CLIOPATRIA: A Group Blog
Entries by Ralph E. Luker
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Thursday's Notes
The Biblical Studies Carnival for August 2010 is up at Jim West's Zwinglius Redivivus. Four Stone Hearth C, the anthropology/archaeology festival, is up at Martin Rundkvist's Aardvarchaeology.
Stuart Jeffries reviews Kathryn Schulz's Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error for the Guardian, 28 August.
Paul A. J. Davis, "Rochester's salacious textual history," TLS, 1 September, reviews John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester's The Poems and ‘Lucina's Rape', ed., by Keith Walker and Nicholas Fisher.
Ruth Scurr, "John Aubrey and the roots of the Royal Society," TLS, 1 September, reviews "John Aubrey and the Development of Experimental Science," an exhibit at the Bodleian Library, and William Poole's John Aubrey and the Advancement of Learning.
Howard Falcon-Lang, "Charles Darwin's ecological experiment on Ascension isle," BBC, 1 September, explores the artificial ecosystem that Darwin and Joseph Hooker created.
Barron YoungSmith, "Warriors, Hot and Cold," The Book, 2 September, reviews Nicholas Thompson's The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Midweek Notes
Tom Scocca, "Cover Story," Boston Globe, 29 August, interviews Andrew Pettegree, the author of The Book in the Renaissance.
Janet Maslin, "Hard Science, Softened With Stories," NYT, 4 August, and Neil Gussman for Books & Culture, 26 August, review Sam Kean's The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements.
Brenda Wineapple, "Voices of a Nation," American Scholar, Summer, studies 19th century American writers' effort to understand who they and who Americans were. It anticipates the publication of her new anthology, Nineteenth-Century American Writers on Writing, in November.
Peter Asden reviews Gabriel Josipovici's What Ever Happened to Modernism? for the Financial Times, 13 August.
Roger Scruton, "The Post-Modern Ear," Axess, 31 August, looks at the evolution of modern classical music from the late-19th Century crisis in the musical language that had been the "common property of Western composers since the Renaissance."
Adam Kirsch, "Founding Document," Tablet, 31 August, reviews Jonathan Schneer's The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
More Noted Things
Saul David, "Tall tales from history: Are historians best placed to write historical fiction?" Independent, 13 August, searches the fashion of historians publishing historical fiction.
"Das Lied der Deutschen," The Economist, 5 August, reviews Ruth H. Sanders's German: Biography of a Language.
The William James Centennial:
Jill Lepore, "The Uprooted," New Yorker, 6 September, reviews Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration and Richard Wright's 12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States. See also, the accompanying slide show: "Life on the South Side," New Yorker, 6 September.
Finally, because of staff turmoil at the Virginia Quarterly Review, the University announced yesterday that the Review's winter issue has been put on hold.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Things Noted Here and There
From Sharon Howard:
The Broadside is a regularly updated collection of history bloggging (and some other online history news) that has been popular among the historians who are followed by @historycarnival on Twitter.
It's intended as a supplement to the monthly Carnivals - the content is largely automated and will be much less selective and individual. (For more information, read here.)
Aminatta Forna reviews V. S. Naipaul's The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief for the Guardian, 29 August.
John Smolens reviews Alex Butterworth's The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Agents for the Washington Post, 29 August.
Fresh from the slammer, Conrad Black publishes "Decline, but Not Inevitable Decline," NRO, 26 August, which surveys American history since 1940. Except for Viet Nam, it's onward and upward to 1989. Then it's declension under four failed administrations.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Sunday's Notes
George Johnson, "Den of Antiquities," NYT, 26 August, reviews Craig Childs's Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession.
Henrik Bering, "True Barbarians," Policy Review, n.d., reviews Adrian Tinniswood's Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean.
Joseph Berger, "Revolutionary Road," NYT, 26 August, reviews Eric Jaffe's The King's Best Highway: The Lost History of the Boston Post Road, the Route That Made America.
John Schwartz, "Steam-Driven Dreams," NYT, 26 August, reviews William Rosen's The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention.
Peter Conrad for the Guardian, 29 August, reviews Eadweard Muybridge, an exhibit at London's Tate Britain Gallery.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Weak Endnotes
Dave McNair, "Genoways takes charge, VQR staffers pull names," The Hook, 24-26 August, reports, in a bit of a surprise, that Ted Genoways has the support of University authorities and that, except for the daughter of a major financial contributor, all other VQR staff members have withdrawn. Tom Bissell, "From Tragedy to Trend Story: In Defense of Virginia Quarterly Review Editor Ted Genoways," New York Observer, 24 August, explains the devotion of writers for the VQR, if not its staff members, to Genoways.
A. W. Purdue reviews Adrian Smith's Mountbatten: Apprentice War Lord 1900-1943 for the THE, 26 August.
Oralandar Brand-Williams, "Rare collection of Nation of Islam papers discovered," Detroit News, 26 August, reports an extraordinary find of early Black Muslim documents.
David Thomson, "Chinamen," TNR, 27 August, reviews Yunte Huang's Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and his Rendezvous with American History.
Robert Messenger, "Contemplating Death From Above," WSJ, 27 August, reviews Daniel Swift's Bomber Country. If trench warfare caught the poets' imagination in World War I, aerial bombing captured it in World War II.
R. Scott Appleby and John T. McGreevy, "Catholics, Muslims, and the Mosque Controversy," NYR Blog, draws on the historical experience of American Catholics to urge American Muslims to make a forceful assertion of their constitutional rights.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Friday's Notes
David Dobbs, "Tut DNA: The Risks and Rewards of Royal Incest," National Geographic, September, discusses the advantages and widespread practice of royal incest.
Adam Kirsch reviews Fred Inglis's A Short History of Celebrity for the Barnes & Noble Review, 20 August.
Alastair Macauley, "The Protean Master of the Ballets Russes," NYT, 25 August, reviews Sjeng Scheijen's Diaghilev: A Life, trans. by Jane Hedley-Prôle and S. J. Leinbach.
Anne Karpf reviews Francine Prose's Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife for the Guardian, 21 August.
Leslie Sprout, "Unlocking the Mystery of Honegger," NYT, 26 August, searches the evidence of Arthur Honegger's political loyalty during World War II.
It is nine years since 9/11:
Jen Phillips, "Ground Zero's Slave Graves," Mother Jones, 25 August, argues that, since about 10% of North American slaves were Muslim, it seems likely that Manhattan's Twin Towers were built on Muslim holy ground. At Lal Salaam, Vinay Lal has a three-part series, "The Mosque at ‘Hallowed' Ground":
It is five years since Hurricane Katrina:
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Thursday's Notes
David A. Bell, "Hope and Play," The Book, 25 August, reviews Natalie Zemon Davis's A Passion for History: Conversations with Denis Crouzet.
Emily Hodgson Anderson, "Who were the Bluestockings?" TLS, 25 August, reviews Elizabeth Eger's Bluestockings: Women of reason from Enlightenment to Romanticism and Arianne Chernock's Men and the Making of Modern British Feminism.
Michael Marrus, "The Dreyfus Affair and why it matters today," TLS, 25 August, reviews Louis Begley's Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters and Ruth Harris's The Man on Devil's Island: Alfred Dreyfus and the affair that divided France.
We've featured the early color photography before at Cliopatria. There is both the Library of Congress's "The Empire That Was Russia," showcasing the work of of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii and displays of the work of Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud and other color photographers of World War I. "Russia in color, a century ago," The Big Picture, 20 August, is the Boston Globe's display of Prokudin-Gorskii's work. The photographs are simply stunning.
Michael Dirda reviews Yunte Huang's Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective for the Washington Post, 26 August.
For the Telegraph, 18 August, on the 50th anniversary of its original publication, Andrew Rosenheim reviews a new, revised edition of Ernest Hemingway's memoir, A Moveable Feast. It is, says Rosenheim, "a study in character assassination," "a masterpiece of malice."
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
20th Century Notes
Stephen M. Walt, "Lessons from the Weimar Republic," Foreign Policy, 23 August, recalls Gordon Craig's interpretation of a liberal intellectual's responsibilities.
Adam Kirsch, "Hareloom," Tablet, 24 August, reviews Edmund de Waal's The Hare With Amber Eyes, a recollection of one of pre-World War II's leading German Jewish families.
Anne Helen Petersen, "‘Tells the Facts and Names the Names'," Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style, 22 August, is an illustrated and endnoted chapter from her dissertation on the scandal mag Confidential in the late 1950s.
Sean Wilentz, "New Dylan Recordings Unveiled," Daily Beast, 24 August, announces Columbia Records release of two new collections of Bob Dylan recordings and anticipates the publication of Wilentz's Bob Dylan in America.
Matilda Battersby, "Hendrix in Britain and Handel's house," Independent, 18 August, reviews "Hendrix in Britain," an exhibit at Mayfair's Handel House Museum. "Jimi Hendrix memories inhabit Handel House," Guardian, 24 August, is a gallery of photographs.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
More Noted Things
Patricia Cohen, "Scholars Test Web Alternative to Peer Review," NYT, 23 August, glimpses the future in scholarly publishing.
Among Cliopatria's alums,
Geoffrey Wheatcroft reviews Jonathan Schneer's The Balfour Declaration: the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict and Richard J. Evans reviews Adrian Weale's The SS: a New History for the New Statesman, 23 August.
Adam Gopnik, "Finest Hours: The Making of Winston Churchill," New Yorker, 30 August, reviews Max Hastings's Winston's War: Churchill, 1940-1945, Richard Holmes's Churchill's Bunker: The Cabinet War Rooms and the Culture of Secrecy in Wartime London, Paul Johnson's Churchill, and Richard Langworth, ed., Churchill by Himself: The Definitive Collection of Quotations.
Finally, farewell to SMU's David Weber, a historian of the American West and Borderlands and an officer of the AHA.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Carnivalesque LXV, an ancient/medieval edition of the festival, is up at Jonathan Jarrett's A Corner of Tenth Century Europe. Cliopatria's friend, Sharon Howard, is looking for hosts for both History Carnival and Carnivalesque this fall and winter. She wants to hear from you.
Jonathan Yardley reviews Lucy Worsley's The Courtiers: Splendor and Intrigue at Kensington Palace for the Washington Post, 22 August.
Elaine Showalter reviews Ilyon Woo's The Great Divorce: A 19th-Century Mother's Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times for the Washington Post, 22 August.
John Pollard reviews Herbert Wolf's Pope and Devil: the Vatican's Archives and the Third Reich, translated by Kenneth Kronenberg, for the THE, 19 August. Wolf, "Why Did the Pope Keep Quiet about Hitler?" Foreign Policy, 6 May, is an excerpt from the book.
Seamus Perry, "Parody, the vile art," TLS, 18 August, reviews John Gross, ed., The Oxford Book of Parodies.
Finally, Dave Stone notes that, while he's been on "sick leave" from the University of London's Birkbeck College, Orlando Figes is out and about, most recently seen last week, lecturing at Chile's Universidad Gabriela Mistral.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Sunday's Notes
Alberto Manguel reviews Steven Moore's The Novel: An Alternative History, Beginnings to 1600 for the Washington Post, 22 August.
Robert Darnton, "A Republic of Letters," NYT, 20 August, reviews Lewis Hyde's Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership.
Tom Segev, "‘View With Favor'," NYT, 20 August, reviews Jonathan Schneer's The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict.
Stacie Williams for the Christian Science Monitor, 18 August, and Lynell George for the LA Times, 22 August, review James Baldwin's The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings, Randall Kenan, ed. Both reviewers conclude with Baldwin's reply to Robert Kennedy's comment that one day a black man could be president. "What I am really curious about," Baldwin replied, "is just what kind of country he will be president of?"
Linda Robinson, "Christians and Muslims," NYT, 19 August, Christopher Caldwell, "Where Islam and Christianity Collide," Slate, 22 August, and Michael Mewshaw for the Washington Post, 22 August, review Eliza Griswold's The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches From the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
A Complete History of the Soviet Union Through the Eyes of a Humble Worker, arranged to the melody of Tetris
Friday, August 20, 2010
Friday's Notes
David McNair, "Tale of Woe: The death of the VQR's Kevin Morrissey, The Hook, 18 August, has more details about the tragedy at the Virginia Quarterly Review. Brendan Fitzgerald, "Sullivan on VQR: UVA will conduct management review of literary journal," C-Ville, 19 August, has a statement by UVa's new president, Teresa Sullivan.
Diane Coyle reviews Nicholas Phillipson's Adam Smith: an Enlightened Life for the New Statesman, 16 August.
Donald R. Prothero, "A Cornucopia of Darwinian Gems," eSkeptic, 18 August, reviews Richard Milner's Darwin's Universe: Evolution from A to Z.
Jed Perl, "The Picture: So Bad," TNR, 18 August, relieves me of any felt obligation to see "Salvador Dalí: The Late Work," an exhibit at Atlanta's High Museum.
Robert Darnton, "Talking About Brazil with Lilia Schwarcz," NYRBlog, 17 August, interviews one of Brazil's leading anthropologists and historians.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Mid-Week Notes
Military History Carnival #25 is up at The Edge of the American West. David Silbey is your host.
Bianca Bonomi, "Maps give insight into artists as much as locations," The National, 10 August, reviews "Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art," an exhibit at the British Library.
Peter Duffy, "Lords of the Ring," The Book, 17 August, reviews an updated edition of Elliott J. Gorn's The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
More Noted Things
Iain McLean reviews Nicholas Phillipson's Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life for the Financial Times, 2 August.
Ian Rankin, who has written the introduction to a new edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, tells us what we hadn't understood about the novel until now.
Sean Wilentz, "Penetrating Aether: The Beat Generation and Allen Ginsberg's America," New Yorker, 16 August, is an excerpt from Wilentz's new book, Bob Dylan in America, which will be published in September. The New Yorker's Alex Ross interviews Wilentz about Dylan.
The two of us:
Claire Potter, "I Will Go Voluntarily at 67," NYT, 15 August; and
K. C. Johnson, "The Value of the Longtime Professor, NYT, 15 August.
Thomas Sugrue, "School Daze," TNC@Atlantic, 16 August, argues that American public schools are still separate and still unequal.
Finally, farewell to Basil Davidson, a distinguished Africanist, and to Bernard Knox, a distinguished classicist.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
The Giant's Shoulders #26, a special edition of the history of science carnival featuring "fools, failures and frauds," is up at Neurotic Physiology. Scicurious is your host.
Robert Appelbaum reviews Nicola Humble's Cake: A Global History for the THE, 12 August; and Devra First, "Red Menace," Boston Globe, 15 August, interviews David Gentilcore, the author of Pomodoro! A History of the Tomato in Italy.
Lille Carre, "Raising Chicago: An Illustrated History," ChicagoMag.com, August, features the raising of the city in the 1850s and 1860s by ten to fourteen feet to accommodate a sewer system.
Johann Hari, "Jack London's Dark Side," Slate, 15 August, reviews James L. Haley's Wolf: The Lives of Jack London.
Jed Perl, "Individualism," TNR, 14 August, reviews "Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917", an exhibit at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art, and "Renoir in the 20th Century", an exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Sara Lippincott reviews Manjit Kumar's Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality for the LA Times, 8 August.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Sunday's Notes
Christopher Hawtree for the Independent, 25 June, and Robert Pinsky, "Start the Presses," NYT, 13 August, review Andrew Pettegree's The Book in the Renaissance.
Peter Coclanis, "Literature of the Heart," Books & Culture, July/August, recalls the most unusual commemoration of Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto, Czech composer-pianist Erwin Schulhoff's oratorio, Das Manifest.
John Lehman reviews William Leeman's The Long Road to Annapolis: The Founding of the Naval Academy and the Emerging American Republic for the Washington Post, 8 August.
Johann Hari, "The Two Churchills," NYT, 12 August, and Richard Shribman, "Churchill in focus," Boston Globe, 15 August, review Richard Toye's Churchill's Empire: The World That Made Him and the World He Made. See also: "Stray Questions for Richard Toye," Paper Cuts, 13 August; and Richard Toye's Blog.
Finally, it's good to see that Sarah Werner has returned to her Cliopatria Award-winning blog, Wynken de Worde; and, though I'm late to the party, congratulations to Lucy Inglis and her Cliopatria Award-winning blog, Georgian London. Penguin will publish her Georgian London, the book, in the Spring of 2012.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Weak Endnotes
Robin Wilson, "What Killed Kevin Morrissey?" CHE, 12 August. Ted Genoways and Kevin Morrissey met when they worked together at the Minnesota Historical Society Press and, when Genoways became the editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, he asked Morrissey to be his right-hand man. Genoways and VQR were enormously successful, but now Kevin Morrissey has committed suicide and Ted Genoways's office is vacated.
Tom Palaima reviews William W. Cook's and James Tatum's African American Writers and Classical Tradition for the THE, 12 August. Palaima follows a long tradition claiming that John C. Calhoun held that "no black man was capable of learning such a challenging subject as Greek grammar." The only evidence that Calhoun thought or said this is a second hand account first published fifty years after the South Carolina Senator was supposed to have said it.
Michael Dirda reviews William H. Patterson, Jr.'s Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century, Volume 1 1907-1948: Learning Curve for the Washington Post, 12 August.
Scott McLemee, "The Chinese revolution's influence on French thinking," The National, 12 August, and Tim Unwin for the THE, 12 August, review Richard Wolin's The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Friday's Notes
Neal Ascherson, "Liquidator," LRB, 19 August, reviews Adam Sisman's Hugh Trevor-Roper: The Biography.
Sarah Williams Goldhagen, "On Background," TNR, 12 August, reviews Slobodan Curcic's and Evangelina Hadjitryphonos's Architecture as Icon: Perception and Representation of Architecture in Byzantine Art, the catalogue to the exhibit earlier this year at Princeton University's Art Museum.
Samuel Moyn, "Human Rights in History," Nation, 11 August, anticipates the publication of Moyn's new book of the same title.
"1906 Scanned Color Photos-GIS-Shaughnessy" is a selection of color photographs of central European scenes in 1906. Can you find Dachau? The photographs are scanned by Michael R. Shaughnessy of Washington and Jefferson College.
Carolyn See reviews Douglas Perry's The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers who Inspired 'Chicago' for the Washington Post, 13 August.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Carnival Time
Organizers of the history carnivals welcome your willingness to host the festivals. Please let them know now when you'd like to host one of the carnivals between September and December.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Mid-Week Notes
Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "Tony Judt Obituary," Guardian, 8 August, should be the obituary of record. "In the 1960s, Cambridge produced a remarkable generation of historians – David Cannadine, Linda Colley and Simon Schama among others – but one name acquired a particular resonance. ...."
Adam Kirsch, "Convert's Tale," The Book, 10 August, reviews Jean-Claude Schmitt and and Alex J. Novikoff, The Conversion of Herman the Jew: Autobiography, History, and Fiction in the Twelfth Century.
Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, "The Wise Men," The Book, 11 August, reviews Jack Rakove's Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America.
Ann Trubek reviews Ilyon Woo's The Great Divorce: A Nineteenth-Century Mother's Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times for the Barnes & Noble Review, 4 August.
Charles McGrath, "Charlie Chan: A Stereotype and a Hero," NYT, 10 August, reviews Yunte Huang's Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous With American History.
Michael Dirda, "James Lees-Milne," Barnes & Noble Review, 10 August, is an essay about a man widely regarded as 20th century England's most entertaining diarist.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
More Noted Things
Carl Pyrdum's "Professor Newt's Distorted History Lesson," Got Medieval, 2 August, has already been cited by both Crooked Timber and The Edge of the American West. In case you missed it there, check it out.
Edward Wong, "China Seizes on a Dark Chapter for Tibet," NYT/IHT, 9 August, argues that the Chinese government finds an important role for the British invasion of Tibet in 1904.
"Captured: America in Color from 1939-1943," Plog, 26 July, was featured at our last History Carnival and has since been making the rounds on the net. The photographs are extra-ordinary.
Andrew Salmon, "The Lingering War," The Book, 9 August, reviews Bruce Cumings's The Korean War: A History.
Amy Davidson, "A Beer with the General," New Yorker, 6 August, features an interview with General John Lavelle, who took a fall for Richard Nixon in 1972. Lavelle asks: "When was the last time a four-star general was court-martialed?" "‘Good question,' says Davidson. (Any historians have an answer?)"
Jonathan Mirsky, "After the Flood," Literary Review, August, reviews Emma Larkin's Everything is Broken: The Untold Story of Disaster Under Burma's Military Regime.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Saul Goldberg, "Tony Judt: the captivating wit and intellect of my friend and teacher," Guardian, 7 August, is a fine tribute by Judt's distant cousin and former student.
William Eamon, "The Disease Called Curiosity," William Eamon, 2 August, plots a changing attitude toward curiosity from the middle ages to the renaissance.
Julie D. Campbell reviews Alison Conway's The Protestant Whore: Courtesan Narrative & Religious Controversy in England, 1680-1750 for the THE, 5 August.
Jan Ellen Lewis reviews T. H. Breen's American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People and Jack Rakove's Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America for the Washington Post, 8 August.
Joel Mokyr, "Enlightened and Enriched," City Journal, Summer, draws on his research for The Enlightened Economy: Britain and the Industrial Revolution.
William Grimes, "Your Tired, Your Poor and Their Food," NYT, 6 August, reviews Andrew Beahrs's Twain's Feast: Searching for America's Lost Foods in the Footsteps of Samuel Clemens and Jane Ziegelman's 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Genealogy & Family History
With Friday's addition of Geneabloggers to Cliopatria's History Blogroll as our Categorical List for Genealogy & Family History, we have added about 1000 history-related blogs to our history blogroll. Like a few other categories on the list, it is not, however, maintained at the History News Network site. But Genealogy & Family History is perhaps the single largest group of history-related blogs, one that features a Carnival stable enough to be the envy of the rest of us.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Tony Judt, 1948-2010
According to New York Magazine, there are multiple, but unconfirmed reports this morning that Tony Judt has died. See also: Joe O'Shea, "Race against time to complete a life's work," Irish Independent, 7 August, Chapati Mystery, Mondoweiss, and the New Statesman. Alas, his death is now confirmed by the Guardian, Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Washington Post. His 20 years of contributions to the New York Review of Books are gathered there. Here is Still Life: A Short Film about Tony Judt:
Weak Endnotes
James Forrester, "The Lying Art of Historical Fiction," Books Blog, 6 August, argues that the acceptability of inaccuracy in historical fiction depends on whether or not it is constructive.
Stephen Bales reviews Yun Lee Too's The Idea of the Library in the Ancient World, for the THE, 5 August.
Don MacRaild reviews Thomas Bartlett's Ireland: A History for the THE, 5 August.
Anne Sebba, "'They Adore Titles ...'," Literary Review, August, reviews Jehanne Wake's Sisters of Fortune: The First American Heiresses to Take Europe by Storm.
Lauren Elkin reviews Lorenza Foschini's Proust's Overcoat: The True Story of One Man's Passion for All Things Proust for bookforum, 6 August.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Recent History Notes
Mark Bauerlein, "On Confidentiality--Hamilton College, Part 3," Brainstorm, 5 August, seals his case against Hamilton's Dean Joseph Urgo.
Fergus Fleming, "England Made Them," Literary Review, August, reviews Jeremy Lewis's Shades of Greene: One Generation of an English Family.
John Summers, "What Politics Does to History," The Book, 19 July, reviewed Carl Mirra's The Admirable Radical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent, 1945–1970. In "The Battle Over Radical History," TNR, 4 August, Lynd, Mirra, and Summers reply.
Michelle Goldberg, "The Faith Continent," The Book, 5 August, and Marie Arana review William Dalrymple's Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India for the Washington Post, 1 August.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Thursday's Notes
Field-switching in history: a sign of intellectual breadth or a mark of dilettantism?
Mark Brown, "National Portrait Gallery shines light on forgotten artist Thomas Lawrence," Guardian, 4 August, previews "Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power and Brilliance," an exhibit coming to London's National Portrait Gallery.
The current special issue of Politics and Culture features essays in intellectual biography, with reviews of biographies of Theodor Adorno, Simone de Beauvoir, Fyodor Dostoyevski, Thelonious Monk, and others.
Paul Johnson, "He Smelt of Honey," Literary Review, August, and Claire Harmon, "H. G. Wells, the futurity man," TLS, 4 August, review Michael Sherborne's H G Wells: Another Kind of Life.
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, "Stalking Charlie Chan," Huffington Post, 2 August, reviews Yunte Huang's Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Midweek Notes
Tom Bartlett, "Michael Bellesiles Takes Another Shot," CHE, 3 August; and Patricia Cohen, "Scholar Emerges From Doghouse," NYT, 3 August, update the story on Michael.
Scott Jaschik, "A Medieval War – Over Arizona," IHE, 4 August, looks at the Medieval Academy of America's decision to hold its April meeting in Arizona. The folks at the Cliopatria Prize winning blog, In the Middle, had led the opposition.
Simon Schama, "The Language of Food," Financial Times, 31 July, is excerpted from his new book, Scribble, Scribble, Scribble, Writings on Ice Cream, Obama, Churchill and My Mother. Steven Shavin, "Down to the Last Cream Puff," LRB, 5 August, reviews Michael Steinberger's Au Revoir to All That: The Rise and Fall of French Cuisine.
Stan Katz, "Get Right with History," Brainstorm, 3 August, is critical of Left and Right claims on the "Founding Fathers".
John Dupré reviews Jerry Fodor's and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini's What Darwin Got Wrong for The Philosopher's Magazine, 23 July.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
More Noted Things
Randy Kennedy, "It's a Long Road From Ancient Egypt," NYT, 2 August, reviews "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," an exhibit at Discovery Times Square Exposition in New York City. The New York showing of the Tut exhibit will feature one of his chariots, which has never been shown before outside of Egypt.
DeNeen Brown, "Excavation of sites such as Timbuctoo, N.J., is helping to rewrite African American history," Washington Post, 3 August, looks at how archaeological digs at lost African American community sites is reshaping African American history.
Wendy Smith, "How the plan to fall apart soon fell apart," LA Times, 22 July, reviews Alex Butterworth's The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Agents.
Wendy Smith reviews John Carey's William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies for the Washington Post, 1 August.
Malise Ruthven, "Righteous & Wrong," NYRB, 19 August, reviews Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Nomad: From Islam to America, Timothy Garton Ash's Facts Are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade Without a Name, Paul Berman's The Flight of the Intellectuals, Berman's Terror and Liberalism, and Ian Buruma's Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Paul Levy, "Beautiful Ashmolean Exhibition Offers Glimpse of 'Old Europe'," WSJ, 21 May, and Neal Ascherson, "At the Ashmolean," LRB, 5 August, review "The Lost World of Old Europe: The Danube Valley 5,000-3,500 B.C.," an exhibit at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
Elizabeth Royte, "Up From Darkness," NYT, 30 July, reviews Jane Brox's Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light.
Roya Nikkhah and Richard Dorment for the Telegraph, 13 & 28 June, Arifa Akbar for the Independent, 22 July, and Ben East, "Genuine Fakes," The National, 1 August, review "Close Examination: Fakes, Mistakes, and Discoveries," an exhibit at London's National Gallery.
Michael Fitzgerald, "How Puritans became capitalists," Boston Globe, 1 August, interviews Mark Valeri, the author of Heavenly Merchandize: How Religion Shaped Commerce in Puritan America.
Blake Gopnik, "At National Gallery, Edvard Munch's 'Prints' reveal artist's methodical process," Washington Post, 1 August, reviews "Edvard Munch: Master Prints," an exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
Jill Lepore, "Chan, the Man," New Yorker, 9 August, reviews Yunte Huang's Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and his Rendezvous with American History.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Sunday's Notes
Biblical Studies Carnival LIII is up at Jim West's Zwinglius Redivivus; and History Carnival XC is up at USHistoryBlog.
Had you noticed? Building a castle in France. Building a castle in Arkansas.
Andrea Wulf, "Colonials Abroad," NYT, 30 July, reviews Julie Flavell's When London was Capital of America.
Christopher Benfey, "Explosive Inheritance," NYT, 30 July, reviews Lyndall Gordon's Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds.
Liaquat Ahamed, "Yesterday's Banker," NYT, 30 July, reviews Niall Ferguson's High Financier: The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg.
Sean Lee, "A War of Words," The National, 29 July, reviews Gilbert Achcar's The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives.
Damon Linker, "Turning Right," NYT, 30 July, reviews Benjamin Balint's Running Commentary: The Contentious Magazine That Transformed the Jewish Left Into the Neoconservative Right and Thomas L. Jeffers's Norman Podhoretz: A Biography.
Finally, farewell to Robert C. Tucker, a distinguished Sovietologist.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Weak Endnotes
The FBI has released its 423 page file on the late Howard Zinn (1949-1974). David Knowles at AOL News finds three highlights in the file: a) Although several informants identified Zinn as a member of the CP, he repeatedly denied it. b) Although he disavowed violence, Zinn recalled his service in defense of the United States in World War II and said that he would defend it in any war with the Soviet Union. c) Zinn was critical of the role of Robert Kennedy and the FBI in the civil rights crises of the early and mid-1960s. Megan Carpentier, a reporter for TPMMuckraker, finds that, in 1970, only six years after Zinn was hired to teach at Boston University and a year before John Silber became its president, a senior Boston administrator who was an FBI informant, maneuvered to have Zinn fired. See also: Clark Merrefield, Daily Beast, 30 July.
Isabelle Mandraud, "Mauritania's hidden manuscripts," Guardian, 27 July, is an update on threatened rare manuscripts in northwest Africa.
Trevor Butterworth, "A Revolution Of the Mind," WSJ, 30 July, reviews Joel Mokyr's The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 1700-1850.
Thomas Mallon, "Saratoga Gothic," NYT, 30 July, and Carolyn See for the Washington Post, 30 July, review Geoffrey O'Brien's The Fall of the House of Walworth: A Tale of Madness and Murder in Gilded Age America.
Evan R. Goldstein, "Will Israel's New Archive Policy Set Back a Generation of Scholarship?" CHE, 30 July, interviews Benny Morris about the classification extension by twenty years on select Israeli archives.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Mostly Modern Notes
A castle rises up in Arkansas. The NYT takes a look, so you don't have to.
Anthony Kenny, "Was Cardinal Newman a saint?" TLS, 28 July, and Terry Eagleton, "Washed in Milk," LRB, 5 August, review John Cornwell's Newman's Unquiet Grave: The reluctant saint.
Tim Congden, "Low Tricks and High Finance," TLS, 28 July, reviews Niall Ferguson's High Financier: The lives and times of Siegmund Warburg.
Richard Vinen, "Myths of Charles de Gaulle," TLS, 28 July, and Andrew Knapp for the THE, 29 July, review Jonathan Fenby's The General: Charles de Gaulle and the France He Saved.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
August's Carnivals
Organizers of the various history carnivals welcome your willingness to host the festivals. Please let them know now when you'd like to host one of them between September and December.
More Noted Things
Peter Jukes, "Tony Judt: a man of his word," Prospect, 21 July, interviews the author of Ill Fares the Land.
A. C. Grayling, "A Man For All Seasons," Prospect, 21 June, reviews Sarah Bakewell's How to Live: a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer.
For 378 years, the Tuttles have farmed the same 134 acres near Dover, New Hampshire. It appears to be the oldest continuously operated family farm in the United States. Now, the recession has forced the family to put it on the market.
Algis Valiunas, "Scientists Fallen Among Poets," New Atlantis, Spring, reviews Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science.
Jeremy Lewis, "The Greenes: A Talented Tribe of Trailbrazers," Telegraph, 24 July, draws on Shades of Greene: One Generation of an English Family, his collective biography of Graham Greene's extended family.
Christian Caryl, "Bury the Graveyard," Foreign Policy, 26 July, reviews Thomas Barfield's Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History.
Garry Wills, "Obama's Legacy: Afghanistan," NYRBlog, 27 July, breaks his silence about a meeting he and eight other historians had with the President and three staffers over a year ago.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Wednesday's Notes
Mark Bauerlein, "An Episode at Hamilton, Part 2," Brainstorm, 27 July, continues his account of developments at Hamilton College. Part 1 is here.
From the University of Sheffield, Sharon Howard manages "London Lives 1690 to 1800: Crime, Poverty, and Social Policy in the Metropolis," a massive online project that follows and builds on her last, "The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913." London Lives has been featured in the Guardian's Observer and, yesterday, at AHA Today.
Ian Klaus, "Objects of Trust," The Book, 28 July, reviews Amanda Vickery's Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England.
Dwight Garner, "In a Tenement's Meager Kitchens, a Historian Looks for Insight," NYT, 27 July, reviews Jane Ziegelman's 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement.
Adam Kirsch, "Notes from Underground," Tablet, 27 July, reviews James Loeffler's The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Renaissance Culture:
Neil Bartlett reviews Andrew Graham-Dixon's Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane for the Guardian, 24 July;
Teresa Stoppani reviews Deborah Howard's and Laura Moretti's Sound and Space in Renaissance Venice: Architecture, Music, Acoustics for THE, 22 July; and
Francesca Fiorani reviews Mary Hollingsworth and Carol M. Richardson, eds., The Possessions of a Cardinal: Politics, Piety, and Art, 1450-1700 for THE, 22 July.
Jonathan Yardley reviews Eric Jaffe's The King's Best Highway: The Lost History of the Boston Post Road, the Route That Made America for the Washington Post, 25 July.
Where's Chris Bray, when you need him? Doug Kendall's "The Tea Party Mocks the Founders," Huffington Post, 26 July, argues that, to honor the Founders, the Tea Party must abandon the language of violent confrontation and plot social change by winning elections. As if the Founders fought no Revolution and defeated George III at the polls.
Randall Kennedy, "Honoring Good White People," Slate, 26 July, reviews Bruce Watson's Freedom Summer: The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy.
Finally, farewell to Frau Inge Keil, a major German historian of astronomy.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Modern History Notes
Wikileaks' drop of 92,000 classified documents over the weekend challenged official western interpretations of the war in Afghanistan. If they are more than you can read, see the Guardian, NYT, Der Spiegel or Washington Post. A first interpretation: Andrew J. Bacevich, "Leakistan: The New Insurgency," TNR, 25 July.
Jerome Charyn reviews Lyndall Gordon's Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds for the Washington Post, 25 July.
David Greenberg, "The Do-Gooder," The Book, 26 July, reviews John Milton Cooper's Woodrow Wilson: A Biography.
Patricia Cohen, "Sexual Outlaw on the Gay Frontier," NYT, 25 July, reviews Justin Spring's Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Sunday's Notes
On Sunday 1 August, Biblical Studies Carnival LIII will go up at Jim West's Zwinglius Redivivus and History Carnival XC will go up at US History Blog. Nominations in Biblical Studies, especially in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, are welcome here. Nominate the best in July's history blogging by writing to USHistorySite*@* gmail*.*com or use the form.
Daniel Gilbert, "The Errors of Our Ways," NYT, 25 July, reviews Kathryn Schulz's Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error.
Stephen Wade reviews David J. Cox's A Certain Share of Low Cunning: A History of the Bow Street Runners, 1792-1839 for THE, 22 July.
Pankaj Mishrah, "Posing as Fitness," NYT, 25 July, reviews Robert Love's The Great Oom: The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America and Stefanie Syman's The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America.
David Leavitt, "Lives of the Novelists: Somerset Maugham," NYT, 25 July, reviews Selina Hastings's The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham: A Biography. Colm Toibin, "Lives of the Novelists: E. M. Forster," NYT, 25 July, reviews Wendy Moffitt's A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Weak Endnotes
Virginia DeJohn Anderson, "Creatures of the Revolution," NYT, 25 July, reviews Jack Rakove's Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America.
Daisy Hay, "Adventures of An Unromantic Biographer," Daily Beast, 21 July, reflects on her experience writing Young Romantics: The Tangled Lives of English Poetry's Greatest Generation.
Leo Damrosch, "At War With Itself," NYT, 25 July, reviews Ruth Harris's Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion, and the Scandal of the Century.
Miranda Seymour, "Carrying On," NYT, 25 July, reviews Juliet Nicolson's The Great Silence: Britain From the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age.
Mark Atwood Lawrence, "The Heart of a Realist," NYT, 25 July, reviews John Lukacs, ed., Through the History of the Cold War: The Correspondence of George F. Kennan and John Lukacs.
Friday, July 23, 2010
More Noted Things
Rachel Donadio, "A Museum Display of Galileo Has a Saintly Feel," NYT, 22 July, features the newly renamed and reopened Museo Galileo in Florence, Italy. Here is a video guide to its Virtual Museum's Room VI on "The Science of Warfare".
Jordan Ellenberg reviews Amir Alexander's Duel at Dawn: Heroes, Martyrs, and the Rise of Modern Mathematics for the Barnes & Noble Review, 22 July.
Roger Cardinal, "Lautréamont's poison-drenched pages," TLS, 21 July, reviews Lautréamont's Oeuvres Completes, Jean-Luc Steinmetz, ed.
Stephen Burt, "The Verse Electric," The Book, 23 July, reviews C. K. Williams's On Whitman.
Matthew Price, "Blood on the Tracks," The National, 22 July, reviews Sean McMeekin's The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany's Bid for World Power, 1898-1919.
Toby Perl Freilich, "Historic Shift," Tablet, 22 July, reviews Christopher Browning's Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave Labor Camp.
Jeremy Treglown, "Koestler the dangerous intellectual," TLS, 21 July, reviews Michael Scammell's Koestler: The indispensable intellectual.
Scott McLemee, "A man outside," The National, 22 July, reviews John A. Hall's Ernest Gellner: An Intellectual Biography.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Modern History Notes
Cliopatria's History Blogroll continues to grow rapidly. Recently, we've had major additions in Material Culture & Public History, Women's History, and Premodern History. You might want to scan your fields of interest there for new blogs in it.
Joanna Lewis reviews Ronald Hyam's Understanding the British Empire for THE, 22 July.
Daphne Spain, "Voltairine (and other twentieth-century feminists)," TLS, 21 July, reviews Sheila Rowbotham's Dreamers of a New Day: Women who invented the twentieth century.
Dwight Garner, "Carpet-Bombing Falsehoods About a War That's Little Understood," NYT, 21 July, reviews Bruce Cummings's The Korean War.
Conrad Black, "Escape from ‘Nixonland'," NY Sun, 19 June, reviews Rick Perlstein's Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Midweek Notes
Four Stone Hearth #97, the anthropology/archaeology carnival, is up at Judith Weingarten's Zenobia: Empress of the East.
Mark Bauerlein, "An Episode at Hamilton--Paquette and Urgo, Part 1," Brainstorm, 20 July, begins a discussion of chilling conduct at Hamilton, from its rejection of Christopher Hill for a tenure track position to the administration's restrictions on the academic freedom of an chaired professor. See also: Scott Jaschik, "When Faculty Aren't Supposed to Talk," IHE, 22 July.
Julian Baggini, "Plato's stave: academic cracks philosopher's musical code," Guardian, 29 June, offers another look at Jay Kennedy's reading of Plato texts.
Kate Connelly, "Fate of Franz Kafka's literary heritage turns into nightmare ruled on by judge," Guardian, 19 July, reports that, though the Zurich bank vault containing Kafka's manuscripts has finally been opened, the sisters who claim ownership are obstructing any public report of its contents.
Adam Kirsch, "American Messiah," Tablet, 20 July, reviews Elliott R. Wolfson's Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson.
Essential Reading: Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, "Top Secret America," Washington Post, 19 July- , Part I, Part II, and Part III.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Leonard Cassuto reviews Sam Kean's The Disappearing Spoon and Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements for the Barnes & Noble Review, 13 July.
Eric Foner, "Restless Confederates," Nation, 14 July, reviews Stephanie McCurry's Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South and Victoria Bynum's The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies.
Janet Maslin, "Pen Pals: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and the Literary World They Made," NYT, 19 July, reviews Bill Morgan and David Stanford, eds., Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters and Bill Morgan's The Typewriter is Holy: The Complete, Uncensored History of the Beat Generation.
Adam Kirsch, "Muscular Movement," The Book, 20 July, reviews Justin Vaïsse's Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement.
Monday, July 19, 2010
20th Century Notes
Saul Austerlitz, "The Span," The Book, 15 July, reviews Kevin Starr's Golden Gate: The Life and Times of America's Greatest Bridge.
Stefan Collini reviews Adam Sissman's Hugh Trevor-Roper: The Biography for the Guardian, 17 July.
John Summers, "What Politics Does to History," The Book, 19 July, reviews Carl Mirra's The Admirable Radical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent, 1945–1970.
Michael Kazin reviews Alex Heard's The Eyes of Willie McGee: A Tragedy of Race, Sex, and Secrets in the Jim Crow South for the Washington Post, 18 July.
Dwight Garner, "Mississippi Invaded by Idealism," NYT, 18 July, reviews Bruce Watson's Freedom Summer: The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy.
Kevin Boyle reviews James T. Patterson's Freedom Is Not Enough: The Moynihan Report and America's Struggle Over Black Family Life -- from LBJ to Obama for the Washington Post, 18 July.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Sunday's Notes
Carnivalesque LXIV, an early modern edition of the festival, is up at Dainty Ballerina's Fragments!
Jay Parini, "The Tolstoys' War," NYT, 18 July, reviews Alexandra Popoff's Sophia Tolstoy: A Biography.
"The Agony and the Ecstasy," The Economist, 8 July, reviews Norman Lebrecht's Why Mahler? How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed the World.
Brian Ladd, "Made in Germany," NYT, 18 July, reviews Peter Watson's The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century.
William Boyd, "Man as an Island," NYT, 18 July, reviews John Carey's William Golding, The Man Who Wrote "Lord of the Flies": A Life.
Colin Thubron, "Believer's Bazaar," NYT, 18 July, reviews William Dalrymple's Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India.
Finally, twice today, I have been told
I will not slit my wrists! Tomorrow is another day. I will revise and revise.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Weak Endnotes
Thomas Bender, "Historians in Public," Transformations of the Public Sphere, 12 July, argues that affixing "public" to either "historian" or "intellectual" is redundant.
Darrin M. MacMahon, "Intensely Familiar, Yet Strangely Remote," WSJ, 15 July, reviews Fred Inglis's A Short History of Celebrity.
Finally, Alexandra Topping, "Historian Orlando Figes agrees to pay damages for fake reviews," Guardian, 16 July, reports on his acceptance of responsibility.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Friday's Notes
Michael Korda, "Rome's Greatest Enemy Reconsidered," Daily Beast, 15 July, reviews Peter Stothard's On the Spartacus Road.
David Grann, "The Mark of a Masterpiece," New Yorker, 12 July, features Peter Paul Biro, who finds Leonardo's finger print on an obscure painting.
James Meek, "Some Wild Creature," LRB, 22 July, reviews The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy, trans. by Cathy Porter, Leo Tolstoy's A Confession, trans. by Anthony Briggs, William Nickell's The Death of Tolstoy: Russia on the Eve, Astapovo Station, 1910, and Donna Tussing Orwin's Anniversary Essays on Tolstoy.
Roberta Smith, "Matisse at MoMA: Carving With Color," NYT, 15 July, reviews "Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917," an exhibit at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art.
Crystal N. Feimster reviews Sharon Davies's Rising Road: A True Tale of Love, Race, and Religion in America for THE, 15 July. A Methodist minister murders a Roman Catholic priest and is defended by a future member of the Supreme Court.
Aaron Thier, "Known Unknowns," The Book, 16 July, reviews Hans Magnus Enzensberger's The Silences of Hammerstein. Thier argues that it is Enzensberger's silences that raise his important questions about the writing of history.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Thursday's Notes
Nico Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim Voth, "Cruel windfall: How wars, plagues, and urban disease propelled Europe's rise to riches," vox, 29 July, presents the argument of two economists that war, disease, and urban death enriched pre-modern Europe.
Jonathan Jones, "The Virgin of the Rocks: Da Vinci decoded," Guardian, 13 July, follows discussions arising from the restoration of the altarpiece at the National Gallery. See also: Jones, "Leonardo Da Vinci's Virgin of the Rocks – more to Mary than meets the eye?" On Art, 14 July.
Joseph Phelan, "Edgy Elizabeth Barrett Browning," TLS, 14 July, reviews Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Brownings' Correspondence XVII, February 1851–January 1852, Philip Kelly, et al., eds.; and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 5 vols., Sandra Donaldson, et al., eds.
Adam Kirsch, "The Prose and the Passion," TNR, 13 July, reviews Wendy Moffat's A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E.M. Forster and Frank Kermode's Concerning E.M. Forster.
David Wheatley, "Louis MacNeice and friends," TLS, 14 July, reviews Jonathan Allison, ed., Letters of Louis MacNeice.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Mid-Week Notes
Claire Potter's "Is Teach for America a Program for the Poor or for the Rich?" Tenured Radical, 12 July, provokes a fruitful discussion.
Peter Schmidt, "An Angry Professor Mounts His Own Labor Protest in Alabama," CHE, 12 July, reports the struggle of UAB's labor historian, Glenn Feldman, with the University's administration.
Michael Kimmelman, "Old Masters and Modern Science," NYT, 12 July, reviews "Close Examination: Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries," an exhibit at London's National Gallery.
Last week's the Library of Congress announced that its technicians had discovered that Thomas Jefferson had changed the word "subject" to "citizen" in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence. It failed to note that Julian P. Boyd had pointed that out in his edition of the Thomas Jefferson Papers many years ago. See footnote #10.
Isaac Chotiner, "The Lamp and The Fog," The Book, 13 July, revisits George Dangerfield's The Strange Death of Liberal England, 1910-1914.
Claire Dederer, "Why Americans Love Yoga," Slate, 12 July, reviews Stefanie Syman's The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga and Robert Love's The Great Oom: The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America.
Tristram Hunt reviews Adam Sissman's Hugh Trevor-Roper: The Biography for The Telegraph, 10 July.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Isao Hashimoto's "1945-1998"
An animation of deliberate nuclear explosions from 1945 to 1998:
"This piece of work is a bird's eye view of the history by scaling down a month length of time into one second. No letter is used for equal messaging to all viewers without language barrier. The blinking light, sound and the numbers on the world map show when, where and how many experiments each country have conducted." – Isao Hashimoto
As Brandon Watson suggests, it begins slowly, "but soon becomes quite the fireworks display."
Monday, July 12, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Simon Blackburn, "Whatever You Say," The Book, 12 July, reviews John Searle's Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization.
Joshua Glenn, "Shining a light on the way artificial light has changed our lives," Washington Post, 11 July, reviews Jane Brox's Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light.
Jonathan Yardley reviews Christiane Bird's The Sultan's Shadow: One Family's Rule at the Crossroads of East and West for the Washington Post, 11 July.
Debby Applegate reviews Geoffrey O'Brien's The Fall of the House of Walworth: A Tale of Madness and Murder in Gilded Age America for bookforum, June/August.
T. J. Stiles reviews Niall Ferguson's High Financier: The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg for the Washington Post, 11 July.
Ian Thomson reviews Harvey G. Cohen's Duke Ellington's America and Robin D. G. Kelley's Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original for the Telegraph, 9 July.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Sunday's Notes
A. N. Wilson reviews Adam Sisman's Hugh Trevor-Roper: The Biography for The Guardian, 11 July.
A Christopher Hill symposium:
Isaac Chotiner, "An Opiate of the People," NYT, 11 July, reviews Elizabeth Abbott's Sugar: A Bittersweet History.
Ben Downing, "Love's Pestilence," NYT, 11 July, reviews Daisy Hay's Young Romantics: The Tangled Lives of English Poetry's Greatest Generation.
Carol Vogel, "High-Tech Matisse," NYT, 11 July, reviews "Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917," an exhibit opening next week at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art.
Wendy Smith reviews Kevin Starr's Golden Gate: The Life and Times of America's Greatest Bridge and Michael Hiltzik's Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century for the LA Times, 11 July.
Michael Sims reviews Robert Stevens's Yvon's Paris and Graham Robb's Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris for the Washington Post, 9 July.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Weak Endnotes
The new Common-Place is up! As usual, lots of good things.
Victor LaValle, "Bierced," The Nation, 23 June, argues that our era fits the talents of Ambrose Bierce. Thanks to 3 Quarks Daily for the tip.
Jim Lindgren, "Serious Questions About the Veracity of Michael Bellesiles's Latest Tale," Volokh Conspiracy, 9 July, follows up on Lindgren's earlier reading of Bellesiles's article in the CHE. Jim is the most scrupulous and tenacious peer reviewer I know of. If you have access to a copy of the Bellesiles's syllabus for his military history course at Central Connecticut State University in the fall of 2009, please make it available to Lindgren. Thanks to KC Johnson for the pointer.
After the scandal at the Smithsonian three years ago, you might have thought that managers of public history institutions would have learned a lesson. Some probably did. The folks over at Lawyers, Guns and Money, however, are shaking their heads over John S. Carter's mismanagement of Philadelphia's Independence Seaport Museum, the catastrophic decline in its endowment, the loss of major assets, and the failure of trustees to intervene. These stories suggest that the corruption is long-term and systemic. Thanks to Alan Baumler for the tip.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Friday's Notes
Martin Gayford, "Italian Renaissance Drawings - the iPhone of the Renaissance," Telegraph, 20 April; Richard B. Woodward, "Sublime Sketches Rarely Seen," WSJ, 20 June; and James Hall, "The cult of the Renaissance sketch," TLS, 7 July, review "Fra Angelico to Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Drawings," an exhibit at the British Museum.
Phil Baker, "A history of anarchists - and their enemies," TLS, 7 July, reviews Alex Butterworth's A World That Never Was: A true story of dreamers, schemers, anarchists and secret agents.
J. P. E. Harper-Scott, "Myths and legends of Chopin and Tchaikovsky," TLS, 7 July, reviews Roland John Wiley's Tchaikovsky and Adam Zamoyski's Chopin.
David Shribman, "Shattering some of the Stalin-Hitler myths," Boston Globe, 8 July, reviews John Mosier's Deathride: Hitler vs. Stalin — The Eastern Front, 1941-1945.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Additionally Noted
David Lewis-Williams, "Scratching the Surface," Literary Review, July, reviews Christine Desdemaines-Hugon's Stepping-Stones: A Journey Through the Ice Age Caves of the Dordogne.
Sophia Lear, "The Hidden God," The Book, 7 July, reviews James Shapiro's Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?
David Wallace-Wells, "Puritan Inc.," The Book, 8 July, reviews Nick Bunker's Making Haste From Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World: A New History.
Charles Simic, "Last Words," NYRBlog, 7 July, reviews Robert K. Elder's Last Words of the Executed.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
More Noted Things
Reports on the Rehabilitation of Historians:
Alan Baumler, "Huainanzi," Frog-in-a-Well, China, 5 July, discusses the new and only English translation of the second century BCE Huainanzi with one of the translators as a guest.
Dwight Garner, "A Talent for Writing, and Falling Into Things," NYT, 6 July, reviews John Carey's William Golding: The Man Who Wrote ‘Lord of the Flies'.
Finally, farewell to Ann Waldron, the biographer of Caroline Gordon, Eudora Welty and Hodding Carter.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Edward Rothstein, "A Hatred That Resists Exorcism," NYT, 5 July, reviews Robert S. Wistrich's A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism From Antiquity to the Global Jihad and Anthony Julius's Trials of the Diaspora: : A History of Anti-Semitism in England.
Catherine Rampell, "They Did Their Homework (800 Years of It)," NYT, 2 July, features Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, the authors of This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.
Jeffrey Rosen reviews Adrian Johns's Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars From Gutenberg to Gates for the Washington Post, 4 July.
Toby Lester, "How America got its name," Boston Globe, 4 July, explains how "the new world" came to be called "America".
Jenna Weissman Joselit, "Enlightened Views," The Tablet, 1 July, reviews Lynn Hunt's, Margaret C. Jacob's and Wijnand Mijnhardt's The Book That Changed Europe: Picart and Bernard's Religious Ceremonies of the World.
Sean Wilentz, "July 4th's Forgotten Partisan History," Daily Beast, 4 July, looks at a history of conflict over the 4th of July.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Modern European Notes
Congratulations to our colleague, Jonathan Jarrett, whose "Should Historians Have to Engage the Public?" appeared initially at Cliopatria and is now featured on HNN's mainpage.
Peter Godfrey-Smith, "It Got Eaten," LRB, 8 July, reviews Jerry Fodor's and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini's What Darwin Got Wrong.
Frederic Raphael, "An Affair to Remember," Literary Review, July, reviews Ruth Harris's The Man on Devil's Island: Alfred Dreyfus and the Affair that Divided France. Dennis Drabelle reviews it under the American market's title, Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion, and the Scandal of the Century, for the Washington Post, 4 July.
Ian Thompson, "Diaries of Mussolini's mistress," TLS, 30 June, reviews Claretta Petacci's Mussolini Segreto: Diari, 1932–1938, ed. by Mauro Suttora.
Donald Morrison, "The General," FT, 26 June, and Sudhir Hazareesingh, "The Melancholic Prophet," Literary Review, July, reviews Jonathan Fenby's The General: Charles de Gaulle and the France he Saved.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Independence Day Notes
"Library of Congress reveals slip made by Jefferson in draft of Declaration," AP, 3 July, announces a new discovery of a correction of language in Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence.
T. H. Breen, "The Secret Founding Fathers," Daily Beast, 3 July, summarizes the argument in his new book, American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People.
Ann Little, "Stars and Stripes Forever," Historiann, 3 July, and Ruth Graham, "Sew Tough," Slate, 4 July, review Marla Miller's Betsy Ross and the Making of America.
Andrew Cayton, "To Save the Union," NYT, 4 July, reviews Robert V. Remini's At the Edge of the Precipice: Henry Clay and the Compromise That Saved the Union and David S. Heidler's and Jeanne T. Heidler's Henry Clay: The Essential American.
Stefany Anne Golberg, "Battle Scars," Smart Set, nd, and John Heiser, "The Great Reunion of 1913," Voices of Battle, 1998, recall the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, when over 50,000 Union and Confederate veterans gathered to remember it.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Scattered Endnotes
Jack Rakove, "The Ring and the Crack," The Book, 2 July, reviews Gary B. Nash's The Liberty Bell.
Here is rare video footage of Leo Tolstoy, his household, and his burial, ca 1908-1010.
Marc Grossberg, "Brave Soldier," The Tablet, 2 July, is recommended reading for July 4. What's not to like about a widowed Jewish grandmother who grabs an American flag and an iron skillet to coldcock a Klansman on her property in Texas?
The Smithsonian Magazine celebrates its 40th anniversary with a special issue. Among other things, it looks ahead forty years and surveys manuscript collections that have been closed, but will be opened in the next forty years. In print, the article is immodestly titled "The Future of History".
Friday, July 2, 2010
Friday's Notes
The new old:
Middling Distance:
The old new:
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Additionally Noted Things
History Carnival LXXXIX is up at Jon Dresner's World History!
Howard Jacobson, "Restoration," The Book, 30 June, reviews Adam Nicolson's Sissinghurst: An Unfinished History.
Jonathan Yardley reviews Alice Sparberg Alexiou's The Flatiron: The New York Landmark and the Incomparable City That Arose With It.
Sam Tanenhaus, "John Updike's Archive: A Great Writer at Work," NYT, 20 June, is ST's impression of Updike's papers.
Adam Kirsch, "Unorthodox Theology," The Tablet, 29 June, reviews Elliot J. Cosgrove, ed., Jewish Theology in Our Time: A New Generation Explores the Foundations and Future of Jewish Belief.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
More Noted Things
History Carnival LXXXIX goes up at Jon Dresner's World History on Thursday 1 July. Send nominations of the best in June's history blogging via a comment here, via e-mail to jonathan*@*froginawell*.*net, or by using the form.
Ben Wallace-Wells, "The Death Lovers,"The Book, 29 June, reviews Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier's Bullfighting: A Troubled History, translated by Sue Rose.
David Greasley reviews Joel Mokyr's The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History Of Britain, 1700-1850 for BBC History, nd.
Laura Miller reviews Christiane Bird's The Sultan's Shadow: One Family's Rule at the Crossroads of East and West for Salon, 27 June.
Jim Sleeper, "Pride and Prejudice," bookforum, June/August; and George Packer, "Air America," New Yorker, 28 June, review Peter Beinart's The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Michael Bellesiles, "Teaching Military History in a Time of War," CHE, 27 June, argues that it is more difficult. Our colleague, Scott McLemee, has been trying to understand the uses of the adjectives "celebrated" and "controversial" to describe a "disgraced" historian.
H. W. Brands reviews Leo Damrosch's Tocqueville's Discovery of America for the Washington Post, 27 June.
Randy Malamud, "Eadweard Muybridge, Thief of Animal Souls," CHE, 27 June, reviews "Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change," an exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. See also: "Muybridge Stop-Motion Sequences, Animated," CHE, 27 June.
Andrew Hussey reviews Jonathan Fenby's The General: Charles De Gaulle and the France He Saved for the Guardian, 27 June.
Andrew Bacevich, "Endless war, a recipe for four-star arrogance," Washington Post, 27 June, argues that de facto perpetual war is severely damaging both America's military forces and American democracy. Thanks to Brad Smith for the tip.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Sunday's Notes
Michael Dirda looks at The Letters of Pliny the Younger and The Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius for the Barnes & Noble Review.
Max Rodenbeck, "The Muslim Past," NYT, 27 June, reviews Bernard Lewis's Faith and Power: Religion and Politics in the Middle East and Fred Donner's Mohammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam.
Peter Conrad reviews Andrew Graham-Dixon's Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane for the Guardian, 27 June.
Adam Kirsch, "Positively Jewish," The Book, 25 June, reviews Jonathan Sacks's Future Tense: Jews, Judiasm, and Israel in the Twenty-First Century.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Weak Endnotes
Errol Morris, "The Anosognosic's Dilemma: Something's Wrong but You'll Never Know What It Is," Opinionator, 20-24 June: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V.
Judith Thurman, "Debenedetti Confesses!" New Yorker, 24 June, has Tommaso Debenedetti's admission that his five dozen published interviews with major literary figures are fictions.
Michael Dirda reviews Hugh Trevor-Roper's History and the Enlightenment for the Washington Post, 24 June.
Robert Fulford, "French dissing, the scandalous literature that liberated a country," National Post, 21 June, reviews Robert Darnton's The Devil in the Holy Water, or the Art of Slander from Louis XIV to Napoleon.
Paul Kennedy, "A Time to Appease," National Interest, 22 June, argues that there's a time to appease.
Stephen M. Walt, "Question for the day," Foreign Policy, 25 June: "Are there good historical examples where a great power withdrew because a foreign military intervention wasn't going well, and where hindsight shows that the decision to withdraw was a terrible blunder? If there are plenty of examples where states fought too long and got out too late, are there clear-cut cases where states got out too early?"
Friday, June 25, 2010
20th Century Notes
In Daniel Judt and Tony Judt, "Generations in the Balance," NYT, 18 June, a 16-year-old and his 62-year-old historian/father discuss the plight of American democracy. When Michael Wolff suggested that Judt père had written the part of Judt fils, young Judt replied for himself.
Leigh Phillips, "Ex-commissioner calls Congo's colonial master a 'visionary hero'," euobserver.com, 22 June, tests the limits of historical delusion. See also: Chris Bertram, "Plucky King Leopold," Crooked Timber, 24 June.
Joanna Moorhead, "Henrietta Lacks: the mother of modern medicine," Guardian, 23 June, reviews Rebecca Skloots's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
David Runciman, "It's Been a Lot of Fun," LRB, 24 June, and Ian Buruma, "The Believer," NYRB, 15 July, review Christopher Hitchens's Hitch-22: A Memoir.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Victorian Notes
Alexander Nazaryan, "The Iceman Cometh," The Book, 23 June, reviews Anthony Brandt's The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage.
A. C. Grayling reviews Leo Damrosch's Tocqueville's Discovery of America for the Barnes & Noble Review, 18 June.
Christopher Clausen, "America's Changeable Civil War," Wilson Quarterly, Spring, and Clausen, "History is Not a Mirror," From the Editors, 21 May, look at changing perspectives on the war.
Martin Gardner, "Abstract adventuring," New Criterion, June, reviews Amir Alexander's Duel at Dawn: Heroes, Martyrs, and the Rise of Modern Mathematics.
Jonathan Barnes, "Conan Doyle and the creeping man," TLS, 23 June, reviews Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Works.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Still More Noted Things
Carnivalesque LXIII, an ancient/medieval edition of the festival, is up at The Cranky Professor's place.
Adam Kirsch, "Redrawing Boundaries," Tablet, 22 June, reviews Michael Brenner's A Short History of the Jews.
Edward Glaeser, "Thinkers and Tinkerers," The Book, 22 June, reviews Joel Mokyr's The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 1700-1850.
Robert Pinsky, "Firmness in the Write," Slate, 22 June, considers the poetry of Abraham Lincoln.
Stephen Kinzer, "Israel's Shady Arms Deal," Daily Beast, 22 June, reviews Sasha Polakow-Suransky's The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa.
Michael Hastings, "The Runaway General," Rolling Stone, 8 July, is the article that brings General McChrystal to the White House today.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
More Noted Things
Errol Morris, winner of a Cliopatria Award for Best Series of Posts, has launched a new series with "The Anosognosic's Dilemma: Something's Wrong but You'll Never Know What It Is (Part 1)," Opinionator, 20 June; (Part 2), 21 June.
As recently as 25 May, Northwest History's Larry Cebula justified non-renewing his OAH membership in part on the grounds that the organization offered no recommendations about promoting and tenuring public historians. Er, read this and this, Larry.
Katherine Bouton, "Sorting Through the History of Science, With Plenty of Side Trips," NYT, 21 June, reviews Steven Shapin's Never Pure: Historical Studies of Science as if It Was Produced by People With Bodies, Situated in Time, Space, Culture, and Society, and Struggling for Credibility and Authority.
Max Byrd, "Man on the Run," Wilson Quarterly, Spring, reviews Michael Kranish's Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War.
Laura Miller, "The First War on Terror," Salon, 20 June, reviews Alex Butterworth's The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Agents.
Michael Levenson, "Aspects of the Novelist," Slate, 21 June, reviews Wendy Moffat's A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster and Frank Kermode's Concerning E. M. Forster.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Mark Arax reviews Peter Schrag's Not Fit for Our Society: Immigration and Nativism in America for the LA Times, 13 June. Hat tip.
Robert Sullivan, "Geopolitical Cycles," NYT, 20 June, reviews David V. Herlihy's The Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer and His Mysterious Disappearance.
Kevin Starr reviews Michael Hiltzik's Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century for the Washington Post, 20 June.
Bernard Porter, "Pariahs Can't Be Choosers," LRB, 26 June, reviews Sasha Polakow-Suransky's The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa.
The Washington Post's profile of Brown's Ted Widmer claims he has "a gallimaufry of identities." You wouldn't want that on your cv, would you? Widmer also has a short piece in the Post about writing speeches for Presidents.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Sunday's Notes
Nicola Copping, "Skin Deep?" FT, 19 June, reviews Roger Scruton's Beauty, Geoffrey Jones's Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry, and Carol Dyhouse's Glamour: Women, History, Feminism.
Mark Mazower, "‘War and Peace': The Fact-Check," NYT, 20 June, reviews Dominic Lieven's Russia Against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of "War and Peace".
Simon Schama, "The Patriarch," TNR, 19 June, reviews Abigail Green's Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero.
Noemie Emery, "Beautiful and Damned," WS, 21 June, reviews Bill Patton's My Three Fathers and the Elegant Deceptions of My Mother, Susan Mary Alsop.
William Dalrymple, "Road Tripping With Sufi Mystics," Daily Beast, 18 June, recounts his recent book tour, promoting Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Weak Endnotes
Jed Perl, "The Modern High-Wire," The Book, 18 June, reviews Circus: The Photographs of Frederick W. Glasier with texts by Peter Kayafas, Luc Sante, and Deborah Walk.
Nate Barksdale, "Subtitles," Cardus, 11 June, reviews the history of subtitles in film.
Ebony has an excerpt from Jelani Cobb's current book, The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress. Our former colleague is currently guest-blogging for Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic. He was teaching at Moscow State University this spring and writes about it in "A View from the East," 17 June, and "That's Russian for Hope," 18 June.
Scott McLemee reviews H. Aram Veeser's Edward Said: The Charisma of Criticism for the Barnes & Noble Review, 8 June.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Yet More Modern Notes
Anthony Tommasini, "A Musical Battle Flag, Waved by All Sides," NYT, 17 June, and Michael Dirda for the Washington Post, 17 June, review Harvey Sachs's The Ninth: Beethoven and the World of 1824.
Alexandra Mullen, "The artful Dickens," New Criterion, June, reviews Michael Slater's Charles Dickens.
James Longenbach, "Ardor and the Abyss," The Nation, 5 July, reviews Lyndal Gordon's Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds.
Harold Evans, "Bloody Sunday: How the Truth Came Out," Daily Beast, 16 June, recalls the Times's investigative journalism.
On Afghanistan:
Thursday, June 17, 2010
More Modern Things
Jeremy Adler, "When Goethe met Napoleon," TLS, 16 June, reviews Rüdiger Safranski's Goethe und Schiller: Geschichte einer Freundschaft and Gustav Seibt's Goethe und Napoleon: Eine historische Begegnung .
Janice P. Nimura, "Remember the General Slocum," The Morning News, 16 June, recalls New York's deadliest tragedy before 9/11.
Jessa Crispin, "Two Women's Modern Odyssey," Barnes & Noble Review, 16 June, locates her review of Keri Walsh's edition of The Letters of Sylvia Beach in the classroom of Cliopatria's friend and colleague, Manan Ahmed. Where else?
Christopher Benfey, "Picasso vs. Degas," Slate, 16 June, is a slideshow/essay based on "Picasso Looks at Degas, an exhibit at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA.
Michael Tomasky, "Against Despair," Democracy, Summer, argues that "our misreading of history harms progressivism today."
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Carnivals
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Modern History Notes
Jonathan Rée reviews Hugh Trevor-Roper's History and the Enlightenment, ed. by John Robertson, for the New Humanist, May/June.
Michael Sims, "All the Dead Are Vampires," CHE, 13 June, draws from work on Sims's new anthology, Dracula's Guest: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories.
Christopher Corbett, "The Pony Rides Again (and again)," American Heritage, 14 June, debunks the Pony Express mythology.
Philip Kennicott, "Upward Dog," The Book, 15 June, reviews Robert Love's The Great Oom: The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America and Stephanie Syman's The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America.
Scott McLemee, "Psyched Out," bookforum, June/August, reviews Francois Dosse's Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari: Intersecting Lives.
