Faculty members in the Department of History had a busy summer, publishing a quartet of new books during the break. From the history of soccer to 18^th century Andean mining, Native American peace medals to China’s Great Leap Forward, the historians gave campers, beachgoers and those just relaxing at home plenty to dive into.

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“The Shortest History of Soccer: From Ancient Kicking Games to the World's Most Popular Sport,” written by Brian Bunk, senior lecturer II, hit bookshelves in June, just in time for the start of the World Cup. Published by Experiment Publishing, “The Shortest History of Soccer” illuminates the impact of the sport on world history, from the field to the screen to the halls of government. 

Drawing on key historical and contemporary events both on and off the field, from famous victories to the dark money and backroom deals that now power the game at its highest levels, Bunk describes the many ways that a single soccer goal today may not only electrify a sold-out stadium but reverberate around the world.

Named one of Barnes & Noble’s “Best Paperbacks” of June 2026, “The Shortest History of Soccer” also ranked No. 1 on a list of “Recommended Summer Reads” by Big Think Books, a popular literary and academic newsletter.

June also saw the publication of “Mining Maps and Enlightenment in the Andes,” by Heidi V. Scott.

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Scott, an associate professor, is a historian and historical geographer of colonial Latin America who teaches courses on cartography, colonial Latin American history, and environmental history. In her latest book, she examines the relationship between maps, mining and colonial thought.

While researching aspects of colonial mining history in the Andes for a separate project, Scott became increasingly intrigued by hand-drawn maps of mines and mining sites that are preserved in the General Archive of the Indies in Seville, Spain. Most of these maps were created in the late 18^th century, a time when mapmaking—and visual representation, generally—were increasingly valued in Spain and Spanish America. Although dozens of such maps have been preserved, Scott says that historians have tended to overlook them.

Drawing on archival research that reveals the circumstances in which mining maps were created, their intended purpose, and how they were understood by contemporaries, “Mining Maps and Enlightenment in the Andes” presents a series of historical narratives about mapmaking at different mining locations in late colonial Bolivia, Peru, Chile and Ecuador.

Published by De Gruyter Brill, the book features in two of the press’s series, Brill Research Perspectives in Humanities and Social Sciences and Brill Research Perspectives in Map History.

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In July, University Press of Colorado published “Tarnished Promises: Indian Peace Medals in North America” by Samuel J. Redman, professor of history and director of the Public History Program.

As Redman explains in the book, peace medals paradoxically worked as both tools of colonialism as well as Native American agency, sovereignty, power, resistance and change in response to growing challenges. Their widespread adoption by Native people in North America both prefigured and coincided with the many ways in which Native Americans and First Nations peoples worked to adapt to the unwelcome and undesirable changes wrought by expanding western colonialism.

Using a collection of medals held at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS), “Tarnished Promises” presents an updated overview of the history and story of peace medals through an examination of their legacy in the modern world. Redman tells this complex story in two parts, with the first detailing the history of Indian peace medals from 1670 to the present day and the second part exploring their meaning at different points in time and to different peoples. Accompanying the history and analysis are images of 13 exemplar peace medals from the DMNS collections and their accompanying object biographies.

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Finally, Sigrid Schmalzer, professor and chair of the history department, has teamed with Christine Ho, graduate program director and associate professor of East Asian Art in the Department of History of Art and Architecture, to co-edit “A Revolution Across Art and Science: Participatory Knowledge Production in China’s Great Leap Forward.”

Published Sept. 2 by Hong Kong University Press, “A Revolution Across Art and Science” examines how laborers reimagined knowledge during a high point of radicalism in modern Chinese history. 

Encouraged to become curators, historians, writers, artists, technicians, scientists, and other kinds of experts, Chinese workers and peasants were mobilized to produce new knowledge in the humanities and sciences. Schmalzer and Ho’s book moves beyond the economic questions that have dominated most previous scholarship on the Great Leap Forward, instead exploring the cultural dimensions of the movement to establish the significance of mass knowledge production. Through 10 case studies authored by emerging scholars, including UMass doctoral students Jaehee Seol, Guanhua Tan, Bing Xia, and Fanqi Xu, the book offers a simultaneously empathetic and critical inquiry into PRC history and its impact on ongoing efforts to democratize knowledge around the world.

More information about these and other books by UMass historians can be found on the Department of History’s news page.