In exploring how thousands of Indigenous Americans experienced and impacted life in early modern Europe – as travellers, translators, royal employees, or abductees – On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe (Orion) reverses our familiar narrative of the ‘Age of Discovery’. Caroline Dodds Pennock expertly interrogates historical fragments and manuscript sources to tell a story that is grand in scale but also feels heart-rendingly personal. This book delivers a genuinely original and meaningful account of the 16th century that will prove eye-opening even for those familiar with the period.
Part art history, part memoir, Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life & Sudden Death (Vintage) is a gentle and beautiful journey though the power of art, love and grief. In gorgeous prose, Laura Cumming moves from an explosion in Delft in 1654 to a transformative encounter with a painting of asparagus and her own meditations on human connections to paintings, to history and to each other. Her passion for the masterpieces of the Dutch golden age is also delightfully infectious.