Peter Steinfels, "All in the Mespoche," Democracy, Summer, reviews Benjamin Balint's Running Commentary: The Contentious Magazine That Turned the Jewish Left into the Neoconservative Right.
Monday, June 14, 2010
20th Century Notes
Peter Ackroyd reviews Wendy Moffat's E. M. Forster: A New Life for Times Online, 12 June.
Jonathan Kirshner, "Keynes, Recovered," Boston Review, May/June, reviews Peter Clarke's Keynes: The Rise, Fall, and Return of the 20th Century's Most Influential Economist, Paul Davidson's The Keynes Solution: The Path to Global Economic Prosperity and Robert Skidelsky's Keynes: The Return of the Master.
Dwight Garner, "The Meteoric Rise, and Decline, of a Talented Young Writer," NYT, 8 June, reviews Hilary Spurling's Pearl Buck in China: Journey to ‘The Good Earth'.
Timothy Snyder, "Jews, Poles & Nazis: The Terrible History," NYRB, 24 June, reviews Christopher Browning's Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp and Barbara Engelking's and Dariusz Libionka's Z´ydzi w powstan´czej Warszawie [Jews in Insurrectionary Warsaw, 1944].
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Sunday's Notes
Tom Holland reviews Simon Price's and Peter Thonemann's The Birth of Classical Europe: A History from Troy to Augustine for the Guardian, 1 May. Benjamin Storey and Jenna Silber Storey, "Lessons from Venus," Claremont Review, 24 May, reviews Justine Lacroix's La Pensée Française à l'Epreuve de l'Europe.
Adam Eaker, "Caravaggio's Grand Passions," Daily Beast, 11 June, reviews "Caravaggio," an exhibit at Rome's Scuderie del Quirinale. Don't miss the Caravaggio Gallery.
Ruth Scurr reviews Ruth Harris's The Man on Devil's Island: Alfred Dreyfus and the Affair that Divided France for the Guardian, 13 June.
Richard McGregor, "The man who exposed Mao's secret famine," Financial Times, 12 June, is an excerpt from his The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers.
Barry Gewen, "Leave No War Behind," NYT, 13 June, reviews Justin Vaïsse's Neo-Conservatism: The Biography of a Movement.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Weak Endnotes
Tony Judt, "The Disintegration of the Public Sector: Recasting Public Conversation," Transformations of the Public Square, 30 May, is an excerpt from his recent book, Ill Fares the Land.
Bettina Bildhauer, "Better Than Wagner," TLS, 9 June, reviews Cyril Edwards, trans. and ed., The Nibelungenlied: The Lay of the Nibelungs.
Antony Lerman, "Undefined," Nation, 9 June, reviews Anthony Julius's Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England.
Pete Wilton, "Oxford and the Royal Society's origins," University of Oxford Science Blog, 2 February, is one of nine finalists for Three Quarks Daily's 2010 Prize in Science.
Jeffrey Collins, "Better served cool," New Criterion, April, reviews Robert E. Sullivan's Macaulay: The Tragedy of Power.
Ananya Vajpeyi, "Peace in His Time," The National, 10 June, reviews Mithi Mukerjee's India in the Shadows of Empire: A Legal and Political History 1774-1950.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Brinkley announces a "Gulf Recovery Act"
Speaking to Anderson Cooper, Rice's Douglas Brinkley announces that the Obama administration will propose a massive Gulf Recovery Act:
Et Plagieringseventyr
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Modern History Notes
Hendrik Hertzberg, "Historians for Kagan," New Yorker, 7 June, features Barbara Weinstein on Kagan and Wilentz at Princeton.
Diarmaid MacCulloch, "A Different Cloth," Literary Review, June, reviews John Cornwell's Newman's Unquiet Grave: The Reluctant Saint.
Jacqueline Rose, "‘J'accuse': Dreyfus in Our Times," LRB, 10 June, probes the contemporary relevance of the Affair. Here is the video broadcast of Rose's lecture. Hat tip.
John Sutherland, "Coarser Connections," Literary Review, June, reviews Wendy Moffat's E. M. Forster: A New Life and Frank Kermode's Concerning E. M. Forster.
Lawrence James, "Deutschland Über Allah," Literary Review, June, reviews Sean McMeekin's The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany's Bid for World Power, 1898-1918. Eliza Griswold, "The Replication of Cells," The Book, 9 June, reviews Ian Johnson's A Mosque in Munich.
Patrick Courrielche, "In Praise of Capitalism: How the ‘Social Justice' Left Uses Economic Incentives to Create Academic Propaganda," Big Journalism, 8 June; Liberty Chick, "Academia-Gate: As Big Labor and Media Push ‘Researchprop' on Our Kids, Who's Really Paying the Cost? (Part 1)," Big Journalism, 9 June, Liberty Chick, "Academia-Gate: As Big Labor and Media Push ‘Researchprop' on Our Kids, Who's Really Paying the Cost? (Part 2)," Big Journalism, 10 June, Frank Ross, "Academia-Gate: ‘Cry Wolf' Undermining the Shaky Academic Edifice of Honest, Dispassionate Scholarship," Big Journalism, 9 June, Kurt Schlichter, "Academia-Gate: Ethically and Legally, ‘Cry Wolf' Project Cries Out For Investigation," Big Journalism, 9 June, and Erin O'Connor, "Academic Astroturf," Critical Mass, 9 June, are critical of the "Cry Wolf" Project and American labor historians, including Lizbeth Cohen, Janice Fine, Jennifer Klein, Nelson Lichtenstein, Gerald Markowitz, David Rosner, Tom Sugrue, and others.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
More Noted Things
Ross Douthat, "Israel and Outremer," NYT, 6 June, finds parallels in 12th century and 21st century Palestine. Jefferson Gray, "Holy Terror: The Rise of the Order of Assassins," Historynet.com, February, sees parallels between the 12th century's Order of the Assassins and the 21st century's Al Qaeda.
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst reviews Wendy Moffat's E. M. Forster: A New Life for the Telegraph, 4 June.
Anne Applebaum, "Angel Factories," The Book, 21 May, reviews Cathy A. Frierson's and Semyon S. Vilensky's Children of the Gulag.
Randy Kennedy, "His Heart Is in the Art of Sleuthing," NYT, 6 June, reviews Robert K. Wittman's memoir, Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures.
Michael Agger, "The Internet Diet," Slate, 7 June, and Todd Gitlin, "The Uses of Half-True Alarms," The Book, 7 June, review Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brain.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
"Nasty, brutish and short," Economist, 27 May, reviews Sigurdur Gylfi Magnusson's Wasteland With Words: A Social History of Iceland.
Benjamin Markovits, "Literary giants on the playing fields of America," Guardian, 6 June, draws on his new book, Playing Days, to argue that "when American novelists want to say something serious about their country, their thoughts turn to sports."
Michiko Kakutani, "Last Stand? Yes. Last Word? Never.," NYT, 3 June, and Brian Hall, "Nathaniel Philbrick breathes new life into the hoary tale of Custer's Last Stand," Washington Post, 6 June, review Nathaniel Philbrick's The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Hendrik Hertzberg, "Elena Kagan's Not-So-Final Conflict," New Yorker, 4 June, joins Ronald Radosh, and David Greenberg and Tony Michels in bi-partisan praise of Kagan's senior thesis at Princeton: "To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933."
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Sunday's Notes
Katherine Duncan-Jones, "The rise and fall of the sonnet," TLS, 2 June, reviews Stephen Burt's and David Mikics's The Art of the Sonnet and Richard Nugent's Cynthia, edited by Angelina Lynch.
Krissah Thompson, "Conservative class on Founding Fathers' answers to current woes gains popularity," Washington Post, 5 June, looks at a movement that locates authority in the founding fathers, but denies them the respect of accuracy.
Martin Filler, "The Powerhouse of the New," NYRB, 24 June, reviews "Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity," an exhibit at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art; "Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model," an exhibit at Berlin's Martin-Gropius-Bau; "Art to Hear: Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model," an audio CD guide; Gunta Stölzl's Gunta Stölzl: Bauhaus Master; Ulrike Müller's Bauhaus Women: Art, Handicraft, Design; Nicholas Fox Weber's The Bauhaus Group: Six Masters of Modernism; Philipp Oswalt, ed., Bauhaus Conflicts, 1919–2009: Controversies and Counterparts; "Kandinsky," an exhibit at Munich's Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau, the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, and Manhattan's Guggenheim Museum; "László Moholy-Nagy: Retrospective," an exhibit at Frankfurt's Schirn Kunsthalle; "Moholy: An Education of the Senses," an exhibit at Loyola University's Museum of Art in Chicago; and Renate Heyne and Floris M. Neusüss, eds., Moholy-Nagy: The Photograms.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Weak Endnotes
Keith Thomas, "Diary," LRB, 10 June, reflects on a historian's methods.
Claire Potter is your host at the Policy History Conference in Columbus, Ohio: Day One, Day Two.
Randall Stephens is your host at The Historical Society Conference in Washington, DC: Day One, Day Two, Day Three.
Edward Rothstein, "Cleopatra's Underwater Kingdom," NYT, 3 June, and Stacy Schiff, "Cleopatria's Comeback," Daily Beast, 3 June, review "Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt," an exhibit at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute.
Robert Bartlett, "Lords of ‘Pride and Plunder'," NYRB, 24 June, reviews Thomas N. Bisson's The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Origins of European Government.
Gillian Tindall reviews Jeffrey H. Jackson's Paris Under Water: How the City of Light Survived the Great Flood of 1910 for the TLS, 2 June.
Barry Schwabsky, "Black is Also a Color," Nation, 2 June, reviews "Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917," an exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Johann Hari, "The Parable of Prohibition," Slate, 3 June, reviews Daniel Okrent's Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Contemporary Historical Notes
Charles Murray, "Who is Ayn Rand?" Clarement Review of Books, Spring, reviews Jennifer Burns's Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right and Anne C. Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made.
Adam Kirsch, "Muscular Movement," The Tablet, 1 June, reviews Justin Vaïsse's Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement.
Robert P. Baird, "The U.S. Paid Money to Support Hugo Banzer's 1971 Coup in Bolivia," Digital Emunction, 30 May, probes the latest release of State Department documents. Hat tip.
Charlotte Higgins, "Rightwing historian Niall Ferguson given school curriculum role," Guardian, 30 May, looks at a role for Ferguson, who's taken a leave of absence from Harvard.
Raffi Khatchadourian, "No Secrets," New Yorker, 7 June, reports on the person behind Wikileaks.
Pankaj Mishra, "Islamismism," New Yorker, 7 June, reviews Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Nomad: From Islam to America and Paul Berman's The Flight of the Intellectuals. Debate: Andrew F. March, "The Flight of the Intellectuals and Tariq Ramadan," Dissent, 25 May; and Paul Berman, "Response to Andrew F. March," Dissent, 26 May.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Midweek Notes
The University of Pennsylvania Press's most recent podcast is an interview with Johan Elverskog, the author of Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road.
John Preston, "The Vatican Archive: the Pope's private library," Telegraph, 1 June, discusses the opening of 50 miles of shelves, heretofore inaccessible to the public.
Here you can find accounts of the trial of the Knights Templar held at Chinon in August 1308; a threatening note from 1246 in which Ghengis Khan's grandson demands that Pope Innocent IV travel to Asia to ‘pay service and homage[‘]; a letter from Lucretia Borgia to Pope Alexander VI; Papal Bulls excommunicating Martin Luther; correspondence between the Court of Henry VIII and Clement VII; and an exchange of letters between Michelangelo and Paul III.
There are also letters from Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, St Bernadette, Voltaire and Abraham Lincoln.
R. Douglas Fields, "Michelangelo's secret message in the Sistine Chapel: A juxtaposition of God and the human brain," Scientific American: Guest Blog, 27 May. Count me a skeptic.
Alexandra Schwartz, "Collected Lightening," The Book, 2 June, reviews Daisy Hays's Young Romantics: The Tangled Lives of English Poetry's Greatest Generation.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
More Noted Things
History Carnival LXXXVIII is up at Warren Stewart's Magnificat. Scroll down for some of the best in May's history blogging and some of the best in 17th century music.
Bee Wilson, "On the campaign trail," London's Sunday Times, 30 May, reviews Ian Davidson's Voltaire: A Life.
Joseph Kanon reviews Ben Macintyre's Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory for the Washington Post, 30 May.
Benjamin Balint, "Imaginative Assault," Tablet, 28 May, is excerpted from Balint's Running Commentary: The Contentious Magazine That Transformed the Jewish Left Into the Neoconservative Right.
Jonathan Yardley reviews Harvey G. Cohen's Duke Ellington's America for the Washington Post, 30 May.
Eric Banks, "The Art Dealer of the Century," Slate, 31 May, Peter Schjeldahl, "Leo the Lion," New Yorker, 7 June, and Mark Stevens, "Dapper Dealer," bookforum, June/August, review Annie Cohen-Solal's Leo & His Circle: The Life of Leo Castelli, translated by Mark Polizzotti.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Andrew Holgate, "Behind closed doors," London's Sunday Times, 30 May, reviews Bill Bryson's At home: A Short History of Private Life.
Dwight Garner, "Looking for a ‘New' Narrative of Founding Fathers," NYT, 30 May, reviews Jack Rakove's Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America.
Valerie Grove reviews Edmund de Waal's The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance for London's TimesOnline, 29 May.
Bill Littlefield, "Eyes on the prize," Boston Globe, 30 May, reviews Chuck Korr's and Marvin Close's More Than Just A Game: Soccer vs. Apartheid: The Most Important Soccer Story Ever Told.
Ashley Sayeau reviews Elaine Tyler May's America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation for the Washington Post, 30 May.
Anthony Lewis, "A Supreme Difference," NYRB, 10 June, reviews Joan Biskupic's American Original: The Life and Constitution of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Bill Barnhart's and Gene Schlickman's John Paul Stevens: An Independent Life. Hat tip.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Sunday's Notes
Kathryn Harrison, "From Sappho to ‘Fried Green Tomatoes'," NYT, 20 May, reviews Emma Donoghue's Inseperable: Desire Between Women in Literature.
Steven Hahn, "The Other Shore," The Book, 31 May, reviews James R. Fichter's So Great a Proffit: How the East Indies Trade Transformed Anglo-American Capitalism.
Peter Stanford, "Buried Secrets," TLS, 30 May, reviews John Cornwell's Newman's Unquiet Grave: The Reluctant Saint.
Jed Perl, "Finding His Way to Paris," NYT, 20 May, reviews James Lord's My Queer War.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
It's 1229 at Guédelon ...
and You're Building a Castle. Thanks to Christopher Moore for the tip.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Friday's Notes
Mary Beard, "How the Greeks met their gods," TLS, 26 May, reviews Hugh Bowden's Mystery Cults in the Ancient World.
Lindsey Duguid, "Before London Went Metric," TLS, 26 May, reviews Jerry White's London: The story of a great city and Philip Davies's Lost London: 1870–1945.
Nicholas Guyatt, "Movement and Rootedness," The Nation, 26 May, reviews Ira Berlin's The Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations and Steven Hahn's The Political Worlds of Slavery and Freedom.
Michael O'Donnell, "In With Both Feet," The Nation, 26 May, reviews Melvin Urofsky's Louis D. Brandeis: A Life.
Matthew Price, "Arms across the ocean," The National, 27 May, reviews Norman Stone's The Atlantic and Its Enemies: A Personal History of the Cold War.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Additionally Noted Things
History Carnival LXXXVIII goes up at Warren Stewart's Magnificat on Tuesday 1 June. Send your nominations of the best in May's history blogging to: contact*at*magnificatbaroque*dot*com or use the form.
Sean B. Carroll, "Tracking the Ancestry of Corn Back 9,000 Years," NYT, 24 May, reports on research that finds corn's origin in teosinte, a Mexican grass.
Adam Kirsch, "Albion's Shame," Tablet, 25 May, reviews Anthony Julius's Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England. Harold Bloom's review, "The Jewish Question: British Anti-Semitism," NYT, 29 April, prompted an unusually large critical reaction, found here and here.
Miranda Seymour reviews Daisy Hays's Young Romantics: the Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives for the Telegraph, 8 May. Hat tip.
Historians' Lives:
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
More Noted Things
Ed Caesar, "The bare necessities," London's Sunday Times, 23 May, reviews Philip Carr-Gomm's A Brief History of Nakedness.
Martin Garner, "English as a Juggernaut Conquers the World With Glee and an OMG," NYT, 25 May, and Isaac Chotiner, "Globish For Beginners," New Yorker, 31 May, reviews Robert McCrum's Globish: How the English Language Became the World's Language.
Nick Pitt, "Turfing out the cheats," London's Sunday Times, 23 May, reviews Nicholas Foulkes's Gentlemen and Blackguards: Gambling Mania and the Plot to Steal the Derby of 1844.
Robert Gottlieb, "Who Was Charles Dickens?" NYRB, 10 June, reviews Michael Slater's Charles Dickens, putting it in the context of Dickens biography, Peter Ackroyd's Dickens, John Forster's The Life of Charles Dickens, Edgar Johnson's Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph, Fred Kaplan's Dickens: A Biography, Slater's Dickens and Women, and Claire Tomalin's The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens.
Bryan Appleyard, "Whose life is it anyway?" London's Sunday Times, 23 May, reviews Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
Benjamin Pogrund, "Binding Ties," Tablet, 21 May, reviews Sasha Polakow-Suransky's The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship With Apartheid South Africa. Paul Kennedy, "Do Leaders Make History, or Is It Beyond Their Control?" IHT, 21 May, poses one of our big questions.
David A. Hollinger reviews Jack Rakove's Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America for the San Francisco Chronicle, 23 May. Hat tip
Alexandra Mullen for the Barnes & Noble Review, 22 April, and Brooke Allen, "Celebrity Jane," Wilson Quarterly, Spring, review Claire Harmon's Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World.
The Daily Beast's "11 Greatest Literary Feuds" includes some great ones, but they're almost exclusively 20th century.
Jack Shafer, "The Master of Debunk," Slate, 21 May, reviews W. Joseph Campbell's Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism.
David Oshinsky, "Temperance to Excess," NYT, 13 May, reviews Daniel Okrent's Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.
Chris McGreal, "Revealed: how Israel offered to sell South Africa nuclear weapons," Guardian, 23 May, is a stunning story. Carnivalesque LXII, an early modern edition of the festival, is up at Lucy Inglis's Georgian London.
Neely Tucker, "Library of Congress holds conference on origins of portolan charts," Washington Post, 22 May, reports on "Re-Examining the Portolan Chart: History, Navigation and Science." See also: John Hessler's "Bi-dimensional Regression Revisited: Studies in the geometry and form of the Medieval Portolan Chart," Warping History, 13 May.
Fionnùala Sinclair reviews Ian Davidson's Voltaire: A Life for the Guardian, 22 May.
Jaroslav Anders, "The Wizard," TNR, 22 May, reviews Roman Koropeckyj's Adam Mickiewicz: The Life of a Romantic.
Michael B. Sauter, Ashley C. Allen, and Douglas A. McIntyre, "The Net Worth of the U.S. Presidents: Washington to Obama," The Atlantic, 20 May, surveys the wealth of the Presidents.
David Greenberg and Tony Michels, "Elena Kagan Could Have Been a Superb Historian," Slate, 21 May, reads her senior thesis at Princeton: "To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933." From the Right, Ronald Radosh looks at the same evidence and reaches much the same conclusion. Serena Golden, "History, Not Politics," IHE, 21 May, reports on Jonathan Spence's Thomas Jefferson Lecture in Washington, DC, "When Minds Met: China and the West in the Seventeenth Century."
Witold Rybczynski, "The Godfather," Slate, 19 May, is a slide show, illustrating the influence of 16th century Italy's Andrea Palladio on American architecture.
Michael Grunwald, "Compromised," The Book, 21 May, reviews Robert V. Remini's At the Edge of the Precipice: Henry Clay and the Compromise that Saved the Union.
Corey Robin, "Garbage and Gravitas," The Nation, 20 May, reviews Anne C. Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made and Jennifer Burns's Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. Paul Berman, "The Prisoner Intellectuals," The Book, 5 May, reviews Michael Scammell's Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth Century Skeptic.
Peter Stothard reviews David Remnick's The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama for the TLS, 19 May.
Finally, congratulations to Penn's Richard Beeman, whose Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution has won the George Washington Book Prize. Scott McLemee, "Amazing Disgrace," IHE, 19 May, finds the promotion of Michael Bellesiles's new book remarkably inappropriate. I'd argue that some historians (Jon Wiener, Historiann, and others) never acknowledged the gravity of Bellesiles's offenses. It's worth noting that New Press is the publisher of both Wiener's Historians in Trouble and Bellesiles's 1877. If you think Wiener's argument is credible, you might promote Bellesiles's new book as New Press has. Wiener and others need to explain to us why such distinguished historians as Stanley Katz, Hannah Gray, and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich would compromise their professional integrity so readily and become the willing tools of reactionary forces, just to satisfy Bellesiles's critics.
Rosemary Hill, "Welcome to Strawberry Hill," TLS, 19 May, reviews Horace Walpole's A Description of the Villa at Strawberry Hill, Michael Snodin, ed., Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill, and "Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill," an exhibit at London's Victoria and Albert Museum.
Elizabeth Lowry, "Kipling beyond India," TLS, 19 May, reviews Rudyard Kipling's Kipling Abroad: Traffics and discoveries from Burma to Brazil.
Simon Akam, "Istanbul, Constantinople," The Book, 20 May, reviews Amy Mills's Streets of Memory: Landscape, Tolerance, and National Identity in Istanbul.
Michael Dirda reviews Selina Hastings's The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham for the Washington Post, 20 May. Michael Kimmage, "Communism, Rising and Falling," Dissent, 4 May, reviews Archie Brown's The Rise and Fall of Communism, David Priestland's The Red Flag: A History of Communism, and Vladislav Zubok's Zhivago's Children: The Last Intelligentsia. Hat tip.
At Copenhagen in 1932, Leon Trotsky argues that World War I and the Russian revolution have recentered world history (in English):
Dominic Sandbrook reviews Michael Burleigh's Moral Combat: A History of World War II for London's Sunday Times, 16 May. Jan Morris reviews Fergal Keane's Road of Bones: The Siege of Kohima 1944.
Adam Kirsch, "‘Suite' Ironies," Tablet, 18 May, reviews Olivier Philipponat's and Patrick Lienhardt's The Life of Irène Némirovsky. The Leviathan's Shoulders, the history of science carnival, is up at Deep-Sea News.
Adam Gopnik, "What Did Jesus Do?" New Yorker, 24 May, reviews Bart Ehrman's Jesus Interrupted and Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years.
Janet Maslin, "Looking at a Novelist's Career While Keeping a Close Eye on His Sexuality," NYT, 17 May, reviews Wendy Moffat's A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster.
Jonathan Yardley reviews Jonathan Eig's Get Capone: The Secret Plot that Captured America's Most Wanted Gangster for the Washington Post, 16 May.
Giles Whittell, "Solving the mystery of Barack Obama," Times Online, 15 May, reviews David Remnick's The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama. Matthew Dallek reviews Jonathan Alter's The Promise: President Obama, Year One for the Washington Post, 16 May.
Finally, visits to Cliopatria surpassed 1,000,000 yesterday. The total would be larger than that since the site meter joined us months after the blog was launched in December 2003. In any case, thanks to all of our former colleagues, our current colleagues, and our readers across the world. The genius behind Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog unveiled himself at Kalamazoo Thursday night. He is Sonoma State's Brantley Bryant, who was a graduate student in English at Columbia when he launched the blog. The medievalists at K-zoo reportedly lifted many glasses of bubbly to float his new book.
Rochelle Gurstein's "Disputations: Lasching Out," TNR, 17 May, replies to Alan Wolfe's "Jeremiah, American-Style," TNR, 30 April, a review of Eric Miller's Hope in a Scattering Time: A Life of Christopher Lasch.
Holland Cotter, "My Hero, the Outlaw of Amherst," NYT, 11 May, revisits the home of Emily Dickinson.
Bruce Watson reviews Alex Heard's The Eyes of Willie McGee: A Tragedy of Race, Sex, and Secrets in the Jim Crow South for the LA Times, 16 May. Hat tip.
Claudia Roth Pierpont, "Black, Brown, and Beige," New Yorker, 17 May, reviews Harvey G. Cohen's Duke Ellington's America.
Nicholas Lemann, "Terrorism Studies," New Yorker, 26 April, reviews Eli Berman's Radical, Religious, and Violent: The New Economics of Terrorism, Audrey Kurth Cronin's How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns, Mark Moyar's A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq, Mark Perry's Talking to Terrorists: Why America Must Engage with Its Enemies, and David Petraeus's Counterinsurgency. Jackie Wullschlager, "A bit of a Renaissance," FT, 15 May, reviews Jonathan Jones's The Lost Battles: Leonardo, Michelangelo and the Artistic Duel that Defined the Renaissance, Blake de Maria's Becoming Venetian: Immigrants and the Arts in Early Modern Venice, and Carmen C Bambach, ed., The Drawings of Bronzino.
Mark Auslander, "The Other Side of Paradise: Glimpsing Slavery in the University's Utopian Landscapes," Southern Spaces, 13 May, looks at slavery and a university's early history.
Michael Korda, "The 3 Royal Cousins of World War One," Daily Beast, 15 May, reviews Miranda Carter's George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft reviews Norman Stone's The Atlantic and Its Enemies: A Personal History of the Cold War for the Guardian, 16 May.
Bryan Burrough, "Death of a Dream," NYT, 16 May, and David Garrow for the Washington Post, 16 May, review Hampton Sides's Hellbound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin. David Womersley, "Trevor-Roper and Gibbon: A Tale of Two Historians," StandPoint, May, explores the influence of Gibbon's example on Trevor-Roper's work as an historian.
Simon Heffer, "The undiluted joys of a literary genius," Telegraph, 8 May, reviews Peter Davison, ed., Orwell: a Life in Letters.
NYU's Jonathan Zimmerman sees Arizona repeating past mistakes in "Putting the accent on bigotry," AJC, 13 May.
Graeme Wood for the Barnes & Noble Review, 7 May, Claire Martin for the Daily Beast, 12 May, and Dexter Filkins, "‘Nothing to Do but Kill and Wait'," NYT, 16 May, review Sebastian Junger's War.
Our former colleague, Taylor Owen, offers "Five reasons David Cameron's coalition government
is not a harbinger for Canada," Globe and Mail, 14 May. Hat tip. "The history of political philosophy," bookforum, May, has a roundup of recent reviews in western political thought.
Ron Rosenbaum, "The Double Falsehood of Double Falsehood," Slate, 13 May, is critical of the decision by editors of the new Arden Shakespeare to include Double Falsehood in the canon.
Samuel Moyn, "Mind the Enlightenment," The Nation, 12 May, reviews Jonathan Israel's A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy and Dan Edelstein's The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, and the French Revolution.
Paula Findlen, "The Enhancement of the Senses," The Nation, 12 May, reviews Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science.
Richard C. Lewontin, "Not So Natural Selection," NYRB, 27 May, reviews Jerry Fodor's and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini's What Darwin Got Wrong.
Nathan Heller, "Nathanael West's Secret," Slate, 13 May, reviews Marion Meade's Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney. David Walsh's "Michael Bellesiles is Back with a New Book," HNN, 11 May, generates little interest in HNN's mainpage, but the news has considerably more notice and discussion at The Volokh Conspiracy. See: Eugene Volokh, "A New Book Coming Soon from Michael Bellesiles," VC, 11 May, and Jim Lindgren, "Michael Bellesiles and the Bogus NRA Conspiracy," VC, 12 May.
Ken Johnson, "At the Met, Portraits of Grief, Written in Stone," NYT, 12 May, reviews "The Mourners: Medieval Tomb Sculptures From the Court of Burgundy," an exhibit at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Molly Worthen, "Past Imperfect," The Book, 13 May, reviews Claude S. Fischer's Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character.
Jonathan Yardley reviews Wendy Moffatt's A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster for the Washington Post, 9 May.
Eric Griffiths, "What went wrong for T. S. Eliot?" TLS, 12 May, reviews Valerie Eliot and Hugh Haughton, eds., The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume I, 1898-1922, and Volume II, 1923-1925. Adam Kirsch, "On the Move," Tablet, 11 May, reviews David B. Ruderman's Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History.
David A. Bell, "Was Tolstoy Right?" The Book, 12 May, reviews Dominic Lieven's Russia Against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace.
Dwight Garner, "Floating a Wild Plan and a Dead Man to Defeat the Nazis," NYT, 11 May, reviews Ben Macintyre's Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory.
Jed Perl, "THE PICTURE: Picasso [hearts] New York City," TNR, 12 May, reviews "Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art," an exhibit in Manhattan.
Henry Farrell, "Reading Milton Friedman in Dublin," Washington Monthly, May/June, reviews Fintan O'Toole's Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger.
Nathaniel Rich, "Mythologist of Our Age," Slate, 10 May, reviews The Stories of Ray Bradbury, with an introduction by Christopher Buckley. Robert McCrum, "How English erased its roots to become the global tongue of the 21st century," Guardian, 9 May, is an excerpt from his new book, Globish: How the English Language Became the World's Language.
Adam Kirsch, "Heirs to the Throne," The Book, 11 May, and Mark Noll, "The KJV Effect," Books & Culture, May/June, review Robert Alter's Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible.
James Wood, "Tocqueville in America," New Yorker, 17 May, reviews Leo Damrosch's Tocqueville's Discovery of America and Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America.
Michael McDonald reviews Frederick Brown's For the Soul of France: Culture Wars in the Age of Dreyfus for Commentary, May.
Chris Lehmann, "Dry Rot," bookforum, April/May, reviews Daniel Okrent's Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst reviews Michael Sherborne's H. G. Wells: Another Kind of Life for the Telegraph, 8 May. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is both forthright and coy about her relationship with Niall Ferguson in Tony Allen-Mills, "In love ... and on an Islamist death list," London's Sunday Times, 9 May.
Brian O'Neill, "Yemen, a prisoner of its own history," The National, 7 May, reviews Victoria Clark's Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakes.
John Demos reviews Nick Bunker's Making Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World, A New History for the Washington Post, 9 May.
William Dalrymple, "The Ghosts of Gandamak," NYT, 8 May, recalls the disastrous end of the disastrous retreat of British and Indian soldiers in Victorian Afghanistan.
Elaine Showalter reviews Allan T. Duffin's History in Blue: 160 Years of Women Police, Sheriffs, Detectives, and State Troopers and Evelyn M. Monahan's and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee's A Few Good Women: America's Military Women from World War I to the War in Iraq and Afghanistan for the Washington Post, 9 May. Laurel Thacher Ulrich, "Star-Spangled Story," NYT, 29 April, reviews Marla R. Miller's Betsey Ross and the Making of America.
Francis Fukuyama, "Nietzsche: A Philosophy in Context," NYT, 29 April, reviews Julian Young's Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography.
Harold Bloom, "The Jewish Question: British Anti-Semitism," NYT, 29 April, reviews Anthony Julius's Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England.
Francine Prose, "The Némirovsky Paradox," NYT, 29 April, reviews Irène Némirovsky's Dimanche and Other Stories and Olivier Philipponnat's and Patrick Lienhardt's The Life of Irène Némirovsky, 1903-1942, trans. by Bridget Patterson.
Adam Kirsch, "The Jewish Question: Martin Heidegger," NYT, 29 April, reviews Emmanuel Faye's Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism Into Philosophy in Light of the Unpublished Seminars of 1933-1935 and Daniel Maier-Katkin's Stranger from Abroad: Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, Friendship and Forgiveness. Richard Overy, "The Historical Present," THE, 29 April, finds academic history in Great Britain caught between "the heritage industry" and political pressure to make history "socially useful." Overy summons us to stand and fight. Hat tip
James Mcconnachie reviews Matthew Dennison's Empress of Rome: The Life of Livia for London's Sunday Times, 9 May.
Timothy Burke, "Africans and the Slave Trade," Easily Distracted, 7 May, takes up the discussion of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "Ending the Slavery Blame-Game," NYT, 22 April.
Sarah Bakewell reviews Anthony Sattin's A Winter on the Nile: Florence Nightingale, Gustave Flaubert and the Temptations of Egypt for London's Sunday Times, 9 May.
Jerry Saltz, "The Picassos From the Basement," New York Magazine, 30 April, reviews "Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art," an exhibit in New York City.
Giles Harvey, "The Two Raymond Carvers," NYRB, 27 May, reviews Carol Sklenicka's Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life and Raymond Carver's Collected Stories, edited and with notes by William L. Stull and Maureen P. Carroll. James Mustich interviews Daniel Okrent, the author of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, for the Barnes & Noble Review, 5 May.
Terry Eagleton reviews Norberto Fuentes's The Autobiography of Fidel Castro, trans. by Anna Kushner, for the Guardian, 1 May.
Benjamin Wallace-Wells, "Colonial Burden," The Book, 6 May, reviews Ted Morgan's Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu That Led America into the Vietnam War.
Christopher Hitchens, "Martin, Maggie, and Me," Vanity Fair, June, is an excerpt from his forthcoming memoir, Hitch 22: A Memoir.
Mark Lilla, "The Tea Party Jacobins," NYRB, 29 April, reviews Glenn Beck's and Kevin Balfe's Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government, Bill Bishop's, with Robert G. Cushing, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart, Max Blumenthal's Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party, David Frum's Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again, and Marc J. Hetherington's Why Trust Matters: Declining Political Trust and the Demise of American Liberalism.
Michiko Kakutani, "From a Prophet, a Call for Reform," NYT, 6 May, reviews Nouriel Roubini's and Stephen Mihm's Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance. KC Johnson, "Virginia and Duke," IHE, 6 May, compares cases against lacrosse players at the two institutions.
Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, "Modern Times," The Book, 5 May, reviews Eric Nelson's The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought.
Julian Barnes, "A great fiery explosion called Delacroix," TLS, 5 May, reviews Eugène Delacroix's Journal, edited by Michèle Hannoosh. 2 volumes.
Daniel Karlin, "Lewis Carroll, overdrawn again," TLS, 5 May, reviews Jenny Woolf's The Mystery of Lewis Carroll: Understanding the author of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Elizabeth Sewell's Lewis Carroll: Voices from France .
Christine Rosen, "Life in an Awkward Position," WSJ, 23 April, reviews Robert Love's The Great Oom: The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America. History Carnival LXXXVII is up at Melissa Bellanta's The Vapour Trail.
Scott McLemee, "Six Feet Under," IHE, 5 May, reviews Michael Kammen's Digging Up the Dead: A History of Notable American Reburials.
Catherine Peters, "Experiments in Living," Literary Review, May, reviews Daisey Hays's Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives.
James McGrath Morris reviews Evan Thomas's The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and The Rush to Empire, 1898 for the Washington Post.
Christopher Coker, "Force for the Good," Literary Review, May, reviews Michael Burleigh's Moral Combat: A History of World War II. Malcolm Gladwell, "Pandora's Briefcase," New Yorker, 10 May, reviews Ben Macintyre's Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory.
Daisy Goodwin, "Norman Stone: poster boy for booze, fags and mischief," London's Sunday Times, 2 May, profiles the author of The Atlantic and Its Enemies: A Personal History of the Cold War. It is reviewed by Dominic Sandbrook.
Michelle Goldberg, "What the Pill Gave Birth To," TAP, 22 April, reviews Elaine Tyler May's America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation.
In an excerpt from his next book, Bob Dylan in America, Sean Wilentz replies to claims by the folk singer's critics that he is a plariarist.
As the British elections reach their climax, Simon Schama comments on the "Three-Way Race." Carrie Tate, "Q&A with Niall Ferguson," Vancouver Sun, 1 May, breaks with the gossip columns and primes the provocative historian.
Dwight Garner, "In Pursuit of Prey, Carrying Philosophy," NYT, 2 May, reviews Paul Berman's The Flight of the Intellectuals.
Jon Wiener, "Arizona Bans Ethnic Studies," Nation, 1 May, points to an intrusion of the Arizona legislature's current madness in the state's curricula. Thanks to David Walsh for the tip.
Kathryn Hughes for the Guardian, 1 May, and James McConnachie for London's Sunday Times, 2 May, review Daisey Hays's Young Romantics:The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives.
Christine Stansell, "Pews and Picket Lines," The Book, 3 May, reviews Bettye Collier-Thomas's Jesus, Jobs, and Justice: African American Women and Religion.
Patricia Williams for the Guardian, 2 May, and Robert Harris for London's Sunday Times, 2 May, review David Remnick's The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama. Philip Hensher reviews Oliver Hilms's Cosima Wagner: the Lady of Bayreuth for the Telegraph, 2 May.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "About Face," NYT, 26 April, reviews Max Hastings's Winston's War: Churchill, 1940-1945.
Michael Idov, "Spy Games," The Book, 30 April, reviews Ben Macintyre's Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory.
Harold Evans, "The Magazine King," Daily Beast, 1 May, reviews Alan Brinkley's The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century.
Nick Turse, "The Pentagon Book Club," Nation, 29 April, reviews Mark Philip Bradley's Vietnam at War, John Prados's Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945-1975, Lewis Sorley's A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam, and Sorley's Vietnam Chronicles: The Abrams Tapes, 1968-1972.
Christine Smallwood interviews Tony Judt for the Nation, 29 April. Anthony Grafton, "In a Fantastic, Lost World," NYRB, 13 May, reviews "The Mourners: Medieval Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy" and "The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry," exhibitions at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Full access to the review is subscriber only.
Ken Johnson, "Medieval Remnants of the Jews in Spain," NYT, 29 April, reviews "Uneasy Communion: Jews, Christians and the Altarpieces of Medieval Spain," an exhibit at Manhattan's Museum of Biblical Art.
Geoffrey Wall, "Before They Were Famous," Literary Review, May, reviews Anthony Sattin's A Winter on the Nile: Florence Nightingale, Gustave Flaubert and the Temptations of Egypt.
Holland Cotter, "All the Picassos in the Cupboard," NYT, 29 April, reviews "Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art," an exhibit at New York's Metropolitan Museum.
Paul Hockenos, "Past Forward," Boston Review, March/April, reviews Tom Gallagher's Romania and the European Union: How the Weak Vanquished the Strong, Michael Meyer's The Year That Changed the World, and Peter Siani-Davies's The Romanian Revolution of December 1989. Melissa Bellanta hosts History Carnival LXXXVII on Saturday 1 May at The Vapour Trail. Send nominations of the best in April's history blogging to her at m.bellanta*at*uq*dot*edu*dot*au or use the form.
Second Wave commentary:
Bee Wilson, "The bitter history of sugar," TLS, 28 April, reviews Elizabeth Abbott's Sugar: A Bittersweet History.
Congratulations to the winners of the LA Times Book PrizesMonday, May 24, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Weak Endnotes
Friday, May 21, 2010
Friday's Notes
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Additionally Noted
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
20th Century Notes
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
More Noted Things
Monday, May 17, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Sunday's Notes
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Weak Endnotes
Friday, May 14, 2010
Intellectual History Notes
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Thursday's Notes
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Midweek Notes
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
More Noted Things
Monday, May 10, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Sunday, May 9, 2010
The NYT on the Jewish & Other Questions
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Weak Endnotes
Friday, May 7, 2010
20th Century Notes
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Thursday's Notes
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Wednesday's Notes
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Additional Modern History Notes
Monday, May 3, 2010
More Modern History Notes
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Modern History Notes
Saturday, May 1, 2010
European History Notes
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Thursday's Notes
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Modern History Notes
Jessica Loudis, "Sea of Poppies," The Book, 27 April, reviews Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy's Opium: Uncovering the Politics of the Poppy.
Rachel Wolff, "The Power of Picasso," Daily Beast, 26 April, previews "Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art." Don't miss the Media Gallery's slide show.
Saul Austerlitz for The National, 22 April, Lauren Elkin for bookforum, 27 April, and Dwight Garner, "A Pointillist Tour, Revolution to Riots," NYT, 27 April, review Graham Robb's Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris.
Patricia Cohen, "‘Epistemic Closure'? Those Are Fighting Words," NYT, 27 April, surveys the intellectual bankruptcy of the contemporary American conservatism.
Finally, Matthew Leeb's "OMG WWII on FACEBOOK!" College Humor, 8 March, re-enacts the big one. Thanks to Jeff Vanke for the tip.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
American History Notes
Jill Lepore, "Tea and Sympathy," New Yorker, 3 May, tracks the current Tea Party movement to origins in the Bicentennial of the American Revolution.
Michael Lind, "The Yellow Peril," bookforum, April/May, reviews Evan Thomas's The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898, James McGrath Morris's Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power, and Alan Brinkley's The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century.
Michael Pasquier, "An Interest in Women," Killing the Buddha, 26 April, presents the evidence of the interest of two brothers – the older one a photographer, the younger one a Roman Catholic priest – in the women of Storyville in New Orleans. Hat tip to Paul Harvey at Religion in American History.
Christopher Benfey, "Fights," The Book, 26 April, reviews James Lord's My Queer War.
Robert Creamer, "The Arizona of 2010 is the Alabama of 1963," Huffington Post, 25 April, bids to top the month's bad history carnival. Creamer should tell us how many churches were dynamited in Phoenix this year. How many Sunday School children have died as a result? Thanks to Chris Bray for the tip.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Carnivalesque LXI, an ancient/medieval edition of the festival, is up at Gill Polack's Even in a little thing.
In light of his recent confession of sock puppetry, London's Sunday Times has a profile of "Orlando Figes". Rachel Polonsky's "How I rumbled the lying professor: The story behind the discredited don who rubbished rivals on Amazon...then left his own wife to take the blame," Daily Mail, 25 April, and Matthew Bell's "Phoney reviewer Figes has history of litigious quarrels," Independent, 25 April, are more revealing. Hat tip to Margaret Soltan at University Diaries.
Frances Wilson reviews Lucy Worsley's Courtiers: The Secret History of Kensington Palace for London's Sunday Times, 25 April.
Jan Marsh for the Independent, 23 April, Miranda Seymour for the Telegraph, 24 April, and Sarah Bakewell for London's Sunday Times, 25 April, review Chloë Schama's Wild Romance: The True Story of a Victorian Scandal.
Adam Lively reviews Oliver Hilmes's Cosima Wagner: The Lady of Bayreuth, trans. by Stewart Spencer, for London's Sunday Times, 25 April.
Max Hastings reviews Fergal Keane's Road of Bones: The Siege of Kohima, 1944 for London's Sunday Times, 25 April.
Charles McGrath, "Muriel Spark: Playing God," NYT, 22 April, and Michael Gorra, "The Prime of Ms. Muriel Spark," Slate, 25 April, review Martin Stannard's Muriel Spark: The Biography. On Friday, the author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie died in Florence, Italy, at 88.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Notes Ancient & Modern
Bruce Feiler, "The Cult of Tut," Daily Beast, 22 April, reviews the show as it opens in Manhattan, 30 years after a Tut exhibit first opened there. Don't miss the Media Gallery's slide show.
Daniel Metcalf reviews Richard Miles's Carthage Must be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization and the Guardian, 24 April.
Rachel Cooke reviews Daisy Hay's Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives for the Guardian, 25 April.
David Marquand, "Three's a crowd: How the unexpected rise of a third contender broke the cosy two-party system," Independent, 23 April, looks back to the 1920s, when Britain's national election was last a three-way contest.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Weak Endnotes
Robert Service, "The shame of Orlando Figes," Guardian, 23 April, calls for reform of Great Britain's legal system, in light of his experience with Figes and the sock puppet.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "Ending the Slavery Blame-Game," NYT, 22 April, calls for an end to the reparations debate.
Ronald Steel, "Theodore Roosevelt, Empire Builder," NYT, 21 April, reviews James Bradley's The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War and Evan Thomas's The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898.
Matthew Price reviews Max Hastings' Winston's War: Churchill, 1940-1945 for the Barnes and Noble Review, 21 April.
Bill Keller, "Henry Luce, the Editor in Chief," NYT, 22 April, reviews Alan Brinkley's The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Friday's Notes
Orlando Figes admits that he – not his wife – was behind the pseudonymous comments hostile to his peers' work and in praise of his own.
Charlotte Wiedemann, "The scramble for Timbuktu," soundandsight.com, 12 April, reports on the contemporary struggle to control north Africa's medieval heritage.
Charles Nicholl, "Yes, Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare," TLS, 21 April, reviews James Shapiro's Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?
Ari Kelman, "Icons of Oblivion," Nation, 21 April, reviews Mark V. Barrow Jr.'s Nature's Ghosts: Confronting Extinction from the Age of Jefferson to the Age of Ecology and Caroline Fraser's Rewilding the World: Dispatches From the Conservation Revolution.
Michael McDonald, "Hitler Reading," WS, 26 April, reviews Timothy W. Ryback's Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
More Modern Notes
J. C., "The TLS, Orlando Figes and the law," TLS, 21 April, fleshes out what happened behind the scenes as the story developed.
Ian Thompson for the Telegraph, 8 March, and Dominic Sandbrook for London's Sunday Times, 18 April, review Matthew Kelly's Finding Poland: From Tavistock to Hruzdowa and Back Again.
Donald Rayfield, "In search of Molotov," TLS, 21 April, reviews Rachel Polonsky's Molotov's Magic Lantern: A journey into Russian history.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "Scenes from English Life," The Book, 22 April, reviews David Kynaston's Family Britain, 1951-1957.
Janet Maslin, "Tracing King's Killer in a World of Shadow," NYT, 21 April, reviews Hampton Sides's Hellbound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin .
Joseph Lelyveld, "Who Is Barack Obama?" NYRB, 13 May, reviews David Remnick's The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Modern History Notes
Randall Stephens, "Economic History: State of the Field," THS Blog, 16 April, offers a foretaste of Historically Speaking's symposium.
John Summers, "The Observer," The Book, 20 April, reviews Henry David Thoreau's The Journal: 1837-1861, edited by Damion Searls.
Michael Kazin, "Types of Murder," The Book, 19 April, reviews Michael Fellman's In the Name of God and Country: Reconsidering Terrorism in American History.
Neil MacFarquhar, "Middle East Boyhood," NYT, 16 April, and Adam Kircher, "Jerusalem Daze," The Tablet, 20 April, review Kai Bird's Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more"
Richard Rayner, "Channelling Ike," New Yorker, 26 April, reports fraud in Stephen Ambrose's research claims. Given the accumulated evidence, the problems are clearly far beyond carelessness. See also: Mark Lewis, "Ambrose Problems Date Back To Ph.D. Thesis," Forbes, 10 May 2002; "How the Ambrose Story Developed," HNN, 2002/2003; and "Stephen Ambrose", Criticism, Wikipedia. Thanks to Kelly Woestman for the tip.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Philip Hensher, "Anonymity protects too many critics," Independent, 19 April, reports that the Amazon sock puppet, "Historian," is Orlando Figes's wife. Unsurprisingly, she's been praising his books and criticizing those of his peers. See also: Caroline Davies, "The professor, his wife, and the secret, savage book reviews on Amazon," Guardian, 18 April; Robert Barr, "Harsh Amazon reviewer unmasked as author's wife," AP, 19 April; and Dave Itzkoff, "No More Mystery Behind Savage History Reviews: The Author's Wife Did It," NYT: Artsbeat, 19 April. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
James McConnachie reviews Nick Bunker's Making Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World, A New History for London's Sunday Times, 18 April.
François Furstenberg, "The Best Road Trip Ever," Slate, 18 April, reviews Leo Damrosch's Tocqueville's Discovery of America.
Dennis Drabelle reviews Claire Harman's Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World for the Washington Post, 18 April.
Dwight Garner, "Ex-Pat Paris as It Sizzled for One Literary Lioness," NYT, 18 April, reviews Keri Walsh, ed., The Letters of Sylvia Beach.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Weak Endnotes
David S. Reynolds, "Tocqueville: The Life," NYT, 16 April, reviews Leo Damrosch's Tocqueville's Discovery of America.
Grace Elizabeth Hale, "Confederate History is About Race," CNN, 14 April, is by the author of Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940 and A Nation of Outsiders: How the White Middle-Class Fell in Love with Rebellion in Postwar America.
Christopher Hitchens, "Christopher Hitchens re-reads Animal Farm," Guardian, 17 April.
John McWhorter, "Legitimacy, At Last," The Book, 16 April, reviews James T. Patterson's Freedom is Not Enough: The Moynihan Report and America's Struggle over Black Family Life--from LBJ to Obama.
Howard W. French, "Dirt off his shoulders: Barack Obama and the question of race," The National, 16 April, reviews David Remnick's The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Friday's Notes
Daily Mail Reporter, "David Starkey attacks 'pretty girl historians who show off their looks on their book covers'," Daily Mail, 12 April, has Starkey's latest act as "the rudest man in Britain." Their names usually begin and end with "a", he observed, qualifying Amanda Foreman, Lady Antonia Fraser, and Amanda Vickery. Vickery, who has, truth to tell, posed naked with her books, suggested that male historians whose names begin and end in "d" may have feelings of inadequacy.
Correction: Foreman has, truth to tell, posed naked with her books. Vickery suggested that male historians whose names begin and end in "d" may have feelings of inadequacy. Hat tip to Christopher Moore.
Kate Alexander, "Historians decry social studies revisions," Austin American-Statesman, 15 April, reports that 800 professional historians have signed a letter protesting proposed changes in Texas's social studies curriculum standards.
Janet Maslin, "Iowa Swami Who Beguiled the Jazz Age," NYT, 14 April, reviews Robert Love's The Great Oom: The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America. Why was this not a chapter in Frederick Lewis Allen's Only Yesterday?
Daphne Merkin, "Lovers, Not Victims," The Book, 14 April, reviews Leslie McDowell's Between the Sheets: The Literary Liaisons of Nine 20th-Century Women Writers.
Elif Batuman, "7 unproduced screenplays by famous intellectuals," Salon, 14 April, reports on the aborted work of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Georges Bataille, Winston Churchill, Aldous Huxley, Kasimir Malevich, Vladimir Nabokov, and Jean-Paul Sartre.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
More Modern Notes
Congratulations to the winners of Guggenheim Awards for 2010. The Tenured Radical has filtered out the list of historians among them.
Ruth Scurr, "Thomas Carlyle at the barricades," TLS, 14 April, is an abbreviation of her introduction to her new edition of Carlyle's French Revolution.
Alvaro Vargas Llosa, "Call Him Andean Jones," WSJ, 10 April, reviews Christopher Heaney's Cradle of Gold: The Story of Hiram Bingham, a Real-Life Indiana Jones, and the Search for Machu Picchu.
Christine Kenneally, "The Mystery of the Messy Notebooks," Slate, 12 April, reviews John Curran's Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making.
Peter Berkowitz and Joan Wallach Scott debate the French ban of the burqa.
Veterans reunions:
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Modern History Notes
Adam Kirsch, "Heirs to the Throne," The Tablet, 13 April, reviews Robert Alter's Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible.
Felipe Fernández-Armesto reviews Nick Bunker's Making Haste from Babylon; The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World: A New History for the TLS, 10 April.
Meredith Hindley reviews Dominic Lieven's Russia Against Napolean for the Barnes & Noble Review, 13 April.
In Andrew Odlyzko, "Collective Hallucinations and Inefficient Markets: The British Railway Mania of the 1840s," a mathematician looks at "the greatest technology mania in history." Charles Darwin, John Stewart Mill, and the Bronte sisters invested in it.
A special issue of Common-place, edited by Michael Zakim, concentrates on Hard Times in Ante-bellum America. Jonathan Prude's illustrated essay, "Images of Want" considers "how poverty was, and was not, pictured before the Civil War." Noam Maggor reviews "Bubbles, Panics, & Crashes: A Century of Financial Crises," an exhibit at the Harvard Business School's Baker Library Historical Collections. And much more ...
Simon Heffer, "Don't be afraid of Wagner. He's not a Nazi," Telegraph, 10 April, reviews Michael Tanner's The Faber Pocket Guide to Wagner.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
More Noted Things
Pulitzer Prize congratulations to: Liaquat Ahamed for Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World in history, T.J. Stiles for The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt in biography, and David E. Hoffman for The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy in general nonfiction.
Jill Lepore, "Untimely," New Yorker, 19 April, reviews Alan Brinkley's The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century.
Robert Boyers, "Impudence," The Book, 12 April, reviews Karen Lauer and Kristian Wachinger, eds., "Dearest Georg": Love, Literature and Power in Dark Times: The Letters of Elias, Veza, and Georges Canetti, 1933-1948.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Paul Johnson, "Burn, Baby, Burn," Literary Review, April, reviews John Casey's After Lives: A Guide to Heaven, Hell and Purgatory.
Katherine Duncan-Jones, "Much Ado About Nothing," Literary Review, April, reviews James Shapiro's Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?.
Jon Meacham, "Southern Discomfort," NYT, 10 April, reflects on the proclamation of Confederate History Month by Virginia's Governor McDonnell. At least one of our colleagues finds Meacham's use of Robert Penn Warren "bizarre".
Jonathan Yardley reviews S. T. Joshi, ed., Mencken on Mencken: A New Collection of Autobiographical Writings for the Washington Post, 11 April.
Peter Beinart, "Politics and Faith," NYT, 9 April, reviews Ian Buruma's Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents; and Douglas Murray, "We're All Doomed," Literary Review, April, reviews Eric Kaufman's Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Recent History Notes
Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler, "Stealing ‘Mona Lisa'," Vanity Fair, May, is an excerpt from their The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection.
Mark Mazower, "Anderson's Amphibologies: On Perry Anderson," The Nation, 7 April, reviews Perry Anderson's The New Old World.
Amy Black, "Taking the Measure of Barack Obama," Books & Culture, April, reviews David Remnick's The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama and Thomas Sugrue's Not Even Past: Barack Obama and the Burden of Race.
John Allen Paulos, "He Conquered the Conjecture," NYRB, 29 April, reviews Masha Gessen's Perfect Rigor: A Genius and the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Friday's Notes
Ferdinand Mount, "The rescue of Tiepolo," TLS, 7 April, reviews Roberto Calasso's Tiepolo Pink, trans. by Alastair McEwen.
Gail Collins, "A Confederacy of Dunces," NYT, 7 April, covers a week of bad history in the US of A.
Andrew Lycett, "‘Drink up, dear'," Literary Review, April, reviews James C. Whorton's The Arsenic Century: How Victorian Britain was Poisoned at Home, Work, & Play.
David Runciman, "Let's not make a deal," The National, 8 April, reviews Avishai Margalit's On Compromise and Rotten Compromises.
Tony Judt, "Ill Fares the Land," NYRB, 29 April, is from the first chapter of his book of that title.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Thursday's Notes
Johann Hari, "Trouble in Paradise," Slate, 4 April, reviews Lisa Miller's Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife. Miller's "How Jews Invented Heaven," Daily Beast, 28 March, is an excerpt from the book.
Tom Bissell reviews Charles Freeman's A New History of Early Christianity for The National, 2 April.
John Carey reviews Ian Thompson's The English Lakes: A History for London's Sunday Times, 4 April.
John Steele Gordan, "Hubris of a Man Who Thought He Was Napoleon," NYT, 7 April, reviews Dominic Lieven's Russia Against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of ‘War and Peace'.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
More Noted Things
John Noble Wilford, "In Syria, a Prologue for Cities," NYT, 5 April, discusses findings at Tell Zeidan, a "pre-urban" settlement in what is now northern Syria.
Kelefa Sanneh, "Beyond the Pale," New Yorker, 12 April, reviews Rich Benjamin's Searching for Whitopia, Nell Painter's The History of White People, David Roediger's How Race Survived U.S. History and Christian Lander's Stuff White People Like.
Marc Fisher reviews Simon Winder's Germania: In Wayward Pursuit of the Germans and Their History for the Washington Post, 4 April.
Gwen Ifill for the Washington Post, 4 March, and Michiko Kakutani, "Seeking Identity, Shaping a Nation's," NYT, 5 April, review David Remnick's The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama. You can hear Remnick discuss Obama's political career here.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Tracy Lee Simmons, "As I Am Egypt's Queen," NYT, 1 April, reviews Duane W. Roller's Cleopatra: A Biography.
Judith Shulevitz, "Roots and Branches," The Book, 2 April, reviews Elisa New's Jacob's Cane: A Jewish Family's Journey from the Four Lands of Lithuania to the Ports of London and Baltimore.
Miranda Seymour, "We Three Kings," NYT, 1 April, reviews Miranda Carter's George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I.
Simon Blackburn, "Being and Time," The Book, 3 April, reviews Fred Inglis's History Man: The Life of R.G. Collingwood.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Weak Endnotes
History Carnival LXXXVI is up at Sharon Howard's Early Modern Notes.
Simon Callow reviews Tom Ambrose's Heroes and Exiles: Gay Icons Through the Ages for the Guardian, 3 April.
Jon Meacham, "Thine Is the Kingdom," NYT, 1 April, reviews Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years.
Tom Vanderbilt, "Machine Dreams," bookforum, April/May, reviews Sigfried Giedion's Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History.
Dahlia Lithwick, "Writ and Wrongs," bookforum, April/May, reviews Paul D. Halliday's Habeas Corpus: From England to Empire.
Tyler Cowan, "Painting by Words," bookforum, April/May, reviews Nienke Bakker, Leo Jansen, and Hans Luijten, eds., Vincent van Gogh: The Letters: The Complete Illustrated and Annotated Edition (Vol. 1-6).
Nathaniel Popper, "Conscious Pariah: On Raul Hilberg," Nation, 31 March, profiles the important historian of the Holocaust.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Friday's Notes
Donald Worster, "History and Nature," American Scholar, Spring, argues that evolution is an historical scientific theory.
Peter Marshall, "Married to a Monster," Literary Review, April, reviews G. W. Bernard's Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions and Linda Porter's Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr.
Edith Grossman, "Quixotic," Guernica, April, reflects on her experience translating Don Quixote.
Adam Kirsch, "No Prize," Tablet, 1 April, reviews James McGrath Morris's Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Thursday's Notes
History Carnival LXXXVI goes up tomorrow at Sharon Howard's Early Modern Notes. Send nominations today of March's best in history blogging to sharon*at*earlymodernweb*dot*org* dot*uk or use the form. The Giant's Shoulders #22, the history of science festival, will go up at The Lay Scientist on 15 April. Use the form to nominate the best in history of science blogging since mid-March. Military History Carnival #23 goes up at The Edge of the American West on 17 April. Send nominations of the best in military history blogging since mid-March to hwar*at* comcast*dot*net by 15 April.
Martha C. Nussbaum, "A Passion for Truth," TNR, 1 April, pays her tribute to Sir Kenneth Dover.
Ed Yong, "Tree rings reveal two droughts that sealed the fate of Angkor," Not Exactly Rocket Science, 29 March, probes the evidence about the fall of Angkor and the Khmer empire. Hat tip.
David Wallace-Wells, "American Movements," The Book, 31 March, reviews Ira Berlin's The Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations.
A graduate student in history at Duke, Julia Gaffield, has found the only known print copy of Haiti's original constitution. Its location had been unknown for 200 years.
Christine Stansell, "Mrs. Adams' Big Adventure," Slate, 31 March, reviews Michael O'Brien's Mrs. Adams in Winter: A Journey in the Last Days of Napolean.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Midweek Notes
Drake Bennett, "The origins of a holy book," Boston Globe, 28 March, introduces Corpus Coranicum, a new project at Germany's Berlin-Brandenberg Academy of Sciences. It will foster critical scholarship about the Koran.
Laura Edwards reviews James Shapiro's Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? for Salon, 28 March. Jennifer Howard, "A Shakespeare Scholar Takes on a 'Taboo' Subject," CHE, 28 March, discusses Shapiro's new book, with the author.
Donald Morrison, "The Dreyfus Affair," Financial Times, 27 March, reviews Louis Begley's Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters, Frederick Brown's For the Soul of France: Culture Wars in the Age of Dreyfus, and Bertrand Tillier's Les artistes et l'affaire Dreyfus, 1898-1908.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
More Noted Things
Military History Carnival #22 is up at Thompson-Werk.
Rochelle Gurstein, "Oh, the Humanities," TNR, 26 March, takes up the conversation between Louis Menand and Anthony Grafton.
Daniel Mendelsohn, "Epic Endeavors," New Yorker, 6 April, reviews John Banville's The Infinities, David Malouf's Ransom: A Novel, and Zachary Mason's The Lost Books of the Odyssey: A Novel.
Adrian Higgins reviews Sarah Rose's For All The Tea In China: How England Stole the World's Favorite Drink and Changed History for the Washington Post, 28 March.
Gary Krist reviews Anthony Brandt's The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage and Glynn Williams's Arctic Labyrinth: The Quest for the Northwest Passage for the Washington Post, 28 March.
Gerald Howard, "Thirties Somethings," bookforum, April/May, reviews Marion Meade's Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Cathleen McCarthy, "The Tenure Tracts," California, Spring, interviews and profiles some of Cliopatria's friends, including Tim Burke, Daniel Drezner, Brad DeLong, John Holbo, Cosma Shalizi, and Belle Waring on the place of blogging in academic lives.
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, "On the Seventh Day," NYT, 25 March, and Esther Shor, "The Rest Revolution," The Book, 26 March, review Judith Shulevitz's The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time.
H. W. Brands reviews Christian Wolmar's Blood, Iron, and Gold: How the Railroads Transformed the World for the Washington Post, 28 March.
John Stauffer, "In a Fury Over Freedom," WSJ, 26 March, reviews Graham Russell Gao Hodges's David Ruggles: A Radical Black Abolitionist and the Underground Railroad in New York City and Scott Christianson's Freeing Charles: The Struggle to Free a Slave on the Eve of the Civil War.
Daniel Bergner, "The Land of Lock and Key," NYT, 25 March, reviews Robert Perkinson's Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Weak Endnotes
David Brooks, "The Return of History," NYT, 25 March, argues that a history of economics will return it to a field of history.
Emily Wilson, "Stoicism and Us," TNR, 17 March, reviews Frank McLynn's Marcus Aurelius: A Life and William B. Irvine's A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy.
"William Shakespeare: Hero or hoax, The man and his pen," The Economist, 25 March, reviews James Shapiro's Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?
Linda Gordon, "Who's White?" NYT, 25 March, reviews Nell Painter's The History of White People.
James MccConnachie reviews Adrian Tinniswood's Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the 17th-Century Mediterranean for London's Sunday Times, 28 March.
Stacy Schiff, "Traveling Woman," NYT, 25 March, reviews Michael O'Brien's Mrs. Adams in Winter: A Journey in the Last Days of Napoleon.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
More Modern Notes
Ted Widmer, "How Haiti Saved America," Boston Globe, 21 March, comments on the changed relationship between the two western republics.
Tom Carson for the Barnes & Noble Review, 24 March, and Noah Isenberg, "Teuts Uncommon," bookforum, April/May, review Simon Winder's Germania: In Wayward Pursuit of the Germans and Their History. Carson leaves no scrap of the book intact.
Dwight Garner, "As War Loomed, 3 Leaders Wandered Lost," NYT, 23 March, and Peter Clarke, "Family Emergency," The Book, 24 March, review Miranda Carter's George, Nicholas, and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I.
Jill Lepore, "Fixed," New Yorker, 29 March, reviews Laurie Abraham's The Husband and Wives Club: A Year in the Life of a Couples Therapy Group and Rebecca L. Davis's More Perfect Unions: The American Search for Marital Bliss. See also: Lauren Winner's "Booknotes," Books & Culture, 24 March.
Ian Jack, "Five Boys: The Story of a Picture," Intelligent Life, Spring, discusses a 1937 photograph that captured English social class.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Nell Painter Does White People
Glenn Altschuler for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 14 March, and Wesley Yang, "The White Stuff," The National, 18 March, review Nell Painter's The History of White People. Thomas Rogers, "What it means to be white," Salon, 22 March, interviews Painter about her book's subject. Nell arm wrestles Stephen Colbert over racial privilege:
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Nell Irvin Painter | ||||
| ||||
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Eric Alterman, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Michael Kazin, Ann Little, Claire Potter, Ted Widmer, and Sean Wilentz reflect on the Obama administration's health care reform victory in the House of Representatives.
Willibald Sauerländer, "The Best Faces of the Enlightenment," NYRB, 8 April, reviews "Jean-Antoine Houdon: Die Sinnliche Skulptur," an exhibit at Montpellier's Musée Fabre. See also, the beautiful "Slide Show: Houdon's Sensuous Sculpture," NYRBlog, 19 March.
Jonathan Eig, "Fast Food That Won the West," WSJ, 20 March, reviews Stephen Fried's Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire that Civilized the Wild West.
Dave Stone, "Major New Russian Archive for World War II," The Russian Front, 22 March, invites discussion of the announcement of plans for a major new Russian archive of WWII material.
Edmund White, "The Strange Charms of John Cheever," NYRB, 8 April, reviews Blake Bailey's Cheever: A Life, Cheever's Collected Stories and Other Writings, Cheever's Complete Novels: The Wapshot Chronicle, The Wapshot Scandal, Bullet Park, Falconer, Oh What a Paradise It Seems, and Cheever's Fall River and Other Uncollected Stories, edited by Franklin H. Dennis.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Notes in Modern History
Kevin Boyle, "Promised Land," NYT, 21 March, reviews Ira Berlin's The Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations.
Ross Douthat, "Nuts and Dolts," NYT, 18 March, reviews David Aaronovitch's Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History.
Michael Washburn, "Redefining terrorism in American history," Boston Globe, 19 March, reviews Michael Fellman's In the Name of God and Country: Reconsidering Terrorism in American History.
Michael Dirda reviews Jenny Woolf's The Mystery of Lewis Carroll: Discovering the Whimsical, Thoughtful, and Sometimes Lonely Man Who Created Alice in Wonderland for the Washington Post, 21 March.
Phillip Kennicott, "Landscape and Memory," The Book, 22 March, reviews Kirk Savage's Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape.
Seth Stern, "Full court press -- and then some," Washington Post, 21 March, reviews Jeff Shesol's Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court.
David Carr and Michiko Kakutani, NYT, 18 March, review Jules Feiffer's Backing into Forward: A Memoir.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Points in Controversy
Barbara Bradley Hagerty, "Is The Bible More Violent Than The Quran?" NPR, 18 March, considers Philip Jenkins's findings in his Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 years and in his forthcoming Dark Passages.
Robert Darnton, "Blogging Now and Then," NYRBlog, 18 March, compares 18th and 21st century blogging. Caleb McDaniel, "Blogging in the Early Republic," Common-Place, July 2005, made much the same general comparison. Tim Lacy's "A (Non-USIH) Intellectual Historian On The History Of Blogging," U.S. Intellectual History, 18 March, challenges some of Darnton's specific points.
