Christopher Kissane

Contributor

Dr Christopher Kissane, a contributor to The Irish Times, is a historian, writer and presenter of the Ireland's Edge podcast

The Great Defiance: How the World Took on the British Empire by David Veevers

The author argues that instead of thinking that Britain ‘made’ the modern world we should think about how ‘Britain unmade the world’ by replacing many histories with its own

Annie Ernaux, the new Nobel laureate, pushes what is possible in literature, nonfiction and the spaces in between

The writer’s explorations of the relationship between life and memory have captured decades of French history and women’s experience

Oceans of Grain: How American Wheat Remade the World

Scott Reynolds Nelson on how trade routes shaped modern global power relations

My Fourth Time, We Drowned: A book of evidence

Book review: Sally Hayden’s book is an indictment of a guilty continent

Muslims and the Making of Modern Europe: Asking difficult questions about both past and present

Book review: Emily Greble sees Muslims not as ‘relics of a non-European past’ but vital actors in Europe’s tortured modernisation

The Presidents’ Letters: An Unexpected History of Ireland

Wide ranging correspondence covers high-level rows and direct links with citizenry

The International Brigades: Magnificent and readable history

Book review: Giles Tremlett offers a sweeping account of fascism and the Spanish civil war, with a vital warning

Salazar: The Dictator Who Refused to Die

Tom Gallagher’s portrait of Portugal’s totalitarian leader illuminates 20th-century Europe

Black Abolitionists in Ireland: Important and well-researched

Christine Kinealy meticulously traces the travels of 10 abolitionists to Ireland

Epidemics and Society: History shows they are here to stay

Book review: Snowden explains diseases are not random events triggered without warning

The Volunteer by Jack Fairweather: the hero who first exposed the Holocaust

The Costa Book of the Year compellingly tells how Witold Pilecki infiltrated Auschwitz

Food or War: Alarming take on future of humanity

Book review: Julian Cribb offers some unrealistic solutions to world’s greatest threat

Enoch Powell: Radical and racist figure still haunts British politics

Book review: Not another biography of his unconventional career, but a study of his ideas

A history of the potato: Digging up its fascinating past

In Potato, Rebecca Earle finds that the well-travelled tuber has a chequered past

Empire of Democracy: A ‘crucial’ history of the recent past

Book review: Simon Reid-Henry shows citizenship has been reshaped in West since cold war