Why have birth rates in most developed countries plunged to all-time lows in the last century? In The Sterilization Movement and Global Fertility in the Twentieth Century, Ian Dowbiggin (History) draws on a wide variety of archival records, revealing how these revolutionary events can be traced to the efforts of a small group who tried mightily to convince governments that birth rates needed to be cut and that sterilization was the best way to do it. (Oxford University Press, 2008)

A Magnificent Gift Declined: The Dalton Sanatorium of Prince Edward Island, 1913-1923 by Leonard Cusack (History), tells of the rise and fall of the state-of-the-art sanatorium donated by Charles Dalton to the Province of PEI. Built in 1913 on an isolated hilltop in Emyvale, the hospital was demolished in 1923. Cusack skilfully portrays the political manoeuvring and social context surrounding PEI's first TB hospital. (Island Studies Press)

Madness, Architecture and the Built Environment: Psychiatric Spaces in Historical Context, edited by James Moran (History), with Leslie Topp (University of London) and Jonathan Andrews (Newcastle University), is the first volume of papers devoted to an examination of the relationship between mental health/illness, and the construction and experience of space. This is the first rigorous scholarly analysis of its kind in book form. (Routledge)

In Agents of Empire: British Female Migration to Canada and Australia, 1860–1930, Lisa Chilton (History) explores the work of the women who promoted, managed, and ultimately transformed single British women's experiences of migration to Canada and Australia between the 1860s and the 1920s. (University of Toronto)