David Shields, "Trouble seeing the line between fact and fiction," LA Times, 18 March, reflects on recent instances of fabrication and plagiarism.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Weak Endnotes
Mary Beard, "Fortune-telling, bad breath and stress in Roman society," TLS, 17 March, reviews Jerry Toner's Popular Culture in Ancient Rome and Estelle Lezere's Resurrecting Pompeii.
Nahid Siamdoust, "Iran's past and future," The National, 18 March, reviews Homa Katouzian's The Persians: Ancient, Medieval and Modern Iran.
Jenny Uglow reviews Celina Fox's The Arts of Industry in the Age of Enlightenment for the Guardian, 20 March.
Sean Wilentz, "Discovering Tocqueville," TAP, 19 March, reviews Leo Damrosch's Tocqueville's Discovery of America.
Steve Weinberg, "The Honorable Press Baron," The Beast, 19 March, reviews James McGrath Morris's Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power.
Brenda Wineapple, "A Wise Unknowingness: On Violet Gibson," The Nation, 18 March, reviews Frances Stonor Saunders's The Woman Who Shot Mussolini.
Friday, March 19, 2010
20th Century Notes
Congratulations to the Newberry Library's Jim Grossman, whose appointment as Executive Director of the American Historical Association was announced yesterday. Jim will succeed Arnita Jones in August.
Molly Springfield, "Inside the Mundaneum," TripleCanopy, #8, takes another look at Paul Otlet's proto-internet, the Mundaneum.
Jonathan Yardley for the Washington Post, 14 March, and Dwight Garner, "Married to Their Colorful Histories," NYT, 18 March, review Marion Meade's Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney.
Benjamin Schwarz, "Intimate History," Atlantic, April, reviews David Kynaston's Family Britain, 1951-1957, the second in his Tales of a New Jerusalem, a multi-volume history of the British people from 1945-1979, and Terence Davies's documentary film, "Of Time and the City."
Todd Gitlin, "The Age of Tackiness," The Book, 17 March, reviews Francis Wheen's Strange Days Indeed: The 1970s: The Golden Age of Paranoia.
Tony Judt and Kristina Božic', "The Way Things Are and How They Might Be," LRB, 25 March, is a wide-ranging interview.
In "Pakistan's new paranoia," The National, 11 March, our former colleague, Manan Ahmed, examines an emergent narrative in Pakistan's mass media.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Additionally Noted Things
Four Stone Hearth #88, the anthropology/archaeology carnival, is up at ad hominim; and The Giant's Shoulders #21, the history of science festival, is up at PACHSmörgåsbord.
Congratulations to the winners of the Bancroft Prize who were announced yesterday. They are: Linda Gordon for Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits, Woody Holton for Abigail Adams, and Margaret D. Jacobs for White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940.
Alexander Nazaryan, "German Phobia," The Book, 18 March, reviews Simon Winder's Germania: In Wayward Pursuit of the Germans and Their History.
Frances Wilson, "Savagely Wed," bookforum, February/March, reviews Chloe Schama's Wild Romance: A Victorian Story of a Marriage, a Trial, and a Self-Made Woman.
Dennis Drabelle reviews Jerome Loving's Mark Twain: The Adventures of Samuel L. Clemens, Roy Morris, Jr.'s Lighting Out for the Territory: How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain, Michael Sheldon's Mark Twain: Man in White, The Grand Adventure of His Final Years, and Laura Skandera Trombley's Mark Twain's Other Woman: The Hidden Story of His Final Years for the Washington Post, 14 March.
Chloe Schama, "Ad Absurdum," The Book, 16 March, reviews Dwight Garner's Read Me: A Century of Classic American Book Advertisements.
Eric Foner & Stephen Colbert Discuss a Texas Edjukashun
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| I's on Edjukashun - Texas School Board - Eric Foner | ||||
| ||||
Hat tip.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Midweek Notes
Congratulations to Natalie Zemon Davis of Princeton and Toronto who has won Norway's 4.5 million kroner ($785,000) Holberg International Memorial Prize for distinguished work in history.
Rebecca Kaplan, "Students protest tenure denial of professor," Daily Pennsylvanian, 16 March, reports student reaction to the tenure denial of Ronald J. Granieri by Penn's history department. If you look at all he brings to the table, it looks like a bad decision.
Adam Kirsch, "Political Legacy," The Tablet, 16 March, reviews Eric Nelson's The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought.
Timothy R. Smith reviews Mark Lee Gardner's To Hell on a Fast Horse: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West for the Washington Post, 14 March.
Istvan Rev, "An Absurdist Film That Touches on Wartime Reality," NYT, 15 March, reviews the WWII era film, "Inglorious Basterds," and finds more truthfulness in it than other reviewers have believed. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
Dwight Garner, "Renewing an Old Idea: Common Good," NYT, 16 March, reviews Tony Judt's Ill Fares the Land.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
More Noted Things
Both Meg at xoom and Another Damned Medievalist are challenging the practice of Medievalists.net and Medieval News of picking up stories (sometimes verbatim) from other sites, deleting author's names, and, of course, not linking to the original source of the story. ADM has carried the objection to Facebook, where the spokesperson for Medievalists.net refuses to acknowledge the unattributed theft and, elsewhere, claims to be "livid" about the charges. But these folk have been caught red-handed and flat-footed. They need to correct their practice before extending their territory to History of the Ancient World and Early Modern England.
Patricia Cohen, "Fending Off Digital Decay, Bit by Bit," NYT, 15 March, looks at the special problems of archiving electronic manuscripts.
Michael Kazin,"God and Woman at Wasilla," Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Spring, reviews Sarah Palin's Going Rogue: An American Life and Matthew Continetti'sThe Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down A Rising Star.
"Has Education Reform Gone Too Far?" TNR, 15 March, is a symposium, featuring Diane Ravitch, Richard Rothstein, and Ben Wildavsky.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
The National Book Critics Circle Awards for 2009 were announced on Thursday night. Unsurprisingly, they included: Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall for Fiction, Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science for General Nonfiction, and Blake Bailey's Cheever: A Life for Biography.
Eric Ormsby, "Butchers and Saints," NYT, 12 March, reviews Jonathan Phillips's Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades.
Jacqueline Jones, "Black Like Whom?" Slate, 14 March, reviews Ira Berlin's The Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations.
Sarah Wheeler, "The Frozen Unknown," NYT, 11 March, reviews Anthony Brandt's The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage.
Joan Waugh, "Ulysses S. Grant earned his $50 bill," LA Times, 8 March, and Sean Wilentz, "Who's Buried in the History Books?" NYT, 13 March, argue against replacing U. S. Grant with Ronald Reagan on the $50 bill.
Gary Indiana, "Making Our Mark," bookforum, February/March, and Scott Martelle, "Mark Twain's vendetta volume," LA Times, 14 March, review Laura Skandera Trombley's Mark Twain's Other Woman: The Hidden Story of His Final Years.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Weak Endnotes
Richard Dorment, "Art and Traffic," NYRBlog, 12 March, reviews "Masterpieces of European Painting from Dulwich Picture Gallery," an exhibit at Manhattan's Frick Gallery.
James McConnachie reviews Alex Butterworth's The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Agents for London's Sunday Times, 14 March.
Wendell Steavenson reviews Oliver Bullough's Let Our Fame be Great: Journeys Among the Defiant People of the Caucasus for London's Sunday Times, 14 March.
Steven Hahn, "Race to the Plate," The Book, 12 March, and Wil Haygood for the Washington Post, 13 March, review Timothy M. Gay's Satch, Dizzy, and Rapid Robert: The Wild Saga of Interracial Baseball Before Jackie Robinson.
Finally, farewell to UC, Berkeley's professor emeritus of legal history, Thomas G. Barnes, and to Georgetown University's Russian historian, Richard T. Stites.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Friday's Notes
Timothy Garton Ash, "Bearing witness is a sacred trust," Guardian, 10 March, reflects on Artur Domoslawsk's revelations in Kapuscinski Non-Fiction.
Scott Saul, "A Body on the Gears: On Mario Savio," Nation, 11 March, Robert Cohen's Freedom's Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s.
Sara Mosle, "Facing Up to Our Ignorance," Slate, 11 March, reviews Diane Ravitch's The Death and Life of the Great American School System.
For Women's History Month, Tenured Radical recommends a few good women's history blogs by female historians. Cliopatria's History Blogroll lists more than two dozen Women's History Blogs by female historians.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
20th Century Notes
Florida's Matthew Gallman and UC, Irvine's Jon Wiener exchange comments about Wiener's "Big Tobacco and the Historians," The Nation, 25 February.
Lesley Chamberlain, "Powerless Lenin," TLS, 10 March, reviews Helen Rappaport's Conspirator: Lenin in exile.
Edmund Morris, "Why Is Obama Reading My Book?" Daily Beast, 9 March, considers what the 44th has to learn from the 26th.
Peter Kemp reviews Kenneth Slawenski's JD Salinger: A Life Raised High for London's Sunday Times, 28 February.
Peter Carlson reviews Francis Wheen's Strange Days Indeed: The 1970s: The Golden Age of Paranoia for the Washington Post, 7 March.
Harold Seymour (1910-1992) earned a doctorate in history from Cornell and taught at South Carolina's Presbyterian College and Cleveland's Fenn College. Later, he was in administration at SUNY, Buffalo. But Seymour earned his professional reputation with the publication of a prize-winning three volume history of baseball (1960-1990) and, before the third volume was published, Alzheimer's Disease severely limited his intellectual capacity. For 30 years, he'd refused to acknowledge his wife's co-authorship of his books and now the Society for American Baseball Research seeks to correct the record. You have to wonder how many other wives and lovers of male historians of his generation ought to have been acknowledged as co-author.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Mid-Week Notes
Rob MacDougall, "Playful Historical Thinking," Old is the New New, 8 March, MacDougall, "Survival of the Funnest," Old is the New New, 9 March, and MacDougall, "A Demonstration," Old is the New New, 10 March, summon us to come out and play.
Paul Lay previews "Paul Sandby RA: Picturing Britain, A Bicentenary Exhibition," an exhibit in the Sackler Wing of London's Royal Academy of Arts, for History Today, 9 March. See also: Mary Beard, 10 March.
Adam Kirsch, "Orthodox Liberal," Tablet, 9 March, reviews Abigail Green's Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero.
Joanna Bourke reviews Bernhard Schlink's Guilt about the Past for the London Times, 27 February.
Finally, farewell to a distinguished classicist, Sir Kenneth Dover.
Here, Bob Dylan casts a skeptical eye at Sir Kenneth.* There is no known evidence, however, that Dover was chuckling at the memory of Trevor Aston's suicide. Hat tip.
*Am I wrong or does this picture look like a still from the new "Alice in Wonderland" flick?
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
More Noted Things
Benedetta Craveri, "Fly High & Fall," NYRB, 25 March, reviews Veronica Buckley's The Secret Wife of Louis XIV: Françoise d'Aubigné, Madame de Maintenon.
Ben Wallace-Wells, "Heart of Darkness," The Book, 10 March, reviews Bertrand Taithe's The Killer Trail: A Colonial Scandal in the Heart of Africa.
Eric Arneson reviews John Milton Cooper, Jr.'s Woodrow Wilson: A Biography for the Chicago Tribune, 4 March. Hat tip.
Robert Lacy, "Model Failure," Literary Review, March, reviews Greg Grandin's Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City.
On May 20, Yale's Jonathan Spence will give the 2010 Jefferson Lecture at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C. His subject is "When Minds Met: China and the West in the Seventeenth Century." Since its establishment in 1972, Spence is the 15th historian to give the Jefferson Lecture. His predecessors include: Bernard Bailyn, Caroline Walker Bynum, Robert Conquest, John Hope Franklin, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Donald Kagan, Bernard Knox, Bernard Lewis, Forrest McDonald, James McPherson, Jaroslav Pelikan, Barbara Tuchman, Emily Vermeule, and C. Vann Woodward.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Curt Suplee reviews Timothy Ferris's The Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason, and the Laws of Nature for the Washington Post, 7 March.
Alan Ryan, "Heroes of Enterprise," Literary Review, March, reviews Joyce Appleby's The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism.
Kenan Malik, "Pigs Won't Fly," Literary Review, March, and Michael Ruse, "Philosophers Rip Darwin," CHE, 7 March, feature the renewed debate about Darwin.
John J. Tierney, Jr., "From the Top: The Question of Command in Counter-Insurgency," Books & Culture, March/April, reviews Mark Moyar's A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq.
Alex Goodall, "'Individualists of The World, Unite!'" Literary Review, March, reviews Jennifer Burns's Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
A Carnival & Modern History Notes
Biblical Studies Carnival LI is up at Annuma.
Amos N. Jones reviews Lea VanderVelde's Mrs. Dred Scott: The woman behind the scenes of the famous case for Books & Culture, March.
Joseph O'Neill, "Turks, Kurds, Armenians: View From a Small Town," NYT, 3 March, reviews Christopher de Bellaigue's Rebel Land: Unraveling the Riddle of History in a Turkish Town.
Mick Sussman, "The Bootleg Diaries," NYT, 5 March, reviews Max Watman's Chasing the White Dog: An Amateur Outlaw's Adventures in Moonshine.
Martin Cohen reviews Emmanuel Faye's Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy for the THE, 18 February.
Elaine Showalter, "China Girl," Literary Review, March, reviews Hilary Spurling's Burying Bones: Pearl Buck's Life in China.
Art History Notes
Richard Dorment for the Telegraph, 15 February, Charles Darwent for the Independent, 21 February, and James Hall, "Michelangelo and the mastery of drawing," Guardian, 6 March, review "Michelangelo's Dream," an exhibit at London's Courtauld Gallery.
Maya Jasanoff reviews Holger Hoock's Empires of the Imagination: Politics, War and the Arts in the British World, 1750-1850 for the Guardian, 6 March.
Sarah Boxer, "The Dark Art of Cut and Paste," Slate, 3 March, has slides from and notes on "Playing with Pictures: The Victorian Art of Photocollage," an exhibit at Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Rachel Wolff, "Did Monet Invent Abstract Art?" Daily Beast, 4 March, reviews "Monet and Abstraction," an exhibit at two venues in Madrid, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza and the Fundación Caja Madrid.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Friday's Notes
Michael Silk, "W. B. Yeats and King Oedipus," TLS, 3 March, reviews Jared Curtis, ed., Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus: Manuscript materials by W. B. Yeats.
Seth Lerer, "What Lewis Carroll Taught Us," Slate, 4 March, reviews Jenny Woolf's The Mystery of Lewis Carroll.
Janet Maslin, "Stand by Your Singer and Her Art," NYT, 3 March, reviews Jimmy McDonough's Tammy Wynette: Tragic Country Queen.
Meanwhile, over here on the So What Are You Doin' About It? Corner:
Thursday, March 4, 2010
More Noted Things
Jed Perl, "Venice in Texas," TNR, 2 March, reviews "Paolo Veronese: The Petrobelli Altarpiece," an exhibit at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas, Austin.
John Rogister, "The Sun King (and his wife)," TLS, 3 March, reviews Nicolas Milovanovic and Alexandre Maral, eds., Louis XIV: L'homme et le roi and Madame de Maintenon's Lettres, 1, 1650–1689, ed. by Hans Bots and Eugénie Bots-Estourgie.
Max Byrd reviews Michael O'Brien's Mrs. Adams in Winter: A Journey in the Last Days of Napoleon for the Barnes & Noble Review, 2 March.
Dwight Garner, "A Look at the Snarled Past of Armenians and Turks," NYT, 2 March, reviews Christopher de Bellaigue's Rebel Land: Unraveling the Riddle of History in a Turkish Town.
Kapuscinski Non-fiction, Artur Domoslawski's new biography of post-World War II Poland's most important foreign correspondent, accuses Kapuscinski of both lying and spying. The accusations draw critical reaction from Neal Ascherson in the Guardian and Morgan Meis at The Smart Set.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
"70 Million" by Hold Your Horses!
This musical video production of "70 Million" by the Franco-American band, Hold Your Horses!, nods at Art History by recreating two dozen of the most important paintings in western art. You get two points for every painting and each artist you can name. One point extra credit for each painting you can date:
70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! from L'Ogre on Vimeo.
Hat tipTuesday, March 2, 2010
20th Century Notes
There's been considerable interest in both Jon Wiener's "Big Tobacco and the Historians," The Nation, 25 February, and the list of historians who have testified in American courts on behalf of tobacco corporations. In his forthcoming book, Golden Holocaust, Robert Proctor will cite more instances of those historians' testimony and the names of additional historians testifying for Big Tobacco.
Elyssa East, "Murder by the Drop," NYT, 25 February, reviews Deborah Blum's The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York.
Lucy Hughes-Hallett reviews Frances Stonor Saunders's The Woman Who Shot Mussolini for the Guardian, 27 February.
Richard Brooks, "The battle of Hastings and Beevor," London's Sunday Times, 28 February, announces new British blockbuster histories of WWII. Henry Holt and Co., the publisher of Charles Pellegrino's The Road from Hiroshima, has announced it is withdrawing the book because of continuing questions about its integrity.
Lawrence D. Freedman, "Frostbitten," Foreign Affairs, March/April, reviews Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, eds., The Cambridge History of the Cold War.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
History Carnival LXXXV, a Winter Olympics Edition, is up at Disability Studies.
Anthony Grafton, "Humanities and Inhumanities," TNR, 17 February, reviews Louis Menand's The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in The American University.
Ann Gibbons, "The Human Family's Earliest Ancestors," Smithsonian, March, and Andrew Curry, "Gobekli Tepe: The World's First Temple?" Smithsonian, November 2008, underscore the remarkable dynamism of archaeological and pre-historical studies. Hat tip.
Antony Lerman reviews Anthony Julius's Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England for the Guardian, 27 February.
Edward Rothstein, "It Took Tools to Build a Revolution," NYT, 26 February, reviews "Compass & Rule: Architecture as Mathematical Practice in England, 1500-1750," an exhibit at Yale's Center for British Art in New Haven, CT.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Testifying for Tobacco
Jon Wiener, "Big Tobacco and the Historians," The Nation, 25 February, is essential reading, I think, for historians. I've often disagreed with Jon, but I'm grateful for his inquiry into the willingness of 40 American historians to sell their reputations to American tobacco interests. I'm also disappointed to learn from his article that some of those historians are in positions of substantial professional influence.
From Robert N. Proctor, "‘Everyone knew but no one had proof': tobacco industry use of medical history expertise in US courts, 1990–2002," Tobacco Control, 2006, Table 2 "Historians (36 in total) who have testified as expert witnesses for the American tobacco industry, 1986–2005 (excludes consulting witnesses). Compiled with Louis M Kyriakoudes":
Friday, February 26, 2010
Modern History Notes
Dominic Sandbrook for the Telegraph, 23 February, and Scott McLemee, "Darkness after noon," The National, 25 February, review Michael Scammell's Koestler: The Indispensable Intellectual.
Larissa MacFarquhar, "The Deflationist," New Yorker, 1 March:
... Krugman went to Yale, in 1970, intending to study history, but he felt that history was too much about what and not enough about why, so he ended up in economics. Economics, he found, examined the same infinitely complicated social reality that history did but, instead of elucidating its complexity, looked for patterns and rules that made the complexity seem simple. Why did some societies have serfs or slaves and others not? You could talk about culture and national character and climate and changing mores and heroes and revolts and the history of agriculture and the Romans and the Christians and the Middle Ages and all the rest of it; or, like Krugman's economics teacher Evsey Domar, you could argue that if peasants are barely surviving there's no point in enslaving them, because they have nothing to give you, but if good new land becomes available it makes sense to enslave them, because you can skim off the difference between their output and what it takes to keep them alive. Suddenly, a simple story made sense of a huge and baffling swath of reality, and Krugman found that enormously satisfying.
Historiann and her readers think about Krugman, the erstwhile historian.
Congratulations to Robert A. Caro, Annette Gordon-Reed, David Levering Lewis and William H. McNeill, who received National Humanities Medals last night from President Obama.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Thursday's Notes
Shadi Bartsch, "The Archaeologist as Minotaur," The Book, 24 February, reviews Cathy Gere's Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism.
Ammon Shea, "Violent but Charming," Humanities, January/February, reviews the Dictionary of Old English.
Patrick O'Connor, "The clown who knew Byron," TLS, 24 February, reviews Andrew McConnell Scott's The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi: Laughter, madness and the story of Britain's greatest comedian.
Richard Rayner for the LA Times, 14 February, Bob Blaisdel for the San Francisco Chronicle, 21 February, Dwight Garner, "Tolstoy & Co. as Objects of Obsession," NYT, 16 February, and Adam Kirsch, "A Comedian in the Academy," Slate, 24 February, review Elif Batuman's The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them.
Sean Wilentz, "Obama, Fire Your Staff!" Daily Beast, 24 February, calls for changes in the White House staff.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Additionally Noted Things
G. W. Bernard's new biography, Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions, finds her guilty, as charged, of adultery.
Philip Ball for London's Sunday Times, 21 February, and Ned Block and Philip Kitcher, "Misunderstanding Darwin," Boston Review, March/April, review Jerry Fodor's and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini's What Darwin Got Wrong. Thomas Rogers interviews Fodor about the book and its argument in "Taking Down the Father of Evolution," Salon, 22 February.
Dominique Browning, "Of Gold and Bondage," NYT, 16 February, reviews Christopher Corbett's The Poker Bride: The First Chinese in the Wild West.
Max Hastings reviews Olivier Philipponnat's and Patrick Lienhardt's The Life of Irène Némirovsky for London's Sunday Times, 21 February; and Adam Kirsch, "Epistolary Bromance," Tablet, 23 February, reviews "Dearest Georg": Love, Literature, and Power in Dark Times: The Letters of Elias, Veza, and Georges Canetti, 1933-1948, ed. by Karen Lauer and Kristian Wachinger.
Charles Pellegrino has agreed to remove the false testimony of Joseph Fuoco from future editions of Pellegrino's The Last Train from Hiroshima. But has Henry Holt or any other publisher committed to a new edition of the book?
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
More Noted Things
Finalists for the LA Times Book Prize for 2009 in History are:
Jeffrey R. Young, "Yo, Ho, Ho, and a Digital Scrum," CHE, 21 February, features Adrian Johns's work in Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars From Gutenberg to Gates.
Sanford Levinson, "So Many Origins," The Book, 23 February, reviews Seth Lipsky's The Citizen's Constitution and Jack Rakove'sThe Annotated U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
If Tiger Woods only had tenure at Harvard, he wouldn't have to go through all this public sturm und drang. Richard Kay and Geoffrey Levy, "Naughty Niall Ferguson: The dashing TV historian and the string of affairs that could cost him millions," Daily Mail, 20 February, finds the Harvard historian invited his wife to cross the Atlantic to attend the £30,000 40th birthday party he gave his latest mistress.
Robin McKie, "How a hobbit is rewriting the history of the human race," The Guardian, 21 February, claims the dispersion out of Africa began before homo sapiens.
Carnivalesque LIX, an ancient/medieval edition of the festival, is up at Burgundians in the Mist.
The finalists for the George Washington Book Prize for 2010 are: Richard Beeman's Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution, R.B. Bernstein's The Founding Fathers Reconsidered, and Edith B Gelles' Abigail & John: Portrait of A Marriage. "The $50,000 award—co-sponsored by Washington College, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and George Washington's Mount Vernon—is the largest prize nationwide for a book on early American history, and one of the largest literary prizes of any kind."
Myron Magnet, "The Education of John Jay," City Journal, Winter, looks at the career of the early American republic's diplomat.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Notes in Recent American History
Ben Ratliff, "Takin' It to the Streets," NYT, 16 February, reviews Tony Fletcher's All Hopped Up and Ready to Go: Music From the Streets of New York 1927-77. Dwight Garner, "Under a Strange, Soulful Spell," NYT, 18 February, reviews Nadine Cohodas's Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone.
John Rodden and Ethan Goffman, "Politics and the Intellectual: The Legacy of Irving Howe," The Common Review, Winter, re-examines Howe's legacy to the American left; and Tony Judt, "Revolutionaries, NYRBlog, 10 February, is the most recent in his series of memoir for the NYRB.
Chris Lehmann, "The Cut Man," The Nation, 18 February, reviews Taylor Branch's The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History With the President. Richard L. Burke, "The President and the Prosecutor," NYT, 16 February, and David Greenberg for the Washington Post, 21 February, review Ken Gormley's The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr.
Russell Jacoby, "Why Intellectuals Are All Bad," CHE, 14 February, reviews Thomas Sowell's Intellectuals and Society; and Ross Posnock, "A Great Memoir! At Last!" The Book, 19 February, reviews Terry Castle's The Professor and Other Writings.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Exhibitions: 20th Century Abstractions
Holland Cotter, "History Lesson in Abstraction, Cutting Across the Americas," NYT, 18 February, reviews "Constructive Spirit: Abstract Art in South and North America, 1920s-50s," an exhibit at New Jersey's Newark Museum.
Eric Banks, "Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit at Phillips goes beyond flowers to abstract art," Washington Post, 20 February, reviews "Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction," an exhibit at Washington's Phillips Gallery.
Carol Vogel, "The Torrent That Flowed in Picasso's Final Years," NYT, 18 February, reviews "Pablo Picasso: The Mediterranean Years (1945-1961)," an exhibit at London's Gagosian Gallery.
History Blogging in Continental Languages
I remember the excitement only a few years ago when we first found someone doing history blogging in a language other than English. Now, I've just added to Cliopatria's History Blogroll a dozen continental language blogs that we hadn't listed earlier and sub-divided all of them by language group. The history blogroll now lists 75 history blogs in 10 continental languages: Bulgarian, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish. Spanish, German, and French are, by far, the largest language groups and each of them has a blog aggregator. Blogosphera de historia, Wissenschafts Café, and ClioWeb probably direct more traffic within their language groups than Cliopatria's History Blogroll does. Together, I hope, we help to create a sense of community, of common interest and purpose, among history bloggers.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
20th Century Notes
Kevin Schultz and Paul Harvey, "Everywhere and Nowhere," IHE, 18 February, comments on the uneven coverage of religion in post-bellum America.
Jenna Weissman Joselit, "‘Here's to You, Mrs. Feitlebaum'," The Book, 17 February, reviews Ari Kelman, ed., Is Diss A System? The Milt Gross Comic Reader.
Piers Brendon, "What Winston Really Wanted," Literary Review, February, reviews Richard Toye's Churchill's Empire: The World that Made Him and the World He Made.
Adam Kirsch, "Axis of Evil," Tablet, 16 February, reviews Jeffrey Herf's Nazi Propaganda in the Arab World.
Mark Walhout, "Il Caso Silone," Books & Culture, January/ February, reviews Stanislao G. Pugliese's Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone. John Gray, "Life of a Giant," Literary Review, February, reviews Michael Scammell's Koestler: The Indispensable Intellectual.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
More Noted Things
Liza Mundy, "Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Childbirth …," Slate, 15 February, reviews Randi Hutter Epstein's Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank. Mundy's "When presidents and slaves mingled at the White House," Washington Post, 15 February, recalls a time when Washington authorities and slaves were intimates.
Rosemarie Zagarri reviews Woody Holton's Abigail Adams for the Washington Post, 14 February.
Michiko Kakutani, "It's a Plot! No, It's Not: A Debunking," NYT, 15 February, reviews David Aaronovitch'd Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History.
Roya Nikkhah, "Queen Victoria's passion for nudity goes on display in new art exhibition," Telegraph, 13 February, previews "Victoria & Albert: Art & Love," an exhibition opening at The Queen's Gallery in Buckingham Palace on March 19.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Summing It Up
John Castelluchi, "The Night They Burned Ranum's Papers," CHE, 14 February, recalls what happened to Orest Ranum's research at Columbia in 1968.
"A Brief History of Pretty Much Everything" is a "2100 page-long flipbook by art student Jamie Bell": Hat tip.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Catherine Rampell, "Jews and the Burden of Money," NYT, 12 February, reviews Jerry Z. Muller's Capitalism and the Jews.
Were you composing a symposium of articles on the early American republic, you might include Russell Shorto's "How Christian Were the Founders?" NYT, 11 February, and Gary Rosen's "Freedom's Laboratory," NYT, 12 February, a review of Timothy Ferris's The Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason, and the Laws of Nature. Kurt Anderson's "Is Democracy Killing Democracy?" NYMagazine, 5 February, otoh, has as much bad history per paragraph as you're likely to find anywhere.
Jonathan Yardley reviews Kathryn Allamong Jacob's King of the Lobby: The Life and Times of Sam Ward, Man-About-Washington in the Gilded Age for the Washington Post, 7 February. Andrew Young's tell-all book about his experience with John and Elizabeth Edwards, The Politician, reminds Jacob Heilbrunn of money, politics, and sex in Gilded Age Washington.
Michael Idov, "Gulag Humor," The Book, 12 February, reviews Karen L. Ryan's Stalin in Russian Satire, 1917-1991.
Godfrey Cheshire, "North Carolina as It Was, Split and Seething," NYT, 12 February, reviews the new film version of Timothy Tyson's Blood Done Sign My Name. Here's the trailer for the film. Hat tip.
Below the fold, updating the Niall Ferguson story:
Friday, February 12, 2010
Notes on Knitting Fiction
Thomas H. Benton, "The Big Lie About the 'Life of the Mind'," CHE, 8 February, is prompting much discussion.
Jane Jakeman, "The tangled history of knitting," TLS, 10 February, reviews Giorgio Riello's and Prasannan Parthasarathi's The Spinning World: A global history of cotton textiles, 1200–1850 and Joanne Turney's The Culture of Knitting.
William Deresiewicz, "The Renunciation Artist: On Leo Tolstoy," The Nation, 11 February, reviews Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, trans.
Janet Maslin, "Mark Twain: A Public Image as Tailored as His Snow-White Suits," NYT, 10 February, reviews Michael Shelden's Mark Twain: Man in White, The Grand Adventure of His Final Years.
Owen Jaurus, "The Real Story of Nazi Egyptology," Heritage-Key, 09/01, features Thomas Schneider's study of German Egyptology during the Nazi era.
Patricia Cohen, "Faulkner Link to Plantation Diary Discovered," NYT, 10 February, features a major development in Faulkner studies. Emory's Sally Wolff-King is interviewed on NPR's "All Things Considered." I am surprised that UNC's Joel Williamson did not discover this 20 years ago, but he apparently did not have access to Edgar Wiggin Francisco, III.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Thursday's Notes
Adam Kirsch, "The Pilgrim," Tablet, 9 February, reviews Hillel Halkin's new biography of Yehuda Halevi, medieval Judaism's great poet.
Lauro Martines, "Science, religion and plague," TLS, 10 February, reviews Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., Culture of Plague: Medical thinking at the end of the Renaissance.
Robert K. Landers, "Redcoats Coming, Nobody Home," WSJ, 29 January, reviews Michael Kranish's Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War.
Dan Cohen calls attention to the National Park Service's developing interactive project, Virtual Fredericksburg.
Claire Harman, "The Belle of Amherst?" Literary Review, February, reviews Lyndall Gordon's Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
20th Century Notes
Michael Scammell, "Saint and Sinner," The Book, 8 February, reviews Stanislao Pugliese's Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone.
Toril Moi, "The Adulteress Wife," LRB, 11 February, reviews Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, trans. by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier.
Linda Christmas reviews Chris Welles Feder's In My Father's Shadow: a Daughter Remembers Orson Welles for the Telegraph, 1 February.
George Perkovich reviews Garry Wills's Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State for the Washington Post, 7 February.
Dwight Garner, "A Nice Guy in a Perfect Baseball World," NYT, 9 February, and Chris Haft, "Mays' life and legend transcend statistics," MLB.com, 9 February, review James S. Hirsch's Willie Mays: The Life the Legend. The MLB site features a video of Bob Costas's interview with Mays.
Finally, think outside the box for Valentine's Day.* Consider recent books by three friends of Cliopatria:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Ferguson's Current Affair Goes Public
In case you don't have the news,
Katie Nicholl, Miles Goslett, and Caroline Graham, "The history man and fatwa girl: How will David Cameron take news that think-tank guru Niall Ferguson has deserted wife Sue Douglas for Somali feminist?" Daily Mail, 7 February
Lawrence Auster, "Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds Admit Impediments," View from the Right, 7 February
Beth Hale, "The historian, his wife and a mistress living under a fatwa," Daily Mail, 8 February
Cahal Milmo and Luke Blackall, "'It's tricky to find men when you're living under a fatwa'," Independent, 8 February
"Fabulously Snobby Divorce Scandal of the Week: Niall Ferguson's Fatwa Mistress Two-Step," The Gawker, 8 February
Courtney Comstock, "Niall Ferguson Is Leaving His Wife For A Young Hot Feminist And Political War Refugee," Business Insider, 8 February
Jessica Pressler, "Niall Ferguson Leaves Wife for Somali Intellectual," New York Magazine, 8 February
Margaret Soltan, "‘In all the years I have known Ayaan, she's never had a boyfriend. She's gorgeous, but with a fatwa, it's tricky to find guys.'," University Diaries, 8 February, and
Doug Camilli, "The Descent of Family," Montreal Gazette, 9 February.
The story broke on Sunday in the Daily Mail, where Ms. Douglas was Ferguson's editor, when they first met in 1987. The DM quotes "another historian" to the effect that NF "has the kind of face you want to punch." He had eight affairs in the last five years?
Monday, February 8, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Anthony Grafton, "Scholar and Blogger," The Book, 8 February, reviews Mary Beard's A Don's Life.
Helen Castor reviews Thomas Asbridge's The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land for the Guardian, 6 February.
Peter Ackroyd reviews Felipe Fernández-Armesto's 1492: The Year Our World Began for the London Times, 6 February.
Claudia Goldin, "Tales Out of School," NYT, 5 February, reviews Jonathan Cole's The Great American University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must Be Protected.
Richard Brooks, "British Library to offer free ebook downloads," London's Sunday Times, 7 February, announces the BL's plan to release 65,000 19th century works of fiction.
John Carey reviews Michael Scammell's Koestler: The Indispensable Intellectual for London's Sunday Times, 7 February.
For All The Saints ...
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Weak Endnotes
Robert Darnton, "Google and the New Digital Future," NYRB, 17 December; Paul N. Currant, Anthony Lewis, Theodore Koditschek, et al., "Google & the Future of Books: An Exchange," NYRB, 14 January; and Roy Blount Jr., Judy Blume, Scott Turow, et al., "The Google Books Settlement: An Exchange with the Authors Guild," NYRB, 25 February, is an important discussion.
Edward Rothstein, "Unrolled, Unbridled and Unabashed," NYT, 4 February, reviews "Rubbers: The Life, History & Struggle of the Condom," an exhibit at Manhattan's Museum of Sex.
Susan Rubin Suleiman, "French Contentions," NYT, 5 February, reviews Frederick Brown's For the Soul of France: Culture Wars in the Age of Dreyfus.
Matthew Kaminski, "Creating a Postwar World," WSJ, 3 February, reviews S. M. Plokhy's Yalta: The Price of Peace.
Charles Peterson, "In the World of Facebook," NYRB, 25 February, reviews Julia Angwin's Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America and Ben Mezrich's The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Friday's Notes
Jeffrey Herf, "It Will Not Go Away," The Book, 4 February, reviews Robert S. Wistrich's A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad.
Thomas Rogers, "When smart people believe dumb things," Salon, 3 February, interviews David Aaronovitch, the author of Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History.
Adam Mars-Jones reviews Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors, eds., A New Literary History of America for the Guardian, 31 January.
Ed Caesar reviews Greg Grandin's Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City for London's Sunday Times, 31 January.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Thursday's Notes
Peter Leeson, "Justice, Medieval Style,"Boston Globe, 31 January. Julie Hofmann: "Anybody want to count the ways in which this is just wrong?" Where are Got Medieval and In the Middle when you need them?
Michael Dirda reviews Michael Scott's Boyle: Between God and Science for the Washington Post, 4 February.
Mark Mazower, "History's Isle," The Book, 3 February, reviews Richard J. Evans's Cosmopolitan Islanders: British Historians and the European Continent.
Liam Julian, "Art as Manifesto," Policy Review, February/March, reviews Nicholas Fox Weber's The Bauhaus Group: Six Masters of Modernism.
The coincidental deaths of J. D. Salinger and Howard Zinn continues to attract commentary. See:
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Modern History Notes
Serena Golden, "Piracy," IHE, 3 February, interviews the University of Chicago's Adrian Johns about his new book, Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates.
Katherine Bouton, "Tale of an Unsung Fossil Finder, in Fact and Fiction," NYT, 1 February, reviews Shelly Emling's The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World and Tracy Chevalier's Remarkable Creatures.
Nicholas Shrimpton, "Tennyson now," TLS, 27 January, reviews Robert Douglas-Fairhurst and Seamus Perry, eds., Tennyson Among the Poets.
Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, "In And Out Of History," The Book, 2 February, reviews Jean-Marie Apostolides's The Metamorphosis of Tintin or Tintin for Adults and Pierre Assouline's Herge: The Man Who Created Tintin.
Anthony Daniels, "Ayn Rand: engineer of souls," New Criterion, February, reviews Ann C. Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made.
Dwight Garner, "A Woman's Undying Gift to Science," NYT, 2 February, reviews Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks; and Denise Grady, "A Lasting Gift to Medicine That Wasn't Really a Gift," NYT, 1 February, takes another look at Lacks's contribution to biological engineering.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
More Noted Things
Rob Lyons, "A foodie's guide to the history of humanity," Spiked Review of Books, 31 January, reviews Tom Standage's An Edible History of Humanity.
Howell Raines, "The Counter Revolution," NYT, 31 January, pays his due to the 50th anniversary of the Greensboro, North Carolina, sit-ins. Marian Wright Edelman, "SNCC, Fifty Years Later," Huffington Post, 31 January, remembers. The scene of the sit-in has re-opened as a civil rights museum. See: Edward Rothstein, "Four Men, a Counter and Soon, Revolution," NYT, 31 January.
Bruce J. Shulman, "House should pass Senate bill," Politico, 31 January, looks at the legislative history of social security to argue for a resolution of the health care impass.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Steven Levingston reviews Paul Strathern's The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior: The Intersecting Lives of da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Borgia and the World They Shaped for the Washington Post, 31 January.
Caleb Crain, "Beer Buddies," BookForum, February/March, reviews Richard Stott's Jolly Fellows: Male Milieus in Nineteenth-Century America.
Douglas Whynott, "A legacy of life," Boston Globe, 31 January, and Eric Roston for the Washington Post, 31 January, review Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. This appears to be an extra-ordinary story and a major book. Popular Science's headline, "Five Reasons Henrietta Lacks is the Most Important Woman in Medical History", probably exaggerates, but you get the point.
William H. Chafe, "A protest that changed history," AJC, 29 January, celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Greensboro, North Carolina, sit-ins.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Sunday's Notes
Michael Bérubé, "The Way We Learn," NYT, 29 January, reviews Louis Menand's The Marketplace of Ideas.
William Dalrymple reviews James Mather's Pashas: Traders and Travellers in the Islamic World for the Guardian, 31 January.
Vanessa Thorpe, "Uncovered: the man behind Coleridge's Ancient Mariner," Guardian, 31 January, reviews Robert Fowke's The Real Ancient Mariner.
Caroline Weber, "Après le Déluge," NYT, 29 January, reviews Jeffrey H. Jackson's Paris Under Water: How the City of Light Survived the Great Flood of 1910.
Tom Carson, "The Night Belongs to Us," NYT, 29 January, reviews Patti Smith's Just Kids. In "Patti Smith's New York stories," Guardian, 31 January, Gaby Wood interviews Smith.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Weak Endnotes
Charlotte Higgins, "The Iliad and what it can still tell us about war," Guardian, 30 January, is a essay on ancient lessons about the costs of war.
Andrew Wheatcroft, "Cast Away," NYT, 29 January, reviews Matthew Carr's Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain.
In Anna Blundy's interview with Robert Goodwin, "Rewriting America," The Browser, 2009, he recommends five books that are central to his project rewriting Spanish American history.
Philip Pullman offers "An introduction to the poetry of William Blake," Guardian, 29 January.
Annabelle Wynn, "Mollie Panter-Downes, a wartime voice to treaure," Books Blog, 21 January, calls for the rediscovery of the mid-20th century journalist and novelist.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Modern History Notes
Richard Posner, "The Race Against Race," The Book, 29 January, reviews Peggy Pascoe's What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America and Paul A. Lombardo's Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell.
Michael Williams reviews Adam Zamoyski's Chopin: Prince of the Romantics for the Telegraph, 26 January.
Andy Beckett reviews Perry Anderson's The New Old World for the Guardian, 23 January.
Our colleague, K. C. Johnson, has published an essay on "Obama and American Foreign Policy," SHAFR, 26 January.
"Obama at One," the Nation's symposium on the highs and lows of Barack Obama's first year as POTUS includes responses by Andrew Bacevich, Robert Caro, Adolph Reed, Jr., Howard Zinn and many others.
Farewell to Howard Zinn, activist and author of A People's History of the United States. Michael Kazin's "Howard Zinn's History Lessons," Dissent, Spring 2004, remains the most powerful critique of Zinn's most popular work. Yet had I been at Spelman College from 1956 to 1963 or at Boston University from 1964 to 1988, Zinn and I would have been allies.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Premodern History Notes
Caleb Crain, "Terms of Infringement," The National, 21 January, reviews Adrian Johns's Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates.
Peter Schjeldahl, "Then and Now," New Yorker, 1 February, reviews "The Drawings of Bronzino," an exhibit at Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art. See also: Schjeldahl's "Man of Mannerism," a narrated slide show.
John Ferling, "Myths of the American Revolution," Smithsonian, January, takes on some common acceptances about the American Revolution.
Aaron Belz, "The Jerk," Books & Culture, January/February, reviews Robert Crawford's The Bard: Robert Burns, A Biography.
Sophia Lear, "Reader, I Made Him Up," The Book, 28 January, reviews Sheila Kohler's Becoming Jane Eyre.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Midweek Notes
You may recall that Simon Schama, "What objects say about our times," Financial Times, 22 January, previews among other things "A History of the World in 100 Objects," Neil MacGregor's new series on the history of material culture that runs throughout 2010 on BBC. Manan Ahmed reminds me that you can listen to the series on BBC's site.
Carnivalesque LVIII, an early modern edition of the festival is up at The Gentleman Administrator. It takes the form of "A Book of Blogge Cookrye" and calls for
1 pitcher of sex 2 pinches of violence 2 slabs of domestic debate 1 qrt. of the exotic 2 litres of Samuel Pepys & 1/2 pint of Shakespeare
Adam Kirsch, "Vanishing Act," Tablet, 26 January, reviews Yehuda Bauer's The Death of the Shtetl.
Samuel Brittan, "The Many Faces of Liberalism," Financial Times, 22 January, reviews Raymond Plant's The Neo-Liberal State, Simon Griffiths and Kevin Hickson, eds., British Party Politics and Ideology after New Labour, and Timothy Ferris's The Science of Liberty.
Dwight Garner, "North Korea Keeps Hiding, and Fascinating," NYT, 26 January, reviews Barbara Demick's Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, Ralph Hassig's and Kongdan Oh's The Hidden People of North Korea: Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom, and B. R. Myers's The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves — and Why It Matters.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
20th Century Notes
The University of Chicago Library's online exhibits feature historical subjects, including Darwin, Lincoln, and book, Jewish, and women's history. "Integrating the Life of the Mind: African Americans at the University of Chicago, 1870-1940" is a fascinating one.
Jonathan Yardley reviews Christopher Browning's Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp for the Washington Post, 24 January.
Janet Maslin, "Exclusive!!! Gossip Has a History!" NYT, 24 January, reviews Henry E. Scott's Shocking True Story: The Rise and Fall of Confidential, ‘America's Most Scandalous Scandal Magazine'.
You've probably seen the "HNN special: Liberals Respond to Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism". A conservative, Michael Ledeen, responds to the book here; and the convener of the liberals' criticism, David Neiwert, prompts more extensive discussion at Neiwert, "Historians vs. Jonah Goldberg," Huffington Post, 25 January.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Louis R. Harlan, 1922-2010
Louis R. Harlan died on Friday in Lexington, Virginia. His service in World War II was the subject of a memoir, All At Sea. Harlan did his undergraduate work at Emory, earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins, and taught for most of his career at the University of Maryland. A distinguished historian of the modern South, he won the Bancroft Prize twice, the Pulitzer Prize once, and the Albert J. Beveridge Award once for Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856–1901 and Booker T. Washington: the Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915. He also edited the multi-volume Washington Papers. Harlan was one of the few historians to have served as president of the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the Southern Historical Association. The fine baggage under his eyes and handlebar mustaches put my own to shame. I miss him already. Thanks to Ted DeLaney for the notice. See also: AHA Today, 25 January.
More Noted Things
Hilary Mantel, "Anne Boleyn, Queen for a Day," NYT, 22 January, reviews Alison Wier's The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn. You can read and hear Weir, "Arguing the Case for Anne Boleyn," NPR's All Things Considered, 24 January.
Stephen Mihm, "Capitalist Chameleon," NYT, 22 January, reviews Joyce Appleby's The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism.
Sidney Mintz, "Whitewashing Haiti's History," Boston Review, 22 January, looks at misreadings of Haiti's history.
Walter Isaacson, "Who Declares War?" NYT, 21 January, reviews John Yoo's Crisis and Command: The History of Executive Power From George Washington to George W. Bush and Garry Wills's Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State. Andrew Sullivan notes that Isaacson and Review editor Sam Tanenhaus acquiesce in the Times refusal to call waterboarding torture.
Sean Wilentz, "The Return of Ulysses," The Book, 25 January, reviews Joan Waugh's U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth.
Anne Applebaum, "Yesterday's Man?" NYRB, 11 February, reviews Michael Scammell's Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic. Damon Linker, "The Illiberal Imagination," The Book, 22 January, reviews Michael Kimmage's The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers, and the Lessons of Anti-Communism.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Carnivalesque LVIII, an early modern edition of the festival, is delayed. Carnival of Genealogy LXXXVIII is up at Creative Gene. Both History Carnival and Carnivalesque are in need of hosts. If you're interested, contact sharon*at*earlymodernweb*dot*org*dot*uk.
Amidst the death and destruction in Port-au-Prince, damage to Haiti's galleries and religious institutions appears to be massive, but damage to its cultural institutions seems more limited. Despite some structural damage, both the National Library and the National Archives buildings remain standing. Major collections in the National Museum, which was built underground across from the National Palace, appear to have survived.
Simon Schama, "What objects say about our times," Financial Times, 22 January, previews "A History of the World in 100 Objects," Neil MacGregor's new series on the history of material culture that runs throughout 2010 on BBC, "Seven Ages Of Britain," David Dimbleby's art history series for BBC One, Holger Hoock's Empires of the Imagination: Politics, War, and the Arts in the British World, 1750-1850, which "reads British imperial history through its self-imaging," and Celina Fox's The Arts of Industry in the Age of Enlightenment which "restores the connection between drawing and technology originally embedded in the very word ‘art' .... "
Past its ninth hour, our colleague, Scott McLemee chaired a meeting of the National Book Critics Circle yesterday to choose finalists for NBCC's 2009 awards.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Weak Endnotes
Our former colleague, Tom Palaima, reviews Page duBois's Out of Athens: The New Ancient Greeks for the THE, 21 January.
Holland Cotter, "A Line Both Spirited and Firm," NYT, 21 January, reviews "The Drawings of Bronzino," an exhibit at Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Given the State Department's reversal of its ban on Tariq Ramadan's travel to and in the United States, Paul Berman re-affirms his claim that Ramadan makes no significant contribution to debate. Berman first argued that at length in "Who's Afraid of Tariq Ramadan?" TNR, 4 June 2007. Both it and his current book project attack Ramadan and his intellectual supporters, Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash.
Charles Simic, "Witness to Horror," NYRB, 11 February, reviews Mark Danner's Stripping Bare the Body: Politics Violence War. Danner's "To Heal Haiti, Look to History, Not Nature," NYT, 21 January, turns his attention to the Caribbean republic.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Friday's Notes
In "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Three-Toed Sloth, 19 January, Cosma Shalizi contemplates why prints didn't "displace paintings the same way that printed books displaced manuscript codices?"
Edward Rothstein, "A Big Map That Shrank the World," NYT, 19 January, reviews an exhibition of the Matteo Ricci World Map at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
Jeremy Harding, "Pavements Like Jelly," LRB, 28 January, reviews Jeffrey Jackson's Paris Under Water: How the City of Light Survived the Great Flood of 1910 and "Paris Inondé 1910," an exhibit at the Galerie des Bibliothèques in Paris.
Michael Dirda reviews Michael Scammell's Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic for the Washington Post, 21 January.
Perry Anderson, "Sinomania," LRB, 28 January, reviews Martin Jacques's When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World, Yasheng Huang's Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State, Ching Kwan Lee's Against the Law: Labour Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Thursday's Notes
James Sharpe, "Satan Rules," TLS, 20 January, reviews P. G. Maxwell-Stuart's Satan: A Biography.
Tristram Hunt reviews Jonathan Clark, ed., A World by Itself: A History of the British Isles for the Guardian, 17 January.
Norma Clarke, "Loving cousins in the English bourgeoisie," TLS, 20 January, reviews Adam Kuper's Incest and Influence: The private life of bourgeois England.
David Kaufmann, "A Skeptic's Skeptic," The Tablet, 20 January, reviews David Mikics's Who Was Jacques Derrida? An Intellectual Biography.
Finally, thanks to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who has renewed Tariq Ramadan's freedom to travel to and in the United States.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
More Noted Things
Lauren Winner, "‘The Christianity of This Land'," Books & Culture, 14 January, reviews Emily Clark's Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines and the Development of a New World Society, 1727-1834, Ed Blum's Reforging The White Republic: Race, Religion, And American Nationalism, 1865-1898, and James B. Bennett's Religion and the Rise of Jim Crow in New Orleans.
Edward Glaeser, "Why Cities Matter," The Book, 19 January, reviews Dominic A. Pacyga's Chicago: A Biography.
Dwight Garner, "After Atom Bombs' Shock, the Real Horrors Began Unfolding," NYT, 19 January, reviews Charles Pellegrino's The Last Train from Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back.
Tony Judt, "Food," NYRBlog, 25 November, Judt, "Night," NYRB, 14 January; and Judt, "Kibbutz," NYRBlog, 18 January are the first three in a series of memoirs by the European historian.
Aaron Bady, "This, periodically, needs to be said: Go to hell, David Brooks," zunguzungu, 15 January, and Matt Taibbi, "Translating David Brooks," taibblog, 18 January, take on DB's "The Underlying Tragedy," NYT, 14 January.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Mostly Modern Notes
Daniel Mendelsohn, "But Enough About Me," New Yorker, 18 January, reviews Ben Yagoda's Memoir: A History.
In C. S. Manegold, "New England's scarlet ‘S' for slavery," Boston Globe, 18 January, the author of Ten Hills Farm: The Forgotten History of Slavery in the North recalls New England's history of slavery.
Sam Roberts, "Of Mutual Influence: The City and the 16th President," NYT, 15 January, reviews "Lincoln and New York," an exhibit at the New York Historical Society, and Harold Holzer, ed., Lincoln and New York.
Christopher Benfey, "The Hunger Artists," TNR, 18 January, reviews Gavin Jones's American Hungers: The Problem of Poverty In U.S. Literature, 1840-1945, Morris Dickstein's Dancing In the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression, and Linda Gordon's Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits.
Blake Morrison reviews Antonia Frasier's Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter for the Guardian, 16 January.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Michael S. Roth for the LA Times, 10 January, and Gideon Lewis-Kraus, "The Opening of the Academic Mind," Slate, 17 January, review Louis Menand's The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University. Hat tip.
Rafael Behr, "Shlomo Sand: an enemy of the Jewish people?" Guardian, 17 January, interviews the author of The Invention of the Jewish People.
Michael Kenney, "These American lives in occupied Paris," Boston Globe, 13 January, reviews Charles Glass's Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation.
Kevin O'Kelly, "García Márquez life misses the man," Boston Globe, 15 January, reviews Ilan Stavans's Gabriel García Márquez: The Early Years.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Modern History Notes
David Silbey renews the Military History Carnival at The Edge of the American West, 17 January.
Edmund White, "Only Reflect," NYT, 14 January, reviews Frank Kermode's Concerning E. M. Forster.
Matthew Dallek reviews David E. Hoffman's The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of The Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy for the Washington Post, 17 January.
Jonathan Yardley reviews Paul Ingrassia's Crash Course: The American Automobile Industry's Road from Glory to Disaster for the Washington Post, 17 January.
Tom Bissell, "The Bunny Revolution," The Book, 14 January, and Tara McKelvey, "Nonfiction Chronicle," NYT, 14 January, review Elizabeth Fraterrigo's Playboy and the Making of the Good Life in Modern America.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Weak Endnotes
"What We're Reading: 124th Annual Meeting Edition," AHA Today, 13 January, is a massive roundup of coverage of the AHA convention in San Diego.
Michael Dirda reviews Umberto Eco's The Infinity of Lists for the Washington Post, 14 January.
Scott McLemee, "History is the Devil's Scripture," Crooked Timber, 15 January, launches from Pat Robertson to C.L.R. James's The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution.
The new Common-Place, X, 2 (January, 2010), is up! It's an ante-bellum American feast.
Miles Corwin, "The Hack," CJR, January/February, sketches the early career of Gabriel García Márquez in journalism.
Isaac Chotiner, "Venerations," The Book, 15 January, reviews Paul Johnson's Churchill.
Friday, January 15, 2010
More Noted Things
The Giant's Shoulders #19, the history of science carnival, is up at The Renaissance Mathematicus. Indian History Carnival #25 is up at varnam.
Caleb Crain, "Semantic Time Travel," NYT, 8 January, is an essay on the new Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Amanda Vickery, "Love and marriage, English-style," TLS, 13 January, reviews Maureen Waller's The English Marriage: Tales of love, money and adultery.
James Stevens Curl reviews Joscelyn Godwin's Athanasius Kircher's Theatre of the World for THE, 7 January.
Eve Ottenberg, "A History of Slander," In These Times, 11 January, reviews Robert Darnton's The Devil in the Holy Water, or the Art of Slander from Louis XIV to Napoleon.
Josh Nathan-Kazis, "A Death in the Family," Tablet, 13 January, tells the story of a murder/scandal that destroyed New York's Sephardic elite.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Early Modern Notes
Daniel Golden, "For-Profit Colleges Target the Military," Business Week, 30 December, argues that for-profit institutions are exploiting Americans in uniform and American tax payers.
David Reiff, "The End of Hunger?" TNR, 2 January, reviews Cormac Ó Gráda's Famine: A Short History.
David A. Bell, "Visions," TNR, 11 January, reviews Larissa Juliet Taylor's The Virgin Warrior: The Life and Death of Joan of Arc.
Adam Kirsch, "The Other Secret Jews," Tablet, 12 January, reviews Marc David Baer's The Dönme: Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries, and Secular Turks.
Brett Zongker, "1602 Map Unveiled, Shows China At Center Of World," AP, 12 January, announces the Library of Congress's public display of Matteo Ricci's map of the world. See also: Mark Iype, "Rare Chinese-language map goes on display in Washington," Canada.com, 12 January.
Alan Jacobs, "Man of Sorrows," Books & Culture, January/February, is a fresh reading of Samuel Johnson.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Chart Wars: Data Visualization
Monday, January 11, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Kenneth J. Cooper, "The Lost Script," Boston Globe, 10 January, is about Ajami, a script whose recovery may be a key to understanding much of Africa's pre-modern history. Our colleague, Jonathan Reynolds, finds the article "a bit hyperbolic in the lack of use of or attention to Ajami. I studied Hausa in Ajami at BU in the early 1990's... using contemporary Hausa books and newspapers that were printed in the script."
Megan Marshall, "Return of the King," NYT, 8 January, reviews Jenny Uglow's A Gambling Man: Charles II's Restoration Game.
Hillel Halkin, "Indecent Proposal," TNR, 9 January, reviews Shlomo Sand's The Invention of the Jewish People, trans. by Yael Lotan.
"Intellectuals and Their America," Dissent, Winter, is a symposium, featuring contributions by E. J. Dionne, Jr., Alice Kessler-Harris, Jackson Lears, Martha Nussbaum, Katha Pollitt, Michael Tomasky, Katrina vanden Heuvel, and Leon Wieseltier.
Adam Liptak, "More Perfect," NYT, 8 January, reviews Seth Lipsky's The Citizen's Constitution: An Annotated Guide and Jack N. Rakove, ed., The Annotated U. S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Cliopatria Awards, 2009
In conjunction with the AHA annual meeting in San Diego, here are the fifth annual Cliopatria Awards for History Blogging. Thanks to the judges this year, who made the difficult decisions necessary to pick the best work from strong fields: Manan Ahmed, Another Damned Medievalist, Miriam Burstein, Paul Harvey, Chris Jones, Rob MacDougall, David Silbey, Randall Stephens, and Jeremy Young. They have done a fine job. It's the year of the female history blogger, with women having won at least 4½ of the 6 awards. It's also the first year in which one blog won two awards. Here are the winners and brief explanations of the judges' rationale for their decisions:
Best Group Blog: Curious Expeditions
If you're not jealous of their travels, you need your head examined: Dylan Thuras and Michelle Enemark scour the world in search of history in its raw essentials--with a special taste for the wondrous, macabre, or obscure. Their analysis is smart, their enthusiasm is infectious, and their (plentiful) images are beautiful and haunting. "I found myself waiting breathlessly for the next twist and turn in several different museums, just as if I were there," one judge reported, "and their non-museum-related posts are equally spectacular."
Best Individual Blog: Georgian London
It's a really nice blog that balances popular history and some decent research. The posts are uniformly good, and the blogger, Lucy Inglis, uses images that enhance and frame the posts.
Best New Blog: Georgian London
From London's 18th century rookeries, to being a dwarf in 18th century England, to Jeremy Bentham and the birth of a surveillance society, to what it was like to have gout, to bizarre birth stories from Gentleman's Magazine, Georgian London informs, instructs, and entertains us on ordinary life in 18th century London, emphasizing especially the artisan and immigrant populations of the city. This is fascinating social history presented in blog form, and is a terrific younger entrant into the burgeoning history blog scene.
Best Post: Rachel Leow's "Curating the Oceans: The Future of Singapore's Past," A Historian's Craft, 14 July 2009.
"Curating the Oceans" is just a great post. It demonstrates what a really good history blog post can do. Rachel uses images well, and presents a coherent essay on a historical topic we might not otherwise hear much about. It's also a very nice example of good history aimed at a popular audience.
Best Series of Posts: Heather Cox Richardson's "Richardson's Rules of Order," The Historical Society Blog, 20 March 2009 - .
"Please remember that your professors are human and it's hard work to stand in front of a hundred pairs of eyes and talk for an hour," Heather Cox Richardson of U. Mass Amherst writes in a series of 9 (and counting) posts that collectively provide an instructive, gentle, and eminently useful guide for college students in history classes. In an age of changing rules and often a challenging lack of civility, Richardson provides both useful information and a practical etiquette manual which could help improve the classroom environment everywhere. This series of posts will soon be finding its way onto syllabi in history courses across the country.
Best Writer: The Headsman, at Executed Today.
Given its format--the story behind a different historical execution, every day -- Executed Today could by rights be monotonous and depressing. It is testament to "The Headsman's" skills as a writer and storyteller that his blog is nothing of the sort. An engaging and astonishingly prolific blogger, The Headsman writes witty and accessible prose, jumps from continent to continent and century to century with ease, and despite two years of daily blogging he is still finding new things to do with his premise.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Friday's Notes
You are most likely to find reports on San Diego's American Historical Association convention at: AHA Today, CHE, The Edge of the American West, Historiann, History News Network, IHE, Notes from the Field, Nothing Recedes Like Success, Religion and American History and THS Blog.
Evan R. Goldstein, "The Trials of Tony Judt," CHE, 6 January, is a rich interview with the European historian afflicted with Lou Gehrig's Disease.
Christopher McDougall reviews Thor Gotaas's Running: A Global History for the Guardian, 3 January.
James McConnachie reviews Thomas Asbridge's The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land for the Sunday Times, 3 January.
Martti Pärssinen, Denise Schaan and Alceu Ranzi, "Pre-Columbian geometric earthworks in the upper Purús: a complex society in western Amazonia," Antiquity, December, and David Grann, "Under the Jungle," New Yorker, 7 January, discuss an extra-ordinary archaeological find in the Amazon valley.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
More Noted Things
At the AHA convention in San Diego, a group of twittering historians ("twitterstorians"!) will gather at Dussini on Friday at 7:00 p.m. pdt. There, Katrina Gulliver will announce the winners of the Cliopatria Awards, 2009. They'll be announced online here at Cliopatria shortly thereafter.
The argument in Rob Townsend's "A Grim Year on the Academic Job Market for Historians," Perspectives, January, that the labor crisis in academic history is caused by an oversupply of newly minted doctors is challenged in Marc Bousquet, "At the AHA: Huh?" Brainstorm, 6 January.
Adam Kirsch, "Enlightenment, Yes!" Tablet, 5 January, reviews Zeev Sternhell's The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition.
Wendy Doniger, "India's Sacred Extremes," TLS, 6 January, reviews William Dalrymple's Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
History's Louella Parsons, C. Vann Winchell, is predicting a "San Diego Tsunami" for the AHA convention later this week. That may be why none of my colleagues at Cliopatria will be there. I've asked Katrina Gulliver to announce the winners of the Cliopatria Awards at the San Diego gathering of twittering historians on Friday evening. The list of winners will appear simultaneously online here at Cliopatria.
Randall J. Stephens, "Teaching the Writing of History Roundtable in January Issue of Historically Speaking," THS Blog, 4 January, offers a foretaste of a roundtable on "How to Teach the Writing of History," Historically Speaking, January 2009. It features contributions by Stephen Pyne, Michael Kammen, Jill Lepore, and John Demos.
Namit Arora, "Early Islam," 3 Quarks Daily, 14 September - 4 January:
Part 1: The Rise of Islam / Part 2: The Golden Age of Islam
Part 3: The Path of Reason / Part 4: The Mystic Tide
Part 5: Epilogue
At "Free Thinkers," Tablet, 4 January, Sara Ivry interviews Michael Goldfarb, the author of Emancipation: How Liberating Europe's Jews from the Ghetto Led to Revolution and Renaissance.
Errol Morris, winner of the Cliopatria Award for Best Series of Posts in 2007, has a new two-part series on photography and war, "It Was All Started by a Mouse," Part 1 and Part 2, Opinionator, 3-4 January.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Modern History Notes
History Carnival LXXXIII is up at Westminster Wisdom. Ebenezer Scrooge is your host.
Robert B. Townsend, "Troubling News on Job Market for History PhDs," AHA Today, 4 January, and Scott Jaschik, "No Entry," IHE, 4 January, feature the deteriorating academic job market in history.
Joan Anderman, "Finding out about Founders," Boston Globe, 2 January, is an interview with Joel Richard Paul, the author of Unlikely Allies: How a Merchant, a Playwright, and a Spy Saved the American Revolution.
John Ferling, "Myths of the American Revolution," Smithsonian, January, considers seven popular myths.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Sunday's Notes
Frank Kermode, "In the Beginning," NYT, 31 December, reviews David Rosenberg's A Literary Bible: An Original Translation.
Arthur C. Danto, "Pleasure, Light, Glory," NYT, 31 December, reviews Roberto Calasso's Tiepolo Pink, trans. by Alastair McEwen.
Michael A. Fletcher reviews D'Army Bailey's The Education of a Black Radical: A Southern Civil Rights Activist's Journey, 1959-1964 for the Washington Post, 3 January.
Gaby Wood, "A walk on the wild side in 70s New York," Guardian, 3 January, reviews Edmund White's City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and 1970s.
Jeffrey Rosen, "A Man of Influence," NYT, 31 December, reviews Joan Biskupic's American Original: The Life and Constitution of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Weak Endnotes
C. Vann Winchell, "Baltimore Shocker! ‘Strangely, Awfully Interesting.' Johns Hopkins Embarrasses Early Modernists in Mass Mailing Gaffe," Nothing Recedes Like Success, 1 January.
Simon Schama, "The Joy of Excess," Financial Times, 23 December, reviews Umberto Eco's The Infinity of Lists: From Homer to James Joyce.
Leo Robson reviews Greil Marcus's and Werner Sollors's A New Literary History of America for the New Statesman, 30 December.
Susie Linfield reviews Daniel J. Goldhagen's Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, And the Ongoing Assault on Humanity and Mark Danner's Stripping Bare the Body: Politics Violence War for the Washington Post, 3 January.
James Mann reviews Paul Johnson's Churchill for the Washington Post, 3 January.
Richard Greenwald, "Our Coffee, Ourselves," In These Times, 29 December, reviews Bryant Simon's Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
More Noted Things
Charlie Savage, "Obama Curbs Secrecy of Classified Documents," NYT, 30 December, features President Obama's executive order opening federal archives to research. All historians must appreciate his declaration that "no information may remain classified indefinitely."
"Religion and the historical profession," The Immanent Frame, 30 December, is a symposium of responses to news of religion's resurgence as a field of historical study. Contributors include: Jon Butler, David Hollinger, John Schmalzbauer, Jonathan Sheehan, and Grant Wacker. Hat tip.
Sarah Kaufman, "Rumors abound that new Leonardo da Vinci painting has been found in Boston," Washington Post, 31 December, reports that those who know won't say and those who say don't know.
Esther Shore, "L.L. Zamenhof and the Shadow People," TNR, 30 December, looks at the origins of Esperanto.
James Dao, "Army History Finds Early Missteps in Afghanistan," NYT, 30 December, looks at the unpublished work of a team of seven historians covering the first four years of the United States' experience in Afghanistan.
Finally, Yale's Economics Department announces that UCLA's Naomi Lamoreaux will move to New Haven in the fall of 2010 to take appointments in Yale's economics and history departments.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
History Carnivals in 2010
So, there's remarkable vitality in history blog carnivals at the end of 2009. Biblical Studies Carnival has become so robust that its sponsors are having to rethink how it can best cover all the work it represents. Some of the history carnivals – Art History, Bad History, and Asian History – have become inert, but so had Military History. Fallow for a year, it springs to life again in collaboration with H-War. So, too, Bad History might work out a cooperative relationship with History and Policy. Art History and Asian History need only look around for likely allies and additional energy on the net.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Modern History Notes
Tony Judt, "Night," NYRB, 14 January, is the first in a series of meditations composed as the European historian copes with ALS ("Lou Gehrig's disease"). He is now paralyzed from the neck down.
