practices and organizational structures by which physical places were made in the early modern period.

Thomas, Alexander R. / Fulkerson, Gregory M., City and Country: The Historical Evolution of Urban-Rural Systems. (Studies in Urban-Rural Dynamics) 490 pp. 2021:6 (Lexington Books, US) <666-2363>
ISBN 978-1-7936-4432-9 hard ¥31,845.- (税込) US$ 150.00 *

City and Country: The Historical Evolution of Urban-Rural Systems begins with a simple assumption: every human requires, on average, two-thousand calories per day to stay alive. Tracing the ramifications of this insight leads to the caloric well: the caloric demand at one point in the environment. As population increases, the depth of the caloric well reflects this increased demand and requires a population to go further afield for resources, a condition called urban dependency. City and Country traces the structural ramifications of these dynamics as the population increased from the Paleolithic to today. We can understand urban dependency as the product of the caloric demands a population puts on a given environment, and when those demands outstrip the carry capacity of the environment, a caloric well develops that forces a community to look beyond its immediate area for resources. As the well deepens, the horizon from which resources are gathered is pushed further afield, often resulting in conflict with neighboring groups. Prior to settled villages, increases in population resulted in cultural (technological) innovations that allowed for greater use of existing resources: the broad-spectrum revolution circa 20 thousand years ago, the birth of agricultural villages 11 thousand years ago, and hierarchically organized systems of multiple settlements working together to produce enough food during the Ubaid period in Mesopotamia seven-thousand years ago-the first urban-rural systems. As cities developed, increasing population resulted in an ever-deepening morass of urban dependency that required expansion of urban-rural systems. These urban-rural dynamics today serve as an underlying logic upon which modern capitalism is built. The culmination of two decades of research into the nature of urban-rural dynamics, City and Country argues that at the heart of the logic of capitalism is an even deeper logic: urbanization is based on urban dependency.