Journal of Interdisciplinary History, L:1 (Summer, 2019), 59–90. Philip Slavin Death by the Lake: Mortality Crisis in Early Fourteenth-Century Central Asia The geographical ori- gins of the Black Death is one of the most pressing and hotly debated questions concerning the historiography of the Second Plague Pandemic, involving not only historians but also (in recent years) palaeogeneticists. Roughly speaking, the history of the de- bate

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, L:1 (Summer, 2019), 31–58. The 50th Year: Special Essay 2 Peter Temin Words and Numbers: A New Approach to Writing Ancient History Interdisciplinary history can enrich the ap- proach of disciplinary histories. According to Beard, the author of a recent definitive history of the Roman Republic, “What is missing [from ancient history] is the perspective of those outside this ex- clusive

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, L:1 (Summer, 2019), 3–30. The 50th Year: Special Essay 1 Michael McCormick Climates of History, Histories of Climate: From History to Archaeoscience Today we have entered an era of historical discovery that reaches far beyond the study of ancient climates and modern connections. In a world of learning in- creasingly blindered by short-sighted metrics of productivity, translational science, and “impact,” emerging

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XLIX:4 (Spring, 2019), 641–648. Robert I. Rotberg The Jameson Raid: An American Imperial Plot? The Cowboy Capitalist: John Hays Hammond, the American West, and the Jameson Raid. By Charles van Onselen (Charlottesville, Univer- sity of Virginia Press, 2018), 557 pp. $35.00 The failed Jameson Raid (1895) implicated the British govern- ment; removed Cecil Rhodes from the premiership of the Cape Colony;

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XLIX:3 (Winter, 2019), 445–472. Or Aleksandrowicz, Claudia Yamu, and Akkelies van Nes Spatio-Syntactical Analysis and Historical Spatial Potentials: The Case of Jaffa–Tel Aviv This research note examines the added value of spatio-syntactical analysis in the writing of urban history by providing a diachronic outlook on the transformations of the urban area of Jaffa and Tel Aviv (present- day Tel Aviv–Yafo). The

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XLIX:2 (Autumn, 2018), 305–313. Elizabeth Pleck Slavery in Puritan New England New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America. By Wendy Warren (New York, Liveright Publishing, 2016) 268 pp. $29.95 cloth $18.95 paper The footnotes in Warren’s monograph, which won the Merle Curti Prize in U.S. Social History and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, are equally as worthwhile

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XLVIII:4 (Spring, 2018), 523–538. Joanna Dzionek-Kozlowska, Kamil Kowalski, and Rafal Matera The Effect of Geography and Institutions on Economic Development: The Case of Lodz One of the longest, most heated, and still unsettled debates in economics is about pinpointing the factors responsible for economic develop- ment. What are the main factors that cause some areas to prosper whereas others do not?

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XLVIII:3 (Winter, 2018), 385–392. Ehud R. Toldedano Expectations and Realities in the Study of Enslavement in Muslim-Majority Societies Slavery, Agriculture, and Malaria in the Arabian Peninsula. By Benjamin Reilly (Athens, Ohio University Press, 2015) 216 pp. $75.00 cloth $28.95 paper For the past two decades, but more intensely during the last few years, the body of knowledge dedicated to understanding how

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XLVIII:2 (Autumn, 2017), 187–210. Alana Jayne Piper and Victoria Nagy Versatile Offending: Criminal Careers of Female Prisoners in Australia, 1860–1920 Most of the criminal offending by women in common-law jurisdictions during the nine- teenth and early twentieth century fell into three main categories— property, personal, and public-order. As Williams comments in respect to Victorian England, “Whilst crimes of theft most often

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XLVIII:1 (Summer, 2017), 61–69. Peter C. Caldwell The Life of the Dead: Karl Marx in Context Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion. By Gareth Stedman Jones (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2016) 750 pp. $35.00 “The Marx constructed in the twentieth century bore only an in- cidental resemblance to the Marx who lived in the nineteenth” (595). So concludes Stedman Jones’ monumental

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XLVII:4 (Spring, 2017), 521–535. Lisa A. Kirschenbaum The Meaning of Resilience: Soviet Children in World War II Does the behavioral category of resilience have any explicatory power in the psychology of traumatic experience? How resilient can children be when subjected to the horrors of war? During World War II, the Soviet media used images of threatened, wounded, and murdered children to

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XLVII:3 (Winter, 2017), 267–285. Anne E. Bailey Miracle Children: Medieval Hagiography and Childhood Imperfection Medieval miracle narratives, written to promote the posthumous miraculous activities of saints from their shrines, document the stories of pilgrims seeking inter- cessory aid. They contain much of interest for social historians, his- torians of medieval medicine, and scholars researching the history of emotions. Those featuring children

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XLVII:2 (Autumn, 2016), 193–212. Johan Fourie The Data Revolution in African Economic History Improvements in computing power, increased connec- tivity, and more advanced analytical techniques herald the era of Big Data in fields as diverse as astronomy, economics, biology, and management. Yet, in the history profession, this data revolution has gained only limited traction. One obvious reason is the lack of

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XLVII:2 (Autumn, 2016), 139–170. Daniel R. Curtis Was Plague an Exclusively Urban Phenomenon? Plague Mortality in the Seventeenth-Century Low Countries Much current scholarship argues that in early mod- ern northwestern Europe, plagues not only were less severe than the seventeenth-century plagues that ravaged Italy; they were also far less territorially pervasive—remaining mainly in the cities and not spreading easily into the

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XLVII:1 (Summer, 2016), 85–92. Barry Edmonston The Statistical Analysis of Longitudinal Data Lives in Transition: Longitudinal Analysis from Historical Sources. Edited by Peter Baskerville and Kris Inwood (Montreal, McGill- Queen’s University Press, 2015) 381 pp. $110.00 cloth $34.95 paper Lives in Transition offers an innovative and useful discussion of data and methods for quantitative longitudinal historical research. After a helpful introduction,

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XLVI:4 (Spring, 2016), 517–542. Wayne Geerling, Gary B. Magee, and Russell Smyth Sentencing, Judicial Discretion, and Political Prisoners in Pre-War Nazi Germany Like most dic- tatorships, Nazi Germany did not draw distinctions between no- tions of national and regime security. For all intents and purposes, they were one in the same. Thus, according to the Nazis, the fate of the German

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XLVI:3 (Winter, 2016), 421–433. Simon Nicholson The Birth of Free-Market Environmentalism The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Our Gamble over Earth’s Future. By Paul Sabin (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2013) 320 pp. $28.50 cloth $18 paper One day in October 1990, economist Julian Simon opened his mailbox to find a check for $576.07. The check bore the signature of

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XLVI:2 (Autumn, 2015), 225–244. Robert Urbatsch The American Public’s Attention to Politics in Conf lict and Crisis, 1880–1963 Questions about when the public held what attitudes can be surprisingly difficult to answer. Sur- veys and polls are quintessentially obtrusive measures. They prompt people to think about issues in a way that is unlikely to occur in, or reflect, typical experience. Even