Patrick Healy, "Falling, Falling, Falling for the Footlight Parade," NYT, 28 December, reviews Ben Hodges, ed., The Play That Changed My Life: America's Foremost Playwrights on the Plays That Influenced Them.
Anthony Lane, "Hollywood Royalty," New Yorker, 4 January, reviews "Gli Anni di Grace Kelly, Principessa di Monaco," an exhibit at Rome's Fondazione Memmo, and Donald Spoto's High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly.
George Brock, "A reporter reflects," TLS, 22 December, reviews Timothy Garton Ash's Facts Are Subversive: Political writing from a decade without a name.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Laura Italiano, "Embezzler-busting NYU whiz kid," NY Post, 26 December, has the story of an NYU history major, Michael Peaden. He blew the whistle on the chemistry department's manager for embezzling over $400,000 from the University. Peaden's had no word of thanks yet from NYU officials. Someone -- Thomas Bender, Hasia Diner, Michael Gomez, Linda Gordon, David Levering Lewis, Daniel Walkowitz, Barbara Weinstein, Marilyn Young, Jonathan Zimmerman – someone ought to take the young man out to lunch or something. He's one of ours and he ought to know that we're proud of him.
Yale University attorneys argue that a suit demanding the return of a Vincent Van Gogh painting it has held for 50 years could undo American museums' ownership claims to art and artifacts worth billions of dollars.
You can tour the ruins of ancient Pompeii on Google Maps. There's no better guide through them than Mary Beard's Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town.
Tim Martin, "For want of a better word," The National, 19 December, reviews The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Sunday's Notes
Leigh van der Stoep, "Witi's publisher in fresh plagiarism dispute," Wellington, New Zealand's Sunday Star Times, 27 December, headlines charges that New Zealand historian Danny Keenan's recent book on the Moari land wars plagiarized material from an earlier book by New Zealand historian Nigel Prickett. Hat tip.
S. Frederick Starr, "Rediscovering Central Asia," Wilson Quarterly, Summer, takes us back to a time when central Asia was the heart of civilization.
Danny Hakim, "His Specialty? Old New York, in Vivid Dutch," NYT, 26 December, features the work of Charles Gehring in translating New York's Dutch colonial records.
Kevin Levin's "Best of 2009," Civil War Memory, 25 December, hands out his blog and book awards for the year. CWM's choice of "best history blog" of the year? Jim Cullen's American History Now.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Tracy Lee Simmons reviews Donald Kagan's Thucydides: The Reinvention of History for the Washington Post, 23 December.
Matthew Price, "The making of the modern state," The National, 24 December, reviews Steve Pincus's 1688: The First Modern Revolution.
Ronan McDonald reviews Frank Kermode's Concerning E. M. Forster and his Bury Place Papers for the Guardian, 20 December.
Stefan Kanfer, "All That Jazz," City Journal, 22 December, reviews Terry Teachout's Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong.
Carlos Lozada reviews Jennifer Burns's The Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right and Anne C. Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made for the Washington Post, 23 December.
Friday, December 25, 2009
Photograph of Jesus
This brief film was a winning entry in a competition to use images from Getty's Hulton Archive to illustrate the range of its offerings. Even such a rich archive gets many requests that it's unlikely to be able to fill:
Hat tip.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Modern History Notes
Greg Lukianoff, "College Students Can't Say 'Sissies' Anymore? Yale Goes for Old-Timey Censorship Against F. Scott Fitzgerald Quote," HuffPo, 21 December, protests censorship at Yale.
Mark Noll, "Jefferson's America," Books & Culture, January, reviews Gordon Wood's Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815.
Ron Charles reviews Sheila Kohler's Becoming Jane Eyre for the Washington Post, 23 December.
Stephen Shapin, "The Darwin Show," LRB, 7 January, is an essay looking back on the conference, exhibition, and literary production occasioned by the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of the Species.
David Yaffe, "Misterioso," Nation, 22 December, reviews Robin D. G. Kelley's Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
More Noted Things
A. C. Grayling reviews Paul Murdin's Secrets of the Universe: How We Discovered the Cosmos for the Barnes & Noble Review, 17 December.
Steven Levingston reviews Geoffrey Chaucer's ‘The Canterbury Tales: A Retelling' by Peter Ackroyd for the Washington Post, 20 December.
Brooke Allen, "Not only connected," New Criterion, December, reviews Frank Kermode's Concerning E. M. Forster. Hat tip.
Simon Winchester, "A Photo of a Smell and Other Scoops," NYT, 21 December, reviews Harold Evans's My Paper Chase: True Stories of Vanished Times.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Stuart Taylor, Jr., "The Rot At Duke -- And Beyond," National Journal, 19 December, claims that Duke's faculty learned nothing from the scandal of 2006 and 2007.
Robert B. Townsend, "A New Found Religion? The Field Surges among AHA Members," Perspectives, December, and Scott Jaschik, "Religious Revival," IHE, 21 December, examine the surge of academic interest in the history of religion.
In Tony Perrottet's "Gentlemen, Charge Your Indecent Props," Slate, 18 December, the author of Napoleon's Privates: 2,500 Years of History Unzipped, visits some uncommon relics at the Museum of the University of St. Andrews.
Justin Moyer reviews Thomas Fleming's The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers for the Washington Post, 20 December.
Claude R. Marx, "The man behind the Roosevelts," Boston Globe, 19 December, reviews Julie M. Fenster's FDR's Shadow: Louis Howe, the Force that Shaped Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Hat tip.
Johann Hari, "The Casanova of Causes," Slate, 20 December, reviews Michael Scammell's Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Sunday's Notes
Ambrose Hofstadter Bierce, III, the Broad-Gauge Gossip, sends seasonal "Greetings, Friends!"
Andrea Wulf, "Bed, Bath and Beyond," NYT, 16 December, reviews Amanda Vickery's Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England.
Adam Thirwell, "The Animator," TNR, 19 December, reviews Michael Slater's Charles Dickens.
Alex von Tunzelman, "After the War, Before the War," NYT, 16 December, reviews Richard Overy's The Twilight Years: The Paradox of Britain Between the Wars.
Jeanette Winterson, "Patricia Highsmith, Hiding in Plain Sight," NYT, 16 December, reviews Joan Schenkar's The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Carnivalesque LVII, an ancient/medieval edition of the festival, is up at Judith Weingarten's Zenobia: Empress of the East. Weingarten's "Just the potion to needle a republic," THE, 17 December, reviews Adrienne Mayor's The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy.
David Farley, "The Family Jewels," Smart Set, 19 December, identifies the top ten unlikely Christian relics, up to and including Mary's breast milk and Jesus's foreskin.
Michael Dirda, "Mystic Terror Revisited," WSJ, 19 December, reviews Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time.
Philip Hensher reviews Frank Kermode's Concerning E. M. Forster for the Telegraph, 12 December.
Carolyn See reviews Ted Gioia's The Birth and Death of the Cool for the Washington Post, 18 December; and Louis Bayard reviews Terry Teachout's Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong for the Washington Post, 20 December.
Friday, December 18, 2009
British Notes & Randy Thoughts
Peter Linehan, "800 years on the Cam," TLS, 16 December, reviews Mary Beard's It's a Don's Life, G. R. Evans's The University of Cambridge: A new history, Alan Macfarlane's Reflections on Cambridge, and Peter Pagnamenta, ed., The University of Cambridge: An 800th anniversary portrait.
Janet Maslin, "Once More, Revisiting Anne Boleyn Yet Again," NYT, 16 December, reviews Alison Weir's The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn.
Stella Tillyard, "Georgian London," TLS, 9 December, reviews Dan Cruickshank's The Secret History of Georgian London, Rachel Stewart's The Townhouse in Georgian London, and Amanda Vickery's Behind Closed Doors: At home in Georgian England. Tillyard really ought to have tipped her reviewer's cap to Lucy Inglis's splendid blog, Georgian London.
Henry Power, "Samuel Johnson restored to his proper size and place," TLS, 16 December, reviews Sir John Hawkins's The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D., edited by O. M. Brack, Jr., and David Nokes's Samuel Johnson: A Life.
Ruth Guilding, "John Piper and Myfanwy Piper: art in an organic Utopia," TLS, 16 December, reviews Frances Spalding's John Piper and Myfanwy Piper: Lives in Art.
Scott McLemee, "And the Rand played on," The National, 17 December, reviews Jennifer Burns's Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right and Anne C. Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Thursday's Notes
The Giant's Shoulders #18, the history of science carnival, is up at Jost A Mon.
Jamie James reviews Christopher Betts's translation of Charles Perrault's The Complete Fairy Tales (first published in French in 1697) for the LA Times, 13 December.
Louis Menand, "Road Warrior," New Yorker, 21 December, reviews Michael Scammell's Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic. I heard Koestler lecture at Duke in the early 1960s. He was there to visit J. B. Rhine's laboratory in extra-sensory perception and denounced his audience for knowing nothing about it. He seemed to have no interest in the civil rights movement, about which some of us could have told him a great deal.
Jackson Lears, "Hard Times Revisited," TAP, 10 December, reviews Morris Dickstein's Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression and Linda Gordon's Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Midweek Notes
Indian History Carnival #24 is up at varnam. The Giant's Shoulders #18, the history of science carnival, should be up later today at Jost A Mon.
Jamillah Knowles, "Time machines," BBC Radio 5 Live's Pods and Blogs, 15 December, links to its podcast about history blogging and bloggers. It includes my interview about Cliopatria and the Cliopatria Awards. Knowles also interviews Mike Duncan of The History of Rome, Rob Baker of Another Nickel in the Machine on 20th century London, and Trish Lewis of St. Vincent Memories on an old town in Minnesota's far northwest. Ms. Lewis also blogs at, ... ah ... , Victorian Sex Machines.
Adam Kirsch, "Dark Humor," Tablet, 15 December, reviews Adam Biro's Is It Good for the Jews?.
Justin Elliott, "The John Hope Franklin File: FBI Looked At Esteemed Historian For Communist Ties," TPM, 15 December, reports findings from Dr. Franklin's FBI file. Elliott posts selected documents from it here.
Dwight Garner, "Chinua Achebe's Encounters With Many Hearts of Darkness," NYT, 15 December, reviews Achebe's The Education of a British-Protected Child.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Modern History Notes
By consulting different lists, Jennifer Howard, "A Few University-Press Books Hit Mainstream 'Best Of' Lists," CHE, 14 December, gets slightly different results than Mary Dudziak's. Add Gordon S. Woods's Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 and Martha Dow Fehsenfeld, Lois More Overbeck, Dan Gunn, and George Craig, eds., The Letters of Samuel Beckett, Vol. 1, 1929-1940 to the short list of books that made it to more than one list of the Best.
David W. Blight, "America's Armageddon Revisited," Slate, 14 December, reviews John Keegan's The American Civil War: A Military History. Blight suggests a different perspective on Ari Kelman's observation that "the normally genial James McPherson" had "savaged" Keegan's book. "Some [of Keegan's] chapters cite no sources at all," says Blight, "and many rely heavily on James McPherson's modern narrative history, Battle Cry of Freedom."
Josh Lambert, "Who owns Holocaust history?" Tablet, 14 December, comes up with some surprising answers.
Ronald Hutton, "The saintly Dennis Wheatley," TLS, 9 December, reviews Phil Baker's The Devil is a Gentleman: The life and times of Dennis Wheatley.
Finally, congratulations to Cliopatria's friend, Michael Bérubé, who has been elected president of the Modern Language Association.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Mary L. Dudziak, "2009 Best Book Lists (and a worst book list)," Legal History, 13 December, rounds up lists of the Best and the Worst. Liaquat Ahamed's Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, and Mary Karr's LIT: A Memoir appear to be the only books on more than one list of the Best.
Luke Slattery, "Doing battle for Troy over Homer's ghosts," The Australian, 2 December, reviews Caroline Alexander's The War that Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Illiad and the Trojan War. Hat tip.
Drake Bennett, "The mystery of Zomia," Boston Globe, 6 December, reviews James C. Scott's The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia.
Ben Terris, "Scholars Nostalgic for the Old South Study the Virtues of Secession, Quietly," CHE, 6 December, looks at the Abbeville Institute's contemporary academic secessionists.
Farewell to Paul Samuelson, author of Economics: An Introductory Analysis and the first American Nobel laureate in economics.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Sunday's Notes
Andreas Hess reviews Robert Darnton's The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future for THE, 10 December.
Alex Danchev reviews David Cast's The Delight of Art: Giorgio Vasari and the Traditions of Humanist Discourse for THE, 10 December.
Virginia DeJohn Anderson, "Abigail Adams, Founding Mother," NYT, 10 December, reviews Woody Holton's Abigail Adams.
James Lovegrove, "I see a darkness," Financial Times, 11 December, reviews Peter Straub, ed., American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny, 2 vols., Patrick O'Leary's The Black Heart, and Stephen King's Just After Sunset. See also: Ed Park's "'Another conversation bleeds into yours'," LA Times, 29 November. Hat tip.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Since the demise of the Carnival of Bad History, the historians at History & Policy have taken up the challenge as a regular feature. See: Matthew Reisz, "Past Mistakes," THES, 15 October.
Paul Laity, "Jenny Uglow," Guardian, 12 December, is an interview with the recent biographer of Charles II.
Carolyn See, "Oddball twists of the Revolution," Washington Post, 11 December, reviews Joel Richard Paul's Unlikely Allies: How a Merchant, a Playwright, and a Spy Saved the American Revolution.
Ron Hanson, "Short stories, shorter life," Washington Post, 13 December, reviews Carol Sklenicka's Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life and William L. Stull and Maureen P. Carroll, eds., Carver: Collected Stories.
Farewell to Yosef H. Yerushalmi, a distinguished scholar of Jewish history, who taught at Rutgers, Harvard, and Columbia. See: Marissa Brostoff, "History and Memory," Tablet, 10 December.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Charles Babbage's "Difference Engine"
Laura Sydell, "A 19th-Century Mathematician Finally Proves Himself," NPR's "Morning Edition," 10 December, reviews the story of Charles Babbage's 'Difference Engine.' It was conceived in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and built in the late 20th century.
The Difference Engine was an automatic, mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions. Both logarithmic and trigonometric functions can be approximated by polynomials, so a difference engine can compute many useful sets of numbers.
Here, its modern builder explains how the Difference Engine works.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Modern History Notes
Dwight Garner, "Communism's Path: A Once-Vigorous Idea That Has Lost Its Muscle," NYT, 8 December, reviews David Priestland's The Red Flag: A History of Communism.
Adam Kirsch, "Partisan Poet," Tablet, 8 December, reviews Dina Porat's The Fall of a Sparrow: The Life and Times of Abba Kovner.
David Runciman, "I Could Fix That," LRB, 17 December, reviews Taylor Branch's The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History in the White House.
Kevin Mattson, "In Dubious Battle," bookforum, December/ January, reviews Michael Bérubé's The Left at War.
Finally, farewell to Shearer Davis Bowman. The author of Masters and Lords : Mid-19th-Century U.S. Planters and Prussian Junkers and At the Precipice: Americans North and South during the Secession Crisis, Professor Bowman taught at Hampden-Sydney, the University of Texas, the University of Kentucky, and Berea College.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Maybe It's Just Me ...
Yesterday, members of the Organization of American Historians received an e-mail from its president, Elaine Tyler May, announcing the choice of a new executive director for the OAH.
After an extensive process that resulted in 54 applications, Katherine (Kathy) Finley has been selected by the OAH Executive Board ...
Kathy holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in history, and has served history museums and associations. In addition to her passion for history, she is also a trained and seasoned nonprofit executive whose experience and talents will help us achieve the ambitious goals of the recently adopted Strategic Plan ...
Kathy will be coming to us from her current position of Executive Director of the Real Estate Investment Securities Association and the TICA Foundation in Indianapolis. Previous experiences have been as Director of the American College of Sports Medicine Foundation and senior executive team leader for Advancement, Education and Meetings for the American College of Sports Medicine; Executive Director of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) and Associate Faculty in Philanthropic Studies at IUPUI; and Executive Director of Roller Skating Association International and the Roller Skating Foundation.
Maybe it's just me, but one of my colleagues at Cliopatria thought this announcement sufficiently odd to call it to my attention.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
The Nonfiction list in "The 10 Best Books of 2009," NYT, 13 December, includes Liaquat Ahamed's Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, David Finkel's The Good Soldiers, Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, Mary Karr's LIT: A Memoir, and Carol Sklenicka's Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life.
Caroline Weber, "Paris," NYT, 3 December, reviews Georges Duby and Guy Lobrichon, eds., History of Paris in Painting.
Megan Marshall, "Hey, Mr. Postman," Slate, 7 December, reviews Thomas Mallon's Yours Ever: People and Their Letters.
Crystal Downing and Reid Perkins-Buzo, "Silent Divas," Books & Culture, November/December, reviews Angela Dalle Vacche's Diva: Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema.
Kathryn Harrison, "The Symbologist," NYT, 3 December, reviews Carl G. Jung's The Red Book: Liber Novus.
David Lodge, "Shored Against His Ruins," Literary Review, December/January, reviews Vladimir Nabokov's The Original of Laura: A Novel in Fragments.
Barry Gewen, "That Old Black Magic," NYT, 3 December, reviews Robert Kimball, Barry Day, Miles Kreuger and Eric Davis, eds., The Complete Lyrics of Johnny Mercer.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Happy Anniversary!
Like an absent-minded professor, Cliopatria forgot to mention her 6th anniversary last Thursday. To over 950,000 readers from about 180 countries, thanks for coming by to read and discuss. To over 1500 other history blogs and bloggers, thanks for creating the history blogosphere's increasingly rich diversity. To my colleagues at Cliopatria, both past and present, thanks for your many contributions. Here's to many more!
P. S. If, like me, you've been missing his juiciness, Ambrose Hofstadter Bierce, III, at The Broad-Gauge Gossip, be sure to check out the new pretender to the history gossip throne: C. Vann Winchell at Nothing Recedes Like Success. In his (or her?) initial venture, CVW nominates likely high profile refugees from the UC-system's financial debacle.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Sunday's Notes
Tim Rutten reviews Mark Lamster's Master of Shadows: The Secret Diplomatic Career of the Painter Peter Paul Rubens for the LA Times, 2 December.
John Barnard, "Who killed John Keats?" TLS, 2 December, poses a new theory about the poet's death.
Mary Tompkins Lewis, "His Art, His Words," WSJ, 3 December, reviews Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten and Nienke Bakker, eds., Vincent van Gogh—The Letters, 6 volumes; the online edition, Vincent van Gogh, The Letters; and "Van Gogh's Letters," an exhibit at Amsterdam's van Gogh Museum.
Jay Parini reviews The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy, trans. by Cathy Porter, for the Guardian, 5 December.
Peter Scoblic, "Missile Man," New Republic, 5 December, reviews Neil Sheehan's A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon.
Nicholas Lemann, "The Power and the Glory," New Yorker, 7 December, reviews Harold Evans's My Paper Chase: True Stories of Vanished Times.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Weak Endnotes
From the blogs:
From the news and reviews:
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Additionally Noted
Michael Dirda, "His reign: Far from plain," Washington Post, 3 December, reviews Jenny Uglow's A Gambling Man: Charles II's Restoration Game.
Jill Lepore, "Preëxisting Condition," New Yorker, 7 December, looks at 20th century American health care reform. Here, she responds to readers' questions about it.
Jody Rosen, "Vanishing Act," Slate, 1 December, rediscovers Eva Tanguay, America's first "rock star" and the model for Sunset Boulevard's Nora Desmond. Here she sings her theme song, "I Don't Care".
Ian Buruma, "Occupied Paris: The Sweet and the Cruel," NYRB, 17 December, reviews Claude Arnaud's Jean Cocteau, Jean Baronnet's Les Parisiens sous l'Occupation: Photographies en couleurs d'André Zucca, David Bellos, trans., The Journal of Hélène Berr, Patrick Buisson's 1940–1945 Années érotiques: De la Grande Prostituée à la revanche des mâles, Olivier Corpet's and Claire Paulhan's Collaboration and Resistance: French Literary Life Under the Nazi Occupation, Agnès Humbert's Résistance: Memoirs of Occupied France, trans. by Barbara Mellor, and Philippe Jullian's Occupied Paris: The Sweet and the Cruel.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
MidWeek Notes
History Carnival LXXXII is up at The Lay Scientist.
David W. Blight, "‘He Knew How to Die': John Brown on the Gallows, December 2, 1859," HNN, 30 November, Tony Horwitz, "The 9/11 of 1859," NYT, 1 December, and David S. Reynolds, "Freedom's Martyr," NYT, 1 December, mark the 150th anniversary of the hanging of John Brown. Here and elsewhere, Reynolds argues for pardoning the old man.
In "Decline of the West," IHE, 2 December, our colleague, Scott McLemee, takes a hard look at the intellectual decay of Princeton's Cornel West.
In "Making Sense of Senseless Violence at Berkeley," CHE, 1 December, our colleague, Aaron Bady, writes of students who make him proud to occupy a classroom.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
More Noted Things
John Noble Wilford, "A Lost European Culture, Pulled From Obscurity," NYT, 30 November, reviews "The Lost World of Old Europe: The Danube Valley, 5000-3500 BC," an exhibit at NYU's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World in Manhattan.
Toby Lester, "Armchair Travelers," American Scholar, Autumn, is an essay about Petrarch and Boccaccio from Lester's book, The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America its Name.
Ned Crabb, "Risky Business," WSJ, 26 November, reviews Jenny Uglow's A Gambling Man: Charles II's Restoration Game.
Edward Rothstein, "For Poe, This Has Been the Year to Die For," NYT, 30 November, reviews The Poe Museum and "Poe: Man, Myth, or Monster," an exhibit at the Library of Virginia in Richmond.
Tim Burke, "Anatomy of a Search," Easily Distracted, 30 November, is a fascinating search for the family connection to Cretan nationalism and the Greco-Turkish War of 1897.
Monday, November 30, 2009
20th Century Notes
Nominations for the Cliopatria Awards, 2009 close on Monday 30 November at midnight est. Additional nominations are welcome in all categories, but we especially need nominations for Best Post. To refresh your memory, have a look at the monthly history carnivals and/or Cliopatria's History Blogroll.
David L. Ulin reviews Eva Hoffman's Time for the LA Times, 22 November.
Erez Manela, "First in Peace," Boston Globe, 29 November, reviews John Milton Cooper's Woodrow Wilson: A Biography.
Jon Meacham, "How Heroic Was Churchill?" Slate, 29 November, reviews Paul Johnson's Churchill.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Stacy Schiff, "Please Mr. Postman," NYT, 27 November, reviews Thomas Mallon's Yours Ever: People and Their Letters.
Jay Winik, "A New Nation," NYT, 27 November, reviews Gordon S. Wood's Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815.
Andrew Motion reviews Vincent van Gogh's The Letters: The Complete Illustrated and Annotated Edition for the Guardian, 21 November.
Ange Mlinko, "Angels to Radios: On Rainer Maria Rilke," Nation, 24 November, reviews Edward Snow, ed. and trans., The Poetry of Rilke: Bilingual Edition.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Dominic Sandbrook, "History Books of the Year," Telegraph, 26 November, takes a crack at naming the best of a year's books in history. See also: "100 Notable Books of 2009: Non-fiction," NYT, 6 December; and Benjamin Schwarz, "Books of the Year," Atlantic, December.
Randall Stephens, "Rebunking the Pilgrims?" Religion in American History, 24 November, reviews Jeremy Bangs's Strangers and Pilgrims, Travellers and Sojourners.
Alexander Nazaryan, "How to Digest a Historic Feast," Washington Post, 25 November, reviews James Baker's Thanksgiving: The Biography of an American Holiday.
Laila Lalami, "The New Inquisition," The Nation, 24 November, reviews Christopher Caldwell's Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West.
Finally, farewell to H. C. Robbins Landon, a music historian, who made major contributions to our appreciation of Handel, Haydn, and Mozart.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Additionally Noted
Nominations for the Cliopatria Awards, 2009, will close at midnight est on Monday 30 November. Additional nominations in all categories are welcome, but we particularly need nominations for Best Post. To refresh your memory, have a look at the monthly history carnivals and/or Cliopatria's History Blogroll.
Robert Darnton, "Google and the New Digital Future," NYRB, 17 December, looks at the future of digitized books.
Judith Shulevitz, "My True Story," NYT, 20 November, and Jonathan Yardley, "Shelve It Under Naval Gazing," Washington Post, 29 November, review Ben Yagoda's Memoir: A History.
Jill Lepore, "Boundless promise and grave peril," Washington Post, 29 November, reviews Gordon Wood's Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815.
Michael Dirda, "The unheroic genius behind the adventures of Tintin," Washington Post, 26 November, reviews Pierre Assouline's Hergé: The Man Who Created Tintin and Jean-Marie Apostolidès's The Metamorphoses of Tintin; or, Tintin for Adults.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
20th Century Notes
Adam Kirsch, "The Firebrand," Tablet, 24 November, reviews Robert Service's Trotsky: A Biography.
A Debate: Jeffrey Herf, "Hate Radio," CHE, 22 November; and Richard Wolin, "Herf's Misuses of History," CHE, 22 November. The debate continues on-line at "'Islamo-Fascism': an Exchange," CHE, 22 November.
Dwight Garner, "Power and Style, in the Ring and the World," NYT, 24 November, reviews Wil Haygood's Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson.
Emily Bazelon, "The Alienator," Slate, 24 November, reviews Joan Biskupic's American Original: The Life and Constitution of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
More Noted Things
Patricia Cohen reviews Shlomo Sand's The Invention of the Jewish People for the NYT, 23 November.
Daniel Vitkus, "Celebrating English Proto-Imperialism," Common-place, November, reviews Alison Games's The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion, 1560-1660.
Jeffrey Herf, "Hate Radio," CHE, 22 November, is an essay based on Herf's research for Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, which is published this month by Yale University Press.
Michael Dirda, "Vladimir Nabokov, reduced to notes," Washington Post, 19 November, reviews Vladimir Nabokov's The Original of Laura, edited by Dmitri Nabokov.
Michiko Kakutani, "The Voice That Helped Remake Culture," NYT, 23 November, reviews Terry Teachout's POPS: A Life of Louis Armstrong.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Carnivalesque LVI, an early modern edition of the festival, is up at Investigations of a Dog.
Judith Shulevitz, "My True Story," NYT, 20 November, reviews Ben Yagoda's Memoir: A History.
Emily Colette Wilkinson reviews Veronica Buckley's The Secret Wife of Louis XIV: Franoise D'Aubigne, Madame de Maintenon for the Washington Times, 15 November.
Alexandra Mullen, "Discovering the Keys to a Musical Past," WSJ, 21 November, reviews Madeline Goold's Mr. Langshaw's Square Piano: The Story of the First Pianos and How They Caused a Cultural Revolution.
Sean Wilentz, "Into the West," NYT, 20 November, reviews Robert W. Merry's A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War, and the Conquest of the American Continent.
Jonathan Yardley, "Forgotten Warrior," Washington Post, 22 November, reviews Joan Waugh's U. S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Because I Love Good Country Music, ...
I could listen to the Carolina Chocolate Drops all day. Here, they do "Corn Bread and Butterbeans": That's Justin Robinson singing and on the fiddle, Rhiannon Giddens joins in song and plays the banjo, and Dom Flemons works the jug and bones. They carry on a tradition of African American string band music that Mebane, North Carolina's Joe Thompson taught them.
The Wiyos is a well-regarded white, urban group, with roots in New York and New Orleans. When they do their own, quite different, version of "Corn Bread and Butterbeans," the harmonica, guitar, bass and washboard, with bell and horn, replace the fiddle, banjo, jug and bones.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Friday's Notes
Michael O'Sullivan, "An army for the afterlife," Washington Post, 20 November, reviews "Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China's First Emperor," an exhibit at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, DC.
Edward Rothstein, "Flights of Mind, Brought to Life," NYT, 19 November, reviews "Leonardo da Vinci's Workshop," an exhibit at Discovery Times Square Exposition in Manhattan.
Harvey J. Kaye, "Palin's Unlikely Hero," Daily Beast, 17 November, argues that Sarah Palin and much of the American Right misunderstand Thomas Paine.
Matthew Cobb, "How the Americans bought the French Resistance," TLS, 18 November, reviews Robert Belot's and Gilbert Karpman's L'affaire Suisse: La Résistance a-t-elle trahi de Gaulle?
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Notes Ancient & Modern
Congratulations to T. J. Stiles, whose The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt has won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, and to Philip Hoose, whose Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice has won the Award for Young People's Literature.
Adam Kirsch, "A Prophet's Pen," Tablet, 17 November, reviews David Rosenberg's A Literary Bible: An Original Translation.
Bonnie S. Benwick, "A tasting menu of savory dishes," Washington Post, 18 November, reviews Andrew Dalby's Cheese: A Global History, Sarah Moss's and Alexander Badenoch's Chocolate: A Global History, and Colleen Taylor Sen's Curry: A Global History.
Diana Athill, "Lore of the Land," Literary Review, November, reviews Madelaine Bunting's The Plot: A Biography of an English Acre.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Midweek Notes
"The Giant's Shoulders #17 - Darwin Sesquicentennial Edition," the history of science carnival, is up at The Primate Diaries.
Elspeth Barker, "Words, Glorious Words," Literary Review, November, reviews Christian Kay, Jane Roberts, Michael Samuels and Irené Wotherspoon, eds., Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Laura Claridge, "Best Books About Etiquette," WSJ, 14 November, recommends five: Erasmus, On the Civility of Children's Conduct, 1530; George Washington, Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior, 1748; Emily Post, Etiquette, 1927; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Learning How to Behave [sic], 1946; and Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process, 1969.
Finally, this graphic tracks the expansion and decline of four major European maritime empires between 1800 and 2000: Hat tip.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Additionally Noted
Rosemary Hill, "The re-enchantment of the present," TLS, 11 November, reviews Megan Aldrich and Robert J. Wallis, eds., Antiquaries and Archaists: The past in the past, the past in the present.
Robert Irwin, "Onward Christian Soldiers," Literary Review, November, reviews Jonathan Phillips's Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades.
Tim Blanning, "High Notes," Literary Review, November, reviews Daniel Snowman's The Gilded Stage: A Social History of Opera.
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, "The Arctic heart of darkness," TLS, 11 November, reviews Andrew Lambert's Franklin: Tragic hero of polar exploration and Glyn Williams's Arctic Labyrinth: The quest for the Northwest Passage.
Caryl Phillips, "The Explorer," TNR, 16 November, reviews Lafcadio Hearn's American Writings.
Monday, November 16, 2009
More Noted Things
Judith Shulevitz, "Was Paul a Jew?" Tablet, 11 November, looks at recent revisionist studies of Paul of Tarsus by Pamela Eisenbaum, John G. Gager, Sarah Ruden, and Garry Wills.
Deirdre Foley-Mendelssohn, "Scandal and Success," New Yorker, 13 November, reviews "Candide at 250: Scandal and Success," an exhibit at the New York Public Library.
Steve Fraser, "The Misunderstood Robber Baron: On Cornelius Vanderbilt," The Nation, 11 November, reviews T. J. Stiles's The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Martin Amis, "The problem with Nabokov," The Guardian, 14 November, is an essay occasioned by the publication of Nabokov's The Original of Laura. Hat tip.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
The Carnival of Genealogy LXXXIII is up at Janet the Researcher; Biblical Studies Carnival XLVII is up at Paul of Tarsus in Historical Perspective; and Indian History Carnival #23 is up at varnam.
Edward Rothstein, "Information Highway: Camel Speed but Exotic Links," NYT, 12 November, reviews "Traveling the Silk Road," an exhibit at Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History.
Holland Cotter, "Compassionate Masters of the Universe," NYT, 12 November, reviews "Victorious Ones: Jain Images of Perfection, " an exhibit at Manhattan's Rubin Museum of Art, and "Peaceful Conquerors: Jain Manuscript Painting," an exhibit at Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Harold Bloom, "Road Trip," NYT, 11 November, reviews Peter Ackroyd's The Canterbury Tales: A Retelling.
Michael Dirda, "Jung at Heart," Washington Post, 12 November, reviews Carl G. Jung's The Red Book: Liber Novus.
Friday, November 13, 2009
20th Century Notes
Terry Eagleton, "Waking the Dead," New Statesman, 12 November, is an essay occasioned by the republication of Eagleton's Walter Benjamin: or Towards a Revolutionary Criticism.
Bernard Porter, "Other People's Mail," LRB, 19 November, reviews Christopher Andrew's The Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5.
Walter Isaacson, "How Einstein Divided America's Jews," Atlantic, December, explores the reaction of prominent American Jews to Einstein's Zionism.
Adam Mars-Jones reviews Blake Bailey's Cheever: A Life for the Guardian, 8 November.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Mid-Week Notes
Peter Stothard, "The School of Athens," WSJ, 10 November, reviews Donald Kagan's Thucydides: The Reinvention of History.
Jan Swafford, "Nature's Rejects: The music of the castrati," Slate, 9 November, revisits an outcast dimension of 16th to 19th century European music.
Philip Kennicott, "Far out of Africa," Washington Post, 11 November, reviews "The African Presence in México: From Yanga to the Present," an exhibit at Washington, DC's Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum.
Paul Harvey, "Inventing a Tradition," Books & Culture, 9 November, takes apart Jonathan Bean's claim in Race and Liberty in America: The Essential Reader to have identified a classical liberating tradition in American race relations.
Julian Barnes, "On we sail," LRB, is an essay about Guy de Maupassant, occasioned by new English translations of two of his novels.
Adam Kirsch, "The November Pogrom," Tablet, 10 November, reviews Alan Steinweis's Kristallnacht 1938.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Over the weekend, The Root and Howard University's student newspaper, The Hilltop, reported a crisis at the University's Moorland-Spingarn Research Center. Its staffing had declined from 50 to 12 positions and, by the end of the semester, there would be no employees. Yesterday, Howard's administration said that there are no plans to close the MSRC, but there's every indication that one of the most important centers for research in African American history is in serious difficulty.
Evan R. Goldstein, "Isaiah Berlin, Beyond the Wit," CHE, 8 November, reviews Isaiah Berlin's Enlightening: Letters, 1946-1960.
Christine Stansell, "The Journey of the American Woman," Daily Beast, 10 November, reviews Gail Collins's When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present.
Terry Gross interviews Ken Auletta, the author of 'Googled': Biography Of A Company, And An Age, NPR, 2 November.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Modern Memory
Jonathan Yardley, "Memories carved in stone," Washington Post, 8 November, reviews Kirk Savage's Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, And the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape.
Alan Pell Crawford, "Grave Matters," WSJ, 27 October, and Fergus M. Bordewich, "Our honored dead, our flawed history," Washington Post, 8 November, review Robert M. Poole's On Hallowed Ground: The Story of Arlington National Cemetery.
Patricia Cohen, "An Ethical Question: Does a Nazi Deserve a Place Among Philosophers?" NYT, 8 November, reviews the debate launched even before the publication in the United States of Emmanuel Faye's Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism Into Philosophy.
____________, "Long-Delayed Opening for History of, and by, Joseph Papp," NYT, 6 November, has the back-story on Kenneth Turan's Free for All: Joe Papp, The Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told.
Arts & Letters Daily has a superb roundup of reflections on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall.
Stefany Anne Goldberg, "In Las Vegas, history has a price, not a past," Washington Post, 8 November, argues that pawned items lose their history for a price.
Finally, thanks to Chris Bray, the Best. Job. Listing. Ever.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Harold Bloom, "The Critic's Critic," NYT, 5 November, reviews David Nokes's Samuel Johnson: A Life.
Gregory Cowles, "Stray Questions for: Woody Holton," Paper Cuts, 6 November, interviews the University of Richmond historian, whose new book on Abigail Adams appeared this week.
Edward Rothstein, "At the Morgan, the Jane Austen Her Family Knew," NYT, 6 November, reviews "A Woman's Wit: Jane Austen's Life and Legacy," an exhibit at the Morgan Library & Museum in Manhattan.
Philip Kennicott, "FDR's stimulus package for artists: No cause for nostalgia," Washington Post, 8 November, reviews "1934: A New Deal for Artists," an exhibit at Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Aaron Burr Raps on Alexander Hamilton
"Writer and star of the Broadway musical, In the Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda performs "The Hamilton Mixtape" at the White House Evening of Poetry, Music, and the Spoken Word on May 12, 2009. Accompanied by Alex Lacamoire."
Hat tip.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Friday's Notes
Louis Menand, "The Ph. D. Problem," Harvard Magazine, November/December, argues for a change in the professionalization of academic people.
Jenna Weissman Joselit, "Founding Father," Tablet, 5 November, reviews Bruce Feiler's America's Prophet: Moses and the American Story.
Michael Dirda, "Beneath a host of characters lay a writer akin to Shakespeare," Washington Post, 5 November, reviews Michael Slater's Charles Dickens: A Life Defined by Writing.
Melanie Kirkpatrick, "China's Mystery Lady," WSJ, 3 November, reviews Hannah Pakula's The Last Empress: Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China.
Manan Ahmed, "Start a war," National, 5 November, argues that, in Pakistan, "the dysfunctional state remains its own worst enemy."
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Thursday's Notes
The Historical Society's Historically Speaking has become the most vital historical newsletter in the United States. Currently, its series of symposia on the state of traditional fields of history considers Intellectual History and Military History. September's issue on Intellectual History featured essays by Daniel Wickberg, David Hollinger, Sarah Igo, and Wilfred McClay. November's issue on Military History has essays by Brian Linn, Dennis Showalter, Robert Citino, Victor Davis Hanson, and Roger Spiller. There's a foretaste of the Military History forum at The Historical Society's ths blog.
Peter Campbell, "At the British Museum," LRB, 5 November, reviews "Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler," an exhibit at the London's BM.
Julian Bell, "For Those Who Don't Know," LRB, 5 November, reviews Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten and Nienke Bakker, eds., Vincent van Gogh: The Letters, trans. by Michael Hoyle et al.
Paul Reitter, "The precious Hugo von Hofmannsthal," TLS, 4 November, reviews J. D. McClatchey, ed., The Whole Difference: Selected writings of Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
Tariq Ali, "The life and death of Trotsky," Guardian, 31 October, reviews Bertrand M. Patenaude's Stalin's Nemesis: The Exile and Murder of Leon Trotsky and Robert Service's Trotsky: A Biography.
Evgeny Morozov, "Edit This Page," Boston Review reviews Andrew Lih's The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Mid-Week Notes
Cato Unbound, November, features a symposium on "How the World Got Modern." Stephen Davies's "How the World Got Modern" is its lead essay. Jack Goldstone, Anthony Pagden, and Jason Kuznicki will each publish a reply to Davies this week.
Dwight Garner, "Wartime China's Elegant Enigma," NYT, 3 November, reviews Hannah Pakula's The Last Empress: Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China.
A year after his election, historians assess President Obama: Walter Isaacson, Michael Kazin, Rick Perlstein, Ted Widmer, and Garry Wills, Daily Beast, 2 November; and Doris Kearns Goodwin, Huffington Post, 3 November.
Finally, farewell to Claude Lévi-Strauss, a cultural anthropologist and leading French intellectual, and to Judson C. Ward, an American historian who was for many years an administrator at Emory University.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
More Noted Things
Jill Lepore, "Rap Sheet," New Yorker, 2 November, reviews Randolph Roth's American Homicide and Pieter Spierenburg's A History of Murder: Personal Violence in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present. See also: Lepore, "Foul Play," ibid.
Peter Brooks, "Napoleon's Eye," NYRB, 19 November, is an essay drawing on Peter Rosenberg, ed., Dominique-Vivant Denon: L'oeil de Napoléon, an exhibition at the Louvre, Paris, October 20, 1999–January 17, 2000, Vivant Denon's No Tomorrow, and Andrew McClellan's Inventing the Louvre: Art, Politics, and the Origins of the Modern Museum in Eighteenth-Century Paris.
Jonathan Raban, "American Pastoral," NYRB, 19 November, reviews Linda Gordon's Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits and Anne Whiston Spirn's Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange's Photographs and Reports from the Field.
Johann Hari, "How Ayn Rand Became an American Icon," Slate, Jennifer Burns's Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right and Anne Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made.
Charlotte Higgins, "Benjamin Britten's diaries reveal boys, bitching and brilliance," Guardian, 31 October, reviews John Evans, ed., Journeying Boy: The Diaries of the Young Benjamin Britten, 1928-1938.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Karen Houppert, "A room of her own," Washington Post, 1 November, tells the story of Marcia Carlisle, Houppert's history professor at Bennington, her disability, and a modest, mysterious bequest.
Johannah Cornblatt, "The Evolution of Birth Control," Newsweek, 29 October, is a slideshow of its history.
Christopher Benfey's "Renaissance Men," NYT, 29 October, reviews Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall.
Caleb Crain, "Keats Speaks," NYT, 29 October, considers whether John Keats spoke like the character who plays him in Jane Campion's film, "Bright Star." See also: Crain, "Cockney Keats?" Steamboats are ruining everything, 31 October.
Daniel Stashower, "The United States of spooks and spirits," Washington Post, 25 October, reviews William J. Birnes's and Joel Martin's The Haunting of America: From the Salem Witch Trials to Harry Houdini and Mitch Horowitz's Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation.
James M. McPherson, "Brutal Terrain," NYT, 29 October, reviews John Keegan's The American Civil War: A Military History.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
The History Blogosphere's Weekend
Michael Sims, "Mind over monsters: Peering into the dark corners of the psyche," Washington Post, 27 October, reviews Stephen T. Asma's On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears. See also: Asma's "Monsters and the Moral Imagination," CHE, 25 October.
Adam Kirsch, "Ayn Rand's Revenge," NYT, 29 October, and T. J. Stiles for the San Francisco Chronicle, 1 November, review Anne C. Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made.
Ronald Grigor Suny, "Empire Falls: The Revolutions of 1989," Nation, 28 October, reviews Stephen Kotkin's Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment, Constantine Pleshakov's There Is No Freedom Without Bread! 1989 and the Civil War That Brought Down Communism, and Victor Sebestyen's Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire.
Friday, October 30, 2009
20th Century Notes
John Herrman, "Giz Explains: Why Every Country Has a Different F#$%ing Plug," Gizmodo, 29 October, includes a helpful map of where a dozen different male plugs and female sockets are used around the world. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
Jacob Silverman, "‘I Have Decided Not to Die'," VQR, Fall, reviews Grigoris Balakian's Armenian Golgotha and Peter Balakian's Black Dog of Fate: A Memoir.
Today marks the 71st anniversary of the Orson Welles's 1938 live radio production of H. G. Wells's story of a Martian invasion, "The War of the Worlds." Its realism apparently caused widespread panic in its radio audience. WaroftheWorldsTribute.com will live stream the original radio production tonight, beginning at 8:00 p.m. EST.
Nick Gillespie, "Ready for Her Close-Up," Wilson Quarterly, Autumn, reviews Jennifer Burns's Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right and Anne C. Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made.
Michael Tomasky, "In The Tank," TNR, 28 October, reviews Taylor Branch's The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Thursday's Notes
Isobel Grundy reviews Dena Goodman's Becoming a Woman in the Age of Letters for the THES, 29 October.
Alexis de Tocqueville, "Letters from America," Hudson Review, Autumn, publishes a selection from the letters he sent home when he visited the United States in 1831/32. See also: Paula Deitz, "Alexis de Tocqueville: Letters From America, Huffington Post, 28 October.
James Buzard reviews Paul Young's Globalization and the Great Exhibition: The Victorian New World Order for the THES, 29 October.
Willy Maley reviews Tristram Hunt's The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels for the THES, 29 October.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Midweek Notes
Cristina Odone reviews Diarmaid MacCulloch's A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years for the Guardian, 25 October.
Edward Rothstein, "One Man's Crusade Against Slavery, Seen From Two Angles," NYT, 27 October, reviews "John Brown: The Abolitionist and His Legacy," an exhibit at the New York Historical Society in Manhattan, and "The Portent: John Brown's Raid in American Memory," an exhibit at the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond.
Adam Kirsch, "Deliberate Evil," Tablet, 27 October, and David Reiff, "The Willing Misinterpreter," National Interest, 27 October, review Daniel Goldhagen's Worse than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity.
Bruce Kuklick, "A Cold War Story," Books & Culture, November/ December, reviews Neil Sheehan's A Fiery Peace in a Cold War.
Finally, farewell to Bowling Green's Ray Browne, who pioneered in studies of American popular culture.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
More Noted Things
John Gray, "The democratic wish," The National, 15 October, reviews John Keane's The Life and Death of Democracy.
Janet Maslin, "For Starters, a Satanic Svengali," NYT, 25 October, reviews Piers Dudgeon's Neverland: J. M. Barrie, the Du Mauriers and the Dark Side of "Peter Pan".
Steven Hahn, "The Race Man," TNR, 26 October, reviews Robert J. Norrell's Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington.
Philip D. Zelikow, "The Suicide of the East," Foreign Policy, November/December, reviews Frederic Bozo's Mitterrand, the End of the Cold War, and German Unification, Archie Brown's The Rise and Fall of Communism, Jeffrey A. Engel, ed., The Fall of the Berlin Wall: The Revolutionary Legacy of 1989, Stephen Kotkin's Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment, Michael Meyer's The Year That Changed the World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Constantine Pleshakov's There Is No Freedom Without Bread! 1989 and the Civil War That Brought Down Communism, David Priestland's The Red Flag: A History of Communism, Mary Louise Sarotte's 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe, and Victor Sebestyen's Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire.
Elizabeth Kolbert, "The Things People Say," New Yorker, 2 November, reviews Cass Sunstein's On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
On Sunday 1 November, we'll open nominations for the Cliopatria Awards, 2009. Throughout November you can offer nominations for the six awards. Teams of judges will select the winning nominees in December and they will be announced in conjunction with the meeting of the American Historical Association in early January.
An ancient/medieval edition of Carnivalesque, with an All Hallows Eve theme, will be held on Saturday 31 October at Bavardess. Send nominations of the best or most frightening of September's and October's ancient/medieval history blogging to bavardess*at*gmail*dot*com or use the form. On Sunday 1 November, Natalie Bennett will host History Carnival LXXXI at Philobiblon. Send nominations of the best in October's history blogging to natalie*at*nataliebennett*dot*co*dot*uk, use the form, or "tweet @natalieben with quick links using the hashtag #historycarnival."
Tunku Varadarajan, "Metropolitan Glory," WSJ, 24 October, reviews John Julius Norwich, ed., The Great Cities in History.
Matthew Guerrieri, "Beethoven's early believers," Boston Globe, 25 October, argues that New England Transcendentalists adopted Beethoven as the embodiment of their artistic ideal in the 1830s and 1840s. Fixing him in the American musical canon may be their most persistent cultural contribution, Guerrieri argues.
Errol Morris's seven-part series, "The Case of the Inappropriate Alarm Clock," is now complete at Zoom.
Finally, the Nation's 9 November issue has a forum on Afghanistan. It features essays by Stephen Walt, John Mueller, Selig Harrison, Priya Satia, our former colleague, Manan Ahmed, Mosharraf Zaidi, and Robert Dreyfuss.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Sunday's Notes
Dinah Birch reviews Mary Beard's It's a Don's Life for the Guardian, 25 October. The book is a edition of Beard's work on her blog, It's a Don's Life, and the debates that have ensued there.
James Glanz, "Henry V's Greatest Victory Is Besieged by Academia," NYT, 24 October, reviews the debate about Agincourt. Silbey pursues the subject in "Agincourt & Iraq," Edge of the American West, 24 October.
Matthew Shaer, "Tackling Knut Hamsun," LA Times, 25 October, reviews Ingar Sletten Kolloen's Knut Hamsun: Dreamer and Dissenter and Monika {Zcaron}agar's Knut Hamsun: The Dark Side of Literary Brilliance.
David Oshinsky, "Picturing the Depression," NYT, 22 October, reviews Linda Gordon's Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Joy Connolly, "A City Unbottled," Nation, 21 October, reviews Mary Beard's The Fires of Vesuvius.
Roberta Smith, "Wise Warriors, Artfully Attired," NYT, 22 October, reviews "Art of the Samurai: Japanese Arms and Armor, 1156-1868," an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan.
John Matson, "Galileo's Contradiction: The Astronomer Who Riled the Inquisition Fathered 2 Nuns," Scientific American, 21 October, transcribes a conversation with Dava Sobel, the author of Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Friday's Notes
Elizabeth Lowry, "Full Disclosure," TLS, 21 October, reviews Laura Cumming's A Face to the World: On Self Portraits.
Carlin Romano, "Heil Heidegger!" CHE, 18 October, previews Emmanuel Faye's Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism Into Philosophy.
Sam Anderson, "Mrs. Logic," New York Magazine, 18 October, reviews Anne Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made.
Kevin Morris and Glenn Altschuler, "Catty on a Hot Tin Roof," Huffington Post, 22 October, reviews Edmund White's City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960's and 70's.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Thursday's Notes
Adam Kirsch, "Heavenly Bodies," Tablet, 21 October, reviews Benjamin D. Sommer's The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel.
Natasha Tripney reviews Sheila Rowbotham's Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love for the Guardian, 18 October.
Sherrilyn A. Ifill, "Woman of Valor," Women's Review of Books, September/October, reviews Mia Bay's To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells and Paula Giddings's Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign against Lynching.
Donald Rayfield, "Trotsky at Last," TLS, 21 October, reviews Bertrand M. Patenaude's Stalin's Nemesis: The exile and murder of Leon Trotsky and Robert Service's Trotsky: A Biography.
Janet Maslin, "Twin Biographies of a Singular Woman, Ayn Rand," NYT, 21 October, reviews Anne C. Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made and Jennifer Burns's Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
More Noted Things
You can read, hear, and see the story at Sylvia Poggoli's "Greece Unveils Museum Meant For 'Stolen' Sculptures," NPR, 20 October.
Brett Foster, "Hurlyburly," Books & Culture, 19 October, reviews Arthur L. Schwartz's Vivat Rex! An Exhibition Commemorating the 500th Anniversary of the Accession of Henry VIII.
William J. Quirk, "Living on $500,000 a Year," American Scholar, Autumn, reports on what we know from F. Scott Fitzgerald's financial records.
Michael Korda, "Escape from Hungary," Daily Beast, 20 October, and Jonathan Yardley, "Behind the Iron Curtain," Washington Post, 18 October, review an immigrant's memoir of her family's experience, Kati Marton's Enemies of the People: My Family's Journey to America.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Cliopatria Welcomes Bruce Mazlish
Cliopatria is pleased to welcome Bruce Mazlish to its circle. Professor Mazlish hardly needs an introduction. He earned his academic degrees at Columbia, studying with Shepherd Clough and Jacques Barzun, joined the history department at MIT, and taught there for nearly a half century. His first book, with Jacob Brunowski, was The Western Intellectual Tradition: From Leonardo to Hegel (1960); and his second, The Riddle of History: The Great Speculators from Vico to Freud (1966), pursued his interest in European intellectual history. Subsequently, he published pioneering works in psycho-history, revolutionary leadership, and comparative and global history. Professor Mazlish was a founding editor of History & Theory and helped to establish the Journal of Interdisciplinary History. He published in such places as the American Historical Review, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Daedalus, History of European Ideas, the Journal of Contemporary History, the Nation, the New York Times Book Review, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, and many others. He has lectured widely in the United States and abroad; and served on governing and advisory boards for the Toynbee Prize Foundation, the Library of Congress's Kluge Prize, and the Rockefeller Archives Center. It is a privilege to welcome him to our group at Cliopatria.
Things Noted Here & There
Anthony Grafton, "Did Thucydides Really Tell the Truth?" Slate, 19 October, reviews Donald Kagan's Thucydides: The Reinvention of History.
Richard White, "Changing the Metaphor," Nation, 14 October, reviews Jackson Lears's Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America,1877-1920.
Thaddeus Russell, "Why Liberals Kill," Daily Beast, 17 October, argues that if Obama escalates America's commitment to the war in Afghanistan, he merely follows the examples of the American left's presidential heroes.
In "The Case of the Inappropriate Alarm Clock," Part 1 and Part 2, Zoom, 18 October, Errol Morris, the winner of the Cliopatria Award in 2007 for Best Series of Posts, launches a new, seven part series.
Jennifer Balderama, "Style and Alchemy," NYT, 14 October, reviews Mark Garvey's Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White's "The Elements of Style".
Timothy Garton Ash, "1989!" NYRB, 5 November, draws on nine recent works of history in English, French, and German to argue that 1989 was a crucial year for Europe's role in world history.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
20th Century Notes
Piers Brendon reviews Andrew Marr's The Making of Modern Britain for the Guardian, 17 October.
Alan Allport, "no peace on the home front," London's Times, 17 October, says there's a history of troubled return of British troops from the battlefield. Alan, our former colleague at Cliopatria, would know about that. Yale University Press publishes his Demobbed: Coming Home After the Second World War this month and he blogs about it here.
D. G. Myers, "The Never-Ending Journey," Commentary, October, reviews Edward Alexander's Lionel Trilling and Irving Howe: And Other Stories of Literary Friendship and Michael Kimmage's The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers, and the Lessons of Anti-Communism.
August Kleinzahler, "Monk's Moods," NYT, 15 October, reviews Robin D. G. Kelley's Theolonius Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original.
Hans-Ulrich Stoldt and Klaus Wiegrefe, "East German Jokes Collected by West German Spies," Der Spiegel, 14 October, asks "What would happen if the desert became communist?" "Nothing for a while," comes the reply, "and then there would be a sand shortage."
Friday, October 16, 2009
Friday's Notes
The Biblical Studies Carnival XLVI is up at Hebrew and Greek Reader; Giant's Shoulders #16, the history of science carnival, is up at Quiche Moraine; the Indian History Carnival #22 is up at varnam; and the History is Ephemeral Carnival, 6th edition, is up at Kitsch Slapped.
The National Book Award nominees were announced yesterday. In Nonfiction, they include: Adrienne Mayor's The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy, T. J. Stiles's The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Greg Grandin's Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City.
John Bowen, "Day-to-day Dickens," TLS, 14 October, reviews Michael Slater's Charles Dickens.
Dwight Garner, "America's War, British View," NYT, 15 October, reviews John Keegan's The American Civil War: A Military History.
Luke Harding, "Russian historian arrested in clampdown on Stalin era," Guardian, 15 October, reports the arrest of Mikhail Suprun, who is doing research on German prisoners in the Arctic gulags.
Robert Draper, "Barack Obama's Work in Progress," GQ, November, argues that the President is, first, a writer.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Thursday's Notes
Toby Lester, "A world redrawn," Boston Globe, 11 October, is an essay based on Lester's forthcoming book, The Fourth Part of the World, on the consequences of publication of the Waldseemüller map in 1507 CE. Click here for an interactive version of the map.
Mark Lamster, "The Art of Diplomacy," WSJ, 10 October, is an essay adapted from Lamster's Master of Shadows: The Secret Diplomatic Career of the Painter Peter Paul Rubens.
The new Common-place is up, with pirates, explorers, slave-traders and much more. Now with a feature that allows comments and discussion.
Andrea Wulf, "Let My People Grow," Literary Review, October, reviews Tim Richardson's Great Gardens of America.
Christopher Hitchens, "The Pity of War," Atlantic, November, reviews Peter Hart's The Somme: The Darkest Hour on the Western Front.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
More Noted Things
Stephen Adams, "Leonardo da Vinci picture 'worth millions' revealed by a fingerprint," Telegraph, 12 October, reports the claimed new find of a da Vinci.
Joan Acocella, "Tudor Tales," New Yorker, 19 October, Martin Rubin, "A Man for All Tasks and Times," WSJ, 10 October, and Wendy Smith, "Henry VIII Got the Wives, but Cromwell Got the Power," Washington Post, [13] October, review Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall.
Geoffrey Kurtz, "From Liberalism to Social Democracy," Dissent, 26 August, reviews Andreas Kalyvas's and Ira Katznelson's Liberal Beginnings: Making a Republic for the Moderns. Hat tip.
Nicholas Bakalar, "In 1918 Pandemic, Another Possible Killer: Aspirin," NYT, 12 October, asks whether the cure accounted for a portion of the deaths.
Joseph Loconte, "‘A New Era of Friendship and Prosperity'," Books & Culture, 12 October, reviews David Faber's Munich, 1938: Appeasement and World War II.
Evan R. Goldstein, "Inventing Israel," Tablet, 13 October, reviews Shlomo Sand's The Invention of the Jewish People. See also: Anita Shapira, "The Jewish-people Deniers," The Journal of Israeli History, March.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Some Things Are Like This and/or Not Like That
Scott Eric Kaufman, "The increasingly forgettable work of Malcolm Gladwell," Edge of the American West, 12 October, tackles the analogy offered in Malcolm Gladwell, "Offensive Play," New Yorker, 19 October, between dog fighting and football. If Gladwell's analogy is forgettable, are these other current offerings memorable and/or persuasive?
Monday, October 12, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Clay Risen, "They need a hero," The National, 9 October, recalls the story of Hermann, an ancient chief who rallied German tribesmen to defeat the Roman army. This founding national myth was cherished until it was banished in the post-World War II era. What role might it play in Europe's post-national era?
Stephen Greenblatt, "How It Must Have Been," NYRB, 5 November, reviews Hilary Mantel's Man Booker Prize-winning novel, Wolf Hall.
Joel Achenbach, "Washington: First in War, Peace -- and Accounting," Washington Post, 12 October, looks at current interest in digitizing the voluminous George Washington financial records.
Simon Callow reviews Michael Slater's Charles Dickens for the Guardian, 10 October.
Joshua Hammer, "The Girl in the Attic," NYT, 8 October, reviews Francine Prose's Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Edward Carr, "The Last Days of the Polymath," Intelligent Life, Autumn, reviews Carl Djerassi's Four Jews on Parnassus -- A Conversation. It is an imagined series of discussions among Theodor Adorno, Arnold Schönberg, Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem about art, music, philosophy and Jewish identity.
Edward Rothstein, "When Honest Abe Met This Querulous Metropolis," NYT, 8 October, reviews "Lincoln and New York," an exhibit at the New York Historical Society in Manhattan.
Colman McCarthy, "The Script Doesn't Change," Washington Post, 11 October, reviews Susan A. Brewer's Why America Fights: Patriotism and War Propaganda From the Philippines to Iraq. Professor Brewer was one of my students.
Jeremy Treglown, "Somerset Maugham's bondage," TLS, 7 October, reviews Selina Hastings's The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham.
Jonathan Yardley, "Beyond Omaha Beach," Washington Post, 11 October, reviews Anthony Beevor's D-Day: The Battle for Normandy.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Mostly Early Modern Notes
Simon Ings reviews Richard Wrangham's Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human for the Telegraph, 4 October.
As you probably know, the richest collection of Judaica ever gathered by a single collector, the Valmadonna Trust Library, is now on display and for sale at Sotheby's in New York City. This slideshow offers a remarkable sense of the collection's holdings.
Jessie Childs, "Murder Most Royal," Literary Review, October, reviews Alison Wier's The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn.
David Wootton, "The Credulous Chemist," Literary Review, October, reviews Michael Hunter's Boyle: Between God and Science.
Norma Clark, "The Harlot's Progress," Literary Review, October, reviews Dan Cruickshank's The Secret History of Georgian London: How the Wages of Sin Shaped the Capital.
Robert Pinsky, "In Nomine Patris et Felis," Slate, 6 October, introduces us to Christopher Smart's poem about his cat, Jerome.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
More Modern Notes
David A. Bell, "The Colbert Report," TNR, 7 October, reviews Jacob Soll's The Information Master: Jean-Baptiste Colbert's Secret State Intelligence System.
Charles Esdaile, "The Bear Against The Cockrel," Literary Review, October, reviews Dominic Lieven's Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814.
Rachel L. Swarns and Jodi Kantor, "In First Lady's Roots, a Complex Path From Slavery," NYT, 7 October, outlines the genealogical findings of Megan Smolenyak and others into Michelle Obama's family background. Ira Berlin, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Annette Gordon-Reed, and others discuss it.
John Gray, "Behind the Myth," Literary Review, October, reviews Robert Service's Trotsky: A Biography.
Taylor Branch, author of The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President, will be fielding questions at noon today for the Washington Post. Cranky Professor, take note.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
More Noted Things
Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall has won the Man Booker Prize for 2009. The novel is a "densely-plotted tale of Thomas Cromwell's rise to power in the court of Henry VIII." Among the winners of the American Book Awards for 2009 are Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science and Houston A. Baker, Jr.'s Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Right Era.
Donald Morrison, "Vive la différence," Financial Times, 2 October, reviews John Dummer's Serge Bastarde Ate My Baguette, Debra Ollivier's What French Women Know: About Love, Sex and Other Affairs of the Heart, Michael Simkins's Détour de France: An Englishman in Search of a Continental Education, and Lucy Wadham's The Secret Life of France.
Allison Hoffman, "Something Old, Something New," Tablet, 6 October, reviews Elisa New's Jacob's Cane: A Jewish Family's Journey from the Four Lands of Lithuania to the Ports of London and Baltimore; A Memoir in Five Generations.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Things Ancient & Modern
G. W. Bowersock, "Unquiet Flows the Don," TNR, 5 October, reviews Leslie Mitchell's Maurice Bowra: A Life.
John Tierney, "A High-Tech Hunt for Lost Art," NYT, 5 October, reports on efforts to locate Leonardo da Vinci's largest painting.
Jill Lepore, "Not So Fast," New Yorker, 12 October, reviews Matthew Stewart's The Management Myth: Why the Experts Keep Getting It Wrong.
Adam Kirsch, "The Great Disconcerting Wipeout," TNR, 5 October, reviews Christopher Bigsby's Arthur Miller.
W. A. Pannapacker, "Confessions of a Middlebrow Professor," CHE, 5 October, reflects on a theme in recent books: Alex Beam's A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books (2008), Joan Shelley Rubin's The Making of Middlebrow Culture (1992), and Lawrence Levine's Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (1988).
Monday, October 5, 2009
European History Notes
History Carnival LXXX is up at Katrina Gulliver's Notes from the Field.
Howard Halle, New York: Timeout, 17 September, and Alexandra Peers, "Vermeer's Naughty Milkmaid," Daily Beast, 2 October, review "Vermeer's Masterpiece: The Milkmaid," an exhibit at Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Christopher Benfey, "Watteau the Wanderer," Slate, 4 October, is a slide-show essay about the 18th century French artist, Jean-Antoine Watteau.
Anne Frank House, 23 September, posts the only known footage of young Anne Frank on film. It is 22 July 1941 and the woman next door is getting married.
Hat tip.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Sunday's Notes
In John McWhorter, "What African-American Studies Could Be," Minding the Campus, 30 September, and McWhorter, "What Should African-American Studies Students Learn?" TNR, 1 October, a conservative looks at what African-American Studies is and what it might be.
Richard Fortey, "All Things Considered," Literary Review, September, reviews Frances Larson's An Infinity of Things: How Sir Henry Wellcome Collected the World.
Michael Beschloss, "Missile Defense," NYT, 1 October, reviews Neil Sheehan's A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon.
Kevin Boyle, "Too Young to Bear This Burden," Washington Post, 4 October, reviews A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School by Carlotta Walls LaNier, with Lisa Frazier Page.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Mary Beard, "Roman art thieves," TLS, 30 September, reviews Margaret M. Miles's Art as Plunder: The ancient origins of debate about cultural property and Carole Paul's The Borghese Collections and the Display of Art in the Age of the Grand Tour.
Philip Pullman reviews Joscelyn Godwin's Athanasius Kircher's Theatre of the World for the Guardian, 3 October.
Frances Wilson reviews Jenny Uglow's A Gambling Man: Charles II and the Restoration and Dan Cruikshank's The Secret History of Georgian London for London's Sunday Times, 27 September and 4 October.
Katheryn Hughes reviews David Nokes's Samuel Johnson: A Life for the Guardian, 3 October.
John Carey reviews Michael Slater's Charles Dickens for London's Sunday Times, 27 September.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Friday's Notes
Science devotes its special issue of 2 October to a 4.4 million year old hominid species, ardipithecus ramidus, and its environment. Many scientists think it may be that last common ancestor we share with chimpanzees.
Frederic Raphael, "‘The One Wanted Most'," Literary Review, September, reviews Susan Gubar's Judas: A Biography.
Corey Robin, "The First Counter-revolutionary," The Nation, 30 September, reviews Quentin Skinner's Hobbes and Republican Liberty.
Freya Johnston, "Toilet Humours," Literary Review, September, reviews David Nokes's Samuel Johnson: A Life.
Jackson Lears, "The Usefulness of Cranks: Nature as a standpoint for social criticism," TNR, 29 September, reviews James William Gibson's A Reenchanted World: The Quest for A New Kinship With Nature, Edward Humes's Eco Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers, and Millionaires Who Are Saving Our Planet, Bill McKibben, ed., American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau, Steve Nicholls's Paradise Found: Nature in America at the Time of Discovery, Jonathan Peter Spiro's Defending The Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, And The Legacy Of Madison Grant, and Donald Worster's A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
"History Hurts My Brain"
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Where the Riled Things Are | ||||
| ||||
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Memory & Oral History
Our former colleague, Michael Tinkler, The Cranky Professor, is critical of Cliopatria for having cited published reviews of Taylor Branch's new book, based on his interviews with former President Clinton. Michael seems to think that I ought to have criticized the fact that Branch conducted the interviews with Clinton privately and that, for the time being, at least, access to them is denied all other historians.
The criticism seems strange to me because, in "Murder and Biblical Memory: The Legend of Vernon Johns,"* I published a fuller critique of Branch's work as a historian than any other historian.** One of its major points focused on his uncritical use of oral history. The scandal of Branch's new book on Clinton isn't that Branch accepted a National Humanities Medal from Clinton even as the interviews were being conducted. The scandal isn't even, as Tinkler seems to think, that the interviews were conducted privately or that other historians are denied access to them. Frustrating as it may be, that is very commonly the case in contemporary history. The scandal of Branch's new book is that even he had no access to the tapes that he and Bill Clinton had created. All Branch had were his notes and recorded memories of the interviews that he created after leaving the interviews with Clinton.
*Joyce Appleby, ed., The Best American History Essays, 2006 (NY: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006): 201-229.
**My colleague on the Martin Luther King Papers Project, Clayborne Carson, will publish a tepid critique of Branch's civil rights trilogy in the coming issue of the American Historical Review.
Modern American Notes
Barry Yeoman, "Tenure Tracker," Duke Magazine, September/ October, follows the job search of Kelly Kennington, a young Duke Ph.D. in history, during a difficult year.
Adam Kirsch, "A Zionist Supreme," Tablet, 29 September, reviews Melvin I. Urofsky's Louis D. Brandeis: A Life.
