Congratulations to Warwick University History Department undergraduate student Alex Schiphorst on the publication of his grandfather's autobiography From Night Flak to Hijack: It's a Small World, which Alex has both edited and written the epilogue for:

 
This is the autobiography of Reginald Levy, a British pilot who reached a total of 25,090 flying hours in over forty years of civil, military and commercial aviation. He recounts his training and military operations as an RAF Bomber Command pilot during the Second World War. Enthralled and immersed within the ever growing world of aviation, he flies sixty-four types of aircraft between 1941 and 1981 and takes part in the Berlin Airlift. He joins the Belgian airline Sabena in 1952. In 1972, he is hijacked by Black September terrorists and plays a heroic part in the liberation of the hostages thanks to his professionalism and training. Not only does the book offer an insight into the hardships and camaraderie of the Second World War and of the Cold War, it also gives a first-hand account of a Palestinian terrorist attempt. Two of the Israeli commandos who freed the hostages would go on to become prime ministers of Israel – Barak and Netanyahu. The epilogue is provided by his youngest grandson, Alex Schiphorst.
 

Warwick Univeristy History PhD candidate Anna Bruzzone has her excellent article "Chickens come home to roost: State building and the credibility conundrum in Somalia" published on the African Arguments blogsite, ran by the Royal African Society.

Why do Czechs love redemptive stories of Winton? Don’t they let them forget about the role of Gentile Czechs in the Holocaust? Dr Anna Hájková pushes Czechs to ask hard questions in her recent article, 'NÁZOR: Česká pohádka o Wintonovi aneb holokaust s happy endem', published in DNES.

An article by Dr Anna Hájková on the omissions in a memoir of a Holocaust survivor who later became a historian has now been published in Tablet:

 
Ephemeral City: Cheap Print and Urban Culture in Renaissance Venice, by Dr Rosa Salzberg, has been published by Manchester University Press.

Ephemeral City explores the rapid rise of cheap print and how it permeated Venetian urban culture in the Renaissance. It offers the first view of one of the city's most productive and creative industries from the bottom up and a new and unexpected vision of Renaissance culture, characterised by the fluid mobility and dynamic intermingling of texts, ideas, goods and people.

Closely intertwined with oral culture and often peddled in the streets, cheap printed texts helped to open up new audiences for literature, providing information and entertainment to a diverse public and transforming the city into an epicentre of vernacular literature and performance. Examining the ways in which the production and dissemination of cheap print infiltrated Venice's urban environment and changed the course of its cultural life, the book also traces how local authorities responded by escalating censorship and control over the course of the sixteenth century.

Ephemeral City will be of interest to scholars and students of early modern European and Italian Renaissance culture and society and the history of the book and communication.

Please also see the Academic Publications section of the website for details of all academic publications by the staff of the Warwick History Department.

In an exciting new venture, Professor Chris Read, Dr Tim Lockley and Dr Sarah Richardson have been appointed as editors of the Modern History Review. The magazine is published by Philip Allan for Hodder Education and is aimed at sixth-form students helping them to learn more, gain deeper subject knowledge and the skills to study independently, to get the grade they're really looking for. The Warwick team view this as an opportunity to bring current cutting-edge research directly to A level students in an accessible format. The first issue has just been published and has articles on the origins of the First World War, on the Cold War and on Gladstone and Disraeli.

 
Dr Anna Hájková's essay, 'The Last of the Self-Righteous: Claude Lanzmann’s version of Benjamin Murmelstein' published in Histoire@Politique.

Dr Camillia Cowling is one of two winners of the 2014 Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA) Roberto Reis Book Prize for her book, Conceiving Freedom: Women of Color, Gender, and the Abolition of Slavery in Havana and Rio de Janeiro (North Carolina Press, 2013). This prize is awarded annually for the two best books in Brazilian Studies published in English that contribute significantly to promoting an understanding of Brazil.

The book, Conceiving Freedom: Women of Color, Gender, and the Abolition of Slavery in Havana and Rio de Janeiro, is also one of three finalists for the prestigious Frederick Douglass Book Prize which is awarded for the most outstanding nonfiction book published in English on the subject of slavery and/or abolition and antislavery movements. The Douglass Prize Jury and Review Committee will meet in the fall to select a winner, which will be announced publicly at that time.

Please also see the list of all academic publications by the academic staff of the Warwick University History Department.