Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
by Timothy Snyder

–Reviewed by Adam Fleisher

Bloodlands, indeed. Starting with Stalin’s reign of terror and famine in the Ukraine in 1932—which was followed by systematic killings of national minorities, prisoners of war, and Europe’s Jews—Germany and the Soviet Union murdered at least 14 million noncombatants as a matter of deliberate state policy in the regions east of the Molotov-Ribbentrop line, the area Timothy Snyder, a renowned historian at Yale, calls “the bloodlands” …

Pleasure Bound: Victorian Sex Rebels and the New Eroticism
By Deborah Lutz

–Reviewed by Catherine E. Bailey

Nineteenth century England was a hotbed of social change and intellectual discourse. Charles Darwin presented his Origin of Species, Charles Lyell demonstrated the deep antiquity of the planet and mechanized factories transformed the workforce, polluted the Thames, and spewed out dark clouds that hung low over the city of London. Swimming in this sea of uncertainty, many mid-century Victorian artists and writers actively rebelled against the established mores of the day, creating works of art, literature and poetry that sought to pull the sexual and political fringe a few steps closer to the center…