Elisabeth Malkin, "Kahlo Trove: Fact or Fakery?" NYT, 28 September, considers the claims of authenticity for a collection attributed to Frida Kahlo.
Dwight Garner, "In the '70s, All New York Seemed Young and Gay," NYT, 29 September, reviews Edmund White's City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and '70s. White recalls that the sociologist, Richard Sennett, might slip, midmeal at dinner parties, into "a chic little black dress." Surely, this won't be news to Sennett's wife, Saskia Sassen.
Richard Dorment, "What Is an Andy Warhol?" NYRB, 22 October, reviews Arthur C. Danto's Andy Warhol, Tony Scherman's and David Dalton's Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol, and Richard Polsky's I Sold Andy Warhol (Too Soon).
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
María Rosa Menocal, "The Culture of Translation," Words Without Borders, September, is "a translation and adaptation of ‘La culture des traductions: l'arabisation invisible de l'Europe et l'invention du moderne,' one in a series of six lectures given during May and June 2003 at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris." Hat tip.
Dana Stevens, "There's Something About Keats," Slate, 25 September, reviews "Bright Star," Jane Campion's new film about the love affair between John Keats and his neighbor Fanny Brawne.
Jackson Lears, "The Waxing and Waning of America's Political Right," NYT, 28 September, reviews Sam Tanenhaus's The Death of Conservatism.
Timothy Tyson, "Esther: For Just Such a Time as This," Facebook, 28 September, is the sermon that Tyson preached in the Duke University chapel on Sunday.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Carnivals
Carnivalesque LIV, an excellent early modern edition of the festival, is up at Early Modern Notes. Katrina Gulliver at Notes from the Field will host History Carnival LXXX on 4/5 October. Bavardess will host Carnivalesque LV, an ancient/medieval edition of the festival, in the latter half of October. The next early modern edition of Carnivalesque will be in November and needs a host. If you are interested, contact sharon*at*earlymodernweb*dot*org*dot*uk.
Sharon Howard's "Whither Carnivals? Or, Carnivals wither?" Early Modern Notes, 26 September, asks about the future of History Carnival in particular and history carnivals in general. The various history carnivals have been excellent means of a) highlighting superior blogging on historical topics; and b) drawing attention to new voices in the history blogosphere. In the last two years, however, the art history carnival, the Asian history carnival, the military history carnival, and the carnival of bad history have collapsed. Carnivalesque, History Carnival, the history of science's The Giant's Shoulders, and Indian History Carnival survive because of energetic coordination. The coordinators need volunteer hosts. If you expect them to promote your work, do them the favor of noticing the carnival's appearance and link to it.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
20th Century American History
P. J. O'Rourke, "Sex, Drugs, Music, Mud," WS, 31 August, reviews Michael Lang's The Road to Woodstock, Brad Littleproud's and Joanne Hague's Woodstock: Peace, Music & Memories and Susan Reynolds's Woodstock Revisited: 50 Far Out, Groovy, Peace-Loving, Flashback-Inducing Stories From Those Who Were There.
Michael Dobbs, "The Brain That Won Us the Cold War," Washington Post, 27 September, reviews Neil Sheehan's A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon.
Henry Adams, "Decoding Jackson Pollock," Smithsonian, October, sees Pollock's paintings in a new way.
Joe Klein, "Bill Session," NYT, 25 September, reviews Taylor Branch's The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History With the President.
Finally, farewell to the remarkably prolific Milton Meltzer and to the University of Virginia's distinguished Jefferson scholar, Merrill D. Peterson.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Modern History Notes
Emily Bazelon, "Supreme Courtship," NYT, 25 September, reviews Barry Friedman's The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution.
Stephen Budiansky, "Rising Up Against a Rich Man's War," Washington Post, 27 September, reviews Sally Jenkins's and John Stauffer's The State of Jones: The Small Southern County That Seceded From the Confederacy.
Alan M. Dershowitz, "The Practice," NYT, 25 September, reviews Melvin I. Urofsky's Louis D. Brandeis: A Life.
Adam Begley, "Side By Side," NYT, 25 September, reviews Morris Dickstein's Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression.
Jonathan Yardley, "Tracking Nazi Loot," Washington Post, 27 September, reviews The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Friday's Notes
Matthew Reisz, "The seven deadly sins of the academy," THES, 17 September, names the familiar.
Tim Burke, "The Microhistorical Unknown," Easily Distracted, 24 September, reflects on what we make of the unknown.
Aaron Bady, "Walkout," zunguzungu, 24 September, has excellent photographs of the strike at UC, Berkeley.
Mike Pitts, "Anglo-Saxon gold hoard is the biggest - and could get bigger," Guardian, 24 September, and "Huge Anglo-Saxon gold hoard found," BBC, 24 September, are early reports of the discovery in Staffordshire of 1500 gold and silver artifacts. For photographs, see "The Staffordshire Hoard."
Richard Posner, "How I Became a Keynesian," TNR, 23 September, tells how he gave Keynes a second look. See also: Paul Krugman reviews Robert Skidelsky's Keynes: The Return of the Master for the Guardian, 30 August.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Thursday's Notes
Farhad Manjoo, "Is Wikipedia a Victim of Its Own Success?" Time, 28 September, seeks to understand why the expansion of Wikipedia has slowed dramatically in the last two years. Is it the first collapse in the internet's ecosystem? [Cliopatria's resident expert on such things, Sage Ross, is otherwise preoccupied with the birth of Brighton.]
Michael Bérubé, "What's the Matter With Cultural Studies?" CHE, 14 September, provokes replies in Ira Livingston's "What's the Matter with Michael?" Bully Bloggers, 23 September, and The Cultural Studies Graduate Group, UC Davis, "A Note from the Unicorns: A Cultural Studies PhD Program responds to Michael Berube," Bully Bloggers, 23 September. He replies in "Things I Did Not Know," Michael Bérubé, 23 September.
Laura Miller, "America, the beautiful (America, the ugly)," Salon, 23 September, reviews Greil Marcus and Werner Sollers, eds., A New Literary History of America.
Joshua Kendall, "Samuel Johnson, anti-American," Boston Globe, 20 September, argues that America's love of Johnson was unrequited.
Bernard Porter, "The Anglo-world of settlers, not dominators," TLS, 23 September, reviews James Belich's Replenishing the Earth: The settler revolution and the rise of the Anglo-world.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
More Noted Things
Patricia Cohen, "The Essence of America in 1,095 Pages," NYT, 22 September, reviews Greil Marcus and Werner Sollers, eds., A New Literary History of America.
Meghan O'Rourke, "The Man Who Made Oz," Slate, 21 September, reviews Evan I. Schwartz's Finding Oz: How L. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story and Rebecca Loncraine's The Real Wizard of Oz: The Life and Times of L. Frank Baum.
Harvey A. Silverglate, "Setting a noble precedent," Boston Globe, 20 September, reviews Melvin I. Urofsky's Louis D. Brandeis: A Life. Hat tip.
Jonathan Brent, "Postmodern Stalinism, CHE, 21 September, argues that revisionism among Russian historians is renewing Joseph Stalin's historical reputation.
Dwight Garner, "Behind the Scenes of the Dark Cold War, Where an Even Darker Side Lurked," NYT, 22 September, reviews David E. Hoffman's The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy.
Evan R. Goldstein, "Intellectual Cold Warriors," CHE, 21 September, reviews David C. Engerman's Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America's Soviet Experts, Stephen F. Cohen's Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, and Yevgeny Primokov's Russia and the Arabs: Behind the Scenes in the Middle East From the Cold War to the Present.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Anthony Grafton, "Google Books and the Judge," New Yorker, 18 September, is Grafton's most recent take on Google Books.
Chicago Boyz is in the midst of a roundtable on Xenophon. See: Introduction, Xenophon was a Professional, Alexander and Cyrus: Two Different Routes to Babylon, Xenophon's Ascent, The Shadow of Herodotus, Tips for Reading The Anabasis, Clearchus Delinda Est, and The Art of Leadership.
Eric Ormsby, "Fateful Schism," WSJ, 11 September, reviews Lesley Hazleton's After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam.
Adam Gopnik, "Trial of the Century," New Yorker, 28 September, reviews Louis Begley's Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters and George R. Whyte's The Dreyfus Affair: A Chronological History.
Monday, September 21, 2009
On Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Modern History Notes
The Organization of American Historians has released a draft of its "2009 Strategic Plan." Larry Cebula's "More Cowbell: My Plan to Revive the OAH," Northwest History, 16 September, argues that more radical change is in order.
Ira Berlin, "The Not-So-Solid South," NYT, 17 September, reviews Lacy K. Ford's Deliver Us From Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South.
Michael Bailey, "Brunel, Locke and Stephenson: the engineering giants who shaped our world," Telegraph, 15 September, pays tribute to three 19th century British railroad engineers -- titans of the Industrial Revolution.
Steve Heller, "The Revolution Will Be Illustrated," NYT, 17 September, reviews David King, ed., Red Star Over Russia: A Visual History of the Soviet Union From the Revolution to the Death of Stalin, Agnes Husslein-Arco, Jean Louis Gaillemin, Michel Hilaire and Christiane Lange, eds., Alphonse Mucha, designed by Peter Baldinger, Daniel Zimmer's and David J. Hornung's Reynold Brown: A Life in Pictures, Earl Kemp and Luis Ortiz, eds., Cult Magazines, A to Z: A Compendium of Culturally Obsessive and Curiously Expressive Publications, Craig Yoe's Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-Creator Joe Shuster, and Edward Sorel's The Mural at the Waverly Inn: A Portrait of Greenwich Village Bohemians.
Mary Speck, "Fidel and Friends," Washington Post, 20 September, reviews Simon Reid-Henry's Fidel and Che: A Revolutionary Friendship and Angel Esteban's and Stephanie Panichelli's Fidel and Gabo: A Portrait of the Legendary Friendship Between Fidel Castro and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Christopher Howse reviews David Nokes's Samuel Johnson: A Life for the Telegraph, 18 September. In addition to it, Andrew O'Hagan, "The Powers of Dr. Johnson," NYRB, 8 October, reviews Peter Martin's Samuel Johnson: A Biography, Martin's Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings, and Jeffrey Meyers's Samuel Johnson: The Struggle.
Adam Kirsch, "Awakenings," Tablet, 15 September, reviews Kenneth B. Moss's Jewish Renaissance in the Russian Revolution.
Roberta Smith, "The Angel in the Architecture," NYT, 17 September, previews "Kandinsky," an exhibit opening Sunday at Manhattan's Guggenheim Museum.
Dwight Garner, "The Old Economist, Relevant Amid the Rubble," NYT, 17 September, reviews Robert Skidelsky's Keynes: The Return of the Master.
On the eve of the release of Taylor Branch's new book, The Clinton Tapes, Wil S. Hylton, "The Bill Clinton Tapes," Men.Style.com/, 16 September, is an interview with Branch about the taped interviews he did with Clinton.
Finally, have a look at Cliopatria's recently revised History Blogroll. Newly added institutional blogs include The Cloisters' The Medieval Garden Enclosed, the National Museum of Health and Medicine's A Repository for Bottled Monsters, and the Women's Review of Books blog.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Thursday's Notes
Claire Potter's "Learning To Say No, Hollywood Style: A Helpful Response To Screenwriter Josh Olson," Tenured Radical, 16 September, is a bracing rejoinder to Josh Olson, "I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script," Village Voice, 9 September.
Hilary Mantel, "The Crow Is White," LRB, 24 September, reviews Eamon Duffy's Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor.
Robert Vilain, "Rilke the clay pot," TLS, 16 September, reviews Rainer Maria Rilke's The Book of Hours, George C. Schoolfield's Young Rilke and His Time, and Edward Snow and Michael Winkler, trans., Rainer Maria Rilke and Lou Andreas-Salomé: The Correspondence.
Alexander Zaitchik, "Meet the man who changed Glenn Beck's life," Salon, 16 September, introduces the late Cleon Skousen, the Mormon "historian" Beck and Mitt Romney praise. See also: Steve Benson, "From Commie Basher To Rock 'n Roll Trasher: The Legacy Of The Late, Latter-Day Looney Cleon Skousen," The Mormon Curtain, 21 January 2006.
Kim Phillips-Fein, "Right On," The Nation, 9 September, draws on a dozen major books to assess the state of American conservatism.
Finally, GQ ranks "America's 25 Douchiest Colleges." This Duke alum is one proud puppy.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Wednesday's Notes
Josh Olson, "I Will Not Read Your Fucking [Manu]Script," Village Voice, 9 September, is a candid reply to your request.
James Fallows, "Village Dreamers," Atlantic, October, explores the effort of an American family to preserve a traditional Chinese culture from tourist kitsch.
Alison Bashford, "Australian art takes evolutionary turn," Sydney Morning Herald, 1 September, reviews Richard Dawkins's The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, Jeanette Hoorn's Reframing Darwin: Evolution and Art in Australia, and Richard Milner's Darwin's Universe: Evolution from A to Z. Hat tip.
Dwight Garner, "When Grave Years Fueled Grand Art," NYT, 15 September, reviews Morris Dickstein's Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
More Noted Things
Indian History Carnival #21 is up at varnam; and the history of science carnival, The Giant's Shoulders #15, is up at Entertaining Research.
"A conversation with Jill Lepore," Humanities, September/ October, is a charming interview about her work as a historian.
Caleb Crain, "It Happened One Decade," New Yorker, 21 September, reviews Morris Dickstein's Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression. See also: Crain's related posts at Steamboats are ruining everything.
Jonathan Chait, "Wealthcare," TNR, 14 September, reviews Jennifer Burns's Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right and Anne C. Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Allison Hoffman, "Treasure Trove," Tablet, 9 September, takes another look at Jack Lunzer's Valmadonna, the finest collection of Hebraica ever gathered by a single individual. It's for sale, you know.
Claude R. Marx, "Slavery's influence on the Constitution," Boston Globe, 11 September, reviews David Waldstreicher's Slavery's Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification.
"Creation," the first major film about the life of Charles Darwin, was recently previewed in the NYT and will open the Toronto Film Festival and premier in England on Saturday. Yet, it does not have a distributor in the United States. "Too controversial," say its producers.
Tim Page, "A Masterful Composer, a Melodic Life," Washington Post, 13 September, reviews Roland John Wiley's Tchaikovsky.
Roberta Smith, "Serenade in Blue," NYT, 10 September, reviews "Monet's Water Lilies," an exhibit that opens Sunday at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Friday's Notes
Bettina Bildhauer, "Monsters and mentalities of the Renaissance," TLS, 9 September, reviews Merry Wiesner-Hanks's The Marvelous Hairy Girls: The Gonzales sisters and their worlds and Jennifer Spinks's Monstrous Births and Visual Culture in Sixteenth Century Germany.
Carol Vogel, "An Old Master Emerges From Grime," NYT, 9 September, reports that a cleaning helps confirm Metropolitan Museum experts' opinion that its painting is by Velazquez.
Alex Beam, "Making history. Or not.," Boston Globe, 8 September, reviews Greil Marcus and Werner Sollers, eds., A New Literary History of America.
Richard Davenport-Hines, "Les rosbifs abroad," TLS, 9 September, reviews Richard Mullen's and James Munson's The Smell of the Continent: The British discover Europe.
Richard Fortey, "All Things Considered," Literary Review, September, reviews Frances Larson's An Infinity of Things: How Sir Henry Wellcome Collected the World.
Benjamin Schwartz, "Life In (and After) Our Great Recession," Atlantic, October, draws on studies of the Great Depression to suggest implications for our own futures.
Sanford Schwartz, "Mysteries of Ensor," NYRB, 24 September, reviews Catherine de Zegher, ed., Between Street and Mirror: The Drawings of James Ensor and "James Ensor," an exhibit at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art, New York, 28 June – 21 September 2009 and at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, 20 October 2009 – 4 February 2010.
Michael Binyon, "Thatcher told Gorbachev Britain did not want German reunification," London Times, 11 September, two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Excerpts from the Soviet Union's transcripts of the conversations.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
A Century of Visual Effects
This collection of footage from notable visual effects films of the last 100 years was originally created to accompany a lecture. Its music track is "Rods and Cones" from Blue Man Group's album, "Audio". The list of films from which the montage draws is under the fold. Hat tip.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
More Noted Things
Philip Jenkins, "Where Did They Go?" Books & Culture, September/October, reviews Zvi Ben-Dor Benite's The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History.
Bret Stephens, "The Afghan Stakes," WSJ, 7 September, compares the effect of American withdrawal from Afghanistan to that of the battle of Adrianople in 378 A.D. on the Roman Empire. "... ludicrous and hysterical ... even by the Journal's standards," says Daniel Larison's "Hawkish Alarmism Saps Support For Legitimate Wars," Eunomia, 8 September.
Olivia Judson, "The Creation of Charles Darwin," The Wild Side, 8 September, reviews "Creation," the first major film about the scientist's life.
John Tierney, "A Clash of Polar Frauds and Those Who Believe," NYT, 7 September, reviews what is claimed and what we know about explorers' reach to the North Pole in 1909.
Brooks Barnes, "Blowing the Pixie Dust Off Disney's Archives," NYT, 8 September, previews "Treasures of the Walt Disney Archives," an exhibit that appears this weekend at Southern California's Anaheim Convention Center.
Howard W. French, "Kagame's Hidden War in the Congo," NYRB, 24 September, reviews René Lemarchand's The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa, Gérard Prunier's Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe, and Thomas Turner's The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth and Reality.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Carnivalesque LIII, an ancient/medieval edition of the festival, is up at Carin Ruff's Ruff Notes.
Louisa Thomas, "Their Love is Alive," Newsweek, 4 September, looks again at Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley's authorship of Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus.
James M. McPherson, "Lincoln Off His Pedestal," NYRB, 24 September, reviews Michael Burlingame's Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Catherine Clinton's Mrs. Lincoln: A Life, Fred Kaplan's Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, and Ronald C. White, Jr.'s A. Lincoln: A Biography.
Nicholas Shakespeare reviews Selina Hastings' The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham for the Telegraph 5 September.
Judith Thurman, "Missing Woman," New Yorker, 14 September, reviews Ric Gillespie's Finding Amelia: The True Story of the Earhart Disappearance.
Garry Wills, "Conservatives: The Tanenhaus Taxonomy," NYRB, 24 September, reviews Sam Tanenhaus's The Death of Conservatism.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Modern History Notes
Thomas Lipscomb, "A Declaration of Inconclusiveness," WSJ, 28 August, reviews William G. Hyland Jr.'s In Defense of Thomas Jefferson. Hat tip.
Wesley Yang, "The End of the Affair," Tablet, 4 September, reviews Louis Begley's Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters.
William Deresiewicz, "Aracataca and Sucre," Nation, 2 September, reviews Gerald Martin's Gabriel García Márquez: A Life.
Ross Douthat, "Another One for the Gipper," NYT, 1 September, reviews Steven F. Hayward's The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution, 1980-1989.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Caroline Alexander, "Two of a Kind," NYT, 1 September, reviews Janet Soskice's The Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels.
Matthew Shaer, "Getting Attached to the Past," Washington Post, 6 September, reviews Marina Belozerskaya's To Wake the Dead: A Renaissance Merchant and the Birth of Archaeology.
Caroline Weber, "Undercover Queen," NYT, 1 September, reviews Veronica Buckley's The Secret Wife of Louis XIV: Françoise d'Aubigné, Madame de Maintenon.
Sam Roberts, "New York's Coldest Case: A Murder 400 Years Old," NYT, 4 September, looks at what we know of NYC's first murder.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Friday's Notes
This afternoon, authorities of Antioch University will hand ownership of Antioch College at Yellow Springs, Ohio, over to an independent continuing corporation of College alumni. It expects to re-open Antioch College in September 2010.
Jill Ross reviews The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture by Jerrilynn D. Dodds, Maria Rosa Menocal and Abigail Krasner Balbale for the THES, 3 September.
Deborah D. Rogers reviews Audrey A. Fisch's Frankenstein: Icon of Modern Culture for the THES, 3 September.
Philip Smallwood reviews Fred Inglis's History Man: The Life of R. G. Collingwood for the THES, 3 September.
Edward Glaeser, "What A City Needs," TNR, 4 September, reviews Anthony Flint's Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Modern History Notes
Georgina Ferry, "The odd couple: Carl Jung, Wolfgang Pauli and mystic numbers," TLS, 2 September, reviews Arthur I. Miller's Deciphering the Cosmic Number: The strange friendship of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung.
Scott McLemee lectures on CLR James and African American Liberation at mid-June's Socialism '09 conference in Chicago.
Lawrence Glickman, "Whole Foods Boycott: The Long View," Short Stack, 2 September, puts the boycott in historical perspective. Glickman is the author of Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in America.
I'm impressed with the reviews I've read of Tracy Kidder's Strength in What Remains, but I keep wondering about its title. Could it be a misapprehension of "strengthen what remains" (Revelations 3:2)?
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
More Noted Things
Geoffrey Nunberg, "Google's Book Search: A Disaster for Scholars," CHE, 31 August, documents Google's mishandling of its metadata.
David A. Bell, "The Puritanical French," Slate, 31 August, reviews Veronica Buckley's The Secret Wife of Louis XIV.
"Seeing Red," Foreign Policy, 24 August, reproduces rare photographs of the early Soviet Union from David King's Red Star Over Russia: A Visual History of the Soviet Union from the Revolution to the Death of Stalin.
Adam Kirsch, "Atrocious Normalcy," Tablet, 1 September, reviews Barbara Engelking's and Jacek Leociak's The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City, translated by Emma Harris.
Todd Gitlin, "Mindless Violence," Tablet, 1 September, reviews Uri Edel's new film, "The Baader-Meinhof Complex".
George F. Will, "Time to Get Out of Afghanistan," Washington Post, 1 September, makes a case for American withdrawal.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Edward Luttwak, Grand Strategy and the Facts
Edward Luttwak, "The Best and the Fastest," TNR, 31 August, reviews Christopher Kelly's The End of Empire: Attila the Hun and the Fall of Rome and Christopher I. Beckwith's Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia From the Bronze Age To the Present. Luttwak has no fear of being wrong on the facts.* In this review, he reports academic disinterest in military history, even though, when compared with history's other traditional forms, it flourishes in the academy.
Yet, Luttwak's outsider's perspective occasionally raises questions that academic insiders may have missed. His
The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire from the First Century AD to the Third is controversial among professional historians. Luttwak is seen as an outsider and non-specialist in the field. However, his book has raised questions about the Roman army and its defense of the Roman frontier. Luttwak asked "How did the Romans defend the frontier?", a question that he argued had been lost in the professional discourse that focused on demographics, economics and sociology. Although many professional historians reject his views on Roman strategy, his 1976 book has increased interest in the study of the Roman frontiers....
Since the 1980s, Luttwak has published articles on Byzantium. His new book, The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, will be published by Harvard UP.
*Many of us were offended by Luttwak's claim in the NYT last year that Barack Obama would be regarded as an apostate in the Muslim world and was likely to be assassinated by its terrorists. After consulting well-informed scholars, the Times' public editor agreed with us that Luttwak was wrong on the facts and given to extreme language. More recently, Luttwak's "Why U.S. Diplomacy Will Fail With Iran," WSJ, 12 August, includes a bizarre misreading of the overthrow of Mohammed Mosaddeq as Iran's Prime Minister in 1953. He must, surely, know better.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Sally Jenkins, "Waiting for William," Washington Post, 30 August, revisits the controversy over whether the recently discovered Cobbe portrait is of William Shakespeare.
Caleb Crain, "Bootylicious," New Yorker, 7 September, reviews Peter T. Leeson's The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates. Crain's "Notebook: The Golden Age of Piracy," Steamboats are ruining everything, 30 August, is a valuable bibliographical essay.
Winston Groom, "The Torching of Atlanta," WSJ, 28 August, reviews Marc Wortman's The Bonfire and Russell S. Bonds's War Like the Thunderbolt.
Sam Tanenhaus, "In Kennedy, the Last Roar of the New Deal Liberal," NYT, 28 August, argues that Edward Kennedy's death marks the end of an American political tradition.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Modern History Notes
Mark Lewis, "Treacherous Ground," NYT, 27 August, reviews Richard Slotkin's No Quarter: The Battle of the Crater, 1864. See also: Kevin Levin, "‘The Question of Atrocity' for Richard Slotkin," Civil War Memory, 12 August.
Miranda Seymour, "Couples," NYT, 27 August, reviews Kate Cambor's Gilded Youth: Three Lives in France's Belle Époque.
Leon Hoffman, "Freud's Adirondack Vacation," NYT, 29 August, notes the centennial of Freud's only visit to the United States.
Stanley Kaufman, "Odd Surprises," TNR, 29 August, reviews Dani Levy and Stefan Arndt's "My Fuhrer: The Truly Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler".
Jody Rosen, "A Century Later, She's Still Red Hot," NYT, 28 August, announces the re-release of the best of Sophie Tucker.
Anthony Lane, "Dropping Out," New Yorker, 31 August, reviews Ang Lee's "Taking Woodstock" and Udi Edel's "The Baader Meinhof Complex".
Jay Mathews, "I Pledge Allegiance to Core Knowledge," Washington Post, 30 August, reviews E. D. Hirsch's The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Steve Donoghue, "Alexander the Grating," Open Letters Monthly, August, reviews The History of Alexander by Quintus Curtius Rufus. John Yardley, trans.
Jonathan Yardley, "Such a Sad, Sad Story," Washington Post, 30 August, reviews J. Randy Taraborrelli's The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe.
In David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, "T.R.M. Howard, an unlikely civil rights hero," LA Times, 28 August, Howard's biographers identify his ties to the movement.
Sheri Fink, "Strained by Katrina, a Hospital Faced Deadly Choices," NYT, 25 August, takes a close look at decisions made at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans.
Ron Suskind, "Against the Odds," NYT, 27 August, reviews Tracy Kidder's Strength In What Remains.
Claire Potter, "On Sin, Forgiveness and Redemption: A Few Thoughts On The Loss Of My Friend, Senator Kennedy," Tenured Radical, 28 August, remembers Edward Kennedy.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Friday's Notes
BBC History Magazine has relaunched. Its editor, David Musgrove, explains.
H. J. Jackson, "Samuel Johnson at 300," TLS, 26 August, reviews Greg Clingham and Philip Smallwood, eds., Samuel Johnson After 300 Years, Thomas M. Curley's Samuel Johnson, the ‘Ossian' Fraud, and the Celtic Revival in Great Britain and Ireland, and Peter Martin's Samuel Johnson, A Biography.
Wesley Stace, "Through life with Bob Dylan," TLS, 21 August, reviews Barry Feinstein's and Bob Dylan's Hollywood Foto-rhetoric: The Lost Manuscript, Feinstein's Real Moments, and Clinton Heylin's Revolution in the Air: The songs of Bob Dylan 1957–1973.
Ian Jack, "Downhill from Here," LRB, 27 August, reviews Andy Beckett's When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Additionally Noted
Errol Morris, "Seven Lies About Lying (Part 1)," Zoom, 5 August, and Morris, "Seven Lies About Lying (Part 2)," Zoom, 6 August, is followed by Morris, "More Lying," Zoom, 25 August, in which he responds to readers' questions.
Karen Schoemer, "See the U.S.A.," New York Magazine, 23 August, reviews "Looking In: Robert Frank's ‘The Americans'," an exhibit at Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
James Piereson, "Is Conservatism Dead?" New Criterion, September, reviews Sam Tanenhaus's The Death of Conservatism.
Sean Wilentz, "Triumph and Tragedy," TNR, 26 August, is his assessment of Senator Edward Kennedy's career. Adam Clymer, Kennedy's biographer, takes questions at: "Q. and A. About Senator Kennedy," The Caucus, 26 August.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Wednesday's Notes
Timothy Mowl, "Blood and Mistletoe," THES, 20 August, reviews Ronald Hutton's Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain.
Rebecca Leach reviews Elizabeth Outka's Consuming Traditions: Modernity, Modernism, and the Commodified Authentic for the THES, 20 August.
Janet Maslin, "Scarecrow, Lion, Tin Man and Freud, Too," NYT, 23 August, reviews Rebecca Loncraine's The Real Wizard of Oz: The Life and Times of L. Frank Baum.
At History Today, Martin Evans's "After the Cold War" launches a series of essays that look at changing attitudes to history in once Communist nations. Catherine Merridale's "Haunted by Stalin" looks at competing versions of Russia's past as functions of current political alternatives.
Matthew Reisz, "Free Radical," THES, 20 August, interviews George Scialabba, the author of What Are Intellectuals Good For?
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
20th Century Notes
Timothy L. Wood, "The Accidental Celebrity," IHE, 24 August, describes his recent experience of identity theft. The essay attributed to Wood had also been falsely attributed to our former colleague at Cliopatria, David Kaiser.
Matthew Price, "The End was Nigh," The National, 20 August, reviews Richard Overy's The Morbid Age: Britain Between the Wars.
Robert Gellately, "Remembering the Nazi-Soviet Pact After Seventy Years," Huffington Post, 24 August, draws on the author's Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe.
Johann Hari, "Genocide From the Inside," Slate, 24 August, reviews Tracy Kidder's Strength In What Remains, a story of flight from the Rwanda/Burundi holocaust.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Carnival Notes:
Carnivalesque #53, an ancient/medieval edition of the festival, will be up later today at Carin Ruff's Ruff Notes. History is Ephemeral Carnival #2 is up at Kitsch Slapped. The blog describes itself as "Slapping You With Kitsch — As Often As Possible. Specializing In Bad Taste From A (Feminist) Chick's Perspective. Pop Culture Right In Your Kisser."
Matthew Lynn, "Professor Paul Krugman at war with Niall Ferguson over inflation," London's Sunday Times, 23 August, tracks the careers and recent exchanges of blows.
Diana Preston, "Rome Wasn't Destroyed in a Day Either," Washington Post, 23 August, reviews Adrian Goldsworthy's How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower.
Dennis Drabelle, "Mutiny on the Hudson," Washington Post, 23 August, reviews Peter C. Mancall's Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson -- A Tale of Mutiny and Murder in the Arctic.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
20th Century Lives
Helen Vendler, "The Plain Sense of Things," NYT, 21 August, reviews Wallace Stevens's Selected Poems, edited by John N. Serio.
Evelyn Toynton, "Unhappy Together: The Wittgenstein Family Feud," Harper's, 21 August, reviews Alexander Waugh's The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "Bread, Wine, Politics," NYT, 21 August, reviews Stanislao G. Pugliese's Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone.
A. C. Grayling reviews Graham Farmelo's The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom for the Barnes & Noble Review, 24 August.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
"Kind of Blue"
On 17 August 1959, Columbia Records released Miles Davis's "Kind of Blue". It featured his ensemble sextet, including pianists Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly, drummer Jimmy Cobb, bassist Paul Chambers, and saxophonists John Coltrane and Julian "Cannonball" Adderley. "Kind of Blue" became the best-selling jazz album of all time; many critics regard it as the finest jazz album ever produced.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Friday's Notes
Aram Bakshian, Jr., "Cherry Tree? Let's Negotiate," WSJ, 20 August, reviews John Ferling's The Ascent of George Washington: The Hidden Political Genius of an American Icon.
David Grylls, "John Sutherland and 900 novelists," TLS, 19 August, reviews Sutherland's The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction, 2nd edition.
Dwight Garner, "Delighted by the Joy of Bad Things," NYT, 20 August, reviews Rebecca Solnit's The Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster.
Karan Thapar, "Nehru, Jinnah responsible for Partition: Jaswant," IBN Politics.com, 17 August, interviews Jaswant Singh, the author of a new biography of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of modern Pakistan. Hat tip.
Tim Rutten reviews Christopher Caldwell's Reflections on the Revolution in Europe for the LA Times, 19 August. Hat tip.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
20th Century Notes
John McWhorter, "Thus Spake Zora," City Journal, Summer, looks again at Zora Neal Hurston, who was rediscovered and admired, because of and despite her conservatism.
Adam Kirsch, "Frankfurt on the Hudson," Tablet, 18 August, reviews Thomas Wheatland's The Frankfurt School in Exile.
Gossip:
William Golding and other creeps who wrote well Recent litigation over history's greatest wine hoax
Finally, farewell to Richard Poirier, a founder of the Library of America, an editor of Partisan Review and founder of Raritan: A Quarterly Review.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Wednesday's Notes
Michael Dirda reviews Sei Shonagon's The Pillow Book (translated by Meredith McKinney) for the Barnes & Noble Review, 17 August.
"Oliver Stone revealing 'Secret History of America'," the live feed, 18 August. You'll be glad to know all the secrets!
At Legal History, Duke's Laura Edwards is guest-blogging about her most recent book, The People and Their Peace: Legal Culture and the Transformation of Inequality in the Post-Revolutionary South.
Michael Elliott, "In the Church of Lincoln," Religion Dispatches, 17 August, argues that, while we've fashioned Abraham Lincoln a secular saint, no current politician is his match as a bare-knuckled brawler.
Peter Schjeldahl, "High and Low Relief," New Yorker, 24 August, reviews "Augustus Saint-Gaudens in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," an exhibit at Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Scott McLemee, "Prophets of Deceit," IHE, 19 August, finds current relevance in Leo Lowenthal's and Norbert Guterman's Prophets of Deceit: A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator (1949).
Niall Ferguson, "A runaway deficit may soon test Obama's luck," Financial Times, 10 August, compares Barack Obama to Felix the Cat. Ferguson, "Why My Comparing Obama to Felix the Cat Is Not Racist," Huffington Post, 12 August, jumps at his shadow. Jim Fallows, Paul Krugman, Matt Yglesias and Conor Clarke call him on it.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
More Noted Things
The Tower of Babel:
Hat tip72 Medieval Images 72 Early Modern Images 72 Modern Images
"A very special business angel," Economist, 13 August, and Dwight Garner, "Fox Hunter, Party Animal, Leftist Warrior," NYT, 18 August, review Tristram Hunt's Marx's General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels.
Patricia Cohen, "A Pivotal Year and a Springboard to the '60s," NYT, 17 August, reviews Fred Kaplan's 1959: The Year Everything Changed.
Janet Maslin, "On American Shores, a Wave of Immigrants Smuggled in From China," NYT, 16 August, reviews Patrick Radden Keefe's The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream.
Orlando Patterson, "Race and Diversity in the Age of Obama," NYT, 14 August, finds African Americans as segregated as ever in American private life.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Andrew Collins, "The key to Dan Brown's success," London Times, 15 August, anticipates the publication of Brown's The Lost Symbol.
Rachel L. Swarns, "Madison and the White House, Through the Memoir of a Slave," NYT, 15 August, tells the story of James Madison's slave, who published a memoir of his life in the White House.
David S. Reynolds, "Rebel Rebel," NYT, 14 August, reviews Sally Jenkins's and John Stauffer's The State of Jones: The Small Southern County That Seceded From the Confederacy. Stauffer doesn't even bother to defend a book he signed off on as co-author and Reynolds merely repeats criticism of it offered by bloggers at Civil War Memory and Renegade South.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Carnival Notes
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Weak Endnotes
John Berry & Norman Oder, "Is a New Librarian of Congress in the Works?" Library Journal.com, 3 August, reports rumors of the impending retirement of 80-year-old James Billington as Librarian of Congress. Billington, a noted specialist in Russian history, has been head of the Library of Congress for 22 years. The rumor mill reports that Carla Hayden, director of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, may be in line to succeed him.
Dave Goldberg, "Time-Traveling for Dummies," Slate, 13 August, proposes four ground rules for time travel.
Jonathan Yardley, "Meet the Real Godfather," Washington Post, 16 August, reviews Mike Dash's The First Family: Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder, and the Birth of the American Mafia.
Mark Adams, "The Lady with the Alligator Clutch," Washington Post, 16 August, reviews Jeff Leen's The Queen of the Ring: Sex, Muscles, Diamonds, and The Making of An American Legend.
Philip Womack reviews Paula Byrne's Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead for the Telegraph, 14 August.
Friday, August 14, 2009
More 20th Century Notes
Dan Kaufman, "La Despedida: A Lost Memoir of the Spanish Civil War," Nation, 12 August, reviews James Neugass, Peter N. Carroll and Peter Glazer, eds., War Is Beautiful: An American Ambulance Driver in the Spanish Civil War.
Ken Johnson, "A Chronicle of New York's Darks and Lights, Captured by Savvy Street Photographers," NYT, 13 August, reviews "New York Photographs," exhibits by thirteen New York City galleries.
Benjamin Wallace-Wells, "Worst and Dimmest," TNR, 12 August, argues that we learned the wrong lessons from David Halberstam.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Modern European Notes
Jim Endersby, "Linnaeus at the service of England," TLS, 12 August, reviews Neil Chambers, ed., The Scientific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, 1765-1820, 6 vols.; and The Indian and Pacific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, Vol. I.
Donald Rayfield, "Stalin in charge," TLS, 12 August, reviews Oleg V. Khlevniuk's Master of the House: Stalin and his inner circle (Nora Seligman Favorov, trans.) and Paul R. Gregory's Terror By Quota: State security from Lenin to Stalin (An archival study).
Keith Lowe for the Telegraph, 6 August, and Robert Service for the Guardian, 9 August, review Andrew Roberts's The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War.
Alastair Harper, "Where are the good books on modern British politics?" Books Blog, finds a few to recommend.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
20th Century Biographical Notes
Jon Hendley, "I spy Arthur Ransome," Guardian, 13 August, reviews Roland Chambers's The Last Englishman: the Double Life of Arthur Ransome.
Michael Henderson reviews Robin Daniels's Cardus, Celebrant of Beauty: a Memoir for the Telegraph, 10 August.
Adam Kirsch, "Chic Radical," Tablet, 11 August, reviews Barry Seldes's Leonard Bernstein: The Political Life of an American Musician. See also: Alex Ross, "The Bernstein Files," New Yorker, 10 August: Part One, Bernstein and the F.B.I.; Part Two, Bernstein and Nixon's Plumbers; Part Three, Bernstein in the Nixon Tapes.
Dwight Garner, "Writer's Myth Looms as Large as the Many Novels She Wrote," NYT, 11 August, reviews Benjamin Moser's Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector.
Caitlin Flanagan, "Sex and the Married Man," Atlantic, September, reviews Jennifer Scanlon's Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
More Noted Things
Adam Kirsch, "A Nation of Commentators," Tablet, 21 July, reviews Elie Wiesel's Rashi, 11th century France's Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzhak.
Carol Kaesuk Yoon, "Reviving the Lost Art of Naming the World," NYT, 10 August, is adapted from her book, Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science.
Carlin Romano, "The Shame of Academe and Fascism, Then and Now," CHE, 10 August, reviews Stephen H. Norwood's The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower: Complicity and Conflict on American Campuses.
Howard Husock, "Jane Jacobs's Legacy," City Journal, Summer, reviews Anthony Flint's Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City and Glenna Lang and Marjorie Wunsch's Genius of Common Sense: Jane Jacobs and the Story of The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
Michiko Kakutani, "Presidential Horse Race, the 2008 Version," NYT, 10 August, reviews Dan Balz's and Haynes Johnson's The Battle for America, 2008: The Story of an Extraordinary Election.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Adam Kotsko and Tim Burke discuss posting syllabi on-line.
"The road to insurrection," The Economist, 6 August, reviews David Horspool's The English Rebel: One Thousand Years of Trouble-Making from the Normans to the Nineties.
"Learned and ingenious ladies," The Economist, 6 August, reviews Jane Robinson's Bluestockings: The Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education. Hat tip.
Mark Bauerlein, "Demanding Rights, Courting Controversy," WSJ, 6 August, reviews David and Linda Royster Beito's Black Maverick: T. R. M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power.
Jonathan Yardley, "Cabaret Queen," Washington Post, 9 August, reviews James Gavin's Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne.
Adam Kirsch, "Disengagement," Tablet, 4 August, reviews Rich Cohen's Israel is Real.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Our colleague, Claire Potter, the Tenured Radical, and the American Historical Association's Rob Townsend debate the future of the conference job interview.
Michael Shae, "Wilde's Library," NYT, 6 August, reviews Thomas Wright's Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde.
Gail Collins, "Three Days in August," NYT, 6 August, reviews Pete Fornatale's Back to the Garden: The Story of Woodstock and Michael Lang with Holly George-Warren, The Road to Woodstock.
Paul Krugman, "School for Scoundrels," NYT, 6 August, reviews Justin Fox's The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street and Charles R. Morris's The Sages: Warren Buffett, George Soros, Paul Volcker, and the Maelstrom of Markets.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Modern American Political Notes
Jonathan Rosen, "Natural Man," NYT, 6 August, reviews Douglas Brinkley's The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America.
Lynn Olson, "Band of Bickering Brothers," Washington Post, 9 August, reviews Andrew Roberts's Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941-1945.
Andrea Fuller, "Senate Historian Reflects on 34 Years of Queries," NYT, 7 August, looks back on Richard Baker's 34 years as historian of the United States Senate.
Christopher Caldwell, "The Rise and Fall of Donald Rumsfeld," NYT, 5 August, reviews Bradley Graham's By His Own Rules: The Ambitions, Successes, and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld.
Paul M. Barrett, "While Regulators Slept," NYT, 6 August, reviews David Wessel's In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke's War on the Great Panic.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Friday's Notes
Errol Morris, "Seven Lies About Lying (Part 1)," Zoom, 5 August, and "Seven Lies About Lying (Part 2)," Zoom, 6 August, are a two-part series by the winner of the Cliopatria Award for Best Series of Posts, 2007.
"Is there a margin muse in your library book?" Books Blog, 28 July, offers up readers' marginalia on Gustav Krist, Pauline Moffitt Watts and Eugen Weber.
Dwight Garner, "Rowing to Democracy," NYT, 6 August, reviews John R. Hale's Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy and the Birth of Democracy.
Andrew O'Hehir, "Sacrificial virgins of the Mississippi, Salon, 6 August, and Dennis Drabelle, "Down by the Riverside," Washington Post, 9 August, review Timothy Pauketat's Cahokia: Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Things Ancient & Modern
Vincent Crapanzano, "How to fake science, history and religion," TLS, 5 August, reviews Ronald H. Fritze's Invented Knowledge: False history, fake science and pseudo-religions.
David Arnold, "Beheading Hindus," TLS, 29 July, reviews Wendy Doniger's The Hindus.
A. E. Harvey, "The real Mary Magdalene," TLS, 5 August, reviews Robin Griffith-Jones's Mary Magdelene: The woman whom Jesus loved.
Peter Berkowitz, "Conserving," Policy Review, August/ September, reviews Patrick Allitt's The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History.
Ronald Fraser, "Doing business with Franco," TLS, 29 July, reviews Hugh Thomas's Eduardo Barreiros and the Recovery of Spain.
Richard Vinen, "How Orwellian was Orwell?" TLS, 5 August, reviews Paul Anderson, ed., Orwell in "Tribune," "As I Please" and other writings, 1943–7 and Philip Bounds's Orwell and Marxism: The political and cultural thinking of George Orwell.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
More Noted Things
This week, Cliopatria's friends at Crooked Timber are holding a "book event" on George Scialabba's What Are Intellectuals Good For?. Thus far, there are contributions by:
Henry Farrell Michael Bérubé Russell Jacoby Rich Yeselson John Holbo Scott McLemee George Scialabba
David Zax, "Galileo's Vision," Smithsonian, July, recalls how and what Galileo taught us to see.
Alan Jacobs, "The English Montaigne," Books & Culture, July/August, reviews Duncan Wu's William Hazlitt: the First Modern Man.
Isaac Chotiner, "Could Malcolm Gladwell Be More Wrong About 'To Kill A Mockingbird'?" TNR, 5 August, develops at greater length Jeremy Young's argument at Cliopatria.
Dwight Garner, "When David Fought Goliath in Washington Square Park," NYT, 4 August, reviews Anthony Flint's Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took On New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Michael Massing, "The News about the Internet," NYRB, 13 August, reviews Eric Boehlert's Bloggers on the Bus: How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press, Bill Wasik's And Then There's This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture, and two dozen major political blogs.
Andrew Clark, "Seeking Haydn," Financial Times, 25 July, reviews David Wyn Jones's The Life of Haydn, David Vickers's Haydn, Christopher Hogwood's Haydn's Visits to England, David Wyn Jones, ed., Oxford Composer Companions: Haydn, and Richard Wigmore's The Faber Pocket Guide to Haydn.
Willis G. Regier, "The Essence of War: Clausewitz as Educator," CHE, 3 August, reviews what Clausewitz taught us.
Judith Thurman, "Wilder Women," New Yorker, 10 August, revisits William Holtz's The Ghost in the Little House: A Life of Rose Wilder Lane.
Malcolm Gladwell, "The Courthouse Ring: Atticus Finch and the limits of Southern liberalism," New Yorker, 10 August, argues that Alabama's Big Jim Folsom is a key to understanding To Kill a Mockingbird.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Brenda Wineapple, "French Connections," NYT, 29 July, reviews Caroline Moorehead's Dancing to the Precipice: The Life of Lucie de la Tour du Pin, Eyewitness to an Era.
Dennis Drabelle, "Literature," Washington Post, 2 August, reviews Denise D. Knight and Jennifer S. Tuttle, eds., The Selected Letters of Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
Mark Harris, "Dream and Delirium," NYT, 29 July, reviews Werner Herzog's Conquest of the Useless: Reflections From the Making of "Fitzcarraldo". Translated by Krishna Winston.
Douglas Foster, "The Promise of South Africa," Washington Post, 2 August, reviews Alec Russell's Bring Me My Machine Gun: The Battle for the Soul of South Africa From Mandela to Zuma.
Fouad Ajami, "Strangers in the Land," NYT, 29 July, reviews Christopher Caldwell's Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Notes on Western Civilization
History Carnival LXXIX is up at History Today News!
Kathryn Hughes reviews Hermione Lee's Biography: A Very Short Introduction for the Guardian, 1 August.
Tim Whitmarsh, "A Nabokov of the ancient world," TLS, 24 July, reviews George Economou's Ananios: Ananios of Kleitor.
Jed Perl, "Anonymous No More," TNR, 28 July, reviews Melanie Holcomb's Pen and Parchment: Drawing in the Middle Ages and "Pen and Parchment: Drawing in the Middle Ages," an exhibit at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Tim Black, "‘We want to determine the world, not be determined by it'," Spiked Review of Books, July, and John Cottingham, "From Job to the Enlightenment," Standpoint, July/August, review Susan Neiman's Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-up Idealists. Hat tip.
Friday, July 31, 2009
A Statement About the State of Jones Dispute
Guest-posted by Kevin Levin from Civil War Memory.
The ongoing dispute between Victoria Bynum, the author of the well-regarded study, The Free State of Jones (UNC Press, 2001) and Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer, the authors of the brand new book, The State of Jones (Doubleday, 2009), shows no sign of letting up. Now that the story has been picked up by the New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Inside Higher Ed, I've decided to explain how I came to be involved in this little squabble. I've received a number of emails from interested readers inquiring as to how I got involved, including a few that have taken liberties in assuming some kind of loyalty to one side. I want to clear the air and offer my own assessment of this unfortunate incident.
In late spring I was contacted by a representative from Doubleday who asked if I might be interested in an advanced copy for review. I receive these types of emails on a daily basis and, while I reject most of these offers, I decided to accept this one given the topic as well as the involvement of John Stauffer, whose work I know and respect. Shortly thereafter, I received an email from Sally Jenkins who also asked if I was interested in reviewing the book. I promised to give the book a thorough read, though I could not be certain when I might get around to posting a review on the blog given the demands of my own research projects.
While reading through the book I came across a thorough critique by Victoria Bynum at her blog, Renegade South, and decided to link to it. [Her review was eventually published in three parts: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.] In the interest of full disclosure let me point out that I've never met personally with Prof. Bynum. We are, however, linked on the social networking site, Facebook. Admittedly, I am a big fan of her own study of Jones County and I am familiar with other shorter scholarly pieces in edited collections and scholarly journals. I consider her to be a very talented historian. As I read through the Jenkins-Stauffer book I accumulated a growing list of questions and problems with their interpretation having to do with, among other things, their characterization of Jones County as well as Newton Knight. Many of my concerns were reinforced after reading Prof. Bynum's critique. The decision to link to Prof. Bynum's review was done to make available to my readers the thoughts of an acknowledged expert in this particular subject area. Her review is hard-nosed and thorough; however, at no time does Prof. Bynum engage in personal insult or call into question the authors' motivation for taking on the topic of Jones County. I had no desire to write off the Jenkins-Stauffer book, though I did suggest that there are legitimate questions about its interpretation.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Modern History Notes
Jenny Diski, "All Eat All," LRB, 6 August, reviews Catalin Avramescu's An Intellectual History of Cannibalism, translated by Alistair Ian Blyth.
Michael Dirda, "Meeting of the Minds," Washington Post, 30 July, reviews Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science.
Hillary Mantel, "He Roared," LRB, 6 August, reviews David Lawday's Danton: The Gentle Giant of Terror.
Michael Cieply, "Civil War Fires Up Literary Shootout," NYT, 29 July, looks at the continuing feud between Victoria Bynum, the author of The Free State of Jones: Mississippi's Longest Civil War, and John Stauffer and Sally Jenkins, the authors of The State of Jones: The Small Southern County That Seceded From the Confederacy. Most of the battles have been at Bynum's blog, Renegade South: histories of unconventional southerners, with occasional skirmishes at Kevin Levin's Civil War Memory.
Eric Hobsbawm, "C (for Crisis)," LRB, 6 August, reviews Richard Overy's The Morbid Age: Britain between the Wars.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
History Carnival, A Lincoln Disputation & the Philippines Analogy
Kathryn Hadley will host the next edition of History Carnival on Saturday 1 August at History Today News. Send your nominations of the best in history blogging since 1 July to k*dot*hadley*at*historytoday*dot*com or use the nomination form.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
More Noted Things
Mary Beard, "Knossos: Fakes, Facts, and Mystery," NYRB, 13 August, reviews Cathy Gere's Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism.
Joan Acocella, "Betrayal," New Yorker, 3 August, reviews Susan Gubar's Judas: A Biography and Herbert Krosney's The Lost Gospel: The Quest for the Gospel of Judas Iscariot.
John Warne Monroe, "Isn't It Romantic?" Commonweal, 17 July, reviews Tim Blanning's The Triumph of Music: The Rise of Composers, Musicians, and Their Art. Hat tip.
Roger Cohen, "Iran: The Tragedy & the Future," NYRB, 13 August, looks at the prospects for Iran.
Adam Hochschild, "The Rape of the Congo," NYRB, 13 August, takes a look at prospects for Africa's heartland.
Finally, congratulations to Cliopatria's friend, Stephen D. Marlowe, who has been re-instated on the faculty of Ohio's Edison Community College.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
For lack of volunteer hosts, the carnivals of Asian history, bad history, and military history are currently on hiatus. Without volunteer hosts, History Carnival and both ancient/medieval and early modern editions of Carnivalesque could face the same fate. Please contact sharon*at*earlymodernweb*dot*org*dot *uk or carnivalesque*at*earlymodernweb*dot*org*dot*uk if you are interested in serving as a host.
Michael Dirda, "Finding the 'I' In Life," Washington Post, 23 July, reviews Keith Thomas's The Ends of Life: Roads to Fulfillment in Early Modern England.
John Gray reviews Timothy Garton Ash's Facts Are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade Without a Name for the New Statesman, 16 July.
Finally, farewell to NYU's classicist, Lionel Casson.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Horrible Histories
Over at Crooked Timber, Harry Brighouse says that "Horrible Histories" may be the best thing BBC is doing these days. YouTube offers many samples, but "The 4 Georges: 'Born 2 Rule'" gives you a sense of what the series does:
Saturday, July 25, 2009
More Modern History Notes
Stephen M. Walt recently read Piers Brendon's The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997 and drew "10 lessons on empire."
Adam Liptak, "Judicial Roulette," NYT, 24 July, reviews James MacGregor Burns's Packing the Court: The Rise of Judicial Power and the Coming Crisis of the Supreme Court.
Liza Mundy, "Minding the Children, Watching the Parents," Washington Post, 25 July, reviews Miriam Forman-Brunell's Babysitter: An American History and Tasha Blaine's Just Like A Family: Inside the Lives of Nannies, the Parents They Work for, and the Children They Love.
Tony Horwitz, "A Land and A People," NYT, 23 July, reviews Rich Cohen's Israel is Real: An Obsessive Quest to Understand the Jewish Nation and Its History; and Jonathan Tepperman, "Zionist in the White House," NYT, 23 July, reviews Allis Radosh and Ronald Radosh, A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Friday's Notes
Rachel Cusk, "The Art of Self-Portraiture," The Guardian, 19 July, reviews Laura Cumming's A Face to the World: On Self-Portraits.
Peter Marshall, "Not a real queen?" TLS, 22 July, reviews Eamon Duffy's Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor, Linda Porter's Mary Tudor: The First Queen, Judith M. Richards's Mary Tudor, and Anna Whitelock's Mary Tudor.
Janet Maslin, "Mother Nature's Son, With a Big Stick (and Rifle)," NYT, 22 July, reviews Douglas Brinkley's The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America.
Joseph Lennon, "The hunger artist," TLS, 22 July, marks the centennial of suffragette Marion Wallace-Dunlop's first modern hunger strike.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Some Modern History Notes
Jeffrey R. Young, "When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom," CHE, 20 July, v. Eric Rauchway, "Bullet points don't bore people, people do," Edge of the American West, 21 July.
John Summers reviews Jackson Lears's Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877–1920 for bookforum, 17 July.
Mark Mazower, "The Evil That Men Do," TNR, 1 July, reviews Grigoris Balakian's Armenian Golgotha: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1918, translated by Peter Balakian with Aris Sevag, Ryan Gingeras's Sorrowful Shores: Violence, Ethnicity, and the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1912-1923, and Fethiye Cetin's My Grandmother: A Memoir.
Christopher Hitchens, "A Sense of Historical Irony: Leszek Kolakowski, 1927-2009," Slate, 20 July, recalls Poland's philosopher of democratic socialism.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
More Noted Things
Stephen J. Pyne, "History Is Scholarship; It's Also Literature," CHE, 17 July, argues that too many history graduate students and professors haven't yet learned how to write. The Arizona State historian discusses how he teaches writing for historians.
Adam Kirsch, "What's Romantic About Science?" Slate, 20 July, reviews Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science.
George Scialabba reviews Stanislao Pugliese's Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone for the Barnes & Noble Review, 21 July.
"State Dept Offers New Caveat on Nixon Tapes," Secrecy News, 20 July, takes notice of deviant transcriptions in the Foreign Relations of the United States series. Transcripts are "interpretations"; it's the tapes that are "documents".
On the Thursday afternoon arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr, the police report, and the statement of Gates's attorney, Charles Ogletree.
Update: Cambridge, Massachusetts police announced this afternoon that charges against Gates will be dropped.
Monday, July 20, 2009
United States History Notes
Jeffrey R. Young, "Drive-Time History, With a Dry Sense of Humor," CHE, 13 July, features three Virginia historians who've taken history to radio.
Michael Grunwald, "Power to (Some of) the People," Washington Post, 19 July, reviews Lynn Hudson Parsons's The Birth of Modern Politics: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams and the Election of 1828.
Ben Macintyre, "Dearborn-on-Amazon," NYT, 16 July, and Aaron Leitko, "Welcome to the Jungle," Washington Post, 19 July, review Greg Grandin's Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City.
Martha A. Sandweiss, "The Family That Rejected Jim Crow," Washington Post, 19 July, reviews W. Ralph Eubanks's The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of An Interracial Family in the American South.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Early Modern Notes
David M. Kennedy, "What Is History Good For?" NYT, 16 July, reviews Margaret MacMillan's Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History.
Carnivalesque LII, an early modern edition of the festival, is up at Gilbert Mabbott.
Michael Sims, "White Man's Fantasy," Washington Post, 19 July, reviews Richard Bernstein's The East, the West, and Sex: A History of Erotic Encounters.
Jonathan Yardley, "Shakespeare's Storm," Washington Post, 19 July, reviews Hobson Woodward's A Brave Vessel: The True Tale of the Castaways Who Rescued Jamestown and Inspired Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Robert J. Bliwise, "A Witch's Brew," Duke Magazine, July/August, previews Thomas Robisheaux's The Last Witch of Langenburg: Murder in a German Village.
Justin Moyer, "A New Newton," Washington Post, 19 July, reviews Thomas Levenson's Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist.
Christopher Benfey, "Science and the Sublime," NYT, 16 July, reviews Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Stephen Baker, "A Brief History of Blogs," Business Week, 16 July, reviews Scott Rosenberg's Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters.
Mary Beard, "Was He Quite Ordinary?" LRB, 23 July, reviews Frank McLynn's Marcus Aurelius: Warrior, Philosopher, Emperor.
John Stubbs, "Bill & Bess," Literary Review, July, reviews Helen Hackett's Shakespeare and Elizabeth: The Meeting of Two Myths.
William Doyle, "Blood Brother," Literary Review, July, reviews David Lawday's Danton.
Maria Margaronis, "Mixing History and Desire: The Poetry of C.P. Cavafy," The Nation, 15 July, reviews C. P. Cavafy's Collected Poems and The Unfinished Poems. Translated and edited by Daniel Mendelsohn.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Thursday's Notes
The Giant's Shoulders #13, the history of science carnival, is up at Skulls in the Stars.
Cathy Gere, "Restoring Faith: The ancient Minoan civilisation," History Today, July, argues that, when traditional religions were under attack, Arthur Evans offered Minos as a source of mythological reference. Gere is recently the author of Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism.
Michael Dirda, "A Woman of Masterful Persuasion," Washington Post, 16 July, reviews John Lukacs, ed., American Austen: The Forgotten Writing of Agnes Repplier.
Michael Kimmelman, "High-Born Prussians Who Defied Their Origin," NYT, 15 July, profiles Countess Elisabeth von der Schulenburg, whose Nazi family was at the heart of the plot against Hitler.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
More Noted Things
Indian History Carnival #19 is up at varnam.
The Contributors, "Fired from the Canon," The Second Pass, 9 July, names 10 novels in the canon that really aren't must reads.
Stephanie Simon's "The Culture Wars' New Front: U.S. History Classes in Texas," WSJ, 14 July, prompted considerable discussion at Paul Harvey's "The Eyes of David Barton Are Upon You," Religion in American History, 14 July, and Eric Rauchway's "A rat done bit my sister Nell," Edge of the American West, 14 July.
A colleague points out that the joint effort of two full professors, Christopher Newfield and Stanton Glantz, "Ending the California dream," San Francisco Chronicle, 14 July, says 25% cuts in state funding for the UC system means that "students will learn 25 percent less." That's 25% of the $3 billion that the state general fund sends to the UC system, out of the UC system's $19 billion budget. These two geniuses are both "former chairs of the UC Systemwide Committee on Planning and Budget."
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Early Modern Notes
Patrick Ludolph will host an early modern edition of Carnivalesque at Gilbert Mabbott on 19 July. Send nominations of the best in early modern history blogging since 25 May to him at pludolph*at*umail*dot*ucsb*dot*edu or use the form. If you are interested in hosting History Carnival in September or thereafter, contact sharon*at*earlymodernweb *dot*org*dot*uk.
Peter Forbes for the Independent, 26 September, Robin McKie for the Guardian, 2 November, Janet Maslin for the NYT, 8 July, and Dava Sobel for the Barnes & Noble Review, 17 July, review Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. James Mustich interviews Holmes about his book in Barnes & Noble Review, 6 July.
Nicholas Shakespeare for the Telegraph, 15 January, Jane Shilling for the London Times, 16 January, Sarah Burton for the Independent, 23 January, Kathryn Harrison, "Oh, Lord," NYT, 12 June, and Katha Pollitt, "Lord Byron's Great Insight," Slate, 13 July, review Edna O'Brien's Byron in Love: A Short Daring Life.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Jane Black, "Cooking Up a Pot of Civilization," Washington Post, 12 July, reviews Richard Wrangham's Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human and Tom Standage's An Edible History of Humanity.
Gordon Wood, "Revolutionary Manners," TNR, 1 July, reviews Eric Slauter's The State as a Work of Art: The Cultural Origins of the Constitution.
Mickey Edwards, "A wide-ranging and clear-eyed examination of the history of American conservatism," Boston Globe, 12 July, reviews Patrick Allitt's The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History.
Farewell to Kenneth M. Stampp, 1912-2009.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Recent American History Notes
Michael Meyer, "Still ‘Ugly' After All These Years," NYT, 10 July, looks back on William J. Lederer's and Eugene Burdick's novel The Ugly American.
Tom Perriello, "Faith in the Electorate," Washington Post, 12 July, reviews Shaun A. Casey's The Making of a Catholic President: Kennedy vs. Nixon 1960.
John Lancaster, "Misguided Missiles," Washington Post, 12 July, reviews James Scott's The Attack on the Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel's Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship.
Thomas Mallon, "Giant Step, Full Stop," NYT, 8 July, reviews Craig Nelson's Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon and Andrew Chaikin with Victoria Kohl, Voices from the Moon: Apollo Astronauts Describe Their Lunar Experiences.
Alexander Waugh, "Dreams From His Father," American Conservative, 1 August, reviews Christopher Buckley's Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Weak Endnotes
seeks hosts for both its ancient/medieval and its early modern editions of the festival. If you are interested, contact Julie Hofman and Sharon Howard at carnivalesque *at*earlymodernweb*dot*org*dot*uk.
Laura Miller, "History is bunk after all," Salon, 9 July, and Jonathan Yardley, "Getting History Right," Washington Post, 12 July, review Margaret MacMillan's Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History.
Holland Cotter, "Mysterious Moods, Elusive in Marble," NYT, 9 July, reviews "An Antiquity of Imagination: Tullio Lombardo and Venetian High Renaissance Sculpture," an exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
250 years later, at Christopher Moore's Canadian History, he's live-blogging the siege of Quebec. It begins on 3 July and continues with daily entries.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Modern History Notes
Janet Maslin, "When Poets Were Scientists and Nature Their Mysterious Muse," NYT, 8 July, reviews Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science.
Peter D. Smith reviews Philip Hoare's Leviathan or, The Whale for the TLS, 10 July. Hoare's book won this year's BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction.
David Miller, "Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness," Telegraph, 7July, recalls the novel's extraordinary hold on its readers and Achebe's troubling criticism of it.
Suzy Hansen, "Importance of elsewhere," The National, 3 July, reviews Magdalena J. Zaborowska's James Baldwin's Turkish Decade: Erotics of Exile.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Bela Kiraly, 1912-2009
Bela Kiraly, military leader of the Hungarian uprising in 1956 and subsequently a professor of history at Brooklyn College, died on Saturday in Budapest. After the failure of the Hungarian revolt, he came to the United States, earned a doctorate at Columbia, and taught in Brooklyn's history department from 1964 to 1982. Kiraly's books included Hungary in the Late Eighteenth Century: The Decline of Enlightened Despotism (1969) and Basic History of Modern Hungary (2001).
Wednesday's Notes
Will the recession put an end to conference job interviews? Claire Potter, "More Annals of the Great Depression: Whither The Conference Interview?" Tenured Radical, 7 July.
Michael Kimmelman, "Stolen Beauty: A Greek Urn's Underworld," NYT, 7 July, reviews Vernon Silver's The Lost Chalice: The Epic Hunt for a Priceless Masterpiece.
Johann Hari, "The Birth, and Death, of the Asian Babe," Slate, 29 June, reviews Richard Bernstein's The East, the West, and Sex: A History of Erotic Encounters.
Peter Gwyn reviews Kevin Sharpe's Selling the Tudor Monarchy: Authority and Image in Sixteenth-Century England for the THES, 2 July.
Scott McLemee interviews Immanuel Ness of Brooklyn College, who edited the new 7 volume International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, 1500 to the Present.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
More Noted Things
David Moltz, "So Sue Me," IHE, 6 July, tells the story of a ruthless administration at Ohio's Edison Community College. As farangi at Chapati Mystery, its victim, Stephen D. Marlowe, is a longtime friend of Cliopatria. He also edits the College union's blog, The Illuminator. The faculty has voted no confidence in President Yowell and the Board of Trustees will do justice and save money if it retires him.
The Codex Sinaiticus is now online. Digitization of the oldest Greek text of the Christian Bible is a cooperative venture of the British Library, the Leipzig University Library, the National Library of Russia, and St. Catherine's Monastery. On 6-7 July, the British Library is hosting an international conference about the text. Until September, it hosts an exhibit, "From Parchment to Pixel: the virtual reunification of Codex Sinaiticus."
Jeffrey Rosen, "Black Robe Politics," Washington Post, 5 July, Emily Bazelon, "The Supreme Court on Trial," Slate, 6 July, and Michiko Kakutani, "Appointees Who Really Govern America," NYT, 6 July, review James MacGregor Burns's Packing the Court: The Rise of Judicial Power and the Coming Crisis of the Supreme Court.
Terry Eagleton, "Urbane sprawl," Guardian, 27 June, reviews Isaiah Berlin's Enlightening: Letters, 1946-1960.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Laura, "The Blogosphere 2.0," 11D, 2 July, her observations about how blogging has changed in the last six years, is getting widespread commentary. For the most part, I agree with her, especially about the growth of niche blogging. Six years ago, it was a pleasant surprise to find another history blog out there. Now, we know of at least 1500 of them and they thrive with specialization. Recently, we've created separate categories for Digital History and History of Science and Technology.
Scott Jaschik, "Empty Chair No More," IHE, 2 July, notes the hiring of John W. Hall as the first Ambrose-Hesseltine Professor in U.S. Military History. The topics of both Hall's first and second books are military dimensions of the Indian wars. Jaschik might have noted that Wisconsin's Native American historian, Ned Blackhawk, recently decamped for Yale.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Modern History Notes
Greg Grandin, "Off Dead Center: William Appleman Williams," The Nation, 1 July, reviews a new edition of Williams's The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, with a foreword by Lloyd C. Gardner and an afterword by Andrew J. Bacevich.
Edward Rothstein, "Manhattan: An Island Always Diverse," NYT, 3 July, reviews "Mannahatta/Manhattan: A Natural History of New York City," an exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York.
John G. McCurdy, "We the Bachelors," NYT, 3 July, looks at the status of unmarried men in 18th century America.
Marie Arana, "First in War, First in Peace, First in Hogging the Credit," Washington Post, 5 July, reviews John Ferling's The Ascent of George Washington: The Hidden Political Genius of an American Icon.
Susan Jacoby, "The Flag of Our Fathers," Washington Post, 4 July, reviews Woden Teachout's Capture the Flag: A Political History of American Patriotism.
David Andelman, "Over There," NYT, 3 July, reviews Norman Stone's World War One.
