PositiveThe Guardian (UK)One by one she takes on hoary old myths... explodes them with panache, and leaves us instead with a richer, fuller understanding of epochs, worldviews and fascinating individuals from the past ... Though this argument again treads over familiar ground, Mac Sweeney’s gift for sparkling synthesis and gripping personal vignettes never flags. She’s especially alert to the many reinterpretations of Greco-Roman antiquity that accompanied every new fabrication of \"western civilisation.\
Sathnam Sanghera
RaveThe Guardian (UK)[An] impassioned and deeply personal journey through Britain’s imperial past and present ... Without getting bogged down in definitions, calculations or complicated comparisons, Empireland also manages to convey something of the sheer variety of imperial experiences over four centuries, and the limits of broad-brush explanations ... Sanghera’s unflinching attempt to understand this process, and to counter the cognitive dissonance and denial of Britain’s modern imperial amnesia, makes for a moving and stimulating book that deserves to be widely read.
Dennis Duncan
PositiveNew York Review of BooksClever, sprightly ... Duncan is a brilliantly illuminating and wide-ranging guide across this richly varied terrain, though his cast of characters remains overwhelmingly male.
Olivette Otele
PositiveThe Guardian (UK)Among the private drawings of the great Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer are two moving likenesses of African Europeans – so vivid and timeless you half expect them to look up and come to life ... As Olivette Otele shows in her fascinating book, there was nothing very exceptional about any of this. By the 16th century, the black presence in European life and culture took many forms, and there was a long history of Africans living on the continent ... Though this is a work of synthesis, it’s an unusually generous and densely layered one. Otele is not just concerned to tell the life stories of her protagonists, but also to follow their changing portrayals after death – as well as explaining how and why they’ve been differently interpreted by generations of previous scholars. To this end, she constantly toggles between different centuries and perspectives. This can seem awkward, but it underlines her central message: what we see in the past, as in the present, is constantly in flux. It depends on our priorities and presumptions. As she argues, providing multiple and more inclusive histories can empower people, and help discredit and dismantle racial injustice in the present.
