Dear readers,

The first 2024 issue of «Annali.Reviews.Online» opens with the Forum “Religion and Social History in the Early Modern Period” dedicated to two important volumes, Sacre metamorfosi. Racconti di conversione tra Roma e il mondo in età moderna by Chiara Petrolini, Vincenzo Lavenia, and Sabina Pavone and Catholic Spectacle and Rome's Jews. Early Modern Conversion and Resistance by Emily Michelson.

The books are reviewed by Maria Teresa Fattori (Bologna) and Umberto Cecchinato (Trento). Both volumes deal with the topic of conversion, in the first case analyzing the experiences of the protagonists, which can be reconstructed thanks to a vast corpus of reports from missionaries who worked in Africa, Asia and America, bearing witness to an often brutal reality. The common thread of violence is present also in the second volume, which is dedicated to the dynamics of the weekly sermons addressed to the Jews who were forced to attend conversion sermons in Rome from the sixteenth century onwards. Behind these texts lay the constant anti-Jewish attacks against which the Jews defended themselves with all available means.

The other books reviewed in this issue also demonstrate the richness of the recent historiographical debate: from reflections on microhistory and global history to the history of the landscape, from the history of mobility to consumption patterns during the twenty years of fascism, to name but a few.

We would like to remind you that starting this year the journal will be published every six months, on March 31 and September 30.

Katia Occhi