Dominique Browning, "Goddess of Mischief," NYT, 30 June, reviews Frances Osborn's The Bolter, a biography of Idina Sackville.
Friday, July 3, 2009
American Notes
Christina Hoff Sommers, "Persistent Myths in Feminist Scholarship," CHE, 29 June, gets a reply in Claire Potter's "'And Your Little Dog Too!!!' Christina Hoff Sommers Still Wants the Ruby Slippers," Tenured Radical, 1 July.
The new Common-place is up, with a forum on Thomas Paine and some other good things.
Kathleen Duval, "Life, Liberty and Benign Monarchy?" NYT, 2 July, looks at alternative forms of governance in late 18th century North America.
Michael Dirda, "Liebling, At the Top of His Game," Washington Post, 2 July, reviews A. J. Liebling's The Sweet Science and other Writings.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Thursday's Notes
Scott Jaschik, "Empty Chair No More," IHE, 2 July, features the filling of Wisconsin's chair in military history and the relative health of the field.
Masolino D'Amico, "Rebuilt Rome," TLS, 1 July, reviews David Watkin's The Roman Forum.
Andrew Butterfield, "Venice: The Masters in Boston," NYRB, 16 July, reviews "Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice," an exhibit at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, March 15–August 16, 2009, and the Louvre, Paris, September 14, 2009–January 4, 2010.
Sean Carroll, "Newton, P.I.," Cosmic Variance, 1 July, reviews Thomas Levenson's Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
More Noted Things
Brett Schulte hosts History Carnival LXXVIII today at TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog.
H. W. Brands, "A Revisionist's Burden," National Interest, 30 June, reviews Margaret MacMillan's Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History.
Ryan Patrico, "You Say You Want a Revolution," Books & Culture, 29 June, reviews Mike Rapport's 1848: Year of Revolution.
Sean Wilentz, "Who Lincoln Was," TNR, 15 July, reviews Michael Burlingame's Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Donald Yacovone, eds., Lincoln on Race & Slavery, Harold Holzer's Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter 1860-1861 and Holzer, ed., The Lincoln Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Legacy from 1860 to Now, Fred Kaplan's Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, John Stauffer's Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, and Ronald White's A. Lincoln: A Biography.
Finally, if, like me, you admire the pseudonymous blog, Curious Expeditions, and miss The Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society, check out the new joint venture of their founders, Atlas Obscura, A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities and Esoterica.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
20th Century American History Notes
Christina Hoff Sommers, "Persistent Myths in Feminist Scholarship," CHE, 29 June, argues that much feminist scholarship is unreliable.
Lynne Curry, "Intellectual Seduction: The Promise and Perils of Eugenics," H-Law, June, reviews Victoria F. Nourse's In Reckless Hands: Skinner v. Oklahoma and the Near-Triumph of American Eugenics and Paul A. Lombardo's Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell. Hat tip.
Adam Kirsch, "All Quiet," TNR, 24 June, reviews Hasia Diner's We Remember With Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust, 1945-1962. Mark Oppenheimer, "The Denial Twist," Tablet, 23-26 June, is a four-part series on the Holocaust Denial movement in the United States: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Oliver Marre, "They're too cool for school: meet the new history boys and girls," Guardian, 28 June, identifies a half-dozen young historians who are leading the renewal of popular history in Great Britain with "a mix of strong narratives, exciting personalities and quirky facts." Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
Sam Tanenhaus, "Sound of Silence: The Culture Wars Take a Break," NYT, 27 June, and Stan Katz, "NEH in Obamaland," Brainstorm, 28 June, disagree about the significance of Jim Leach's nomination to lead the National Endowment for the Humanities.
David Schiff, "Mahler's Body," The Nation, 24 June, reviews Henry-Louis de La Grange's Gustav Mahler: A New Life Cut Short (1907-1911).
Manjit Kumar, "The meeting of minds," Telegraph, 22 June, is an excerpt from his Quantum, which was shortlisted for the BBC's Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. In it, Kumar explores a clash between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein, one of the great controversies in the history of physics.
In "Blog to Book: An Elegant Execution," New Yorker, 24 June, Caleb Crain discusses the publication of The Wreck of the Henry Clay: Posts & Essays, 2003-2009, his anthology of work from his blog, Steamboats are ruining everything. In 2007, Crain won the Cliopatria Award for Best Writer.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Sunday's Notes
On Wednesday 1 July, Brett Schulte will host History Carnival LXXVIII at TOCWOC -- A Civil War Blog. You can nominate the best in June's history blogging for inclusion in the festival by using the TOCWOC contact or the History Carnival's nomination forms.
Paul Bloom, "No Smiting," NYT, 24 June, and Dan Cryer, "Survival of the nicest," Boston Globe, 28 June, review Robert Wright's The Evolution of God. Take no comfort in't.
Christopher Hitchens, "The Lovely Stones," Vanity Fair, July, visits Athens' Acropolis Museum.
Tunku Varadaradanjan, "Seeking Pleasure Far From Home," WSJ, 9 June, reviews Richard Bernstein's The East, the West, and Sex: A History of Erotic Encounters.
Stephen Mihm, "The Modernizers," NYT, 25 June, reviews Gavin Weightman's The Industrial Revolutionaries: The Making of the Modern World, 1776-1914.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Roberta Smith, "Precious Works From a Perilous Land," NYT, 25 June, reviews "Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures From the National Museum, Kabul," an exhibit now showing at Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Alexander F. Remington, "A Silent Killer," Washington Post, 28 June, reviews Stephan Talty's The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army.
Maira Kalman, "Time Wastes Too Fast," NYT, 25 June, on her visit to Monticello, is from her current series for the Times, "And the Pursuit of Happiness." Penguin published her first series, "The Principles of Uncertainty."
Charles Postel, "Bursting into the Modern Age," Washington Post, 28 June, reviews Jackson Lears's Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920.
Jonathan Yardley, "A Hero for Hard Times," Washington Post, 28 June, reviews Elliott Gorn's Dillinger's Wild Ride: The Year That Made America's Public Enemy Number One.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Friday's Notes
Zenobia Jacobs and Richard G. Roberts, "Human History Written in Stone and Blood," American Scientist, July/August, argues that "two bursts of human innovation in southern Africa during the Middle Stone Age may be linked to population growth and early migration off the continent."
Harvey Mansfield, "Consequential Ideas," WS, 22 June, reviews Paul Rahe's Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville and the Modern Prospect.
Peter Parker, "Is Toad of Toad Hall bipolar?" TLS, 24 June, reviews two new annotated editions of Kenneth Graham's The Wind in the Willows.
Richard Overy, "Ice-Cold in Coyoacan," Literary Review, June, reviews Bertrand M. Patenaude's Stalin's Nemesis: The Exile and Murder of Leon Trotsky.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Thursday's Notes
Algis Valiunas, "Highborn Fools," Claremont Review, Spring, reviews Duc de Saint-Simon, Memoirs of Duc de Saint-Simon, 1691-1709: Presented to the King, Memoirs of Duc de Saint-Simon, 1710-1715: The Bastards Triumphant, and Memoirs of Duc de Saint-Simon, 1715-1723: Fatal Weakness. Translated by Lucy Norton.
Ian Pindar, "Men and Marian," Guardian, 20 June, reviews Brenda Maddox's George Eliot: Novelist, Lover, Wife.
Ben Zimmer, "Hunting the Elusive First ‘Ms.'," Visual Thesaurus, 23 June, finds the earliest use of "Ms." in Massachusetts' Springfield Republican, 10 November 1901.
Elliott J. Gorn, "The Meanings of Depression-Era Culture," CHE, 26 June, reviews David Welky's Everything Was Better in America: Print Culture in the Great Depression.
Garry Wills, "Daredevil," Atlantic, July/August, profiles his friend, William Buckley.
Scott McLemee, "Fifty Years After Stonewall," IHE, 24 June, asks what GLBT studies will look like in 2019.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
More Noted Things
Rachel Leow, "On Newspapers as Sources," a historian's craft, 16 June, has suggestions for newspaper research.
Michael Kimmelman, "Elgin Marble Argument in a New Light," NYT, 23 June, finds a $200 million revisionist argument in Athens.
James Gibbons, "Clout of Africa," BookForum, June/August, sees in recent publications "an African literary boom."
Timothy Snyder, "Holocaust: The Ignored Reality," NYRB, 16 July, recenters the Holocaust in today's Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Modern American Notes
Jill Lepore, "Baby Talk: The Fuss about Parenthood," New Yorker, 29 June, reviews Michael Lewis's Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood and Ayelet Waldman's Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace.
Adam Kirsch, "Mixed Record," Tablet, 16 June, and David Oshinsky, "Saint Izzy," Slate, 23 June, review D. D. Gutterplan's American Radical: The Life and Times of I.F. Stone.
Philip Davis, "Charm and Death," Literary Review, July, and Adam Kirsch, "The Binding of Isaac," New Republic, 1 July, review Steven J. Zipperstein's Rosenfeld's Lives: Fame, Oblivion, and the Furies of Writing.
Michiko Kakutani, "The Rumsfeldian Persona and Its Role in the Iraq War," NYT, 22 June, reviews Bradley Graham's By His Own Rules: The Ambitions, Successes, and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Margherita Laera, "Peter Greenaway's multimedia vision of Christ," Wired.co.uk, 11 June, and Roberta Smith, "In Venice, Peter Greenaway Takes Veronese's Figures Out to Play," NYT, 21 June, review "The Wedding at Cana: A Vision by Peter Greenaway."
Larry Kramer reviews Charles Upchurch's Before Wilde: Sex between Men in Britain's Age of Reform for the Huffington Post, 16 June. Kramer is so full of it.
"The Evolution of Underwear," Daily Beast, 17 June, reviews "Undercover: The Evolution of Underwear," an exhibit at London's Fashion and Textile Museum. See also: the Beast's slide show.
Jonathan Mirsky, "China's Dictators at Work: The Secret Story," NYRB, 2 July, reviews Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Zhao Ziyang, translated and edited by Bao Pu, Renee Chiang, and Adi Ignatius, with a foreword by Roderick MacFarquhar.
Bernard Avishai, "A World Apart? The White House and the Middle East," The Nation, 17 June, explores the failure of the White House to persuade Israel to accept a plan for regional peace.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Sunday's Notes
Christopher Shea, "Working Toward a Good Life," Washington Post, 21 June, and Kelefa Sanneh, "Out of the Office," New Yorker, 22 June, review Matthew B. Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work.
Michael Dirda, "A Breakup With Tradition," Washington Post, 18 June, reviews James Davidson's The Greeks and Greek Love: A Bold New Exploration of the Ancient World.
Megan Marshall, "Married With Children," NYT, 19 June, reviews Gillian Gill's We Two, Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals.
Alexander F. Remington, "A King's Tale," Washington Post, 21 June, reviews Daniel Meyerson's In The Valley of the Kings: Howard Carter and the Mystery of King Tutankhamun's Tomb.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Ancient/Medieval Notes
LI, an ancient/medieval edition of the festival, is up at Gillian Polack's Food History.
"Acropolis Museum to Open in Greece," Washington Post, 18 June, and "The New Acropolis Museum," NYT, 19 June, are slide shows of the new Acropolis Museum that opens this weekend in Athens. See also: Mary Beard, "The new Acropolis Museum -- a glimpse at the opening party (and of the opening speeches)," A Don's Life, 19 June; and Anthee Carassava, "In Athens, Museum Is an Olympian Feat," NYT, 19 June.
Toni Bentley, "Harem Envy," NYT, 19 June, reviews Richard Bernstein's The East, the West, and Sex: A History of Erotic Encounters.
Friday, June 19, 2009
20th Century Notes
Ian Thomson reviews Bertrand M. Patenaude's Stalin's Nemesis: The Exile and Murder of Leon Trotsky for London's Sunday Times, 14 June.
Claire Harman, "Virginia Woolf's neat brown paper parcels," TLS, 17 June, reviews Stuart N. Clarke, ed., The Essays of Virginia Woolf, Volume Five: 1929–1932.
Stefan Beck reviews Susan Jacoby's Alger Hiss and the Battle for History for the Barnes & Noble Review, 18 June.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Modern Western Notes
Iain Sinclair, "Upriver," LRB, 25 June, reviews Peter Ackroyd's Thames: Sacred River.
John Rogister, "Stinking, splendid Versailles," TLS, 17 June, reviews Tony Spawforth's Versailles, William Ritchey Newton's Derrière la Façade: Vivre au château de Versailles au XVIIIe siècle, and Jeanne Louise Henriette Campan's The Private Life of Marie Antoinette.
Elizabeth Redden, "Higher Ed and the Third Reich," IHE, 17 June, interviews Stephen H. Norwood, the author of The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower: Complicity and Conflict on American Campuses.
In October, Yale University Press will publish Alan Allport's book on demobilization in Great Britain, Demobbed: Coming Home after World War Two. Beginning today, in conjunction with the book's publication, Allport will post-blog a year of British demobilization, June 1945-June 1946. His post-blogging follows the examples of Brett Holman's series at Airminded on the 1938 Sudeten Crisis and the 1909 Scareship Wave.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Wednesday's Notes
Indian History Carnival #18 is up at varnam. LI, an ancient/medieval edition of the festival, goes up at Gillian Polack's Food History on 20 June. Send your nominations of the best in ancient/medieval history blogging since 18 April to her or use the form.
A continuing conversation:
Patricia Cohen, "Great Caesar's Ghost! Are Traditional History Courses Vanishing?" NYT, 10 June;
Claire Potter, "Let's Run Away from the Girls and Other Strategies to Make History Relevant to a Twenty-First Century Liberal Arts Education," Tenured Radical, 11 June;
Mary Dudziak, "Another Slow News Day at the New York Times," Legal History, 12 June;
Stan Katz, "Traditional History Courses," Brainstorm, 13 June;
Tim Burke, "History As It Was," Easily Distracted, 16 June; &
David Silbey, "Never Mind the Facts ...," Edge of the American West, 17 June.
Pervez Hoodbhoy, "An Indian history of numbers," Nature, 4 June, reviews Kim Plofker's Mathematics In India.
Dwight Garner, "Revisiting Wartime: 66 Miles of Cruelty," NYT, 16 June, reviews Michael and Elizabeth Norman's Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath.
Andrew Roberts, "Inside Kissinger's Brain," Daily Beast, 15 June, reviews Sir Alistair Home's Kissinger 1973: The Crucial Year.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
More Noted Things
The Giant's Shoulders #12, the history of science carnival, is up at Thoughts from Gut Bacteria.
Thomas W. Laqueur reviews Richard Bernstein's The East, the West, and Sex: A History of Erotic Encounters for the San Francisco Chronicle, 14 June.
Claire Harman, "A Dissenting Voice," Literary Review, June, reviews William McCarthy's Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment.
Judith Flanders reviews J. F. M. Clark's Bugs and the Victorians for the Telegraph, 7 June.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
The history of science carnival, the Giant's Shoulders #12, will be up later today at Thoughts from Gut Bacteria.
Scott Jaschik, "A College for History Only," IHE, 15 June, looks at an experiment in pre-legal studies.
Patricia Cohen, "Great Caesar's Ghost! Are Traditional History Courses Vanishing?" NYT, 10 June, provoked some significant replies:
Claire Potter, "Let's Run Away from the Girls and Other Strategies to Make History Relevant to a Twenty-First Century Liberal Arts Education," Tenured Radical, 11 June;
Mary Dudziak, "Another Slow News Day at the New York Times," Legal History, 12 June; and
Stan Katz, "Traditional History Courses," Brainstorm, 13 June.
On a related issue, Peter Berkowitz, "Conservatism and the University Curriculum," WSJ, 13 June, argues for the representation of conservatism in the liberal arts curriculum.
Jane Mayer, "The Secret History," New Yorker, 22 June, asks whether, given its history, Leon Panetta can change directions at the CIA.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Sunday's Notes
Eric Ormsby, "Empires in Collision," NYT, 12 June, reviews Andrew Wheatcroft's The Enemy at the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans and the Battle for Europe.
Kathryn Harrison, "Oh, Lord," NYT, 12 June, reviews Edna O'Brien's Byron in Love: A Short Daring Life.
Muriel Dobbin, "Albert 'fell into step behind' Victoria," Washington Times, 10 June, reviews Gillian Gill's Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals.
Beverly Gage, "American Macho," NYT, 12 June, Patricia O'Toole, "Barbarian Virtues," American Scholar, Summer, and Tim Rutten for the LA Times, 12 June, review Jackson Lears's Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920.
Matthew Dallek, "Not Ready for Mt. Rushmore," American Scholar, Summer, assesses Ronald Reagan, the myth and the reality. See also: John Harwood, "Republicans Rethinking the Reagan Mystique," NYT, 13 June.
Leah Hager Cohen, "Feminine Mystique," NYT, 12 June, reviews Kate Walbert's A Short History of Women, a work of fiction.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Holland Cotter, "The Many Voices of Enlightenment," NYT, 11 June, reviews "Light of the Sufis: The Mystical Arts of Islam," an exhibit at New York's Brooklyn Museum.
Tim Burke, "Colonial Africa: A List of Questions," Easily Distracted, 12 June, reorganizes a course around key questions. Can you add to his list?
Michael Kazin, "What So Proudly He Hails," Washington Post, 14 June, reviews Simon Schama's The American Future: A History.
Michael Dirda, "Literary Promise Unfulfilled," Washington Post, 11 June, reviews Steven J. Zipperstein's Rosenfeld's Lives: Fame, Oblivion, and the Furies of Writing.
Chris Bray, "The Stuff of Which Movies Are Made," Washington Post, 14 June, reviews Doug Stanton's Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of U.S. Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Friday's Notes
Dan Colman, "Intelligent Video: The Top Cultural & Educational Video Sites," Open Culture, 5 June, notes 45 sites you'd want to know about.
Andrew Holgate reviews Roger Crowley's Empires of the Sea: The Final Battle for the Mediterranean, 1521-1580 for London's Sunday Times, 7 June.
Mark, "Weed, Booze, Cocaine and Other Old School ‘Medicine' Ads," Pill Talk, 9 June, features medicinal ads from a less regulated generation. Hat tip.
Sarah Churchwell, "The real Tramp?" TLS, 10 June, reviews Simon Louvish's Chaplin: The tramp's odyssey and Miranda Seymour's Chaplin's Girl: The life and loves of Virginia Cherrill.
Terence Hawkes, "William Empson's influence on the CIA," TLS, 10 June, reviews Michael Holzman's James Jesus Angleton, the CIA, and the Craft of Counterintelligence.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Thursday's Notes
Patricia Cohen, "Great Caesar's Ghost! Are Traditional History Courses Vanishing?" NYT, 10 June, picks up on a discussion at H-Diplo and the recent Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations conference. It was precipitated by a proposal to change the title of Diplomatic History, the field's only journal. Unsurprisingly, the chart accompanying Cohen's article reports that diplomatic, economic, and intellectual history have declined and women's and cultural history have increased in the last 30 years. The surprise -- to me, at least -- is that, in the same period, military history has marginally increased its representation in American history departments.
Paula Fredriksen, "The Nazi of Nazareth," Tablet, 10 June, reviews Susannah Heschel's Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany.
Robert O. Paxton, "Occupied Minds," BookForum, June/August, reviews Frederic Spotts's The Shameful Peace: How French Artists and Intellectuals Survived the Nazi Occupation, Kirrily Freeman's Bronzes to Bullets: Vichy and the Destruction of French Public Statuary, 1941-1944, and Art of the Defeat, France 1940-1944 by Laurence Bertrand Dorleac, Jane Marie Todd, and Serge Guilbaut.
Ron Rosenbaum, "Save the Salinger Archives!" Slate, 5 June, speculates that there may be something important in J. D.'s papers.
Stan Katz, "Jim Leach at NEH," Brainstorm, 10 June, shares my enthusiasm for the former Iowa congressman's nomination to head the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Wednesday's Notes
Pragati: The Indian National Interest Review, June, is a special issue devoted to history. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
common-place, the American Antiquarian Society's e-journal of early American history and culture, has begun publishing interim issues, reviewing books, films, and exhibits. See: IX, 3.5.
Louis Bayard, "Love -- The Scientific Way," Washington Post, 7 June, reviews Thomas Maier's Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters And Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
More Noted Things
Ross King, "Intelligent, By Design," Washington Post, 8 June, reviews Enrique Joven's The Book of God and Physics: A Novel of the Voynich Mystery, translated from the Spanish by Dolores M. Koch.
David Nash, "The Gain from Thomas Paine," History Today, June, re-examines Paine's legacy to the modern world.
James Bratt, "Exceptionalism with a Twist," Books & Culture, May/June, reviews George C. Herring's From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776.
John Wilson, "‘A Really Holy Self-Realization'," Books & Culture, May/June, reviews Stefan Aust's Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F..
Monday, June 8, 2009
Things Noted Here and There
Simon Winchester, "Lands of Erotic Fantasy and Their Complex Reality," NYT, 7 June, reviews Richard Bernstein's The East, the West, and Sex: A History of Erotic Encounters.
Mike Jay, "The day pain died," Boston Globe, 7 June, perpetuates a Yankee myth about the first use of an anaesthetic in surgery. Boston, tip your hat to Georgia's Crawford Long.
Jody Rosen, "The Oldest Oldie, Revisited," Brow Beat, 4 June, brings us up to date on the findings of audio historians David Giovannoni and Patrick Feaster about the oldest recordings of the human voice. You can hear all of Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville's phonautograms on Giovannoni's and Feaster's website.
Jonathan Yardley, "Weeding Out the Weak," Washington Post, 7 June, reviews Vincent J. Cannato's American Passage: The History of Ellis Island.
Anne Applebaum, "Now We Know," TNR, 17 June, reviews Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
20th Century Biography
This week, Life published previously unpublished photographs of Adolph Hitler, 1936-1945. See: Hitler's Humble Beginnings, Adolph Hitler Among the Crowds, Adolph Hitler: Up Close, and Adolph Hitler's Private World.
Dagmar Herzog, "Berlin Underground," NYT, 5 June, reviews Anne Nelson's Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler.
Max Boot, "Gang of Four," NYT, 5 June, reviews Andrew Roberts's Master and Commander: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941-1945.
Todd Gitlin, "I. F. Stone, Journalist -- and Spy?" American Prospect, 5 June, reviews D.D. Guttenplan's American Radical: The Life and Times of I. F. Stone and Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev.
Paul Berman, "Telling the Tale," NYT, 5 June, reviews Gerald Martin's Gabriel García Márquez: A Life.
John Gray, "The Cosy Philosopher," Literary Review, June, reviews Isaiah Berlin, Enlightening: Letters 1946-1960, edited by Henry Hardy and Jennifer Holmes with the assistance of Serena Moore.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Barbara Graziosi reviews Robin Waterfield's Why Socrates Died: Dispelling the Myths for the THES, 4 June.
Holland Cotter, "Putting ‘Primitive' to Rest," NYT, 4 June, reviews "African and Oceanic Art From the Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva: A Legacy of Collecting," an exhibit at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
At Legal History, Sally Greene is doing a series of posts on newly discovered archival evidence on the case of State v Mann (1829). A major case in American slave law, it starkly held that a master's authority is absolute.
Volume XI of the Journal of Southern Religion is online! It publishes Kelly Baker, Ed Blum, Fitzhugh Brundage, Anthea Butler, Wayne Flynt, Charles Irons, Randall Stephens and many other historians.
Ian Sansom, "Hucksters, mavericks and visionaries," Guardian, 6 June, reviews Helen Carr's The Verse Revolutionaries: Ezra Pound, HD and the Imagists.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Notes Ancient & Modern
In a series that puts famous philosophical quotations in context, Brandon Watson treats George Santayana's "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Tom Holland, "Modernist minotaurs," TLS, 3 June, reviews Cathy Gere's Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism and Theodore Ziolkowski's Minos and the Moderns: Cretan myth in twentieth-century literature and art.
John Holbo, "Hey kids! Free Plato Book! And you can help me make it better!" Crooked Timber, 1 June, introduces us to his and Belle Waring's e-edition of Reason and Persuasion: Three Dialogues by Plato: Euthyphro, Meno and Republic, Book I.
Nicholas Guyatt, "Orchids and Lilacs: Darwin, Lincoln and Slavery," The Nation, 3 June, reviews Adam Gopnik's Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life, Adrian Desmond's and James Moore's Darwin's Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin's Views on Human Nature, and Barry Werth's Banquet at Delmonico's: Great Minds, the Gilded Age, and the Triumph of Evolution in America.
Scott Saul, "Off Camera: Civil Rights in the North," The Nation, 3 June, reviews Thomas J. Sugrue's Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Modern History Notes
"History students are most promiscuous," Telegraph, 30 May, at Oxford, at least. Hat tip.
Garry Wills, "Lincoln's Black History," NYRB, 11 June, reviews Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Donald Yacovone, eds., Lincoln on Race and Slavery.
Colm Tóibín, "The Admirable Mrs. James," NYRB, 11 June, reviews Susan E. Gunter's Alice in Jamesland: The Story of Alice Howe Gibbens James and Paul Fisher's House of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family.
Jonathan Keates, "Foreigners in Florence," TLS, 3 June, reviews Bernd Roeck's Florence 1900: The quest for Arcadia, translated by Stewart Spencer.
Martin Filler, "The Late Show," NYRB, 11 June, reviews "Picasso: Mosqueteros," an exhibit at the Gagosian Gallery in New York City.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Wednesday's Notes
D. Graham Burnett and Anthony Grafton, "Deception as a Way of Knowing: A Conversation with Anthony Grafton," Cabinet, Spring, is an interview with Grafton about his work on deception and forgery. Errol Morris continues his series on the subject, "Bamboozling Ourselves," Zoom, this week.
Pat Rogers, "Cheerfulness breaks in," New Criterion, June, reviews Peter Martin's Samuel Johnson: A Biography and Jeffrey Meyers's Samuel Johnson: The Struggle.
David W. Blight, "The Civil War Sesquicentennial," CHE, 5 June, argues that the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War might be what the 100th anniversary failed to be.
Dwight Garner, "Some Like It Hot, Some Like It Literary: A Playwright's Life, With Marilyn," NYT, 2 June, reviews Christopher Bigsby's Arthur Miller, 1915-1962.
Finally, farewell to Harvard's Ernest R. May, a distinguished historian of diplomacy. Thanks to Jeff Vanke for the tip.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
More Noted Things
Allen C. Guelzo, "Culprit-in-Chief," Books & Culture, 29 May, reviews William Marvel's Mr. Lincoln Goes to War and Lincoln's Darkest Year: The War in 1862.
Joseph Epstein, "Eminent Victorian," Weekly Standard, 8 June, reviews Gertrude Himmelfarb's The Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot.
Christopher Benfey, "The Way of Distortion," TNR, 3 June, reviews Brad Gooch's Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor.
Michiko Kakutani, "Playing Basketball, Playing Politics: Lessons From the Top Game Changer," NYT, 1 June, reviews Richard Wolffe's new book on Barack Obama, Renegade: The Making of a President.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Peter Behrens, "The Appeal of the Spud," Washington Post, 31 May, reviews John Reader's Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent.
Jonathan Yardley, "Celebrating Quiet Heroism," Washington Post, 31 May, reviews Edmund S. Morgan's American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America.
Caroline Weber, "Lightning Rods and Sideshows," NYT, 29 May, reviews Jill Jonnes's Eiffel's Tower: And the World's Fair Where Buffalo Bill Beguiled Paris, the Artists Quarreled, and Thomas Edison Became a Count and James H. S. McGregor's Paris from the Ground Up.
Whether you participated in The Long Civil Rights Movement Conference: Histories, Politics, Memories at UNC, Chapel Hill, on 2-4 April or not, you may want to view videos of its panels.
David Greenberg, "The Cold War Duel That Never Dies," Washington Post, 31 May, reviews Susan Jacoby's Alger Hiss and the Battle for History.
Francis Wheen, "Life on Mars," Literary Review, May, reviews Andy Beckett's When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Ian Pindar reviews John Guy's A Daughter's Love, his new dual biography of Sir Thomas More and his daughter, Margaret, for the Guardian, 30 May.
After picking up a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family has won the $50,000 George Washington Book Prize for "the most important new book about America's founding era."
Joseph Tartakovsky, "Spirits Rising," WSJ, 14 May, reviews Linda Himelstein's The King of Vodka: The Story of Pyotr Smirnov and the Upheaval of an Empire.
Giles Foden, "Fair stood the wind for France," Guardian, 30 May, reviews Anthony Beevor's D-Day: The Battle for Normandy.
Finally, farewell to Patricia Crawford, a historian of women's lives in the 17th century, to Rupert Hall, historian of science and editor of the Isaac Newton papers, to Franklin H. Littell, a scholar of the Holocaust, to Ivan van Sertima, a controversial advocate of Afro-centrism, and to Ronald T. Takaki, a pioneer in American ethnic studies.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Friday's Notes
Errol Morris, "Bamboozling Ourselves," Zoom, 27 May- , is a seven-part series that will continue through next week. Part I, Part II.
Giulia F. Miller reviews Yirmiyahu Yovel's The Other Within: The Marranos: Split Identity and Emerging Modernity for the THES, 28 May.
Ari Kelman, "Lincoln's legacy," TLS, 27 May, reviews Philip B. Kunhardt III, Peter W. Kunhardt and Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., Looking for Lincoln: The making of an American icon, James Oakes's The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the triumph of anti-slavery politics, Eric Foner, ed., Our Lincoln: New perspectives on Lincoln and his world, and Barry Schwartz's Abraham Lincoln in the Post-Heroic Era: History and memory in late twentieth-century America.
A. W. Purdue, "Politics filtered by the past," THES, 21 May, reviews Reba Sofer's History, Historians, and Conservatism in Britain and America: From the Great War to Thatcher and Reagan.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Biographical Notes
Maggie Scarf, "Vows," NYT, 22 May, reviews Wendy Moore's Wedlock: The True Story of the Disastrous Marriage and Remarkable Divorce of Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore.
Brian Hayes, "An Epistolary Episode," American Scientist, May/June, reviews Keith Devlin's The Unfinished Game: Pascal, Fermat, and the Seventeenth-Century Letter That Made the World Modern.
Mark Bostridge, "The darker side of George Eliot," Guardian, 24 May, reviews Brenda Maddox's George Eliot: Novelist, Lover, Wife.
Michael O'Donnell, "Radical Streak," Washington Monthly, May/June, reviews Barry Seldes's Leonard Bernstein: The Political Life of an American Musician.
Janet Maslin, "Unraveling the Labyrinthine Life of a Magical Realist," NYT, 27 May, reviews Gerald Martin's Gabriel García Márquez: A Life.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Wednesday's Notes
John Carey reviews Merry Wiesner-Hanks's The Marvellous Hairy Girls: The Gonzales Sisters and Their Worlds for the Sunday Times, 24 May.
Stephen Amidon reviews Elaine Showalter's A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx for the Sunday Times, 24 May.
Jonathan Ross, "The secret life of Superman," London Times, 23 May, reviews Craig Yoe's Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster.
Allan Mallinson reviews Antony Beevor's D-Day: The Battle for Normandy for the London Times, 23 May.
John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev, "Their Man in Havana?" NRO, 26 May, summarizes their findings about Ernest Hemingway's contacts with the KGB.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
More Noted Things
Three Quarks Daily announces the launch of the Quarks, annual prizes for the best blog entries in Science, Arts & Literature, Politics, and Philosophy. See the announcement for all of the details.
Carlos A. Driscoll, Juliet Clutton-Brock, Andrew C. Kitchener and Stephen J. O'Brien, "The Evolution of House Cats," Scientific American, June, says that recent research finds cats were domesticated earlier and elsewhere than we'd previously thought.
Spiegel Staff, "Hitler's European Holocaust Helpers," Der Spiegel, 20 May, looks at the active complicity of non-German Europeans in the Holocaust.
Finally, a belated farewell to Perez Zagorin, a distinguished American historian of 16th and 17th century Europe.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
#50, an early modern edition of the festival, is up at Nick's Mercurius Politicus.
Alice Schroeder, "The Man Who Owned America," Washington Post, 24 May, reviews T. J. Stiles's The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Michael Dirda, "The Importance of Reading in Earnest," Washington Post, 21 May, reviews Thomas Wright's Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde.
Michael Kazin, "Socialist Studies," bookforum, June/August, reviews D. D. Guttenplan's American Radical: The Life and Times of I. F. Stone.
Glenn Altschuler, "Looking to America's past to find a path for the future," Boston Globe, 24 May, and David Brooks, "Mirror on America," NYT, 22 May, review Simon Schama's The American Future: A History.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Weed Endnotes
Weeds presents a brief history of cannabis from 2727 B.C. to the present. New episodes on Showtime beginning Monday June 8th at 10PM ET/PT.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Friday's Notes
#50, an early modern edition of the festival, goes up at Nick's Mercurius Politicus on Sunday 24 May. Send nominations of the best of early modern history blogging since 22 March to mercuriuspoliticus*at*googlemail*dot*com or use the form.
The shortlist for Great Britain's Samuel Johnson Prize in nonfiction is: Liaquat Ahamed's Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, Ben Goldacre's Bad Science, David Grann's The Lost City of Z, Philip Hoare's Leviathan, Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, and Manjit Kumar's Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality.
Richard Vinen, "The great British crisis, 1918–1939," TLS, 20 May, reviews Richard Overy's The Morbid Age: Britain between the wars.
David Runciman, "Like Boiling a Frog," LRB, 28 May, reviews Andrew Lih's The Wikipedia Revolution.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Thursday's Notes
Tim Burke, "What's Distinctive About Africanist Historiography?" Easily Distracted, 20 May, finds four ways in which the historiography of Africa differs from other historiographies.
Adam Nicolson's Sissinghurst: An Unfinished History has won the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje prize for a book that most successfully evokes "the spirit of a place." Nicolson's book features his family's ancestral home from a medieval manor, to the creation by his grandparents, Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, of a world-famous garden, and Nicolson's own attempts to restore the estate to its glory days.
Alison Flood, "Scholar denies oral roots of fairy tales," Guardian, 19 May, reviews Ruth B. Bottigheimer's Fairy Tales: A New History.
David Denby, "The Real Rhett Butler," New Yorker, 25 May, reviews Michael Sragrow's Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master and Molly Haskell's Frankly, My Dear: ‘Gone with the Wind' Revisited.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Wednesday's Notes
Christopher Ricks, "Keats's Afterlife," NYRB, 11 June, reviews Stanley Plumley's Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography. See also: Ricks's podcast interview with Giles Harvey about the book.
A. O. Scott, "Holy Mystery! Mayhem at the Vatican," NYT, 15 May, and Ross Douthat, "Dan Brown's America," NYT, 18 May, take on Brown's Angels and Demons.
Michael Wood, "The Myth of Gabriel García Márquez," Slate, 18 May, reviews Gerald Martin's Gabriel García Márquez: A Life.
Dwight Gardner, "Piecing Together That Voice on the Barroom Floor," NYT, 19 May, reviews Barney Hoskyns's Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits.
The text of "Obama's Commencement Address at Notre Dame," 17 May. E. J. Dionne, Russell Arben Fox, and Hugo Schwyzer comment on it.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
More Noted Things
Alec Ryrie reviews Eamon Duffy's The Canon: The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580, for the THES, 7 May.
Sarah Churchwell, "A room of their own, at last," Guardian, 16 May, reviews Elaine Showalter's A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx.
Bruce Kuklick, "America's First Legal Coup," Washington Post, 17 May, reviews David O. Stewart's Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy.
Jonathan Rauch, "Capitalism's Fault Lines," NYT, 14 May, reviews Richard A. Posner's A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent Into Depression. During May, Posner is guest blogging at Andrew Sullivan about the subject of his book.
Finally, farewell to David Herbert Donald (1920-2009), a distinguished American historian.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Scott Jaschik, "'Becoming Historians'," IHE, 18 May, interviews the editors of a new volume of essays by senior historians about the path to becoming one.
G. W. Bowersock, "The Scholar of Scholars," NYRB, 14 May, reviews Anthony Grafton's Worlds Made by Words: Scholarship and Community in the Modern West. The review is fully available only to subscribers, but it is a worthy tribute to one of the most widely admired contemporary historians.
Jennifer Howard, "From 'Once Upon a Time' to 'Happily Ever After'," CHE, 22 May, reviews Ruth B. Bottigheimer's Fairy Tales: A New History.
Simon Schama, "America's phobia of banks," Financial Times, 15 May, tracks the targeting of monied interests in American political rhetoric. Hat tip.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Sunday's Notes
Jonathan Edwards guest-blogs at "Trips on Grading," zunguzungu, 15 May.
Walter Reich, "‘We Are All Guilty'," NYT, 13 May, reviews Richard J. Evans's The Third Reich at War.
Joseph O'Neill, "Touched by Evil," The Atlantic, June, reviews Brad Gooch's Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor.
Bruce Barcott, "Special Forces," NYT, 14 May, reviews Doug Stanton's Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of U.S. Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan.
Leslie Berlin, "A Web That Speaks Your Language," NYT, 16 May, features ways in which barriers of language are being overcome on the web. Berlin is project historian for the Silicon Valley Archives at Stanford. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Indian History Carnival #17 is up at varnam. The Giant's Shoulders #11, the history of science carnival, is up at Curving Normality.
Carl Pyrdum, "Arianna Huffington is Good at History," Got Medieval, 11 May, shows Huff hasn't quite got the invention of the printing press, just yet.
Jonathan Yardley, "Love, Power and Art," Washington Post, 17 May, reviews Gerald Martin's Gabriel García Márquez: A Life.
Alexandra Alter, "The Next Age of Discovery," WSJ, 8 May, identifies some of the ways in which digital history transforms how we do history.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Thursday's Notes
Mary Beard, "Spinning Caesar's murder," TLS, 13 May, reviews T. P. Wiseman's Remembering the Roman People: Essays on Late-Republican politics and literature.
Carol Vogel, "By the Hand of a Very Young Master?" NYT, 12 May, reports on Fort Worth's Kimbell Art Museum's purchase of what may be the earliest known work by Michelangelo.
At Airminded, our colleague, Brett Holman, has launched a series of posts about mysterious aerial visitors in the nights skies over Great Britain in 1909.
Colm Tóibín, "Follow-the-Leader," LRB, 14 May, reviews Thomas Travisano and Saskia Hamilton, eds., Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell.
Dwight Gardner, "An American Writer, Coming of Age in Oxford," NYT, 12 May, and Michael Dirda, "Friends and Other Characters," Washington Post, 14 May, review Reynolds Price's memoir of his early years at Oxford, Ardent Spirits: Leaving Home, Coming Back.
Erik Eckholm, "Secret Memoir Offers Look Inside China's Politics," NYT, 14 May, and John Pomfret, "Secret Memoir Reveals Dissent by Chinese Leader," Washington Post, 14 May, announce the publication next week of Zhao Ziyang's Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang.
Richard Posner, "Is the Conservative Movement Losing Steam?" The Becker-Posner Blog, 10 May, argues that the late 20th century's intellectual movement is over.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Wednesday's Notes
Andrew Roberts, "The Green-Ink Brigade," Literary Review, May, reviews David Aaronovitch's Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History.
Elspeth Barker, "Getting on with it," Literary Review, May, reviews Elaine Showalter's A Jury of her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx.
hilzoy, "About That Georgia Nullification Resolution ...," Obsidian Wings, 8 May, points out that Georgia's resolutions of state sovereignty is a lightly edited version of Thomas Jefferson's "Resolutions Related To The Alien And Sedition Acts," which were adopted by the Kentucky legislature in 1798.
Alan Ryan, "A Capital Fellow," Literary Review, May, reviews Tristram Hunt's The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels.
Charles Matthews, "The Great and Powerful 'Oz'," Washington Post, 12 May, reviews Evan I. Schwartz's Finding Oz: How L. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story.
Istvan Deak, "Honor's Gasp," TNR, 20 May, reviews Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager's Valkyrie: The Story Of The Plot To Kill Hitler, By Its Last Member, trans. by Steven Rendall.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Modern History Notes
Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, "The Mythology of Blogs: A Top Ten List for the Uninitiated Historian," Perspectives on History, May, identifies some that are news to me.
Michael Kazin, "Ruthless in Manhattan," NYT, 7 May, reviews T. J. Stiles's The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Robert McCrum, "The masterpiece that killed George Orwell," Guardian, 10 May, describes the conditions under which Orwell wrote 1984.
Stephen Cox, "Finding Atlas," American Conservative, 4 May, argues that, before Ayn Rand, there was Isabel Patterson.
Jordan Davis, "Into the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis's Narnia," Nation, 6 May, reviews Laura Miller's The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia.
Laura Shapiro, "Helen Gurley Brown's Sexy Mistake," Slate, 11 May, reviews Jennifer Scanlon's new biography of Brown, Bad Girls Go Everywhere.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Elisabetta Povoledo, "Leonardo Unbound: Splitting the Master's Tome to Save His Words," NYT, 8 May, looks at the curatorial problems with Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus at Milan's Ambrosiana Library.
Richard Holmes, "The Great de Staël," NYRB, 28 May, reviews Francine du Plessix Gray's Madame de Staël: The First Modern Woman, J. Christopher Herold's Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël, Renee Winegarten's Germaine de Staël & Benjamin Constant: A Dual Biography, Angelica Goodden's Madame de Staël: The Dangerous Exile, and Madame de Staël's Corinne, or Italy, trans. by Sylvia Raphael.
Richard Dorment for the Telegraph, 21 April, and Stan Katz for the CHE, 10 May, review "Cezanne and Beyond," an exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Sunday's Notes
Ruth Rosen, "Soap to Ploughshares," Slate, 8 May, looks at returning Mother's Day to something closer to what Anna Jarvis and Julia Ward Howe had in mind.
Richard C. Lewontin, "Why Darwin?" NYRB, 28 May, reviews Janet Browne's Darwin's Origin of Species: A Biography, The Annotated Origin: A Facsimile of the First Edition of On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, annotated by James T. Costa, Jerry A. Coyne's Why Evolution Is True, and Greg Gibson's It Takes a Genome: How a Clash Between Our Genes and Modern Life Is Making Us Sick.
Benjamin Carter Hett, "Brutally Violent and Destined for Defeat," Washington Post, 10 May, reviews Richard J. Evans's The Third Reich at War.
Dorothy Gallagher, "A Clash of Symbols," NYT, 7 May, reviews Susan Jacoby's Alger Hiss and the Battle for History.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Lori Gottlieb, "Mother, Brace Yourself," NYT, 7 May, and "Worst mothers in literature," BookFinders.com Journal, 4 May, are antidotes to mothersday miasma. Hat tip.
Samuel D. Kassow, "A Tale Of Two Cities," TNR, 6 May, reviews Gordon J. Horwitz's Ghettostadt: Lodz and the Making of a Nazi City.
Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, Alexander Vassiliev, "I.F. Stone, Soviet Agent—Case Closed," Commentary, May, v. D.D. Guttenplan, "Red Harvest: The KGB in America," Nation, 6 May.
John Gross, "Gentility Takes a Holiday," WSJ, 7 May, reviews David Castronovo's Blokes: The Bad Boys of British Literature. Hat tip.
Hendrik Hertzberg, "Bonkers in Georgia," New Yorker, 7 May, tracks state sovereignty sentiment among Southern Republicans.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Friday's Notes
After only eight months on the job, William H. Worger, a historian of southern Africa, who previously taught at UCLA, Stanford, Michigan, and Dalhousie, has been ousted as dean of the graduate school at Louisiana State. More disturbing news from LSU for historians is the report that reduced state funding could jeopardize the existence of the University Press.
Michael Dirda, "A Journey That's Hard to Take," Washington Post, 7 May, reviews Robin Lane Fox's Traveling Heroes: In the Epic Age of Homer.
Jonathan Keates, "The life of a dynamic Doge," TLS, 29 April, reviews Dennis Romano's The Likeness of Venice: A Life of Doge Francesco Foscari, 1373–1457.
Martin Jacques, "Marx's keeper," Guardian, 2 May, reviews Tristram Hunt's The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels.
Waterboarding in 1902, Life, 22 May 1902. "Chorus in Background: Those pious Yanks can't throw stones at us any more." Hat tip.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Thursday's Notes
Biblical Studies Carnival #41 is up at Exploring Our Matrix. The Carnival of Genealogy #71, with a Local History theme, is up at What's Past is Prologue. The anthropology/archaeology carnival, Four Stone Hearth #66, is up at Aardvarchaeology.
Alexandra Mullen reviews Patricia T. O'Conner's and Stewart Kellerman's Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language for the Barnes & Noble Review, 5 May.
John Lichfield, "Was truth the biggest casualty in the case of Vincent and his severed ear?" Independent, 5 May, reports the argument of Hamburg University's Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans, in Van Goghs Ohr, Paul Gauguin und der Pakt des Schweigens [Van Gogh's Ear, Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence], that Gauguin was responsible for Van Gogh's loss of an ear.
Christopher Hitchens, "Ruthless yet Humane," Slate, 4 May, finds reasons Obama cited Churchill on torture.
Finally, we grieve with our colleagues, who teach at the University of Georgia and Wesleyan University, for the tragic deaths by murder that their communities have recently experienced.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
More Noted Things
John Wilson discusses Eugene Genovese's new book, Miss Betsey: A Memoir of Marriage at Books & Culture Podcast, 1 May. The memoir of his life with Elizabeth Fox-Genovese bears endorsements from Natalie Zemon Davis, Jean Bethge Elshtain, Paul Gottfried, and Wilfred McClay. I hope Gene will do a second memoir, focusing primarily on his own career.
Hugh Eakin, "Who Should Own the World's Antiquities?" NYRB, 14 May, reviews James Cuno's Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage and Cuno, ed., Whose Culture? The Promise of Museums and the Debate Over Antiquities.
Michiko Kakutani, "A Towering Playwright's Tiny Library," NYT, 4 May, reviews Jonathan Bate's Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Jonathan Yardley, "A Queen for the Ages," Washington Post, 3 May, reviews Diana Preston's Cleopatra and Antony: Power, Love, and Politics in the Ancient World.
Louis Bayard, "The Bard's Beautiful Mind," Washington Post, 28 April, reviews Jonathan Bate's Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare.
Noel Malcolm, "The Odd Couple," Standpoint, May, reviews Robert Zaretsky's and John T. Scott's The Philosophers' Quarrel: Rousseau, Hume, and the Limits of Human Understanding.
Scott Jaschik, "Going After a Scholar's Critic," IHE, 4 May, reports Guenther Lewy's lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center for defamation.
Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, Alexander Vassiliev, "I.F. Stone, Soviet Agent—Case Closed," Commentary, May, argues that the case that Izzy was a Soviet agent in the United States in the 1930s is conclusive.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Dwight Gardner, "No Smiley Faces the Day the Lady Left the Louvre," NYT, 30 April, reviews R. A. Scotti's Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa.
Patricia Cohen, "Roosevelt and the Jews: A Debate Rekindled," NYT, 30 April, anticipates the publication of Richard Breitman, Barbara McDonald Stewart and Severin Hochberg, eds., Refugees and Rescue: The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald, 1935-1945. This is the second of three volumes of McDonald's papers.
Evan R. Goldstein, "Running out of Solutions," Foreign Policy, April, looks at the evolving position of Bennie Morris and the Israeli left.
Late this afternoon at my house, we will lift our cups of Mint Julep for the Annual Official Weep. It happens when the choir sings "My Old Kentucky Home" before the running of the Kentucky Derby. Many versions of Stephen Foster's song really are bad enough to make you weep, but I rather like Johnny Cash's revision of it. Foster's lyrics were sanitized by the state legislature two decades ago, but the revision obscured the origins of a song written in the antislavery spirit of Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel. It was originally entitled "Poor Uncle Tom, Good Night."
Friday, May 1, 2009
Friday's Notes
History Carnival LXXVI is up at Penny Richards's Disability Studies.
Bob Blaisdell reviews Barry Schwartz's Abraham Lincoln in the Post-Heroic Era: History and Memory in Late Twentieth-Century America for the THES, 30 April. This second volume follows Schwartz's first, Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory (2000).
Michael Dirda, "Giving Us the Pieces, but Not the Prose," Washington Post, 30 April, reviews Mark Twain's Who Is Mark Twain?
Tony Mann reviews Loren Graham's and Jean-Michel Kantor's Naming Infinity: A True Story of Religious Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity for the THES, 30 April.
Fred Inglis, "Values of Homo unacademicus," THES, 30 April, reviews Michele Lamont's How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
More Noted Things
A Conversation:
Tristram Hunt, "Feminist friend or foe?" Guardian, 29 April, draws on Hunt's The Frock-coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels.
Dwight Gardner, "The Mogul Who Built Corporate America," NYT, 28 April, reviews T. J. Stiles's The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Michelle Orange, "Not Easy Being Greene: Graham Greene's Letters," Nation, 15 April, reviews Richard Greene, ed., Graham Greene: A Life in Letters.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Things Noted Here & There
Penny Richards hosts History Carnival LXXVI at Disability Studies on Friday 1 May. Send nominations of April's best in history blogging to her at disstud*at*temple*dot*edu or use the form.
Ingrid D. Rowland, "A Silly, Very Cultured Club," NYRB, 14 May, reviews Bruce Redford's Dilettanti: The Antic and the Antique in Eighteenth-Century England.
Jonathan Zasloff, "What if torture is necessary but illegal? Learning from Lincoln," The Reality-Based Community, 27 April, asks "What did Lincoln do?"
A Pandemic Reader:
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
More Modern Notes
Scott Jaschik, "Larry Kramer Questions Gay Studies," IHE, 28 April, discusses Kramer's "Yale's Conspiracy of Silence," Daily Beast, 24 April, with scholars in the field.
Robert Service reviews Tristram Hunt's The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels for the Sunday Times, 26 April.
George Scialabba, "Only Words: Liberalism, Past and Future," The Nation, 11 May, reviews Jedediah Purdy's A Tolerable Anarchy: Rebels, Reactionaries, and the Making of American Freedom and Alan Wolfe's The Future of Liberalism.
Daniel Mallory, "Who Stole the Mona Lisa?" Washington Post, 26 April, reviews R.A. Scotti's Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa and Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler's The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection.
Sam Kean, "Where's Our Scapegoat?" Slate, 27 April, reviews Frank Partnoy's The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Modern History Notes
Larry Kramer, "Yale's Conspiracy of Silence," Daily Beast, 24 April, lays out the activist's grievances with the University's handling of gay & lesbian studies.
Kevin Murphy, "U. S. History for Dummies," Ghost in the Machine, 22 April, offers a primer for tea parties.
Barron H. Lerner, "Gather 'Round the Cadaver," Slate, 24 April, Elizabeth Redden, "Photographic History of Human Dissection," IHE, 29 April, and Abigail Zuger, "Snapshots From the Days of Bare-Hands Anatomy," NYT, 27 April, review John Harley Warner's and James M. Edmonson's Dissection, a book of photographs of 19th and 20th century medical students and their cadavers.
Louis Begley, "Before the Law," TNR, 6 May, reviews Stanley Corngold, Jack Greenberg, and Benno Wagner, eds., Franz Kafka: The Office Writings.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Sunday's Notes
Pankaj Mishra, "Another Incarnation," NYT, 24 April, reviews Wendy Doniger's The Hindus: An Alternative History.
Roger Cohen, "America Unmasked," NYT, 24 April, reviews Godfrey Hodgson's The Myth of American Exceptionalism.
Louise Richardson, "Malicious Intent," NYT, 24 April, reviews Michael Burleigh's Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism.
Laura Tyson Li, "The Final Triumph of Chiang Kai-shek," Washington Post, 26 April, reviews Jay Taylor's The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-Shek and the Struggle for Modern China.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Matthew Reisz, "'The book everyone wishes they'd written'," THES, 23 April, launches the periodical's series in which scholars name a work in their field that they most admire.
Alan Baumler, "Grading exams in Late Imperial China," Frog in a Well/China, 24 April, finds us doing it in another time and another place.
Tim Blanning, "Joseph Haydn and the German Nation," History Today, May, discusses the composer's cultural nationalism.
Paul Collins, "Online gaming the Victorian way," New Scientist, 17 April, shows how chess at a distance led to the telegraph, answering a need felt since England's Henry I played France's Louis VI in 1119. Hat tip.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Notes Ancient & Modern
Angela Charlton, "Humanity's earliest written works go online," AP, 21 April, introduces World Digital Library. Thanks to Les Baitzer for the tip.
Stacy Schiff, "Who's Buried in Cleopatra's Tomb?" NYT, 21 April, considers the questions and answers that may be suggested by the discovery of Cleopatra's tomb.
Carlin Romano, "An Author's Favorite Wittgenstein," CHE, 24 August, reviews Alexander Waugh's The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War.
Michiko Kakutani, "Brand Che: Revolutionary as Marketer's Dream," NYT, 20 April, reviews Michael Casey's Che's Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image.
Scott Shane and Mark Mazetti, "In Adopting Harsh Tactics, No Inquiry Into Their Past Use," NYT, 21 April, tells a stunning tale of indifference to history. Or is it that policy-makers cannot now admit that they did know the history?
Finally, "turned into a newt," Texas in Africa, 17 April, looks back again at Newt Gingrich's dissertation in history at Tulane. See also: Dave Noon, "Gingrich the Historian," Lawyers, Guns, and Money, 20 April. We could do a whole series of these. Ralph Reed, anyone? Others? Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
More Noted Things
Johann Hari, "Why the Wicked Witch Isn't Dead," Slate, 20 April, reviews John Demos's The Enemy Within: 2,000 Years of Witch-hunting in the Western World and Thomas Robisheaux's The Last Witch of Langenburg: Murder in a German Village.
Jill Lepore, "The Humbug," New Yorker, 27 April, reviews In the Shadow of the Master: Classic Tales by Edgar Allen Poe and Essays by ..., Mary Higgins Clark, et al., On a Raven's Wing: New Tales in Honor of Edgar Allen Poe, and Peter Ackroyd's Poe: A Life Cut Short. For a bonus, Lepore challenges you to "Solve Edgar Allen Poe's Cryptogram," Graham's Magazine (August 1841).
Congratulations to the winners of Pulitzer Prizes for 2009:
and to: Mary Elizabeth Berry of UC, Berkeley, Robert A. Caro, William Chester Jordan and James M. McPherson of Princeton, Rashid Khalidi of Columbia, T. J. Jackson Lears of Rutgers, Matthew S. Santirocco of NYU, Jonathan Sarna of Brandeis, Steven Shapin of Harvard, Sanjay Subramanyam of UCLA, Donald E. Worster of the University of Kansas, Itamar Ravinovich of Tel Aviv, and Romila Thapar of Jawaharlal Nehru University, who are newly elected members of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Things Noted Here and There
Mary Beard, "Scrolling Down the Ages," NYT, 16 April, looks at book-making and -marketing in ancient Greece and Rome.
Alan Jacobs, "Gardening and Governing," Books & Culture, 3 April, reviews Tim Richardson's The Arcadian Friends: Inventing the English Landscape Garden.
Benjamin L. Carp, "Nice Party, But Not So Revolutionary," Washington Post, 19 April, compares the tax protests of 1773 and 2009.
Valerie Strauss, "What Was the Civil War Really About?" Washington Post, 20 April, talks with Richmond's Ed Ayres, St. Joseph's Randall Miller, Princeton's James McPherson, and others about how the election of Barack Obama may affect interpretations of the American Civil War.
Jon Garvie, "Is it fresh?" TLS, 15 April, reviews Susanne Friedberg's Fresh: A perishable history.
Ross Douthat, "God and Politics," NYT, 16 April, reviews Steven P. Miller's Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South.
Finally, farewell to Harvard's Samuel H. Beer.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Conditions Currently Rendering Me Mute
From my evangelical childhood:
Yield not to temptation,
for yielding is sin ....
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Notes Ancient & Modern
XLIX, an ancient/medieval edition of the festival, is up at Muhlberger's Early History.
Judith Weingarten reviews Pat Southern's Empress Zenobia: Palmyra's Rebel Queen for the THES, 16 April.
Stephen Halliday reviews Patrick H. Armstrong's Darwin's Luck: Chance and Fortune in the Life and Work of Charles Darwin for the THES, 16 April.
Roberta Smith, "Going All Out, Right to the End," NYT, 16 April, reviews "Picasso: Mosqueteros," an exhibit at the Gagosian Gallery in Manhattan.
Roger Lewis reviews Evi Kurz's The Kissinger Saga: Walter and Henry Kissinger, Two Brothers from Fürth, Germany for the Telegraph, 16 April.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Friday's Notes
Hilary Mantel, "What did her neighbours say when Gabriel had gone?" LRB, 9 April, reviews Miri Rubin's Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary.
Graham Robb, "Rimbaud in the Pléiade," TLS, 15 April, reviews Jean-Nicolas-Arthur Rimbaud's Oeuvres Complètes, edited by André Guyaux with Aurélia Cervoni.
Michael Dirda, "What Lies Beneath Old-Erotica Covers," Washington Post, 16 April, reviews Donna Dennis's Licentious Gotham: Erotic Publishing and Its Prosecution in Nineteenth-Century New York.
Ross Posnock, "Black is Brilliant," TNR, 15 April, reviews Leonard Harris's and Charles Molesworth's Alain Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher.
"Abuse of Power: The Bush Administration's Secret Legal Memos," ACLU, 16 April, has the four Bush administration memos justifying torture of prisoners and the Obama administration statement that accompanied their release yesterday.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Thursday's Notes
Indian History Carnival #16 is up at varnam. The Giant's Shoulders #10, the history of science carnival, is up at Stochastic Scribbles.
Scott McLemee's interview with John H. Summers, "Every Fury on Earth," IHE, 15 April, is not to be missed.
John Steele Gordon, "Inventing a New World," WSJ, 11 April, reviews Gavin Weightman's The Industrial Revolutionaries: The Making of the Modern World, 1776-1914.
Mark Bostridge, "Austenmania," Literary Review, April, reviews Claire Harman's Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World.
John Pipkin, "Woods Burner," Boston Globe, 12 April, argues that Thoreau may have taken up residence at Walden Pond because of a forest fire that he'd sparked a year earlier.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Cliopatria Welcomes William Jelani Cobb
Cliopatria is pleased to welcome William Jelani Cobb to our circle. A native of New York City, Professor Cobb did his undergraduate work at Howard University and his doctorate at Rutgers, with David Levering Lewis. He is now an Associate Professor of History at Spelman College in Atlanta.
Dr. Cobb is the author of To The Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic and editor of The Essential Harold Cruse: A Reader and The Devil & Dave Chappelle and Other Essays. Currently, he is at work on two book manuscripts, In Our Lifetimes: Barack Obama and the New Black America and a monograph, Antidote to Revolution: African American Anticommunism and the Struggle for Civil Rights, 1931-1957.
Dr. Cobb's articles and essays have appeared in the Washington Post, Essence, The Progressive, Ebony, at TheRoot.com and elsewhere. An occasional commentator on NPR, CNN, Al-Jazeera, CBS News, and other national broadcast outlets, he blogs at Creative Ink and American Exception. It's a pleasure to welcome him to Cliopatria.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Things Noted Here and There
Hilary Mantel, "The War Against Women," NYRB, 30 April, reviews Marilyn French's From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women, 4 volumes, with forewards by Margaret Atwood.
Ronald Dworkin, "Looking for Cass Sunstein," NYRB, 30 April, reviews Cass Sunstein's A Constitution of Many Minds: Why the Founding Document Doesn't Mean What It Meant Before. Hat tip.
Michael Korda, "Patton Like You've Never Seen Him Before," Daily Beast, 12 April, pans the History Channel's new series on General George S. Patton.
Jean Edward Smith, "How to End a War, Eisenhower's Way," 100 Days, 11 April, looks at Eisenhower's decision to end the war in Korea.
Daniel Mendelsohn, "The Collector," TNR, 15 April, reviews Susan Sontag's Reborn: Journals & Notebooks 1947-1963, David Reiff, ed.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Sunday's Notes
Jan Freeman, "Clever Horses," Boston Globe, 12 April, and Geoffrey K. Pullum, "50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice," CHE, 17 April, note that on Thursday we'll celebrate a half century of Strunk's and White's bad advice.
Paul Richard, "Tiny Treasure Offers Secret That Inspires," Washington Post, 11 April, closely examines Giulio Clovio's "The Lamentation" which is in "Heaven on Earth: Manuscript Illuminations from the National Gallery of Art," an exhibit at the National Gallery in Washington.
Miranda Seymour, "This Blessed Plot," NYT, 10 April, reviews Andrea Wulf's The Brother Gardners: Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession.
Walter Isaacson, "A Delicate Balance," NYT, 10 April, reviews Richard Beeman's Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution.
Michael O'Donnell, "They Fought the Law," Nation, 8 April, Fred Strebeigh's Equal: Women Reshape American Law.
U. S. History Notes below the fold ...
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Edward Rothstein, "Jefferson's Blind Spots and Ideals, in Brick and Mortar," NYT, 9 April, reviews Jefferson's Monticello at Charlottesville and Poplar Forest near Lynchburg, Virginia.
David McCullough, "Paving Over History," NYT, 10 April, is a video op-ed, in which McCullough appeals for saving the view of the Brooklyn Bridge, partly for a reason that may not have occurred to you.
Simon Baatz, "Robbers of Romance," Washington Post, 12 April, reviews Jeff Guinn's Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie And Clyde and Paul Schneider's Bonnie and Clyde: The Lives Behind the Legend.
Michiko Kakutani, "Dysfunctional in Old Vienna: Never Good Enough for Big Daddy," NYT, 9 April, reviews Alexander Waugh's The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War.
James Rosen, "Tales from the Cult," Washington Post, 12 April, reviews Mark Rudd's Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen.
Marc Fisher, "At Least They Weren't Nazis," Washington Post, 12 April, reviews Stefan Aust's Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F., Anthea Bell, trans.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Friday's Notes
Richard J. Evans reviews Frank McDonough's Sophie Scholl: The Real Story of the Woman who Defied Hitler for the THES, 9 April.
Congratulations to historians who have won Guggenheim Fellowships for 2009:
That would be three Guggenheims to Rutgers historians.Robert Beachy, Goucher College Jeffrey Bortz, Appalachian State University Kate Brown, University of Maryland, Baltimore County Veena Das, Johns Hopkins University Pierre Force, Columbia University
Peter Galison, Harvard University Risa L. Goluboff, University of Virginia Law School Annette Gordon-Reed, New York Law School/ Rutgers University Amy Greenberg, Pennsylvania State University Karen Halttunen, University of Southern California Benjamin Carter Hett, Hunter College/Graduate Center, CUNY Noel Lenski, University of Colorado Theodore J. Lewis, Johns Hopkins University
Charles Marsh, University of Virginia Roderick A. McDonald, Rider University Mae M. Ngai, Columbia University Tara Nummedal, Brown University Leslie Peirce, New York University Carla Gardina Pestana, Miami University Jacob Soll, Rutgers University Deborah Gray White, Rutgers University
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Thursday's Notes
Allison Flood, "Free-access World Digital Library set to launch," Guardian, 8 April, announces the launch of the WDL on 21 April.
Biancamaria Fontana, "Witness to Three Revolutions," TLS, 8 April, reviews Caroline Moorehead's Dancing to the Precipice: Lucie de la Tour du Pin and the French Revolution.
Maureen Freely reviews Christopher de Bellaigue's Rebel Land: Among Turkey's Forgotten Peoples and Daniel Metcalfe's Out of Steppe: The Lost Peoples of Central Asia for the London Times, 4 April.
Two years after Emory University's announcement that it would put $2,000,000 into translations of Deborah Lipstadt's website Holocaust Denial on Trial, it is now readily accessible in Arabic, Farsi, Russian, and Turkish.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
20th Century Notes
Blake Gopnik, "Face Value," Washington Post, 7 April, reviews "Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture," an exhibit at Washington's National Portrait Gallery.
Michael Kenney, "A Holocaust narrative in the words of refugee Jews," Boston Globe, 7 April, reviews Debórah Dwork's and Robert Jan Van Pelt's Flight from the Reich: Refugee Jews, 1933-1946.
Nicholas Lemann, "Paper Tigers," New Yorker, 13 April, reviews Kenneth Whyte's The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst, Richard J. Tofel's Restless Genius: Barney Kilgore, The Wall Street Journal, and the Invention of Modern Journalism, and Michael Wolff's The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
More Noted Things
David Neiwart, "Fox ambush crew pursues history prof with bogus claims – and is proud of it," Crooks and Liars, 5 April, has the footage of Fox News going all gotcha on Columbia's Alan Brinkley. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
Paul Freedman, "A Spanish Epic Retold," WSJ, 4 April, reviews Burton Raffel's new translation of The Song of the Cid.
The new Common-Place is up! It's a special issue, offering many replies to Sydney Smith's question in the Edinburgh Review (January 1820): "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?"
Denis Donoghue, "The unspeakable stress of pitch," New Criterion, April, reviews Paul Mariani's Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life.
I spoke with an editor at Life.com yesterday about its photographs at the Lorraine Motel after Martin Luther King's assassination. As a result, they've corrected the identification of the man shown embracing Ralph Abernathy and standing alone and pensive outside King's motel room. If you don't know who Will D. Campbell is, introduce yourself to his book, Brother to a Dragonfly.
Finally, farewell to Sidney Fine, who taught over 26,000 students in 53 years at the University of Michigan.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Things Noted Here and There
Lauren Koenig, "Senior Class Day speaker stirs up controversy," inside VANDY, 2 April, notes Vanderbilt student objections to honoring historian/plagiarist Doris Kearns Goodwin. Hat tip.
"Across the Continent, Big Milestones Mean Big Parties," Washington Post, 5 April, tracks this year's multiple anniversaries across Europe.
Linford Fisher, "Comparative Ethnohistory," Religion in American History, 3 April, looks at early American religious and ethnohistory. Fisher will join the history department at Brown in the fall.
Adam Kirsch, "Primary Source," NextBook, 30 March, reviews Grigoris Balakian's Armenian Golgotha: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1918.
Eric Arnesen reviews David Kushner's Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America's Legendary Suburb for the Chicago Tribune, 28 March.
Historians' Opinions below the fold ...
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Sunday's Notes
History Carnival is in need of hosts for May and through the summer months. If you'd like to do it, contact Sharon Howard at sharon*at*earlymodernweb*dot*org*dot*uk.
Tom Holland, "The Revolt That Ravaged An Empire," Washington Post, 5 April, reviews Barry Strauss's The Spartacus War.
Adam Kirsch, "Sealed with a Kiss," NYT, 3 April, reviews Susan Gubar's Judas: A Biography.
Claire Tomalin, "A Woman for All Seasons," NYT, 2 April, reviews John Guy's A Daughter's Love: Thomas More and His Dearest Meg.
Ben Hoyle, "Handel 'was binge eater and problem drinker'," London Times, 2 April, previews "Handel Reveal'd," an exhibit that opens this week at London's Handel House Museum.
Martha A. Sandweiss, "Invisible Woman," Washington Post, 5 April, reviews Lea VanderVelde's Mrs. Dred Scott: A Life on Slavery's Frontier.
Susan Dominus, "The Past as Peep Show," NYT, 2 April, reviews Kat Long's The Forbidden Apple: A Century of Sex and Sin in New York City and Donna Dennis's Licentious Gotham: Erotic Publishing and Its Prosecution in Nineteenth-Century New York.
Adam Kirsch, "Life On Venus: Europe's Last Man," World Affairs, Spring, features the speculation of late 19th century intellectuals that bourgeois culture would destroy the human spirit.
20th Century Notes below the fold ...
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Weak Endnotes
From Karen Winkler's Q & A with Michèle Lamont, the author of How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment, CHE, 3 April:
In history there is a high degree of consensus among scholars about what is good. But it is not based so much on a common theory, or method, or whether people think the discipline is part of the humanities or social sciences. It's a shared sense of craftsmanship. People care about whether the work is careful. They believe they can identify careful work. And that they can convince others about it. The degree of consensus has varied over the years. In the 1960s, for example, the discipline was polarized politically. But it has found consensus in the practice of scholarship.
Historians believe that contrasts sharply with English literature. As one told me, "The disciplinary center holds." That sense of consensus makes history proposals and applicants very successful in multidisciplinary competitions like the national fellowship and grant programs.
Ron Rosenbaum, "Should We Care What Shakespeare Did in Bed?" Slate, 2 April, sees the controversy about the new "Shakespeare portrait" as a discussion of his sexuality.
Marina Warner, "Ventriloquism," LRB, 9 April, reviews Daniel Karlin, ed., Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám by Edward FitzGerald.
Holland Cotter, "From the Deep, a Diva With Many Faces," NYT, 2 April, reviews "Mami Wata: Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and Its Diasporas," an exhibit at Washington's National Museum of African Art.
American History Notes below the fold --
Friday, April 3, 2009
Friday's Notes
Alison Flood, "Is this YouTube for books?" Guardian, 31 March, introduces Scribd.com.
Tunku Varadarajan, "A People and Their Karma," WSJ, 1 April, reviews Wendy Doniger's The Hindus: An Alternative History.
Sarah Bendall reviews James R. Akerman, ed., The Imperial Map: Cartography and the Mastery of Empire for the THES, 2 April.
Christopher Clark, "Vases, Tea Sets, Cigars, His Own Watercolours," LRB, 9 April, reviews Fabrice d'Almeida's High Society in the Third Reich.
Trevor Herbert reviews Krin Gabbard's Hotter than That: The Trumpet, Jazz, and American Culture for the THES, 2 April.
Finally, on the eve of the 41st anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination, Life magazine releases heretofore unpublished photographs taken shortly thereafter by its photographer at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. Thanks to Les Baitzer for the tip.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Thursday's Notes
History Carnival LXXV is up at Frog in a Well: Korea. It's a quiz!
Meredith Hindley, "The Voracious Pen of Thomas Carlyle," Humanities, March/April, features the crucial role of The French Revolution: A History in Carlyle's career.
Adam Zamoyski, "How I Rewrote Polish History," Standpoint, March, reflects on revising his The Polish Way: A Thousand-Year History of the Poles and their Culture after a decisive turning point in Poland's history.
Michael Dirda, "No More Waiting for Beckett's Letters," Washington Post, 2 April, reviews Martha Dow Fehsenfeld and Lois More Overbeck, eds., The Letters of Samuel Beckett. Volume I. 1929-1940.
Janet Maslin, "A Daughter's Life With Daddy Issues," NYT, 2 April, reviews Allegra Huston's Love Child. Until a teenager, Allegra thought that she was the daughter of Hollywood producer, John Huston, but her biological father is the British historian, John Julius Norwich, her half-sister is his daughter, the historian Artemis Cooper, and her half-brother-in-law, the historian Anthony Beevor.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Wednesday's Notes
History Carnival LXXV will be up later today at Frog in a Well: Korea.
If Virgil were on Facebook ...
Anthony Gottlieb, "A Nervous Splendor," New Yorker, 6 April, reviews Alexander Waugh's The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War.
Spencer A. Leonard, "Going It Alone: Christopher Hitchens and the Death of the Left," The Platypus Affiliated Society, 15 March, reviews Simon Cottee and Thomas Cushman, eds., Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left.
Claire Potter, "What Side Are You On: The Politics of History (Meetings)," Tenured Radical, 31 March, replies to my claim yesterday that the OAH convention's panel on the state of studies of modern American conservatism might have been improved had it included – you know – a conservative historian working on the subject.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
3 Series, 2 Personal Appearances, & a Quibble
At Notorious Ph.D., Judith Bennett responds to the March roundtable discussion of her book, History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism.
Errol Morris, "Whose Father Was He?" Zoom, 29 March, is a five-part series this week, in which Morris interrogates an American Civil War era photograph of three children.
At TPM Café this week, Peniel Joseph of Brandeis, Columbia's Todd Gitlin, Penn's Thomas Sugrue, and Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation join Clay Risen, the author of A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination, to discuss his book.
You can hear our former colleague, Manan Ahmed, discuss "Obama Lays out New Policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan," on Chicago Public Radio's Worldview.
Finally, on a less serious note, Historiann points out that the OAH convention may go down in history as "the one where Tenured Radical hurled into a trash can in the Seattle Convention Center." More seriously, Rick Shenkman has done yeoman service in presenting videos of major sessions of the convention on HNN's mainpage. Still, I wonder about the composition of panels at our conventions. How could a panel on the state of the study of recent American conservatism not include a conservative historian? Donald Critchlow, for example, should have been there to respond to Rick Perlstein's criticism. I've seen this happen again and again at our conventions: major panels dealing with major issues and there's not a dime's worth of difference in what or the ways the panelists think about them.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Things Noted Here and There
Jonathan Dresner will host History Carnival LXXV on Wednesday 1 April at Frog in a Well: Korea. Send nominations of March's best in history blogging to jonathan*at*froginawell*dot*net or use the form.
Neely Tucker, "What's the Meaning of Life? Turn to the Last Page," Washington Post, 29 March, reviews Simon Critchley's The Book of Dead Philosophers.
Jamie Merrill, "The Ten Best History Books," Independent, 27 January, lists Merrill's selections, which strike me as an interesting, but given the title, odd list.
Edward Rothstein, "Casting a Sliver of Light on the Heart of Darkness," NYT, 29 March, reviews "Brazza in Congo: A Life and Legacy," an exhibit at New York University's Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, and "Brazza: A Symbol for Humanity," an exhibit at Manhattan's National Arts Club.
"Lorca and the Gay World," New Yorker, 24 March, is a booknote on Ian Gibson's Lorca y el mundo Gay.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Sunday's Notes
Peter Applebome, "John Hope Franklin, Scholar and Witness," NYT, 28 March, recalls the historian's life and work.
At Legal History, Christopher Capozzola blogs the OAH convention in Seattle: Day One, Day Two & Day Three.
Fernando Gouvêa, "Things that Teach," American Scientist, March/April, reviews Peggy Aldrich Kidwell, Amy Ackerberg-Hastings and David Lindsay Roberts, Tools of American Mathematics Teaching, 1800–2000.
Caleb Crain, "Brother, Can You Spare a Room?" NYT, 26 March, is an essay occasioned by new editions of Thomas Butler Gunn’s The Physiology of New York Boardinghouses (1856).
David Oshinsky, "They Dug It," NYT, 27 March, reviews Julie Greene's The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal.
Peter Galison, "Sons of Atom," NYT, 26 March, reviews Louisa Gilder's The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Reborn.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Brad Leithauser, "Family Feuds," NYT, 27 March, reviews Anne Carson, trans., An Oresteia.
Philip Kennicott, "To Dream in Bard's Day? At Folger, That's the Question," Washington Post, 12 March, and Edward Rothstein, "Catching Some Z's in Days of Yore," NYT, 27 March, review "To Sleep, Perchance to Dream," an exhibit at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC.
Dennis Overbye, "A Telescope to the Past as Galileo Visits U.S.," NYT, 27 March, reviews "Galileo, the Medici and the Age of Astronomy," an exhibit opening on 4 April at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute.
Michael Downes, "The Janácek affair," TLS, 25 March, reviews John Tyrrell's Janácek: Years of a Life. Volume Two (1914–1928): Tsar of the Forests.
Bob Thompson, "An Author Peers at Reagan, and the Brink," Washington Post, 26 March, reviews James Mann's The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Friday's Notes
Walter Dellinger, "The Historian Who Lived What He Taught," Washington Post, 26 March, and Stan Katz, "John Hope Franklin, RIP," Brainstorm, 25 March, are tributes by two of the legion who knew him as mentor, colleague and friend.
Historiann and Tenured Radical report from the OAH convention in Seattle.
Michael Dirda, "Darker Judas, or A Forgiving Light?" Washington Post, 26 March, reviews Susan Gubar's Judas: A Biography.
Edward Rothstein, "There Are No Small Parts in This American History Lesson," NYT, 11 March, reviews "Big!" an exhibit at the National Archives in Washington, DC.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Thursday's Notes
Ari Kelman's "A Method to Our Madness," Edge of the American West, 23 March, on books for a course on historical methods, generates a good discussion.
Richard Dunn narrates a slide show, "Taking the long view of the telescope's history," Guardian, 19 March.
Rachel Polonsky, "Pushkin's library lyrics," TLS, 25 March, reviews Alexander Pushkin, Eugen Onegin, trans. by Stanley Mitchell, and Andrew Kahn's Pushkin's Lyric Intelligence.
David A. Bell, "Becoming France," TNR, 1 April, reviews Robert Gildea's Children of the Revolution: The French, 1799-1914.
Jamie James, "A Traveler's Way With Words," WSJ, 20 March, reviews Christopher Benfey, ed., Lafcadio Hearn: American Writings.
Niall Ferguson, "This financial crisis does have a Conservative solution," Telegraph, 24 March, sees three options for conservatives.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Farewell to John Hope Franklin
At 94, John Hope Franklin died today in Durham, North Carolina, of congestive heart failure. He was a pioneer in African American history, a distinguished historian, and a gentleman. His death occurs on the eve of the Organization of American Historians' convention in Seattle.
More Noted Things
John Wilson, "Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in the First Century BC," Books & Culture, 23 March, reviews Barry Strauss's The Spartacus War.
Ingrid D. Rowland, "The Flowering Genius of Maria Sibylla Merian," NYRB, 9 April, reviews Kim Todd's Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis and "Maria Sibylla Merian & Daughters: Women of Art and Science," an exhibit at Amsterdam's Rembrandt House Museum, February 23–May 18, 2008, and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, June 10– August 31, 2008.
Lorna Scott Fox, "There Will Always Be Blood: True Crime Writing," The Nation, 18 March, reviews Harold Schechter, ed., True Crime: An American Anthology.
Drew Gilpin Faust, "The Progress of Our Arms," TNR, 18 March, reviews James McPherson's Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief.
Thomas Mallon, "Theirs Truly: The Lowell-Bishop Letters," Atlantic, April, reviews Thomas Travisano, with Saskia Hamilton, ed., Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Things Noted Here and There
Lucas Mearian, "Internet Archive Upgrades Wayback Machine," PC World, 22 March, announces a massive upgrade to the Net's memory.
The Roundtable on Judith Bennett's History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism continues at:
Part I, Notorious PhD
Part II, Historiann
Part III, Tenured Radical
Part IV, Blogenspiel
Part V, Notorious PhD, next Monday, Bennett responds to the whole discussion.
Suzannah Lipscomb, "Who Was Henry VIII?" History Today, April, attempts to penetrate current illusions about him.
Jean Strouse, "When the Economy Really Did ‘Fall Off a Cliff'," NYT, 22 March, looks at the American banking crisis of 1907. Strouse is the author of Morgan: American Financier and director of the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at The New York Public Library.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Mostly Modern Things Noted
At Chapati Mystery, Wendy Doniger responds to discussion of her new book, The Hindus: An Alternative History. The discussion was prompted by Michael Dirda's review of it.
Aisha Labi, "At Cambridge, Darwin's Natural Selection Was Comfort, Ledgers Show," CHE, 23 March, reports on newly found evidence about Charles Darwin's student years at Cambridge.
Blake Gopnik, "All Eyes Turn To T.J. Clark, Who Turns His To Picasso," "Shades of Meaning at First Blush," and "T.J. Clark Tells the 'Truth' About Picasso," Washington Post, 22 March, feature UC, Berkeley's distinguished art historian. He began his Mellon lecture series on "Picasso and Truth" yesterday at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Darius Rejali, "Icewater and Sweatboxes," Slate, 17 March, traces the history of the CIA's use of torture. Rejali, a political scientist at Reed, is the author of Torture and Democracy (Princeton UP, 2007).
Rob Farley hosted a live discussion with Juan Cole about his new book, Engaging the Muslim World, at firedoglake, 22 March. After 9:00 a.m. edt this morning, you can hear Cole interviewed about his book on PBS's "Morning Edition".
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Sunday's Notes
Carnivalesque XLVIII, an early modern edition of the festival, is up at Sarah Werner's Wynken de Worde.
Nelson Hernandez, "Buried Treasure," Washington Post, 22 March, reviews Jo Marchant's Decoding the Heavens: A 2000-Year-Old Computer -- and the Century-Long Search to Discover Its Secrets.
Danuta Schanzer reviews Valerie Allen's On Farting: Language and Laughter in the Middle Ages for Reviews in History, #733. Consider yourself forewarned ....
Alida Becker, "Twisted Sister," NYT, 19 March, reviews Flora Fraser's Pauline Bonaparte: Venus of Empire.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Weak Endnotes
The winners of this year's Bancroft Prize are: Thomas G. Andrews's Killing for Coal: America's Deadliest Labor War, Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, and Pekka Hämäläinen's The Comanche Empire.
Meet Celia Chazelle, a medievalist who chairs the College of New Jersey's History Department. Her professional credentials are excellent -- could hardly be better -- but she's far from a remote ivy-tower academic. Take a look at her blog, Inside/ Outside, where she writes about her teaching experience in a state prison at Bordentown. It is featured in Michele Alperin's "Prison Instruction: A Respite from Isolation," US 1, 28 December.
The Historical Society's Randall Stephens announces the launch of its new blog, ths blog. He calls it a group blog, which probably means that it welcomes potential posts from other historians. Heather Cox Richardson of UMass, Amherst, is first up, with "Richardson's Rules of Order, Part I: Why Study History?" If ths blog can match the high quality of Historically Speaking, which Stephens also edits, you'll want to keep a close eye on it.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Friday's Notes
Michael Dirda, "Passages from India," Washington Post, 19 March, reviews Wendy Doniger's The Hindus: An Alternative History. See also: Sepoy's "An Alternate History," Chapati Mystery, 19 March.
Holland Cotter, "Treasures at a Korean Crossroad," NYT, 19 March, reviews "Art of the Korean Renaissance, 1400-1600," an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum in Manhattan.
Over 40 years after its original publication, the Post's Jonathan Yardley takes another look at Barbara Tuchman's The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914.
Until 30 April, you can browse and view Alexander Street's American History in Video, its collection of History Channel programs, newsreels from the early twentieth century, and other visual sources without charge.
Peter Campbell, "At the National Gallery," LRB, 26 March, reviews "Picasso: Challenging the Past," an exhibit at London's National Gallery.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
European History Notes
Laleh Khalili reviews Emily Toth's Ms. Mentor's New and Ever More Impeccable Advice for Women and Men in Academia for the THES, 12 March.
Anthony Kenny, "Maurice Bowra, the great Oxford gossip," TLS, 18 March, reviews Leslie Mitchell's Maurice Bowra: A Life.
Michelle Harvey reviews Jeffrey Lockwood's Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War for the THES, 19 March.
Robert Applebaum reviews a new edition of The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi (1570): The Art and Craft of a Master Cook for the THES, 19 March.
James Fenton, "Pure Palladio," TLS, 18 March, reviews "Andrea Palladio: His Life and Legacy," an exhibit at London's Royal Academy of Arts, and Guido Beltramini and Howard Burns, Palladio.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Modern History Notes
Indian History Carnival #15 is up at varnam.
Christopher Hitchens, "The Revenge of Karl Marx," The Atlantic, April, re-evaluates Marx, in light of the current economic crisis.
Dwight Garner, "In Chicago, Real Estate and Race as a Volatile Mix," NYT, 17 March, reviews Beryl Satter's Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America.
Benjamin Ivry, "The Private Barthes," CHE, 20 March, reviews Roland Barthe's journals, Système de la mode (The Fashion System), L'Empire des signes (Empire of Signs), Fragments d'un discours amoureux (A Lover's Discourse: Fragments), Journal de deuil (Bereavement Diary) and Carnets du voyage en Chine (China Travel Notebook), translated by Richard Howard.
Anne Applebaum, "A ‘Beacon Light' Into Black Sites," Slate, 16 March, calls for application of the rule of law in the torture inquiry.
Last night, I attended Emory's celebration of the publication of The Letters of Samuel Beckett, Volume I, 1929-1940. The volume is reviewed here. Salman Rushdie, Edward Albee, and others read excerpts from the letters. This letters project has been twenty years in the creation, with three more volumes to go. If what I heard is any sign of things to come, it is well worth the wait.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Things Noted Here and There
The Military History Carnival for March is up at Jennie's American Presidents Blog. The Giant's Shoulders #9, the history of science carnival, is up at The Evilutionary Biologist. Wynken de Worde's Sarah Werner will host an early modern edition of on 21 March. Use the form to nominate the best in early modern history blogging since 25 January.
Danielle Allen, "A More Perfect Monument," TNR, 18 March, reviews Josiah Ober's Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens.
Steve Coates, "Under the Volcano," NYT, 12 March, reviews Mary Beard's The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found.
John F. Burns, "Is This a Shakespeare Which I See Before Me?" NYT, 9 March, and Adam Gopnik, "Look Here, Upon This Picture," New Yorker, 12 March, cast skeptical eyes on the portrait thought to be of William Shakespeare.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Mr H's Giornale Nuovo to Cliopatria's Hall of Fame
When they are no longer active, Cliopatria honors especially distinguished history blogs by naming them to its Hall of Fame. Heretofore, only Invisible Adjunct (February 2003 - August 2004), Caleb McDaniel's Mode for Caleb (July 2004 - August 2006), and William Turkel's Digital History Hacks (December 2005 - December 2008) have been so honored. At Sharon Howard's suggestion, we're adding Mr H's Giornale Nuovo to the Hall of Fame. BibliOdyssey's pk or peacay is our guest to tell you why.
Giornale Nuovo (October 2002 - October 2007)
Mr H's Giornale Nuovo, the self-described "accumulation of inconsequential notices in the shape of a web-log", provides an excellent model for how an amateur enthusiast can publish a website of distinction within a niche subject. For the ever modest Mr H, that venture involved collecting, scanning and linking to an eclectic array of beautiful, curious and sometimes bizarre art works, dominated by unusual engravings and etchings from the Renaissance and Early Modern periods. At a basic level, one would classify Giornale Nuovo as an Art History blog, justifying its appearance among the esteemed company in this memorial, but Mr H also shared his passion for books and literature as extensions from and sources for the visual delights that appeared on the blog.
A side venture involved the ocr-scanning and hosting of Isaac D'Israeli's 'Curiosities of Literature', and when his collecting habits overtook the available shelf space at home, Mr H generously held periodic book [and CD] giveaways for site visitors.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Sunday's Notes
James Traub, "The Academic Freedom Agenda," NYT, 10 March, and Mike Allen, "Battle brews over Bush library," Politico, 14 March, review the tortured history of George Bush the Younger's effort to build his presidential library, museum, and policy institute at Southern Methodist University. SMU's long had a relatively weak central administration. It is now even weaker.
Amon Shea, "Unwed Language," NYT, 12 March, reviews John McWhorter's Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English.
Holland Cotter, "Passion of the Moment: A Triptych of Masters," NYT, 12 March, and Sebastian Smee, "The art of a rivalry," Boston Globe, 13 March, review "Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese Rivals in Renaissance Venice," at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts.
Gary J. Bass, "The Prague (Berlin, Paris, Milan) Spring," NYT, reviews Mike Rapport's 1848: Year of Revolution.
Brenda Wineapple, "Sallow, Queer, Sagacious: Lincoln Through the Ages," The Nation, 11 March, reviews Harold Holzer, ed., The Lincoln Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Legacy From 1860 to Now and Barry Schwartz's Abraham Lincoln in the Post-Heroic Era: History and Memory in Late Twentieth-Century America.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
American History Notes
Julia Wallace, "The Alcotts, Père and Fille," Harvard Magazine, March/April, reviews John Matteson's Eden's Outcasts.
David Garrow, "How American Ghettos Were Made," Washington Post, 15 March, reviews Beryl Satter's Family Properties: Race, Real Estate and the Black Migration to Chicago.
Nathan Heller, "The Hidden Heart of Cheever Country," Slate, 11 March, Geoffrey Wolff, "Suburban Suffering," NYT, 12 March, and Jonathan Yardley, "Good Writer, Bad Man," Washington Post, 15 March, review Blake Bailey's Cheever: A Life.
Robert Dallek, "How Not to End Another President's War (L.B.J. Edition)," 100 Days, 12 March, revisits Lyndon Johnson's experience with the war in Vietnam.
Finally, Jon Stewart's confrontation with Jim Cramer is literally all over the web.
Tim Burke offers a commentary on it.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Things Noted Here and There
James Stevens Curl reviews Obelisk: A History by Brian A. Curran, Anthony Grafton, Pamela O. Long and Benjamin Weiss for the THES, 12 March.
Jane Ridley, "In the shadow of the Iron Duke," TLS, 11 March, reviews Jane Wellesley's Wellington: A journey through my family.
Paul Anderson, "An Invertebrate Left," LRB, 12 March, is an essay about whatever happened to the Italian Left.
Paul Gifford, "The ultimate French intellectual?" TLS, 11 March, reviews Michel Jarrety's Paul Valéry.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Modernity Reviewed
Cass R. Sunstein, "The Enlarged Republic – Then and Now," NYRB, 26 March, is an essay on The Federalist Papers.
Joan Acocella, "In the Blood," New Yorker, 16 March, reviews Bram Stoker's The New Annotated Dracula, with notations and an introduction by Leslie S. Klinger, Janet Byrne, and Neil Gaiman, and Stephanie Meyer's Twilight.
Adam Kirsch, "Intellectuals at the Gates," City Journal, 6 March, reviews Charles Kurzman's Democracy Denied, 1905–1915: Intellectuals and the Fate of Democracy.
Brooke Allen reviews D. J. Taylor's Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of London's Jazz Age for the Barnes & Noble Review, 19 February.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Two Conversations
As noted earlier, Judith Bennett's History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism is the subject of a March Monday Roundtable. The schedule is as follows:
2 March – Notorious PhD
9 March – Historiann, wherein Lawrence Stone, of blessed memory, is called "a tool"
16 March – Cliopatria and Tenured Radical
23 March – Blogenspiel
30 March – an as yet undisclosed apocalypse.
In the meantime, I am over at Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo Café this week, where the University of Tennessee's Robert Norrell, Liberty & Power's and the Pope Center's Jane Shaw, the University of Oregon's Joseph Lowndes, attorney Bruce Kleinschmidt, and I are discussing Norrell's controversial new biography, Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington. And I'm trying to be nice about it.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Cliopatria Revised & Dissented
Three years ago, Cliopatria helped to launch a new blog at History News Network, Revise and Dissent. It featured some of the younger stars in the history blogosphere and has been a fascinating read, because its group members were on the cutting edge of diverse approaches to history. In recent months, however, R & D's audience declined and a decision made to close it. R & D's remaining active members have agreed to join our group at Cliopatria. That decision is altogether our gain, because each of them is already a well known figure in the history blogosphere.
It is a pleasure to welcome Sterling Fluharty, Brett Holman, and Sage Ross to our circle at Cliopatria.
Monday, March 9, 2009
20th Century Notes
Mondli Makhanya, "He's not some mascot to be bickered over and wheeled out at party bashes," Johannesburg, South Africa Times, 7 March, compares the bad behavior of the children of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela.
Tobias Grey, "The Man Who Threw The First Terrorist Bomb," Washington Post, 8 March, reviews John Merriman's The Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siècle Paris Ignited the Age.
Marie Arana, "Lost in the Jungle," Washington Post, 8 March, reviews David Grann's The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon.
Drake Bennett, "Troublesome Element," NYT, 5 March, reviews Tom Zoellner's Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World.
Roya Nikkhah, "George Orwell's love letters to go on sale," Telegraph, 7 March, announces the auction of Eric Arthur Blair's letters to Eleanor Jaques.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Sunday's Notes
Richard Eden, "Andrew Marr's history book is pulped amid great mystery," Telegraph, 8 March, treats the sudden and mysterious withdrawal and pulping of Marr's A History of Modern Britain. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
Jonathan Yardley, "The Wife Who Got Away," Washington Post, 8 March, reviews Wendy Moore's Wedlock: The True Story of the Disastrous Marriage and Remarkable Divorce of Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore.
Katie Roiphe, "Writing Women," NYT, 5 March, reviews Elaine Showalter's A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers From Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx.
Baz Dreisinger, "A Transracial Man," NYT, 5 March, reviews Martha A. Sandweiss's Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Weak Endnotes
John Elogon, "Identity-Theft Arrest in Dispute Over Dead Sea Scrolls," NYT, 5 March, reports charges against the son of the University of Chicago's Norman Golb, who may have sought to discredit criticism by NYU's Lawrence H. Schiffman of his father's work.
John Adamson, "Eyewitness to an Era," Literary Review, March, reviews Caroline Moorhead's Dancing to the Precipice: Lucie de La Tour du Pin and the French Revolution.
Karen Rosenberg, "Maverick, You Cast a Giant Shadow," NYT, 5 March, reviews "Cézanne and Beyond," an exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The collapse of the city archive at Cologne seems little short of catastrophic. Because of unstable rubble, efforts to rescue two or three people who may have been lost in the collapse or to assay damage to the archive's holdings – including city council minutes going back to 1376 and manuscript collections of Heinrich Böll, Karl Marx, Jacques Offenbach, and others – have been slow. See: Klaus Graf's Archivalia and Nathanael Robinson's Europe Endless. Meanwhile, the library at UCLA has acquired the papers of Aldous Huxley.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Friday's Notes
The melting economy hits Harvard, Yale, and historical societies from New Jersey to Oregon. What the tanking stock market hasn't done to higher education endowments, fraud has. Beyond NYU and Yeshiva, Carnegie Mellon and Pittsburgh appear to have been bilked of nearly $115 million. Anthony Grafton, "Graduate school in a New Ice Age," Daily Princetonian, 2 March, puts the grim implications for graduate education in historical perspective. Hat tip.
Alan V. Murray reviews Abdul Rahman Azzam's Saladin for the THES, 5 March.
Dane T. Daniel reviews Charles Webster's Paracelsus: Medicine, Magic and Mission at the End of Time for the THES, 5 March.
Jonathan Bate, "The Power of Milton," TLS, 4 March, reviews Gordon Campbell's and Thomas N. Corns's John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Thursday's Notes
John Lukacs, "Putting Man Before Descartes," American Scholar, March, stakes history's claim as the comprehensive discipline.
David Wooton, "Happiness and the Historian," TLS, 25 February, reviews Keith Thomas's Ends of Life: Roads to fulfilment in early modern England.
Edward Rothstein, "Darwin's Wake Splashed Artists, Too," NYT, 2 March, reviews "Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts," an exhibit at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven.
Adam Kirsch, "American as Apple Pie," nextbook, 2 March, reviews Lila Corwin Berman's Speaking of Jews: Rabbis, Intellectuals, and the Creation of an American Public Identity.
Stefan Beck, "Cheever v. Cheever," New Criterion, March, and John Updike, "Basically Decent," New Yorker, 9 March, reviews Blake Bailey's Cheever: A Life.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Archival Notes
Lisa Spiro, "Digital Humanities in 2008," Part I and Part II, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 7 and 24 February, round up recent developments in the field. Digital History – Methodology for the Infinite Archive is the new wikihome of our former colleague, William Turkel. Hat tip.
Eric Jager, "Lost in the Archives," CHE, 6 March, recalls his research about a duel in 14th century Normandy to point out that most documents are not available on the internet. Some of them in the archives can't even be found.
The city archive building in Cologne, Germany, collapsed yesterday. The archive includes manuscripts by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, as well as Heinrich Böll. Injuries to people were limited, but there are no reports yet on damage to the manuscript holdings. The collapse may have been related to construction of an underground transit tunnel. For current reports, see: Klaus Graf's Archivalia.
"The First World War Poetry Digital Archive and The Great War Archive," a British venture featuring World War I era documents in private hands is now online. Esther MacCallum-Stewart reviews it and Stuart Lee responds in Reviews in History, January. Hat tip.
Frederick J. Graboske, "Nixon Tapes Archivist, explains why he concluded Stanley Kutler's alterations were deliberate," HNN, 28 February, offers an archivist's account of his judgment about the Nixon Tapes controversy.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
More Noted Things
During March, four of our colleagues are conducting roundtable discussions of Judith Bennett's History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism. The first round is up at The Adventures of Notorious Ph.D., Girl Scholar. Subsequent discussions will be at: Historiann on 9 March; Tenured Radical on 16 March; Blogenspiel on 23 March; and somewhere, with an unnamed special guest, on 30 March.
Blake Gopnik, "At Freer, Aesthetic Is Simply Smashing," Washington Post, 3 March, reviews "Golden Seams: The Japanese Art of Mending Ceramics," an exhibit at the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery in Washington. When has a repair enhanced the aesthetic appeal of an artifact? When the Japanese did it.
John Summers, "Gettysburg Regress," TNR, 18 March, wonders whether the National Park Service's efforts to restore the Gettysburg battlefield to conditions in 1863 are helpful. They've cut down trees that weren't there then. Will they strew dead bodies across the fields? Hat tip.
Charles McGrath, "The First Suburbanite," NYT, 27 February, wonders whether a biography and new editions of his work will secure John Cheever's place among important 20th century American authors.
Evan R. Goldstein, "Rashid Khalidi's Balancing Act," CHE, 6 March, explores the controversial professor's struggle to balance scholarship and advocacy. Thanks to CHE for the free link for non-subscribers.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Things Noted Here and There
If you can get past the lovely painting by Louis Jean Francois, "Mars and Venus an Allegory of Peace," History Carnival LXXIV is up at Eliza Knight's History Undressed.
Matthew Polly, "From Russia With Blood, Beauty, and Beasts: How St. Petersburg Came To Be So Gorgeous," Slate, 23 February, finds its only explanation in the city's history.
Theresa Tedesco, "The daily life of Conrad," National Post, 27 February, tells how historian Conrad Black spends his days in the slammer.
D. T. Max, "The Unfinished," New Yorker, 9 March, tells of the recovery, after his suicide, of David Foster Wallace's unfinished novel. Wallace, "Wiggle Room," ibid., is an excerpt from the novel.
Isaac Arnsdorf and Victor Zapana, "Yale will fire up to 300 staff," Yale Daily News, 27 February, notes that hard times have come, even to Old Eli.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Sunday's Notes
"Afghan treasures give peek into history," Houston Chronicle, 28 February, reviews "Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul," an exhibit on world tour that opens today at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas.
Joseph Caputo, "Solving a 17th Century Crime," Smithsonian, March, looks at the murder of an indentured servant in colonial Maryland. It's one of a number of cases featured in "Written in Bone: Forensic Files of the 17th Century Chesapeake," an exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington.
Jamie James reviews Frances Wilson's The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth: A Life for the LA Times, 1 March.
Rich Cohen, "On the Road to El Dorado," NYT, 26 February, reviews David Grann's The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon.
Joshua Prager, "The Wallenberg Curse," WSJ, 28 February, tells the agonizing story of Raoul Wallenberg's family's relentless quest for information about his fate.
Jim Holt, "Suicide Squad," NYT, 26 February, reviews Alexander Waugh's The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Garry Wills, "Closer Than Ever to Vergil," NYRB, 12 March, reviews Vergil's The Aeneid, translated by Sarah Ruden.
Caleb Crain, "Random facts of kindness," The National, 27 February, reviews On Kindness by the historian Barbara Taylor and the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips.
Laura Miller, "Why can't a woman write the Great American Novel?" Salon, 27 February, reviews Elaine Showalter's A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx.
Joy Williams, "Stranger Than Paradise," NYT, 26 February, reviews Brad Gooch's Flannery, the new biography of Flannery O'Connor.
John Derbyshire, "How Radio Wrecks the Right," American Conservative, 23 February, attacks the "comfort food" Limbaugh and Co. feed their right-wing audience.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Revisionisms
If you have any interest in African American history, the history of American race relations, or the civil rights movement, I recommend that you read Robert J. Norrell's "Reshaping the Image of Booker T. Washington," CHE, 27 February.* It is an apologia for his new biography, Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington, which seeks to frame the story of BTW's leadership in positive terms. In doing so, Norrell must necessarily challenge the image of Washington that we've received from W. E. B. Du Bois, C. Vann Woodward, and Louis R. Harlan. And, in doing so, he can't resist the temptation to depict the Wizard of Tuskegee as the early twentieth century's Barack Obama.
As I've said earlier, count me among the skeptics. Norrell will certainly find sympathetic readers among conservative and libertarian historians, but they didn't need Norrell to tell them that in Washington there was much to admire. More critical to the reception of his book, I suspect, are the historians of "the long civil rights movement," Jacquelyn Hall, Thomas Sugrue, Glenda Gilmore, Mary Dudziak, and many more. Will they embrace a revised and positive portrait of BTW as a major chapter in the long struggle? Despite the timeliness of his book, Norrell doesn't appear on their April conference program. Maybe BTW as Barack Obama just didn't have the right ring to the program's organizers.
But, then, I've my own reservations about "the long civil rights movement" frufraw anyway. At its baldest, tlcrm claims that the movement didn't spring virgin from the minds of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks in 1955. Well, of course. No well-informed historian ever claimed that it did and self-evident truths hardly make cutting-edge historiography. The struggle had a history extending back into the early twentieth century and a national and international scope well beyond the South. Some of us, including Du Bois, Woodward, Harlan, John Hope Franklin, August Meier, and others, wrote about the long civil rights struggle before tlcrm sprang virgin from the minds of younger historians. A major part of the problem is that no one – including the lcrm historians -- has done a history of the organization central to the struggle, the NAACP. And an important question in the larger and longer history is the place of Booker T. Washington in it. Robert Norrell has forcefully raised it.
*Thanks to David Glenn at the Chronicle for the link that is free to non-subscribers for the next five days.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Thursday's Notes
"15 Must-See Endangered Cultural Treasures," Smithsonian, March, features remarkable endangered sites in Australia, Canada, China, Cyprus, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kosovo, Mauritania, Peru, Turkey, the United States, and Venezuela.
W. A. Pannapacker, "How to Procrastinate like Leonardo da Vinci," CHE, 20 February, recommends a more creative procrastination than my own.
Matthew Gurewitsch, "Jan Lievens: Out of Rembrandt's Shadow," Smithsonian, March, reviews "Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered," an exhibit on tour in the United States and currently at the Milwaukee Art Museum.
Andrew Koppelman, "Naked Strong Evaluation," Dissent, Winter, reviews Charles Taylor's A Secular Age.
David Grann, "Finding the Lost City," Boston Globe, 22 February, is excerpted from Grann's The Lost City of Z. It features the quest of British explorer Percy Harrison Fawcett for the remains of ancient civilization in the Amazon basin. Fawcett may have been less delusional than we once thought.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Still More Notes
History Carnival LXXIV goes up at Eliza Knight's History Undressed on Sunday 1 March. Send nominations of the best in February's history blogging to her at writer*at*elizaknight*dot*com or use the form.
Francis Phillips reviews Simon Sebag Montefiore's Heroes: History's Greatest Men and Women for Mercator.net, 20 February.
Dwight Garner, "A Brother's Keeper: The Other Wordsworth," NYT, 24 February, reviews Frances Wilson's The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth: A Life.
Joseph P. Shivers, "15 Questions with Jill Lepore," Harvard Crimson, 18 February, interviews Lepore about her new novel, with Jane Kamensky, Blindspot.
David Glenn, "A Fresh Look at the Lives of Civil War Soldiers Reveals the High Price of Diversity," CHE, 27 February, reviews Dora L. Costa's and Matthew E. Kahn's Heroes and Cowards: The Social Face of War. It's a sophisticated statistical study by two UCLA economists.
Amos N. Jones, "The Leader of the Race," Books & Culture, 23 February, reviews Robert J. Norrell's Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington. Withywindle will appreciate Norrell's argument. Me? Not so much.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
More Noted Things
So, the editor at Prestigious Journal has returned your article with a request to "revise and resubmit." Eric Rauchway offers some advice.
Kaila Adia Story reviews Clifton Crais's and Pamela Scully's Sara Baartman and The Hottentot Venus: A Ghost Story and a Biography for the THES, 19 February.
A. N. Wilson, "What the Victorian artists did for us," Guardian, 22 February, reviews Jeremy Paxman's The Victorians: Britain Through the Paintings of the Age.
As Broadway prepares to re-open Frank Loesser's musical, "Guys and Dolls," Adam Gopnik revisits Damon Runyon's guys and gals.
Philip Swanson, "The myths of Gabriel García Márquez," TLS, 11 February, reviews Gerald Martin's Gabriel García Márquez: A Life.
Perry Anderson, "An Entire Order Converted into What It Was Intended to End," LRB, 26 February, reviews Sergio Rizzo's and Gian Antonio Stella's La Casta: Cosi i Politici Italiani sono Diventati Intoccabili and Rizzo's and Stella's La Deriva: Perche l'Italia Rischia il Naufragio.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Things Noted Here and There
Adam Kirsch, "Money Made Him Do It," Slate, 22 February, reviews Peter Martin's Samuel Johnson: A Biography and Jeffrey Meyers's Samuel Johnson: The Struggle.
John Bowen, "Dickens's Refuge for Fallen Women," TLS, 18 February, reviews Jenny Hartley's Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women.
Eric Hobsbawm, "Era of Wonders," LRB, 26 February, reviews Simon Winchester's Bomb, Book and Compass: Joseph Needham and the Great Secrets of China.
Louise Steinman reviews Samuel D. Kassow's Who Will Write Our History? Rediscovering a Hidden Archive From the Warsaw Ghetto for the LA Times, 22 February.
Steve Weinberg, "Echoes of Vietnam war crimes," Philadelphia Inquirer, 22 February, reviews Deborah Nelson's The War Behind Me: Vietnam Veterans Confront the Truth About U.S. War Crimes. Hat tip.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Herodotus and Modernity
Tobin Harshaw, "Antique Road Show," NYT, 19 February, reviews Justin Marozzi's The Way of Herodotus: Travels With the Man Who Invented History.
Carnivalesque LXVII, "When the Ancient/Medieval and the Modern Collide, and How to Survive the Aftermath. Starring Indiana Jones, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama!" is up at The Adventures of Notorious Ph.D., Girl Scholar.
Jedediah Purdy, "The Coast of Utopia," NYT, 19 February, reviews William H. Goetzmann's Beyond the Revolution: A History of American Thought From Paine to Pragmatism. See also: Blake Wilson, "Stray Questions for Jedediah Purdy," Paper Cuts, 20 February.
Robert Bateman reviews Benson Bobrick's Master of War: The Life of General George H. Thomas for the Washington Post, 22 February.
Annette Gordon-Reed, "Color Blind," Washington Post, 22 February, reviews Martha A. Sandweiss's Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love And Deception Across the Color Line.
Jason Goodwin, "Mongolia and the Madman," NYT, 20 February, reviews James Palmer's The Bloody White Baron: The Extraordinary Story of the Russian Nobleman Who Became the Last Khan of Mongolia.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Weak Endnotes
The finalists for the 2009 George Washington Book Prize for the best work on the American Revolution and the early republic were announced yesterday. They are: Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, Kevin J. Hayes's The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson, and Jane Kamensky's The Exchange Artist: A Tale of High-Flying Speculation and America's First Banking Collapse. The judges, Joyce Appleby, Ira Berlin, and Jay Winik, chose the finalists from 78 nominees.
Scott McLemee reviews Jeff B. Perry's Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 for the Barnes & Noble Review, 20 February.
Julian Barnes, "Such, Such Was Eric Blair," NYRB, 12 March, reviews George Orwell's All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays, Orwell's Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays, and Orwell's Why I Write.
Robert Colville reviews Stan Lauryssens's Dalí and I: Exposing the Dark Circus of the International Art Market for the Telegraph, 17 February.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Western Civ Notes
Mary Beard, "What made the Greeks laugh?" TLS, 18 February, reviews Stephen Halliwell's Greek Laughter: A study of cultural psychology from Homer to early Christianity. In "Byzantium and Prince Charles," A Don's Life, 20 February, Beard chats about attending the opening of "Byzantium, 340-1452" at London's Royal Academy of Art.
Eric Ormsby, "The Islamic Enlightenment," WSJ, 14 February, reviews Jonathan Lyons's The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization and John Freely's Aladdin's Lamp: How Greek Science Came to Europe through the Islamic World.
Brian Vick, "Backstage at the Revolution," THES, 19 February, reviews Victoria Johnson's Backstage at the Revolution: How the Royal Paris Opera Survived the End of the Old Regime.
Alex Ross, "The Youngest Master," New Yorker, 23 February, looks at celebrations of the Felix Mendelson bicentennial. Move over Darwin and Lincoln.
Harold Shukman reviews William I. Hitchcock's Liberation: The Bitter Road to Freedom, Europe 1945-1950 for the THES, 19 February.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Notes Ancient and Modern
Scott McLemee, "War in the Heavens and Here Below," IHE, 18 February, reviews Michel Tardieu's Manichaeism.
Eric Rauchway, "Recession Watch: Work for the greater good," Nature, 19 February, looks at the New Deal's contributions in science and technology.
Dwight Gardner, "Lives Defined by Hurricanes, but Devoted to New Orleans," NYT, 17 February, reviews Dan Baum's Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans.
Ann Douglas of Columbia, Robin D. G. Kelley of USC, Peter Rachleff of Macalester, and Adolph Reed of Penn are among the historians who have endorsed the U. S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel. Hat tip.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Modern History Notes
Alan Riding, "From a Vault in Paris, Sounds of Opera 1907," NYT, 16 February, announces the recovery of early recordings at the Paris Opera. At the link, you can hear Francesco Tamagno's 1904 rendition of "Nium mi tema" from Verdi's Otello, Nellie Melba's 1907 recording of "Caro nome" from Verdi's Rigoletto, and Enrico Caruso's 1908 version of "Celeste Aida" from Verdi's Aida. The recordings of works by over a dozen different composers will be released this spring on three CDs.
On the 100th anniversary of Geronimo's death, his great-grandson gives notice of intent to file a lawsuit for the recovery of the Apache chief's remains.
CNN and the Washington Post cover the tour by Martin Luther King, III, marking the 50th anniversary of his father's and mother's tour of India. From that tour, King, Jr., learned to speak much more authoritatively of Mahatma Gandhi's understanding of non-violence.
K. Anthony Appiah, "Seven Habits of Truly Liberal People," Slate, 16 February, reviews Alan Wolfe's The Future of Liberalism.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Things Noted Here and There
Christopher F. Chabris, "Last-Minute Changes," WSJ, 12 February, and Noah Millman, "Happy Belated Birthday," The American Scene, 13 February, review Gregory Cochran's and Henry Harpending's The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution. Michael Blowhard, "A Week with Gregory Cochran," 2blowhards, 25-30 January, interviews a co-author.
XLVII, an ancient/medieval edition of the festival, goes up at Notorious Ph.D. on 21 February. Send nominations of the best in ancient/medieval history blogging since 23 November to notoriousphd*at*mac*dot*com or use the form.Peter Wilby, "The Trouble with Oxford," New Statesman, 12 February, reviews Leslie Mitchell's Maurice Bowra: a Life.
Finally, Dr. Wicked's Write or Die "puts the prod in productivity." Which reminds me that I do have commitments to three book manuscripts. Hat tip.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Digital History Hacks to Cliopatria's Hall of Fame
When they are no longer active, Cliopatria honors especially distinguished history blogs by naming them to its Hall of Fame. Heretofore, only Invisible Adjunct (February 2003 - August 2004) and Caleb McDaniel's Mode for Caleb (July 2004 - August 2006) have been so honored. With Rob MacDougall's tribute, we are adding William Turkel's Digital History Hacks (December 2005 - December 2008) to that distinguished company:
It seems like just yesterday I was toasting Bill Turkel's Digital History Hacks for winning Cliopatria's Best New Blog Award. Now Bill is moving on from the blog to other things, and I have the sad task of bidding DHH adieu. Let's see what I said back then:
William J. Turkel's Digital History Hacks goes beyond new media platitudes and internet hype to demonstrate in word and deed what history in the twenty-first century will be all about. From the nuts and bolts of spidering and scraping to the loftiest questions about what historians do and why, Digital History Hacks points the way to a brave new world with infectious enthusiasm and blazing imagination.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Modern History Notes
The Virginia Quarterly Review has opened its electronic archive from the period of Staige Blackford's editing, 1975-2003. Without charge, you can read online: Ralph E. Luker, "Garry Wills and the New Debate Over the Declaration of Independence," VQR, Spring 1980, 244-261. Ronald Reagan was not yet elected President, but the new conservative intellectuals dominated critical response to Wills' Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, the most important book on the subject since Carl Becker's The Declaration of Independence. And the diversity of their criticism illustrated divisions within the new conservatism. Or, you can read Irving Louis Horowitz's "Printed Words, Computers, and Democratic Societies," VQR, (Autumn 1983): 620-636, which anticipated the development of wikipedia, e-book readers, and blogs. He does it with the literary skill peculiar to sociologists, but it's a smart article, nonetheless.
Shelby Steele, "Pride and Compromise," NYT, 13 February, reviews Robert J. Norrell's Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington.
Joe Nocera, "Flying Blind," NYT, 13 February, and Frank Ahrens, "Who Caused the Great Depression?" Washington Post, 15 February, review Liaquat Ahamed's Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World.
Matthew Dallek, "Starting Out Strong," Washington Post, 15 February, reviews Adam Cohen's Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America and Burt Solomon's FDR v. The Constitution: The Court-Packing Fight and the Triumph of Democracy.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Weak Endnotes
During March, Another Damned Medievalist, Historiann, Notorious PhD, Tenured Radical and an unnamed invited guest will hold a book event on Judith Bennett's History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism. ADM has the schedule.
Thomas Hayden, "Darwin the Liberator," Washington Post, 15 February, reviews Adrian Desmond's and James Moore's Darwin's Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin's Views on Human Evolution and Jerry A. Coyne's Why Evolution is True.
Roberta Smith, "So Typecast You Could Scream," NYT, 12 February, reviews "Becoming Edvard Munch: Influence, Anxiety and Myth," an exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Alexander Provan, "An Alienation Artist: Kafka and His Critics," The Nation, 11 February, reviews Stanley Corngold, Jack Greenberg and Benno Wagner, eds., Franz Kafka: The Office Writings and Louis Begley's The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head: Franz Kafka, A Biographical Essay.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Blogging Darwin and Lincoln
Celebration of the 200th birthdays of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln yesterday reminded me that there are fascinating blogs devoted to both subjects. There's general interest in Darwin on Cliopatria's History Blogroll at both Digital History, Science, and Technology and at Modern History. But, for particular interest, check out: The Beagle Project, Blogging the Origin, Darwiniana, and The Dispersal of Darwin. Similarly, there is general interest in Lincoln at both Military History, where over two dozen blogs focus on the American Civil War, and United States History. There, A. Lincoln Blog, Abraham Lincoln Blog, Lincoln Studies, and What Would Lincoln Do? feature Father Abraham 365 days a year.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
More Noted Things
Tom Palaima reviews Margaret Malamud's Ancient Rome and Modern America for the THES, 12 February.
Michael Kulikowski, "Bed-Hopping and Coup-Plotting," LRB, 12 February, reviews Christopher Kelly's Attila the Hun: Barbarian Terror and the Fall of the Roman Empire.
Sotheby's currently has on display the Valmadonna Library Trust's 11,000 Hebrew books and manuscripts, the largest collection of Judaica in private hands. Its value is estimated at $40,000,000. Its purchase would catapult the purchasing institution into the forefront of the study of the history of Judaism.
Geoff Pevere, "Lincoln and Darwin: Separated at birth?" The Star, 1 February, reviews Adam Gopnik's Angels and Ages: A Short Book about Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life. Gopnik is interviewed about his book at "The Evolution of Darwin and Lincoln," The Daily Beast, 3 February. Hat tip.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Things Noted Here and There
Carlin Romano, "For Philosophers, Dead Is the New 90," CHE, 13 February, reviews Simon Critchley's The Book of Dead Philosophers.
UCLA's Catalogue of Digitized Medieval Manuscripts is an extraordinary resource for all students of medieval history. Hat tip.
Brooke Allen, "First Man of Letters," Wilson Quarterly, Winter, reviews Peter Martin's Samuel Johnson: A Biography and Jeffrey Meyers's Samuel Johnson: The Struggle. Hat tip.
Philip Kennicott, "Hitler's Terrible Weapon: Publicity," Washington Post, 11 February, reviews "State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda," an exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
More Modern American Notes
So, the administration at your small university threatens to shut down your history department's doctoral program if it doesn't re-invent itself. Jonathan Rose, "Rethinking Graduate Education in History," Perspectives, February, tells us what his department decided was important.
Adam Kirsch, "Lessons From the Gilded Age," Slate, 9 February, reviews Barry Werth's Banquet at Delmonico's: Great Minds, the Gilded Age, and the Triumph of Evolution in America.
Matthew Price, "Stacking Paper," The National, 6 February, reviews Kenneth Whyte's The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst.
Eric Rauchway's The Great Depression and the New Deal: A Very Short Introduction is the focus of discussion this week at Josh Marshall's TPMCafé.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Modern American Notes
Janet Maslin, "Harsh Year in Lincoln's Fight for the Union," NYT, 8 February, reviews Charles B. Flood's 1864: Lincoln at the Gates of History.
Wendy Lesser, "Southern Discomfort," bookforum, February/ March, reviews Brad Gooch's Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor.
Michael Kazin, "A Liberal Revival of Americanism," Washington Post, 8 February, sees American progressives re-asserting their patriotic claims.
The recession is having a substantial effect at the Atlanta University Center, the largest concentration of institutions of African-American higher education in the United States. On Saturday, I pointed to Gayle White's "Clark Atlanta University cuts 100 jobs," AJC, 6 February, which announced that, a month after the semester began, 70 full-time faculty members -- nearly a third of its faculty -- and 30 other full-time employees have been summarily dismissed. Classes are canceled until Tuesday, while undergraduates' schedules are re-organized. Ben Smith's "Morehouse cuts part-time teaching staff," AJC, 8 February, adds more details. Morehouse non-renewed the contracts of a third of its adjuncts at the beginning of this semester and CAU has canceled all physical education classes. Scott Jaschik, "Turmoil Over 70 Faculty Layoffs at Clark Atlanta," IHE, 9 February, indicates that some tenured faculty were dismissed, even though CAU pointedly denies that it faces financial exigency. Can the AAUP be far behind?
Although it continues to admit students, a third institution adjacent to the Center, Morris Brown College, is nearly $30,000,000 in debt and lost membership in the Center, federal funding, support from the United Negro College Fund, and its accreditation six years ago.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
400 Years of Milton; 200 of Lincoln
Frank Kermode, "Heroic Milton: Happy Birthday," NYRB, 26 February, reviews Gordon Campbell's and Thomas N. Corns's John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought, Anna Beer's Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer, and Patriot, and Nigel Smith's Is Milton Better Than Shakespeare?.
Fred Kaplan, "The Lincoln Canon," Washington Post, 8 February, William Safire, "Lincoln Monuments," NYT, 6 February, and Allen Barra, "Yet more books to mark Lincoln's big day," San Francisco Chronicle, 8 February, make recommendations from among the outpouring of work about A. Lincoln. David W. Blight, "Abe the Intellectual," Washington Post, 8 February, reviews Ronald C. White Jr.'s A. Lincoln: A Biography; and Elaine Showalter, "On Her Own," Washington Post, 8 February, reviews Catherine Clinton's Mrs. Lincoln: A Life.
Otherwise, Jane Stancill, "UNC warns of class and job cuts," Raleigh News & Observer, 7 February, says that an anticipated 7% reduction in state support of the University of North Carolina system would mean the loss of 660 faculty positions, 232 of them at UNC, Chapel Hill, alone.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Notes Ancient & Modern
Gayle White, "Clark Atlanta University cuts 100 jobs," AJC, 6 February, announces that, a month after the semester began, 70 full-time faculty members and 30 other full-time employees have been summarily dismissed. Classes are canceled until Tuesday, while class schedules are re-organized.
Benjamin Schwarz, "Geography Is Destiny," Atlantic, December, reviews Barry Cunliffe's Europe Between the Oceans, 9000 BC-AD 1000.
Christopher Kelly, "Lighting Up the Dark Ages," Literary Review, February, reviews Chris Wickham's The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000.
"Greatest Achievements of American Socialism," Salon, 6 February, is a slide show of some of the New Deal's finest works. Hat tip.
Rick Shenkman, "The Watergate Transcript Controversy: The Story Behind the Story," HNN, 5 February, is a very helpful background to the Klingman/Kutler controversy about the transcription of the Nixon tapes. Patricia Cohen, "Journal Rejects Essay About Nixon Tapes," NYT, 6 February, notes that the AHR declines to publish Klingman's article.
Eric Kaufmann, "The Meaning of Huntington," Prospect, February, suggests a not-altogether-obvious reason Samuel Huntington became "a pariah" among intellectuals.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Friday's Notes
Tom Palaima reviews Chris Wickham's The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 for the THES, 5 February.
Jeffrey Meyers reviews Barbara Furlotti's and Guido Rebecchini's The Art and Architecture of Mantua: Eight Centuries of Patronage and Collecting (trans. by A. Lawrence Jenkins) for the THES, 5 February.
Lynn Hunt reviews Michael Sonenscher's Sans-Culottes: An Eighteenth-Century Emblem in the French Revolution for the THES, 5 February.
Michael E. Ross, "The End of Black History Month," The Root, 3 February, argues that its rationale no longer holds. Brokey McPoverty's series, "Know Your History," PostBourgie, February, finds humor in it. Hat tip.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Thursday's Notes
David Morgan, "The Permanence of Persia," TLS, 4 February, reviews Michael Axworthy's Empire of the Mind: A History of Iran.
Steven Gunn, "What should we think of Henry VIII?" TLS, 4 February, reviews David Starkey's Henry: Virtuous Prince and Lucy Wooding's Henry VIII.
Jan Swafford, "Great Composers, Lousy Reviews," Slate, 3 February, revisits madly negative reviews of classical composers. Hat tip.
Andrew Steele, "Boom, bust and Harper," Globe and Mail, 2 February, tracks the history of party systems in the United States and Canada. Hat tip.
Felipe Fernández-Armesto, "Where next??" TLS, 4 February, reviews Raymond John Howgego's Encyclopedia of Exploration, 1850 to 1940.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
More Noted Things
Ken Johnson, "At the Height of Power for the Netherlands, the City in Glorious Detail," NYT, 29 January, and Blake Gopnik, "The 'Golden' Compass," Washington Post, 3 February, review "Pride of Place: Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age," an exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The Post's slide show.
Stephen Taylor reviews Siân Rees's Sweet Water and Bitter: The Ships that Stopped the Slave Trade for the Times of London, 30 January.
John Wilson, "Ah, Wilderness!" NYT, 30 January, reviews Donald Worster's A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir and Bonny J. Gisel's Nature's Beloved Son: Rediscovering John Muir's Botanical Legacy.
Martin Pugh, "Edward Carpenter, father of the twenty-first century," TLS, 28 January, reviews Sheila Rowbotham's Edward Carpenter: A life of liberty and love.
Claudia Roth Pierpont, "Another Country," New Yorker, 9 February, reviews Magdalena J. Zaborowska's James Baldwin's Turkish Decade: Erotics of Exile.
Sam Tanenhaus, "Conservatism Is Dead," TNR, 18 February, is "an intellectual autopsy of the movement" in the United States.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Cliopatria welcomes Aaron Bady
Cliopatria is pleased to welcome Aaron Bady to its circle. A native of southeastern Ohio, Mr. Bady earned a B. A. in English at the Ohio State University and an M. A. in literature from American University in Washington, D. C. He is currently an advanced doctoral student in English at the University of California at Berkeley. Along the way, Bady studied African literature and did two tours of duty as a primary school teacher near Arusha, Tanzania. Nearing the end of his second tour, he began to blog at zunguzungu.
Bady's blog tracks the transition of his interests, from a curiosity about African literature to an interest in the ways in which "America's Africa" and "Africa's America" have been, in his words, "mutually constitutive narratives of identity, the ways that dialogs and travels between have made both identities 'thinkable' in a shared global context." The fascination of his developing ideas has won widespread attention in the academic blogosphere. He is now a member of the literary group blog, The Valve, and has guest-posted at The Edge of the American West. More recently, he won a Cliopatria Award as the history blogosphere's Best Writer. It is a pleasure to welcome him as a member of Cliopatria.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Things Noted Here and There
History Carnival LXXIII is up at Whitney Trettien's diapsalmata.
Judith H. Dobrzynski, "Brandeis on the Brink," The Daily Beast, 28 January, explains the extremity of the University's financial situation that drove its decision to close the Rose Art Museum. The New York Times calls on Brandeis to "share the pain across the university's budget."
Sage Ross, "Libraries and copyfraud," Revise and Dissent, 30 January, is a case study in the right to use a photographic image.
Nathan Nunn and Leonard Wantchekon, "The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa," December. From the Abstract:
We investigate the historical origins of mistrust within Africa. Combining contemporary household survey data with historic data on slave shipments by ethnic group, we show that individuals whose ancestors were heavily threatened by the slave trade today exhibit less trust in neighbors, family co-ethnics, and their local government.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Modern History Notes
Leah Price, "Lives of Johnson," NYT, 30 January, reviews Peter Martin's Samuel Johnson: A Biography and Jeffrey Meyers's Samuel Johnson: The Struggle.
Marilyn Stasio, "Life, Liberty, and Pursuit," NYT, 29 January, reviews Jane Kamensky's and Jill Lepore's Blindspot, By a Gentleman in Exile and a Lady in Disguise.
Christopher Benfey, "Charles Darwin, Abolitionist," NYT, 29 January, reviews Adrian Desmond's and James Moore's Darwin's Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin's Views on Human Evolution and Adam Gopnik's Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life.
Jon Meacham reviews Harold Holzer's The Lincoln Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Legacy from 1860 to Now, Sean Wilentz's The Best American History Essays on Lincoln, Ron White's A. Lincoln: A Biography, John Stauffer's Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, and James McPherson's Abraham Lincoln: A Presidential Life for the LA Times, 1 February. Meacham quotes Edmund Wilson to the effect that "the cruelest thing that has happened to Lincoln since he was shot by Booth has been to fall into the hands of Carl Sandburg." The first multi-volume biography since Sandburg's, Michael Burlingame's Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 2 volumes, ought to be getting more attention.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Weak Endnotes
David Glenn, "Scholars Hope Obama Will Bring Change to the NEH," CHE, 30 January, looks at expectations for the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Dinitia Smith, "Dying and Death: When You Sort It Out, What's It All About, Diogenes?" NYT, 29 January, reviews Simon Critchley's The Book of Dead Philosophers.
Debby Applegate, "Intellectual Selection," NYT, 29 January, reviews Barry Werth's Banquet at Delmonico's: Great Minds, the Gilded Age, and the Triumph of Evolution in America.
Caroline Preston, "Still Life, with Scissors and Glue," Washington Post, 1 February, reviews Jessica Helfand's Scrapbooks: An American History; Jonathan Yardley reviews Bryan Burrough's The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes and Michael Dirda reviews Kitty Burns Florey's Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting for the Washington Post, 1 February.
Finally, farewell to John Patrick Diggins, a maverick historian of American thought.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Charles I, 1600-1649
At Mercurius Politicus, Nick has a mini-blog carnival in honor of the 360th anniversary of "The Execution of Charles I". Monty Python's commemoration of the bloody end:
Modern History Notes
Richard Byrne, "Policed Academy," bookforum, February/March, reviews John H. Summers's Every Fury on Earth. Hat tip.
Holland Cotter, "Gaze East and Dream," NYT, 29 January, reviews "The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989," an exhibit at Manhattan's Guggenheim Museum.
P. D. Smith, "Woolworth's shrine to commerce," TLS, 28 January, reviews Gail Fenske's The Skyscraper and the City: The Woolworth Building and the making of modern New York, Robert H. Kargon's and Arthur P. Molella's Invented Edens: Techno-cities of the twentieth century, and Dell Upton's Another City: Urban life and urban spaces in the new American republic.
Helen Brown reviews Graham Farmelo's The Strangest Man: the Hidden Life of Paul Dirac for the Telegraph, 23 January.
Sergei Larenkov at Fima_Psuchopadt matches World War II-era Russian photographs with shots of the same sites today. Hat tip.
Dan Nguyen and Christopher Weaver, "The Missing Memos," Pro Publica, 28 January, compiles and continues to update a list of crucial internal Bush administration memoranda designed to enhance executive authority to detain and/or torture anyone.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Thursday's Notes
Michael Sims, "Going the Distance," Washington Post, 29 January, reviews Justin Marozzi's The Way of Herodotus: Travels With the Man Who Invented History.
Anne Hogan reviews Margaret M. McGowan's Dance in the Renaissance: European Fashion, French Obsession for the THES, 29 January.
Gerard Carruthers reviews Robert Crawford's The Bard: Robert Burns, a Biography for the THES, 29 January.
Colm Tóibín, "Urning," LRB, 29 January, reviews Sheila Rowbotham's Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Wednesday's Notes
Attribution: Despite attribution in authoritative sources, Abraham Lincoln's "of the People, by the People, and for the People" is apparently not from the prologue to John Wycliffe's 1384 English translation of the Bible; and, despite what Barry Goldwater said, "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice" is Harry Jaffa's line, not from Cicero's orations against Cataline.
Photography:
Symposia:
Farewell: belatedly, to Germany's distinguished medievalist, Karl-Ferdinand Werner, to Ahmad Hassan Dani, Pakistan's distinguished archaeologist and historian, and to the American novelist and essayist, John Updike.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
More Noted Things
From Tenured Radical comes news that Ned Blackhawk is leaving the University of Wisconsin for a professorship in Yale's history department. His first book, Violence Over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West, won awards from the OAH, the ASA, the Western History Association, and the American Society for Ethnohistory.
Ziauddin Sardar reviews Jonathan Lyons's The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization for the London Times, 22 January.
Robert Cushman, "Pop goes The Bard," National Post, 23 January, reviews Marjorie Garber's Shakespeare and Modern Culture.
Keith Thomas, "To Buy or Not to Buy: The Origins of Good Taste," History Today, February, finds in 17th century England's consumer culture the origins of desire for "markers of wealth, status, and good taste." Hat tip.
DD Guttenplan for the Guardian, 17 January, Max Hastings for the London Times, 25 January, and Alan Marshall for the Telegraph, 16 January, review David Reynolds's America, Empire of Liberty: A New History. "Reynolds is just cloth-eared," says Guttenplan, "when it comes to American culture." Thanks to Mary Dudziak for the tip.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Things Noted Here and There
#46, an early modern edition of the festival, is up at Chronologi Cogitationes.The National Book Critics Circle announced the finalists for its 2008 awards on Saturday.
The Andrew Jackson Papers Project at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, finds that a letter of 4 July 1835 from Junius Brutus Booth, the father of John Wilkes Booth, to "You damn'd old Scoundrel," President Andrew Jackson, is authentic. In it, the father of Abraham Lincoln's assassin threatens to "cut your throat whilst you are sleeping."
Philip Ball, "On the Evolution of Darwin," Guardian, 25 January, reviews Adrian Desmond's and James Moore's Darwin's Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery and the Quest for Human Origins.
Anthony Julius, "Judaism's Redefiner," NYT, 23 January, reviews Adam Kirsch's Benjamin Disraeli.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Signs of the Times
Sunday's Notes
Edward Rothstein, "When the News Was New," NYT, 23 January, reviews "Breaking News: Renaissance Journalism and the Birth of the Newspaper," an exhibit at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC.
Russell Shorto, "Breath of Thought," NYT, 23 January, reviews Steven Johnson's The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America.
Carolyn See, "A Step in the Same Direction," Washington Post, 23 January, reviews Adam Gopnik's Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life. See also: Gopnik, "How Lincoln and Darwin Shaped the Modern World," Smithsonian, February.
Helmut Merker, "Marx: the quest, the path, the destination," signandsight, 19 January, reviews Alexander Kluge's 9 1/2 hour film, "News from Ideological Antiquity. Marx – Eisenstein – Das Kapital," and finds it not a moment too long.
Michael Kazin, "Does the Man Matter?" Washington Post, 25 January, reviews Waller R. Newell's The Soul of a Leader: Character, Conviction, and Ten Lessons in Political Greatness and Mark K. Updegrove's Baptism by Fire: Eight Presidents Who Took Office in Times of Crisis.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Robert Darnton, "Google & the Future of Books," NYRB, 12 February, assays the place of Google Books in the Enlightenment enterprise.
Holland Cotter, "Where Lines Become a Kind of Language," NYT, 22 January, reviews "Raphael to Renoir: Drawings From the Collection of Jean Bonna," an exhibit at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Dwight Gardner, "The Mahvelous and the Damned," NYT, 21 January, reviews D. J. Taylor's Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of London's Jazz Age.
Daniel Kennefick, "Einstein's Worldview and Its Effects," American Scientist, 11 January, reviews Peter L. Galison, Gerald Holton and Silvan S. Schweber, Einstein for the 21st Century: His Legacy in Science, Art, and Modern Culture.
Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Jon A. Nagl, an Oxford Ph.D., "Let's Win the Wars We're In," vs. Colonel Gian P. Gentile, of the United States Military Academy at West Point, "Let's Build an Army to Win All Wars," Joint Force Quarterly, 1st Quarter, ground their debate about the future of American armed forces in their understandings of military history. Thanks to Chris Bray and Kings of War for the tip.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Cliopatria Welcomes Jonathan Jarrett
Cliopatria is pleased to welcome Jonathan Jarrett to its circle. His bachelor's degree is from Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he also took an M. Phil. in medieval history. In 2006, he received his doctorate from the School of History, Classics & Archaeology at Birkbeck College, London. Dr Jarrett has held research and teaching positions in the universities of London and Cambridge, and is currently a Research Assistant in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and a College Research Associate at Clare College, Cambridge.
Dr. Jarrett's expertise is in tenth- and eleventh-century Western European history, especially that of Catalonia. He has presented papers at numerous conferences, including the International Medieval Congress at Leeds and the Haskins Society Conference at Georgetown. His articles and reviews have appeared in journals such as Early Medieval Europe and several more are forthcoming. His dissertation, Pathways of Power in late-Carolingian Catalonia: charters and connections on a medieval frontier, is in revision for publication. Dr. Jarrett blogs at A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe. It is a pleasure to welcome him to Cliopatria.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Thursday's Notes
"President Obama Revokes Bush Presidential Records Executive Order," National Coalition for History, 21 January, notes that, on his first full day in office, Barack Obama revoked George Bush's Executive Order 13233, which severely restricted public access to presidential records. Here is Obama's new executive order. Hat tip.
Geert Jan van Gelder, "Grand Arabian Nights," TLS, 21 January, reviews Malcolm C. Lyons, with Ursula Lyons, trans., with an introduction and notes by Robert Irwin, The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 nights.
Brian Dillon reviews Lennard J. Davis's Obsession: a History for the Telegraph, 12 January.
David Greenberg, "The Riddle of Herbert Hoover," Slate, 19 January, reviews William E. Leuchtenburg's Herbert Hoover.
Russell Baker, "A Revolutionary President," NYRB, 12 February, reviews Anthony J. Badger's FDR: The First Hundred Days, Jonathan Alter's The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, Adam Cohen's Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America, and H. W. Brand's Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Alter, Badger, Cohen, Alonzo Hamby, Allen Lichtman, Julian Zelizer, and others discuss Badger's FDR at Josh Marshall's TPMCafé Book Club, 19- January. John Steele Gordon, "Getting America Back on Its Feet, the 1933 Version," NYT, 21 January, reviews Cohen's Nothing to Fear.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Carnivals!
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
More Noted Things
In Michael A. Elliott, "Rick Warren Gives Pre-Inauguration Sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church," Religion Dispatches, 19 January, Emory's Elliott recounts our misadventures yesterday at the Martin Luther King birthday celebration at Ebenezer. There were gay protesters both outside and inside the four hour service and Elliott earns title as "old iron butt" for sitting through all of it. I had to take a bathroom and fresh air break after the first two hours.
Jill Lepore, "Back Issues," New Yorker, 26 January, looks at the early years of American newspapers; and Lepore, "The Speech," New Yorker, 12 January, reviews the history of presidential inaugural addresses.
David Garrow, "An Unfinished Dream," Newsweek, 21 January, warns against seeing Barack Obama's inauguration as the achievement of King's "Dream."
Books that have influenced Barack Obama; and books that he should be reading. The President need not bother with Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, Debra Dickerson's recommendation. Dickerson and anyone still burdening students with it should read: Michael Kazin, "Howard Zinn's History Lessons," Dissent, Spring 2004. Hat tip.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Things Noted Here and There
Steven Hoch, the Russian historian and former provost at Washington State University, has been assigned to teach at the University's branch campus at Richland. There, he will teach a seminar on the Russian Revolution at an annual salary of $245,000. The department might have hired three full professors, five or six assistant professors, or a small army of adjuncts for that money. Hat tip.
Thomas Hegghammer, "Until the end of time," The National, 16 January, reviews Jean-Pierre Filiu's L'Apocalypse dans l'Islam, a study of the apocalypse in Sunni and Shia Islam since the 7th century.
"Inaugural Words: 1789 to the Present," NYT, 17 January, has a word cloud for every inaugural address since George Washington's first.
Michael Kammen, "Chagall, chronicler of a century's triumphs, terrors," Boston Globe, 18 January, reviews Jackie Wullschlager's Chagall: A Biography.
Matt Taibbi, "Flat N All That," New York Press, 14 January, takes aim at Thomas Friedman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded. Especially recommended for connoisseurs of venom well delivered.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
My Inaugural Weekend
If you don't have HBO on cable, your local NPR station may be carrying the concert on the National Mall. It's a terrific bill. If your NPR local station isn't carrying it, NPR is streaming it live until 5:00 p.m. est. HBO Online is rebroadcasting the concert, even for non-subscribers, at 10:30 p.m. est and pst.
Tomorrow, I'm meeting Emory's Michael Elliott to attend the annual Martin Luther King birthday celebration at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church. I expect to spend Tuesday in front of my television at home, watching the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States. It was a distant vision when Michael Kazin, Joyce Appleby and I organized "Historians for Obama" in late November 2007. Thank you, America.
Sunday's Notes
Michael Dirda reviews Paul Maliszewski's Fakers: Hoaxers, Con Artists, Counterfeiters, and Other Great Pretenders for the Washington Post, 18 January.
JFrater, "Top 10 Incredible Early Firsts In Photography," The List Universe, 13 January (scroll down), reproduces important landmarks in photography. [Ed: JFrater should have supplied dates for each photograph. Also, "early firsts," as opposed to "late firsts"?].
Jonathan Yardley reviews Robert J. Norrell's Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington for the Washington Post, 18 January.
David Greenberg, "Fearless Leader," NYT, 16 January, reviews Adam Cohen's Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America and Burt Solomon's FDR v. The Constitution: The Court-Packing Fight and the Triumph of Democracy.
Sam Roberts, "Rosenberg May Have Enlisted Two Spies," NYT, 17 January, looks at new revelations about Soviet era spying in the United States in Spies: The Rise and Fall of the K.G.B. in America by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Peter Gwyn reviews David Starkey's Henry: Virtuous Prince for THE, 15 January, and finds it puffed from little evidence.
Joe Phelen, "The defence for Robert Burns," TLS, 14 January, reviews Robert Crawford's The Bard: Robert Burns, a biography.
Edward Rothstein, "Fragments Tell a Story of Pain and Pride," NYT, 14 January, reviews "America I Am: The African American Imprint," an exhibit that opened Thursday at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
Joanna Lewis reviews Richard Price's Making Empire: Colonial Encounters and the Creation of Imperial Rule in Nineteenth-Century Africa for THE, 15 January.
Philip Kennicott, "The Age of Abe," Washington Post, 16 January, reviews "Abraham Lincoln: An Extraordinary Life," an exhibit at the National Museum of American History in Washington.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Current Issues
Freedom of Speech: A South Carolina state senator proposes to make the use of vulgar language in public a felony. Meanwhile, presidents at 266 public colleges and universities in the United States have been put on notice that they may be personally liable for unconstitutional speech codes on their campuses.
A Ministry of Culture: Look for more discussion of the direction of cultural affairs in the Obama administration in the coming weeks. UNC, Chapel Hill's William Ferris, NEH Chairman in the Clinton administration, argues for an overarching cabinet level position. Goodness knows, the Smithsonian was in need of supervisory authority that was paying attention in recent years. Princeton's Stan Katz thinks a ministry of culture is a non-starter.
AHA & the Market: The best roundups of reports and commentary on the AHA convention are at AHA Today and HNN. Historians TV now has some non-commercial content: interviews with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and Felice Lifshitz, with more promised to come. Elsewhere, Sterling Fluharty and Claire Potter discuss the history job market.
South Asia: Manan Ahmed, "Strangers in the Night," Chapati Mystery, 15 January, is his contribution about Pakistan's recent history at Chicago's panel, "Terror in Mumbai: Reflections on the Aftermath," on Wednesday.
Weblog Awards: Finally, the winners of The 2008 Weblog Awards have been announced. Next year, there should be a category for Best History Blog. With 1200 potential nominees, there's more than enough to choose among.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Thursday's Notes
Neil Genzlinger, "Following That Fast Cash," NYT, 12 January, reviews the PBS documentary, based on Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money, which will premier on Tuesday evening.
The new Common-place is up, with all things early American.
Bill Kauffman, "Darwin in the New World," WSJ, 9 January, reviews Barry Werth's Banquet at Delmonico's: Great Minds, the Gilded Age, and the Triumph of Darwinism in America.
Caleb Crain, "Children of the Left, Unite!" NYT, 9 January, reviews Julia L. Mickenberg and Philip Nel, eds., Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children's Literature.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
American History Notes
Whatever happened to Historians TV? The AHA agreed to an association with a British production company, WebsEdge, which promised to produce daily half-hour in-house programs at the AHA convention and subsequent video clips from the convention to a broader audience. Ten days after the convention closed, however, the only offerings on Historians TV are seven commercials. They were bought by the Smithsonian's yet-to-be-created National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Naval History and Heritage Command, Michigan's Department of History, Arts and Libraries, and history departments at James Madison University, UMass, Boston, Murray State University and Princeton University. At this point, Historians TV offers commercials only. No programming.
David Courtwright, "Why Soldiers Fight – or Flee," WSJ, 12 January, reviews Dora L. Costa's and Matthew E. Kahn's Heroes & Cowards: The Social Face of War. Costa and Kahn are UCLA economists who make use of Robert Fogel's database to do an econometric study of desertion from the Union army during the American Civil War. Here is Princeton University Press's webpage for the book. The authors are guest-posting about their book at The Volokh Conspiracy this week.
The bulk of the Martin Luther King Papers at the Atlanta University Center's Woodruff Library are digitized and went online yesterday. You can browse and search the digital finding aids here, but access to "digital surrogates" is restricted to on site use and researchers will not have direct access to original or photocopied documents. "No downloads, photocopies or photographs of King collection materials are permitted." Access to the archive's dedicated terminals is by 30 minute intervals, up to a maximum of 90 minutes. The archive's hours are very limited. It is a nightmare for researchers from out of town.
Gary J. Bass, "Unvarnished Conclusions After Covering, and Uncovering, the White House," NYT, 12 January, reviews David E. Sanger's The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
More Noted Things
A comment on the new meaning of religious diversity: In all the controversy about the choice of clergy to offer prayers at the Obama inauguration, has anyone noticed that all of them are Protestants? In the rush to represent gay and straight, male and female, Religious Right and not-so-Right, there are no Roman Catholic, Jewish, Eastern Orthodox or Muslim clergy among the select.
Sino-Japanese Studies was published in hard copy from 1988-2003. It is now digitized, its publication is renewed as an e-journal and it invites submissions.
Paul Lay, editor of History Today, launches his blog with assessments of two new books on the English Civil War, John Adamson, ed., The English Civil War and Blair Worden's The English Civil Wars, 1640-1660.
Edmund White, "Teenage Dirtbag," Guardian, 10 January, is excerpted from White's Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Things Noted Here and There
Anthony Grafton, "Gospel Secrets: The Biblical Controversies of Morton Smith," The Nation, 7 January, is a remarkable essay on the persisting controversy about the scholarship of Columbia's ancient historian, Morton Smith. Hat tip.
Justine Ferrari and Samantha Maiden, "Keith Windschuttle caught in Quadrant hoax," The Australian, 7 January, on the sokaling of Australia's leading right-wing historian. Plotted at Diary of a Hoax; first exposed by its host, Crikey. Hat tip.
The The Impotence of Proofreading: Hat tip.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Weak Endnotes
Holland Cotter, "In the Gloom, Seeing Rembrandt With New Eyes," NYT, 8 January, looks at the Dutch painter's work when the bottom dropped out of his market.
Michael Dirda reviews Duncan Wu's William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man for the Washington Post, 11 January.
Louis Boyard, "Sociable Darwinists," Washington Post, 11 January, reviews Barry Werth's Banquet at Delmonico's: Great Minds, the Gilded Age, and the Triumph of Evolution in America.
Jack Rosenthal, "The Mogul at Play," NYT, 9 January, reviews Kenneth Whyte's The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst.
David Garrow, "True North," Wilson Quarterly, Winter, reviews Thomas Sugrue's Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Wherein I Confess To Being A Nit-Picking Crank
I was reading a post at a well-known history blog yesterday. Its author is a historian employed by an American college or university to teach. At his first use of "alot," I was surprised. At his second, I was appalled. He does not know that "a lot" is two words. Don't tell me that language is malleable. As I type this, my computer keeps automatically correcting my attempt to type "alot". Its use is an error common among gum-snapping undergraduates. Can it be that a liberal arts education, doctoral study, a dissertation, and experience teaching history at an American college or university has not taught this historian that "a lot" is two words? I will no longer bother to read anything he posts. Please tell me where he teaches so I won't waste money on tuition there.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Friday's Notes
Christine Purdon reviews Lennard J. Davis's Obsession: A History for the THES, 8 January.
Robert Mills reviews Derek G. Neal's The Masculine Self in Late Medieval England for the THES, 8 January.
John Guy, "Shakespeare and deep England," TLS, 7 January, reviews Jonathan Bate's Soul of the Age: The life, mind and world of William Shakespeare .
Laurence Rees reviews Philipp von Boeselager's Valkyrie, Hans Mommsen's Germans Against Hitler and Ian Kershaw's Luck of the Devil for the London Times, 4 January.
Tony Badger, "FDR: A Model for Obama?" The Nation, 7 January, reminds us of how unprepared Roosevelt was for the crisis that faced him.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Modern History Notes
"Archie Summons Up Some AHA Detox," Rate Your Students, 5 January, is a colorful wrap up on the convention -- including comments on your job interview and your dissertation.
Scott Jaschik's "Seeking Purpose in Graduate Course Work," IHE, 6 January, begins with Ann Fabian's line, "We were more or less raised and professionalized by wolves." The discussion continues at Ann Little's "Modern graduate studies and the value of historiography," Historiann, 6 January, and at Paul Harvey's "The Graduate," Religion in American History, 7 January.
Frances Wilson reviews Franny Moyle's Desperate Romantics: The Private Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites for the London Times, 4 January. Hat tip.
Eric Arnesen, "Free Speech vs. fear," Boston Globe, 4 January, reviews Ernest Freeberg's Democracy's Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent and Christopher Capozzola's Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen. Hat tip.
Adam Kirsch and Slavoj Zizek trade blows in: Kirsch, "The Deadly Jester," TNR, 3 December, a review of Zizek's In Defense of Lost Causes and Violence; Zizek, "Who Are You Calling Anti-Semitic?" TNR, 7 January; and Kirsch, "Still The Most Dangerous Philosopher In The West," TNR, 7 January.
Finally, you can vote in the Weblog Awards, 2008. You can vote once every 24 hours in each category, so vote early and vote often.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
More Noted Things
Scott Jaschik, "The Depressed History Job Market," IHE, 5 January, and Stan Katz, "The State of History and the History of State," Brainstorm, 6 January, report on the AHA's history job market. Katz also updates developments on the Foreign Relations of the United States.
Medieval Thought:
Shaul Magrid, "The Great Islamic Rabbi," Washington Post, 4 January, reviews Joel L. Kramer's Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization's Greatest Minds.
Military History:
Derek Leebaert, "Do Unto Others," Washington Post, 4 January, reviews Edwin G. Burrows's Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners During the Revolutionary War, Norman Bussel's My Private War: Liberated Body, Captive Mind: A World War II POW's Journey, and Kevin Dockery's Operation Thunderhead: The True Story of Vietnam's Final POW Rescue Mission -- and the Last Navy SEAL Killed in Country.
Robert Asahina, "The Other Suicide Bombers," Washington Post, 4 January, reviews Maxwell Taylor Kennedy's Danger's Hour: The Story of the USS Bunker Hill and the Kamikaze Pilot Who Crippled Her.
Interviews:
You can hear H. W. Brands and Louis R. Harlan on NPR's Morning Edition, "White House to Break Another Color Barrier in Jan.," 26 December, about Theodore Roosevelt's invitation to Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House.
You can hear Eric Rauchway on NPR's Planet Money, "If FDR Had Done Nothing," 5 January.
Mortuary: Farewell to Christopher Hibbert.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Notes Medieval and Modern
Namit Arora, "Marco Polo's India," 3 Quarks Daily, 5 January, looks at what we learn from Marco Polo about 13th century India and what we learn about him.
Nicholas Bakalar, "In Reality, Oliver's Diet Wasn't Truly Dickensian," NYT, 29 December, reports a finding in The British Medical Journal that Charles Dickens took dramatic license in his account of Oliver Twist's diet in the 19th century workhouse.
Eugene Volokh finds explanatory power in the fact that, on 18 June 1912, Congress passed a law entitled, "An Act to provide for the support and maintenance of bastards in the District of Columbia."
Sarah Wildman, "Paper Love: Inside the Holocaust Archives," Slate, 5 January, looks at the newly opened archive at Bad Arolsen, Germany.
Adam Kirsch, "Beware of Pity," New Yorker, 12 January, re-assesses Hannah Arendt and her Eichmann in Jerusalem, The Origins of Totalitarianism, and Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Things Noted Here and There
AHA Convention Roundup: AHA Today, Chapati Mystery, CHE, Harper Academic, Historiann, History-ing, Inside Higher Ed, Notorious Ph.D., Rate Your Students*, Tenured Radical, and The Way of Improvement Leads Home.
*Clue to super-senior scholar who shows up at his three-paper panel without having submitted a paper to the commentator in advance, asks how much time he is allotted, and has his microphone ripped from his hands by the panel's moderator after talking for 40 minutes: it's time to retire.
David Hahn, "Origin of the specious," Guardian, 3 January, reviews Chris Lavers's The Natural History of Unicorns.
David C. Flatto, "The Great Eagle," Commentary, January, reviews Joel L. Kramer's Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization's Greatest Minds.
Barry Gewen, "The Man Who Discovered Oxygen (Maybe) and Gave the World Soda Water," NYT, 2 January, reviews Stephen Johnson's The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America.
Gary Anderson reviews Piers Brendon's The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997 for the Washington Times, 4 January.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Sunday's Notes
Carnivals: History Carnival LXXII is up at Melissa Bellanta's The Vapour Trail. Gavin Robinson is unable to continue coordinating the Military History Carnival. If you are interested in doing so, please contact him at Investigations of a Dog.
Blogging the AHA Convention: AHA Today*, Chapati Mystery, Hotshot Harry** and Ann Little at Historiann, Kelly in Kansas, Knitting Clio, Legal History, Making History Podcast, Archie** at Rate Your Students, and Tenured Radical.***
*Officialese, but be nice.
**Bottom's up, as it were.
***All of this, despite reports of The Hilton's free wireless failures and $30 for a breakfast of yogurt and a muffin. Nothing, however, quite so exciting as Indyanna's recollection of Nat Hentoff's being driven from the platform of an AHA plenium in the early 1970s by a female New York intellectual who repeatedly referred to him as a "c*cks*ck*r".
New to History Blogging: The election year drew many historians into blogging at major venues, like Arianna Huffington's The Huffington Post and Tina Brown's more recent venture, The Daily Beast. I've only now added them to Cliopatria's History Blogroll, mostly in Contemporary Commentary, because it was difficult filtering historians out of the long lists of peddle pushers and fancy dancers who blog at those venues. Here, for your edification, are the ones I found:
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Simon Schama at the Ashmolean
Some years ago, I walked over to my office one evening, only to hear some of my students having a great deal of fun in a classroom. I leaned close enough to hear what was going on. It turned out that one of them was doing a mocking imitation of me. I couldn't help but open the door to tell them I thought he was doing a good job of it. Anyway, here's an undergraduate's unkind rendition of Simon Schama:
Hat tip.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Modern History Notes
If you are unable to attend the AHA convention, you can follow it, in part, at AHA Today and Historianstv.com.
Sanford Schwartz, "American Parable," NYRB, 15 January, reviews "Thomas Chambers: American Marine and Landscape Painter, 1808–1869," an exhibit currently on tour in Philadelphia, New York, and Bloomington.
Esther Schor, "Emily Dickinson and other hummingbirds," TLS, 31 December, reviews Brenda Wineapple's White Heat: The friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Christopher Benfey's A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, art, and scandal in the intersecting worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade.
Jeffrey Herf, "Unpleasant Truths," TNR, 30 December, reviews the German feature film, Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
The Cliopatria Awards, 2008
In conjunction with the AHA annual meeting in New York, here are the fourth annual Cliopatria Awards for History Blogging. Thanks to the judges this year, who made the difficult decisions necessary to pick the best work from strong fields: Manan Ahmed, Another Damned Medievalist, Rebecca Goetz, William Turkel, Jeremy Boggs, Lisa Spiro, Jonathan Dresner, Elle, Ph.D., Jeremy Young. They have done a fine job. Thanks also to Jonathan Dresner for creating the 2008 logos. Here, then, are the winners and brief explanations of the judges' rationale for their decisions:
Best Group Blog: The Edge of the American West
Witty and insightful, the Edge of the American West puts the group in group blog, with frequent contributions from an irreverent band that includes several historians, a grad student in philosophy, a grad student in literature, and a software developer. Always entertaining, often enlightening, the blog features snazzy visuals—graphs, photos, videos—and zippy writing on everything from meditations on Obama, to a reflection on the 1967 Detroit riots, to tips for preparing for an academic job interview.Best Individual Blog: Northwest HistoryAri Kelman and Eric Rauchway of the history department at UC, Davis, founded The Edge and are now joined in it by others.
In addition to a strong focus on the historical materials and historiography of the American Northwest, Prof. Cebula introduces and explains digital resources and techniques with great range and depth. The writing is engaging and incisive and the result both entertaining and very useful.Best New Blog: Wynken de WordeLarry Cebula is a Public Historian at Eastern Washington University and Assistant Digital Archivist at the Washington State Digital Archives.
Wynken de Worde is a blog about books: not only their history, but also their cultural significance and myriad uses. It's richly illustrated and always immensely thoughtful. Though the focus is on Renaissance and Elizabethan materials, Sarah Werner brings the history to life, and also addresses the present state of books, reading and intellectual property as well.Best Post: Claire Potter, "What Would Natalie Zemon Davis Do?" Tenured Radical, 19 June 2008.Dr. Sarah Werner is Director of the Undergraduate Program at the Folger Shakespeare Library and a scholar of Shakesperean and Renaissance drama.
In this eloquent, well-argued response to the blogger Rusticus' attack on women's history and women historians, Potter uses a 1988 exchange between Natalie Zemon Davis and Robert Finlay to illustrate how women's history can "illuminate what it meant to be human" while showing "how to argue in a civilized way." She argues that historians succeed because they persuade their colleagues, male and female; this blog post is a good example of one such success.Best Series of Posts: Tim Abbott on Jonathan Trumbull's "The Death of General Montgomery", Walking the Berkshires, Jan. 12, Jan. 13, Jan. 14, Jan. 17, Jan. 18.Claire Potter is a professor of History and American Studies at Connecticut's Wesleyan University.
The examination of Jonathan Trumbull's famous painting, The Death of General Montgomery in Attack on Quebec, December 31 1775, over five posts at Tim Abbott's Walking the Berkshires is good scholarly writing and engaging analysis. Abbott raises intriguing questions about historical memory, as he guides his readers through the examination of historical records.Best Writer: ZunguzunguTim Abbott is a conservation professional.
Whether in his examination of Henry Morton Stanley's encounter with Dr. Livingstone, or tracing the African imaginary in Charlton Heston's Naked Jungle or his expositions of John Ford's American West, Zunguzungu is always thought- provoking and illuminating. His writing consistently demonstrates a gift of narrative and the willingness to eschew easy questions. He draws heavily on visuals to augment his readings, but never at the expense of readability.Zunguzungu is a graduate student in English. His project is broadly concerned with tracking the extent to which "America's Africa" and "Africa's America" have been mutually constitutive -- even, occasionally, dialogic -- narratives of identity.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
JibJab's Year in Review, 2008
Not JibJab's best, I think, but -- except for Obama's election -- 2008 wasn't so great, either.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
More Noted Things
Adam Kirsch, "The Secret of The Canterbury Tales," Slate, 29 December, reviews Burton Raffel's new translation of Chaucer from middle to modern English.
Joseph Tartakovsky, "A Man of Imagination," New Criterion, December, reviews Adam Kirsch's Benjamin Disraeli.
David Schiff, "Ives's Ears," The Nation, 17 December, reviews Gayle Sherwood Magee's Charles Ives Reconsidered. Hat tip.
Bijan C. Bayne reviews James Sullivan's The Hardest Working Man: How James Brown Saved The Soul of America for The Root, 26 December.
Pan Tianshu, "‘Working Sisters': The everyday lives of migrant women in China's world factories," Harvard Magazine, January/February, reviews Leslie T. Chang's Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China.
Cullen Murphy and Todd S. Purdum, "Farewell to All That: An Oral History of the Bush White House," Vanity Fair, February, includes candid and devastating commentary from within the Bush administration. The AP covers it in Staff, "Ex-aides say Bush never recovered from Katrina," AP, 29 December.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Things Noted Here and There
Mike Knobler, "AJC investigation: Many athletes lag far behind on SAT scores," AJC, 28 December; and Doug Lederman, "The Admissions Gap for Big-Time Athletes," IHE, 29 December, report of the gap in SAT scores between football and basketball players and other students at public universities in the United States. The gap is sometimes stunning, as for example the 433 points separating University of Texas basketball players from the average score of all the University's admits.
John Bemelmans Marciano, "A Deadly Wave, a Lucky Star," NYT, 26 December, tells a personal story of the tsunami of 28 December 1908 at Pellaro, Italy, the largest natural disaster in European history.
Before the book's publication, Gabriel Sherman, "The Greatest Love Story Ever Sold," TNR, 25 December, exposes Herman Rosenblat's Holocaust "memoir," Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love That Survived, as a fraud. Oprey Winfrey promoted, film in the works, children's version – the whole nine yards. Book publication canceled; film will go ahead.
A Mt. Rushmore of the Mind
In John F. Harris & Alexander Burns, "Straw Man? Historians say Obama is no Lincoln," Politico, 15 December, and Matt Carey, "Historian sees lessons, Lincoln parallels for Obama," CNN, 23 December, Princeton's Sean Wilentz and Jim McPherson have a gentlemen's disagreement about Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama. Josh Marshall and Eric Rauchway wonder if Obama is trolling Wilentz.
Ronald J. Pestritto, "Theodore Roosevelt Was No Conservative," WSJ, 26 December, argues that TR shouldn't represent the future of the Republican Party; and draws a reply in Max Boot's "TR, Still a Conservative," Contentions, 27 December.
A Rasmussen poll tests public opinion about whether Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan was the best American president of the 20th century.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Sunday's Notes
History Carnival LXXII goes up at Melissa Bellanta's The Vapour Trail on Thursday 1 January. Send your nominations of December's best in history blogging to her at: m.bellanta*at* uq*dot*edu*dot*au.
Michael Hirsch, "Follow the Money," NYT, 25 December, reviews Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World.
Charles Isherwood, "Brush Up Your You-Know-What," NYT, 25 December, reviews Marjorie Gerber's Shakespeare and Modern Culture.
Richard Byrne, "Ranters and Corantos: Renaissance Journalism," The Nation, 22 December, reviews "Breaking News: Renaissance Journalism and the Birth of the Newspaper," an exhibit at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. See also: Scott McLemee, "Wondrous Communications," Quick Study, 27 December, on C. L. R. James and the English Revolution.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Weak Endnotes
Christopher Miller, "Historians and Facebook," History and Education, 16 December, compares the numbers of Facebook group memberships achieved by word-of-mouth for the AHA, OAH, and H-Net. He contrasts these with the group memberships achieved by "sustained efforts" for Cliopatria, HNN, and Progressive Historians.* Miller concludes that the AHA and OAH "are missing out by not extending content to this platform." I'm not so sure about that, but that may be because I really don't understand what Facebook is all about. I have an account and have friends on Facebook, but it isn't clear to me how it is particularly useful to historians.
*Other history blogs that have Facebook groups include: Chapati Mystery, Civil War History, Civil War Memory, In the Middle, and TOCWOC -- A Civil War Blog.
David Abulafia reviews Marcy Norton's Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World for THES, 18 December.
Adam Hochschild, "Americans in the gulag," TLS, 23 December, reviews Tim Tzouliadis's The Forsaken: From the Great Depression to the Gulags, Hope and betrayal in Stalin's Russia.
Dwight Gardner, "A Wartime Tale That Had to Be Told," NYT, 25 December, reviews Thomas Keneally's Searching for Schindler, an account of how the story of "Schindler's List" came to be told.
Finally, can a Marxist think of fox hunting as a healthy sport? Apparently so. The late Christopher Hill did.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Modern History Notes
Nathan, "5 Best Data Visualization Projects of the Year," Flowing Data, 19 December, presents them. Hat tip.
Claire Tomalin, "The house that Charles built," Guardian, 20 December, reviews Jenny Hartley's Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women.
Marshall Berman, "Modernism in the Streets," Dissent, Fall, reviews Peter Gay's Modernism: The Lure of Heresy.
John Steele Gordon, "Getting to Know You, Mr. Hammerstein," NYT, 24 December, reviews Amy Asch, ed., The Complete Lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II.
At the end of the year, The New Republic says Michael Tomasky's "Jackboots and Whole Foods," TNR, 12 March, a review of Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, ranks as the "Best of TNR, 2008." Goldberg disagrees, calling Tomasky's review "shameful, dishonest and just plain stupid." His fuller reply is here.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Earliest Sound Recording
The earliest sound recording that has survived was done by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville in 1860. It predates Thomas Edison's wax cylinder experiments by nearly three decades. Strangely, his "phonautograph" was designed to record sound, but not to play it back. The voice on the 10 second recording is of a woman singing "Au Clair de la Lune."
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
More Noted Things
Gwenda Blair, "Paying with the Past," Chicago Magazine, December, is a study in Iranian antiquities and the modern war on terror. Hat tip.
John Derbyshire, "When Worlds Collide," Claremont Review, Fall, reviews Hugh Kennedy's The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In and David Levering Lewis's God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570 to 1215.
Jessica Dawson, "Virgin Rebirth," Washington Post, 23 December, looks at the conservation of Neroccio dei Landi's "Virgin and Child with Saint Anthony Abbott and Saint Sigismund" (c. 1490/1495) at the National Gallery of Art's conservation lab.
Sander Gliboff, "Love, Death and Darwinism," American Scientist, January/February 2009, reviews Robert J. Richards's The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought.
Martin Sieff, "Chaplin lifted weary world's spirits," Washington Times, 21 December, reviews Stephen Weissman's Chaplin: A Life.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Things Noted Here and There
You may have read about it at Knitting Clio, Historiann, or Legal History. A letter, "Feminist historians for a New Deal," drafted by Mimi Abramovitz of Hunter College, Rosalyn Baxandall of SUNY, Old Westbury, Eileen Boris and Alice O'Connor of the UC, Santa Barbara, Linda Gordon of NYU, Alice Kessler-Harris of Columbia, Annelise Orleck of Dartmouth, and Sally Stein of UC, Irvine, reminds President-elect Obama that New Deal programs did not treat women equally and calls on him to attend to gender equity in his new economic stimulus proposals. Over 1000 American historians of women have now signed the letter.
Kathryn Shevelow, "River of Life," Washington Post, 21 December, reviews Peter Ackroyd's Thames: The Biography.
Philip Dray, "The Crucible of Reconstruction," Washington Post, 21 December, reviews Jacqueline Jones's Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War.
Scott Stossel, "Still Crazy After All These Years," NYT, 19 December, reviews Jonathan Engels's American Therapy: The Rise of Psychotherapy in the United States.
The AP's record of the biggest Ponzi-schemes in history misses two of the most spectacular, according to Josh Marshall: Richard Whitney and Ivar Kreuger. They both made Charles Ponzi look like a piker; and Bernie Madoff makes all of them look almost like honest men.
Finally, Edward Jay Epstein's "How Much Has Harvard Really Lost?" Huffington Post, 21 December, argues that the University's loss may be more than the $8 billion it acknowledges from its $36 billion endowment. The real loss may be closer to $18 billion, he says. Hat tip.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Antikythera rebuilt and rebooted
The 2150 year old Antikythera mechanism is a strange clockwork of meshed cogs that was discovered over a century ago in the cargo of an ancient Greek shipwreck near the island of Antikythera. Jo Marchant's Decoding the Heavens: Solving the Mystery of the World's First Computer is the story of the scientists and engineers who fell under its spell in the last century. It is, says one reviewer, "a gripping tale of scientific obsession, rivalry and skulduggery." Now, the mechanism has been reconstructed and its purposes interpreted by Michael Wright, a former curator at London's Science Museum. Here, Wright demonstrates his working model of the original:
James Randerson, "Antikythera: A 2,000-year-old Greek computer comes back to life," Guardian: Science Blog, 11 December; Jo Marchant, "Archimedes and the 2000-year-old computer," New Scientist, 12 December; Charlie Sorrel, "World's First Computer Rebuilt, Rebooted After 2,000 Years," Wired, 16 December; and John Cox, "Reproduction of 2,100-year-old calculator deepens mystery," Network World, 17 December.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Weak Endnotes
Ahoy, mateys! Mills Kelly has taught his course, "Lying about the Past." As required, his students created and set a hoax afloat, with its own website, wikipedia entry, and youtube channel. USA Today and others bought into the hoax; CHE exposed it.
Holland Cotter, "The Glory That Was Greece From a Female Perspective," NYT, 18 December, reviews "Worshiping Women: Ritual and Reality in Classical Athens," an exhibit at Manhattan's Onassis Cultural Center.
Roberta Smith, "Seeing History in the Eye of a Needle," NYT, 18 December, reviews "English Embroidery From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1580-1700: 'Twixt Art and Nature," an exhibit at Manhattan's Bard Graduate Center.
Anthony Gottlieb, "Particle Man," NYT, 19 December, reviews Ingrid D. Rowland's Giordano Bruno: Philosopher Heretic.
Friday, December 19, 2008
A Holiday Greeting from Mexico
Cliopatria's friend, Ambrose Hofstader Bierce III, sends "Greetings, Friends!" from deepest Mexico.
City Life and Civil War
W. V. Harris, "Noisy, smelly, excavated Pompeii," TLS, 17 December, reviews Mary Beard's Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town.
Rosemary Ashton, "Surveying London," TLS, 10 December, reviews Ben Weinreb, Christopher Hibbert, Julia Keay and John Keay, eds., The London Encyclopaedia, revised 3rd edition.
Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, "In Congo Square: Colonial New Orleans," The Nation, 10 December, reviews Shannon Lee Dawdy's Building the Devil's Empire: French Colonial New Orleans and Ned Sublette's The World That Made New Orleans From Spanish Silver to Congo Square.
Thomas Laqueur, "Among the Graves," LRB, 18 December, reviews Mark Neely's The Civil War and the Limits of Destruction and Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Immigration to the United States, 1820-2007
Each dot represents 100 people:
Immigration to the US, 1820-2007 v2 from Ian Stevenson on Vimeo. Hat tip.
This striking graphic does, for example, illustrate South American immigration's dramatic growth in recent decades. Three things about the graphic, however, make me skeptical of its usefulness as much more than a gimmick:
1) the use of dark blue dots against a black background to represent the African migration makes it difficult to see them well.
2) the graphic depicts the United States exclusively as migration's destiny. We've known for a long time that, at least so far as the European migration is concerned, there was a substantial rate of return to the homeland and that it varied dramatically over time and from one nation of origin to another.
3) depicting the United States exclusively as migration's destiny also obscures far more complex and interesting patterns of international and regional migrations. You would never know from this graphic, for example, that at least in the early years the African migration to the Caribbean and South America was far larger than the migration to the United States. It doesn't even attempt to suggest the large European migration to South America; or the substantial redistributions of population in Asia.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Things Noted Here and There
Indian History Carnival #12 is up at Varnam.
Great Britain's Channel 4 has recently broadcast a four-part, bodice-ripping series, "The Devil's Whore," on the English Revolution of the 1640s. It had tough reviews from John Adamson of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and Edward Vallance of Liverpool.
Dwight Garner, "The Wild, Wild Doctoring in the Wild, Wild West," NYT, 16 December, reviews David Dary's Frontier Medicine: From the Atlantic to the Pacific, 1492-1941.
Libraries of Early America gathers online the book collections of early American bibliophiles, from John Adams to Lady Jean Miller Skipwith. Hat tip.
An out-of-court settlement between the Ulysses S. Grant Association and Southern Illinois University will move all of the USGA's collections for publication of the Grant Papers from SIU to Mississippi State University, where John Marszalek will succeed the late John Y. Simon as executive editor of the series.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Lincoln and Obama in 2009
In John F. Harris and Alexander Burns, "Straw Man? Historians say Obama is no Lincoln," Politico, 15 December, "historians" primarily means Sean Wilentz. Toss with a quote from Eric Foner and a reference to Doris Kearns Goodwin. That's about it.
Whether "the historians" like it or not, Lincoln and Obama will be inextricably linked by writers in 2009 – writers who will make the bicentennial of his birth the year of Lincoln and the year of his inauguration the year of Obama. James L. Swanson, the historian of Lincoln's assassination, counts at least 60 Abraham Lincoln titles that will appear in 2009. Michael Burlingame's Abraham Lincoln: A Life, the first multi-volume biography of Lincoln since Carl Sandburg's, is surely foremost among them. Burlingame's scholarship has mastered the sources, including Lincoln's early anonymous op-eds, as no one else has ever done.
Michael Calderone mentions four Obama authors: 1) the New Yorker's David Remnick, whose "The Joshua Generation" will form the core of his book on Obama, race and politics in contemporary America; 2) the New Yorker's Washington correspondent, Ryan Lizza, is doing a book about Obama's' first year in office; 3) The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama by PBS's Gwen Ifill, groups Obama with a new generation of African American politicians -- Newark's Cory Booker, Massachusetts' Deval Patrick, and Representative Artur Davis of Alabama -- and will appear on Inauguration Day; and 4) Robert Draper has a contract for a work spanning the 40 years from the death of Martin Luther King to the election of Barack Obama. Unmentioned in Calderone's list are: King biographer David Garrow, who is at work on an Obama biography, and campaign books by Newsweek's Richard Wolffe and the Washington Post's David Marannis.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Mostly Modern Notes
Alexander Clark hosts Military History Carnival XIX at Military History and Warfare. The history of science carnival, The Giant's Shoulders VI, is up at Rigorous Trivialities.
From CD Rom to Internet Website: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database and The Walt Whitman Archive.
Anthony Grafton, "Mein Buch," TNR, 24 December, reviews Timothy W. Ryback's Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life.
Scott Jaschik, "‘Crisis' Seen in Key History Series," IHE, 15 December, explores the troubled production of Foreign Relations of the United States, a series that is the official record of U.S. foreign policy. KC Johnson first brought it to our attention.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Notes Ancient and Modern
Steve Coates, "‘My Poetry Is Filthy — but Not I'," NYT, 12 December, reviews Martial's Epigrams: A Selection, translated and with an introduction by Garry Wills.
Lorraine Adams, "Thinly Veiled," NYT, 12 December, reviews Sherry Jones's The Jewel of Medina, a work of historical fiction.
Blake Gopnik, "Ascending Anew," Washington Post, 14 December, features the Correggio retrospective that is currently exhibited across Parma, Italy.
Blake Bailey, "A Modern Victorian," NYT, 12 December, reviews Paul Mariani's Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life.
Patrick Keeney, "Decline, fall and then some," National Post, 6 December, reviews Theodore Dalrymple's Not with a Bang But with a Whimper: The Politics and Culture of Decline.
James Glanz and T. Christian Miller, "Report Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blunders," NYT, 13 December, summarizes a massive report, "Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience," on the $117 billion spent in failed reconstruction projects.
Where is the Frederick Lewis Allen who will write our Only Yesterday? How could you make up Donald Rumsfeld, Sarah Palin, Rod Blagojevich, Marc Dreier, Bernie Madoff?
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Weak Endnotes
Roderick C. Morris, "Venetian spoken here," TLS, 12 December, reviews Ronnie Ferguson's A Linguistic History of Venice.
Simon Jenkins, "Milton the poet was a bore and a prig. But on liberty he was majestic," Guardian, 12 December, argues that John Milton remains an inspiration for freedom of speech.
David Blight, "The Slave Who Found a New World," Washington Post, 14 December, reviews Robert Goodwin's Crossing the Continent, 1527-1540: The Story of the First African-American Explorer of the American South.
Wendy Smith, "A Sect of Celibates," Washington Post, 14 December, reviews Jane Fletcher Geniesse's American Priestess: The Extraordinary Story of Anna Spafford and the American Colony in Jerusalem.
Guy Gugliotta, "Chemistry and Morality," Washington Post, 14 December, reviews Thomas Hager's The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Modern History Notes
Michael Kenney, "Romance and murder in 18th-century Boston," Boston Globe, 9 December, and Carolyn See, "Colonial Farce in Beantown," Washington Post, 12 December, review Jane Kamensky's and Jill Lepore's Blindspot, By a Gentleman in Exile & a Lady in Disguise.
Matthew Price, "Watching the sun set on the great British empire," Boston Globe, 10 December, reviews Piers Brendon's The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997.
Edward Rothstein, "Reconsidering the Man From Illinois," NYT, 11 December, reviews "One Life: The Mask of Lincoln," an exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.
Caleb Crain, "Pixies, Sheilas, Dirtbags and Cougar Bait: Modern Slang," The Nation, 10 December, reviews John Ayto and John Simpson, eds., Stone the Crows: Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang, and Tom Dalzell, ed., The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang and Unconventional English. See also: Crain, "Attack of the Kittenheads," Steamboats are ruining everything, 11 December.
Michael Kazin, "The Sit-Down Strike Returns! Now What?" TAP, 11 December, reflects on how labor action and political support now differs from it in the 1930s. Hat tip.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Notes Ancient to Modern
Neal Ascherson, "It's a sin, what we've done to this place," Guardian, 16 November, Boyd Tonkin, "Babylon: Myth and Reality," Independent, 23 November, and Peter Campbell, "At the British Museum," LRB, 18 December, review "Babylon, Myth and Reality," an exhibit at London's BM.
Michael Kimmelman, "Unraveling a 15th-Century Whodunit," NYT, 10 December, reviews "The Master of Flémalle and Rogier van der Weyden," an exhibit at Frankfurt's Städel Museum.
Janet Maslin, "What's Shakespeare to Us, and We to Him? Plenty," NYT, 10 December, reviews Marjorie Garber's Shakespeare and Modern Culture. "... her sometimes-preposterous book mixes specious points with sharply incisive ones, and her good ideas are worth the trouble."
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Wednesday's Notes
AHA convention: Precirculated Papers for selected sessions at January's American Historical Association convention are now available. They include papers by Elizabeth Rudd, Rob Townsend, and Sterling Fluharty for a session on "The History Job Market: Opportunities, Problems, and Fixes."
Dead White Men: Alan Jenkins, "No Bed for Francis Bacon," TLS, 3 December, reviews Matthew Gale and Chris Stephens, eds., Francis Bacon, Martin Harrison and Rebecca Daniels, Francis Bacon: Incunabula, Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: Studies for a Portrait, and "Francis Bacon," an exhibit at the Tate Britain.
Terry Eagleton, "Milton's Republic," Guardian, 9 December; Roy Booth, "400 years ago today: John Milton," Early Modern Whale, 8 December; and Edward Vallance's John Milton 400 roundup recognized yesterday's 400th anniversary of John Milton's birth. Which reminds me that 3 December was Cliopatria's 5th anniversary. Happy birthday to us!
Susan Bruxvoort Lipscomb, "The Comfort of the Resurrection," Books & Culture, November/December, reviews Paul Mariani's Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life.
Dwight Garner, "The Heart of the Man, Through His Correspondence," NYT, 9 December, reviews Richard Greene, ed., Graham Greene: A Life in Letters.
Resurrected Black Man: Scott McLemee, "Rediscovering Hubert Harrison," IHE, 10 December, reports Jeff Perry's long struggle to put Hubert Harrison back in public consciousness. Christopher Phelps, "The Rediscovered Brilliance of Hubert Harrison," Science & Society, Summer 2004, reviews Perry's A Hubert Harrison Reader.
Our Alums: Northwestern's history department is unlikely to advertise the fact that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was one of its majors. He was, by most accounts, a mediocre student. By most accounts, even worse as a public official. Hat tip.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
More Noted Things
Before the wheel, there was the ski. Bruce Barcott, "Cold Mountains," NYT, 5 December, reviews Roland Huntford's Two Planks and a Passion: The Dramatic History of Skiing.
Conspiracy theorists made you skeptical of everything said of the Illuminati? Try Jan Swafford's "Beethoven and the Illuminati," Slate, 8 December.
Dan Cohen's "Leave the Blogging to Us" is a manifesto for "slow blogging." Cliopatria's most accomplished (i.e., slowest) practitioner, Rob MacDougall, has a fascinating piece, "Are Whales Fish?" Old is the New New, 8 December.
Anne Applebaum, "Russia's Usable Past," Slate, 8 December, reviews Jonathan Brent's Inside the Stalin Archives: Discovering the New Russia.
The British Library has released two three disc sets: The Spoken Word: British Writers*, reviewed by Robert Fulford, "Who's Ever Heard Virginia Woolf?" National Post, 2 December; and The Spoken Word: American Writers**, reviewed by Gregory Cowles, "Everybody Has Their Own English," Paper Cuts, 8 December.
*At the link, you can sample: Arthur Conan Doyle and Virginia Woolf.
**At the link, you can sample: Eugene O'Neill, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thornton Wilder, John Steinbeck, Lillian Hellman, Ralph Ellison, and Arthur Miller.
Finally, "Staten Island Historians Piece Together Genealogy Of Wu-Tang Clan," The Onion, 8 December, reports on a milestone in hip-hop genealogy, tracking the Wu-Tang Clan back to 1993.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Things Noted Here and There
In Matthew Reisz, "Doctor, doctor, quick, quick," THES, 4 December, Vanderbilt's Peter Lake and Kevin Sharpe of Queen Mary, University of London, argue that rigid completion requirements are producing British doctoral programs inferior to those in elite American institutions.
Toni Bentley, "The Man Who Loved Women," NYT, 5 December, reviews Ian Kelly's Casanova: Actor Lover Priest Spy.
Oonagh Walsh, "Madness and Murder," THES, 4 December, reviews Pauline Prior's Madness and Murder: Gender, Crime and Mental Disorder in Nineteenth-Century Ireland.
Nicholas Delbanco, "America's Poet as Brother," Washington Post, 7 December, reviews Robert Roper's Now The Drum Of War: Walt Whitman and His Brothers in the Civil War.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Cliopatria's History Blogroll
I've just added another three dozen blogs to Cliopatria's History Blogroll. It now lists about 1100 history blogs. The largest groups currently include:
1) United States History – 115 blogs
2) Pre-modern History – 97 blogs
3) Military History – 89 blogs
4) Academic Lives – 82 blogs
5) Regional Histories – 66 blogs
6) Non-English Language – 63 blogs
7/8) Ancient History – 62 blogs
Historians Who Write About Many Things – 62 blogs
9) Digital History, Science and Technology – 61 blogs
10) Institutional – 48 blogs
Regional Histories includes blogs that focus on histories of regions of the world outside the United States. In order to help you find the regional history blogs that may interest you, I've created sub-divisions in that one category: African History, Asian History, Australian History, Canadian History, European History, Middle Eastern History, Russian History, and South American History.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Weak Endnotes
The Washington Post's "Ten Best Books of the Year" includes: Andrew X. Pham's The Eaves of Heaven: A Life in Three Wars, Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, Fred Kaplan's Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, Michael Dobbs's One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khruschev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War, and Thomas Tavisano, ed., with Saskia Hamilton, Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. Otherwise, consult: Jennifer Schuessler's "The Top Ten Top-Ten Lists," Paper Cuts, 5 December, and largehearted boy, who indiscriminately aggregates end-of-the-year best-book-lists -- everything from the Abilene Reporter-News's Best Texas Books to Wizard Magazine's Best Comics.
Roberta Smith, "Illuminating the Dark Ages," NYT, 4 December, reviews the Metropolitan Museum of Art's newly restored and reinstalled Gallery for Western European Medieval Art from 1050 to 1300 in Manhattan.
Barry Gewen, "When Languages Die," Paper Cuts, 3 December, draws on Peter K. Austin, ed., One Thousand Languages: Living, Endangered, and Lost. Who knew that the world's most concentrated linguistic diversity was in Vanuatu; that 96% of the world's population speaks only 4% of its 6,900 languages; and that 90% of those languages are probably fated to die out in this century? See also: "A-Z of English words with surprising origins," Telegraph, 26 November, which draws on Henry Hitchings's The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English.
Henry A. Kissinger, "Team of Heavyweights," Washington Post, 5 December, praises President-elect Obama's national security team, even though its composition defies some conventional wisdom.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Notes Ancient and Modern
Congratulations to Peter Brown, Princeton's Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History, and Romila Thapar, Professor Emerita of Ancient Indian History at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. They are recipients of the Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Study of Humanity for 2008. If you are unfamiliar with their work, you might try these, for starters:
Sam Leith, "Grand Theft Auto, Twitter and Beowulf all demonstrate that stories will never die," Telegraph, 25 November, cites David Kirkpatrick of MIT's "Center for Future Storytelling" as claiming that "The idea as we move forward with 21st-century storytelling is to try to keep meaning alive." Surely they jest, says Leith.
Joseph Tartakovsky, "Documents and Disorder," WSJ, 1 December, reviews Jonathan Brent's Inside the Stalin Archives: Discovering the New Russia. Hat tip.
Thelma Gutierrez and Wayne Drash, "Iconic Image Brought Shame to Family," AOL News, 4 December, revisits the child depicted in Dorothea Lange's classic 1936 photograph, "Migrant Mother". It brought shame and determination to the family, says 77 year old Katherine McIntosh. Thanks to Les Baitzer for the tip.
Ben Macintyre and Paul Orengoh, "Beatings and abuse made Barack Obama's grandfather loathe the British," London Times, 3 December, reports on the experience of Hussein Onyango Obama, the President-elect's paternal grandfather, in the Kenyan rebellion against British colonial rule. The larger context for this painful story is told in Caroline Elkins's prize-winning book, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Thursday's Notes
The NYT's "10 Best Books of 2008" includes: Julian Barnes's Nothing To Be Frightened Of, Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic Of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, Dexter Filkins's The Forever War, Patrick French's The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul, and Jane Mayer's The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals.
Katherine A. Powers, "Pedestrian pursuits," Boston Globe, 30 November, reviews Geoff Nicholson's The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Literature of Pedestrianism.
Ingrid D. Rowland, "Mysteries of Siena," NYRB, 18 December, reviews "Renaissance Siena: Art for a City," an exhibit at London's National Gallery.
Alan Helms, "Gargantuan," Boston Globe, 30 November, reviews Peter Martin's Samuel Johnson: A Biography and Jeffrey Meyers's Samuel Johnson: The Struggle.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Farewell, Odetta (1930-2008)
Wednesday's Notes
John L. Allen, Jr., "'Poped out' Wills seeks broader horizons," National Catholic Reporter, 28 November. Despite its foolish title, this is an excellent profile of Garry Wills, who Allen calls America's most important presidential historian. His current project? A book about William Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" and "Coriolanus." With a doctorate in classics from Yale, Wills was denied tenure at Johns Hopkins. Since then, what has he not written about? Hat tip.
H-Shear, the H-Net listserv about the early American republic, has been sponsoring a series of essays that examine Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought. It includes: Introduction (Oct. 27), James Huston on Economic History (Oct. 27), Michael A. Morrison on Political History (Nov. 3), David M. Henkin on the "Communications Revolution" (Nov. 10), Mary P. Ryan on Women and Gender (Nov. 17), James Taylor Carson on Native American History (Nov. 24), and Manisha Sinha on Slavery and Race (Dec. 2). It continues next week with a piece by Bertram Wyatt-Brown on Religion and Reform and concludes the following week with Howe's rejoinder to his critics.
Donald Ritchie, "Why Does the Transition Take So Long?" OUP Blog, 2 December, considers the interregnum between American presidential elections and inaugurations.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
More Noted Things
Jonathan Dresner hosts History Carnival LXXI at Frog in a Well: Japan; and Biblical Studies Carnival XXXVI is up at Dr. Jim West.
AHA Today announces the results of the recent election of American Historical Association officers. Is this the first time that women have won all three of the top positions at issue?
Sharon Waxman, "How Did That Vase Wind Up in the Metropolitan?" NYT, 1 December, calls on Thomas Campbell, the new director of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, for a new policy that frankly acknowledges how artefacts were acquired.
Stanley Fish, "‘Paradise Lost' in Prose," Think Again, 30 November, comments on Dennis Danielson's new rendition of John Milton's Paradise Lost in modern English prose.
Adam Gopnik, "Man of Fetters: Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale," New Yorker, 8 December, reviews Peter Martin's Samuel Johnson and Jeffrey Meyers's Samuel Johnson: The Struggle.
Ruth Scurr, "Bloodstained Ghosts: The Children of Revolutionary France," The Nation, 24 November, reviews Robert Gildea's Children of the Revolution: The French, 1799-1914. Hat tip.
Caleb McDaniel, "'Old ossawatomie Brown to be hanged at Charlestown for murder and insurrection'," a guest-post at The Edge of the American West, 2 December, is a tonic for those of us who miss our former colleague and his Mode for Caleb.
Monday, December 1, 2008
American History Notes
History Carnival LXXI goes up later today at Frog in a Well: Japan.
"The Time Machine," Chicago Tribune, 26 October, takes a close look at the life and work of David McCullough. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
Caleb Crain, "A World of a Different Color," NYT, 28 November, reviews Ann Norton Greene's Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America. See also: Crain, "Miles Per Oat," Steamboats Are Ruining Everything, 28 November.
Steven Rosen, "‘Our' Old Masters?" Denver Post, 20 November, reviews Cynthia Saltzman's Old Masters, New World: America's Raid on Europe's Great Pictures. Hat tip.
Neal Gabler, "The GOP's McCarthy gene," LA Times, 30 November, identifies a poisonous and persistent strain in the modern Republican Party.
Richard Holbrooke, "‘The Doves Were Right'," NYT, 30 November, reviews Gordon M. Goldstein's Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Things Noted Here and There
Early Modern History:
Matthew Price, "The only way is down," The National, 20 November, and Shelby Coffey III, "Markets Don't Make Bubbles, People Do," Washington Post, 30 November, review Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World.
Caroline Weber, "The Sophisticated Table," NYT, 28 November, reviews Susan Pinkard's A Revolution in Taste: The Rise of French Cuisine, 1650-1800.
Michael Dirda reviews Steven Nadler's The Best Of All Possible Worlds: A Story of Philosophers, God, and Evil for the Washington Post, 30 November.
Virginia Heffernan, "Mayflower Power," NYT, 28 November, reviews Sarah Vowell's The Wordy Shipmates and finds it "annoying."
Modern History:
Jonathan Yardley reviews Les Standiford's The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits for the Washington Post, 30 November.
Kira Salak, "On Stanley's Path," Washington Post, 30 November, reviews Tim Butcher's Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart.
John Whiteclay Chambers II, "The Soldier Who Emerged as Statesman," Washington Post, 26 November, reviews Carlo D'Este's Warlord: A Life of Winston Churchill.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
On David Chappell's A Stone of Hope
I was cleaning up my office yesterday and came across this piece that I had meant to, but didn't publish several years ago. It was given at a conference of the Southern Intellectual History Circle in 2004, shortly after the publication of David Chappell's A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow.
Like David's book, my comments are divided into three parts. They are: 1) compliments, 2) back-handed compliments, and 3) criticism. I'll offer them in that order.
For some reason, when I first read David's A Stone of Hope, I thought back some years ago when I was still in graduate school. I was reading Richard Hofstadter's The Age of Reform at a time when it was still a fairly new work of history. So, I'm reading along, thinking and learning, and, then suddenly, there it was – a gob-smacking colossal giant of a mistake. This was no minor error. It was a huge thing that leapt out from the page, grabbed me, and screamed: "You know more than Richard Hofstadter does about this!" In that moment, I thought it was an omen of a promising professional future for me. So, Richard Hofstadter and I made a pact with each other that evening. I would not hold him up to public shame and humiliation if he would be my guardian angel and see me through to the safe harbor of tenure. Some years later, I'm telling you, that Richard Hofstadter made a gob-smacking colossal giant of a mistake in The Age of Reform and you should never count on a Jewish Lutheran to be your guardian angel. There's just too much angst in a Jewish Lutheran to be a good guardian angel. But the larger truth, thirty years later, is that Richard Hofstadter is still Richard Hofstadter and Ralph Luker is still only Ralph Luker. Similarly, I suspect that after I tear David to shreds – ah, offer this critique – this morning, he will still be David Chappell and I will still be my untenured self.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Weak Endnotes
Two days after the terrorist attack on Mumbai began, the injury- and death-count continues to rise. Chapati Mystery, Global Voices, The Lede and CNN IBN live streaming are reliable sources for the latest news.
History dominates the New York Times' nonfiction list of "100 Notable Books of 2008" (scroll down) and the "TLS Books of the Year 2008."
Ken Johnson, "Pint-Size Treasures Cast for Private Delectation," NYT, 16 October, reviews "Andrea Riccio: Renaissance Master of Bronze," an exhibit at the Frick Collection in Manhattan; Christopher Benfey's slide-show essay, "Andrea Riccio's Intricate Universe," Slate, 26 November, reproduces and reflects on selected pieces from the exhibit.
Anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, "The Magic Ballot," The Immanent Frame, 7 November; historian Jason Kuznicki, "Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain," Cato@Liberty, 7 November; Appadurai, and Kuznicki exchange fire over Obamania and the limits of political action. Hat tip.
Finally, do not wait until Monday to nominate your candidates for the Cliopatria Awards. Nominations close on Sunday evening at midnight.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Thanksgiving Notes
Mark Bauerlein and KC Johnson have commonly used the term "group think" in reference to contemporary academic communities. Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, "Group think," Boston Globe, 23 November, explores whether technology and the internet contribute to or cause it.
George Brock, "The End of Journalism," TLS, 26 November, reviews Robert Fox, ed., Eyewitness to History, a four volume anthology of journalism, from Herodotus to BlackBerries and blogs.
Mervyn Rothstein, "The Circle of Life with Bagels," NYT, 25 November, reviews Maria Balinska's The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread.
Abram Van Engen, "The Good, the Bad, and the Puritans," Books & Culture, November/December, reviews Sarah Vowell's The Wordy Shipmates.
London's Natural History Museum lets you track Charles Darwin's 1831-1836 voyage on the HMS Beagle. Hat tip.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Ev Dirksen was a Piker
Senator Everett Dirksen (R, Ill.) was one of the more colorful members in the history of the United States Senate. A fiscal conservative, he is commonly remembered for having said: "A billion here, a billion there; soon you're talking about real money." Dirksen could not have imagined the magnitude of the bailout to which the United States is already committed. Barry Ritholz, "Big Bailouts, Bigger Bucks," The Big Picture, 25 November, puts it this way:
If we add in the Citi bailout, the total cost now exceeds $4.6165 trillion dollars. People have a hard time conceptualizing very large numbers, so let's give this some context. The current Credit Crisis bailout is now the largest outlay In American history.
Jim Bianco of Bianco Research crunched the inflation adjusted numbers. The bailout has cost more than all of these big budget government expenditures – combined:• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billionThat is $686 billion less than the cost of the credit crisis thus far.
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion
TOTAL: $3.92 trillionThe only single American event in history that even comes close to matching the cost of the credit crisis is World War II: Original Cost: $288 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $3.6 trillion.
The $4.6165 trillion dollars committed so far is about a trillion dollars ($979 billion dollars) greater than the entire cost of World War II borne by the United States: $3.6 trillion, adjusted for inflation (original cost was $288 billion).
A trillion here, a trillion there; ....
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
More Noted Things
Fareed Zakaria says:
Some of us—especially those under 60—have always wondered what it would be like to live through the kind of epochal event one reads about in books. Well, this is it. We're now living history, suffering one of the greatest financial panics of all time. It compares with the big ones — 1907, 1929 — and we cannot yet know its full consequences for the financial system, the economy or society as a whole.
Howard W. French, "Thinking Globally: America's Rise to Dominance, With Slips Along the Way," NYT, 23 November, and Douglas Little, "Why We Need Diplomatic History," CHE, 28 November, review George C. Herring's From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776.
Michael Chase-Levenson, "Florence Nightingale's Fever," Slate, 24 November, reviews Mark Bostridge's Florence Nightingale: The Making of an Icon.
James Wood on V. S. Naipaul; William Deresiewicz on James Wood.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Things Noted Here and There
Carnivalesque XLV, an ancient/medieval edition of the festival, is up at Cranky Professor.
David Oshinsky, "Disaster Reel," NYT, 23 November, reviews Howard Blum's American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, Movie-Making, and the Crime of the Century.
James Sturcke, "The influenza pandemic of 1918," Guardian, 12 November, is an interactive review of the pandemic's impact. Hat tip.
Charles Isherwood, "Father of the ‘Follies'," NYT, 23 November, reviews Ethan Mordden's Ziegfeld: The Man Who Invented Show Business.
Liesl Schillinger, "A Fever in the Blood," NYT, 23 November, reviews Owen Matthews's Stalin's Children: Three Generations of Love, War, and Survival.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Johnny Cash/Bob Dylan, 1969
If you share my love of Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan, you'll be as happy as I am with "Bob Dylan/Johnny Cash :: 1969 Sessions," Aquarium Drunkard, 18 November. You can hear their 15 duets and 7 solos by Dylan, recorded in three sessions on 17-18 February and 1 May 1969. I've died and gone to Americana heaven. Hat tip.
Weak Endnotes
Indian History Carnival 11 is up at varnam.
Reza Aslan, "How To Read the Quran," Slate, 20 November, reviews a new English translation of the Quran by Tarif Khalidi of the American University of Beirut.
Roberta Smith, "Eternal Objects of Desire," NYT, 20 November, reviews "Art and Love in Renaissance Italy," an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City.
peacay, "Five Centuries of Board Games," BibliOdyssey, 19 November, is the latest offering by the winner of the first Cliopatria Award for Best New Blog.
Martin Vander Weyer reviews Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World for the Telegraph, 20 November.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "Little Britain," NYT, 21 November, reviews Piers Brendon's The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Your Type & The Cliopatria Awards
This site claims to be able to analyze a blog's "type". Here's what it says about Cliopatria:
The Thinkers The logical and analytical type. They are especially attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.
They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.
AHA Today and The Edge of the American West are of the same type. Other history sites, like HNN's mainpage and Errol Morris's Zoom, are read as:
The Mechanics The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generelly prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.
The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.
Whether they're a "Thinker," a "Mechanic," or some other type, take a moment this weekend to nominate your favorite history blogger for a Cliopatria Award. Thanks to AHA Today, Airminded, American Creation, Archaeoastronomy, Blogenspiel, Boston 1775, Civil War History, Civil War Memory, Early Modern Notes, Frog in a Well/China/Japan/Korea, History Carnivals Aggregator, History News Network, In the Middle, Inside Higher Ed, Legal History, Mercurius Politicus, Progressive Historians, Public Historian, Rogue Classicism, Spinning Clio, Testimony of the Spade, Walking the Berkshires, and wig-wags for helping to get the word out about the nominations.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Friday's Notes
Scott Jaschik, "History Employment – Public and Private," IHE, 21 November, summarizes the findings in an AHA report by Rob Townsend.
At Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall puts on his historian's cap to suggest that:
... historically, the rising incidence of piracy has frequently, if not always, been a sign of the receding reach of whatever great power has taken on responsibility for policing the sea lanes. The decline of the Hellenistic monarchies in the Mediterranean before the rise of Rome. Caribbean piracy during Spain's long slide into decrepitude and before England decided she lost more than she gained from it. There are many examples. I note too that the Russians just announced that they're sending a few more warships to try to get things under control off the coast of East Africa.
The Guardian has a slide show of excerpts from Charles Darwin's letters and diaries, contemporary cartoons and photographs, taken from David Quammen's new illustrated edition of Darwin's On The Origin of the Species.
The American Social History Project and CUNY's Center for New Media and Learning presents Picturing U. S. History, "an interactive source for teaching with visual evidence."
Six years after being sent to the plagiarism corner, there to sit in exile with Stephen Ambrose, Doris Kearns Goodwin is back on top of her game. Obama cabinet-making has put her study of Lincoln's cabinet, Team of Rivals, back among best-sellers; she is a News Analyst for NBC and reportedly commands up to $40,000 for a lecture. Yet, her "team of rivals" argument is being challenged by her peers. James Oakes, "What's So Special About a Team of Rivals?" NYT, 19 November, argues that Lincoln's inviting competitors into his cabinet was neither innovative nor smart; and Matthew Pinsker's "Lincoln and the myth of 'Team of Rivals'," LA Times, 18 November, argues that Lincoln's cabinet was far more dysfunctional than Goodwin allows. Hat tip.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Rutgers' McCormick
Ted Sherman and Josh Margolin, "Report says Rutgers failed to properly oversee athletics department," Newark Star-Ledger, 20 November, says a newly released report lays the blame for the out-of-control and still foundering athletic program at the feet of the University's president, historian Richard L. McCormick, and the school's board of governors. McCormick responds to the report here. Arguing that McCormick should resign, Margaret Soltan calls his response to the report "preening" and "cretinous."
Thursday's Notes
Edward Wong, "The Dead Tell a Tale China Doesn't Care to Listen To," NYT, 18 November, reports on an exhibit of ancient mummies in China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region and their story that Beijing doesn't want told.
Mary Beard has tried her hand with Google Earth's and the University of Virginia's virtual recreation of ancient Rome. It might have been more satisfactory if she had more experience at a pinball machine.
Jacqueline Trescott, "America's Attic Is Ready for Its Public," Washington Post, 20 November, previews the re-opening of DC's National Museum of American History.
Samuel P. Jacobs, "A talk with Jane Kamensky and Jill Lepore," Boston Globe, 16 November, explores the two historians' decision to write a work of historical fiction. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
Annette Gordon-Reid's The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family has won the National Book Award for Non-Fiction, 2008. The other nominees included: Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, Jane Mayer's The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, Jim Sheeler's Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives, and Joan Wickersham's The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Modern History Notes
At Google Life, you can search "millions" of photographs, many of them not published before, from Life magazine's photo archive. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
Christopher Benfey, "The American Loneliness," TNR, 3 December, reviews Robin G. Wilder and Jackson R. Bryer, eds., The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder.
Adam Liptak and Jonathan D. Glater, "Papers Offer Close-Up of Rehnquist and the Court," NYT, 17 November, looks at the stories slowly unfolding from the William Rehnquist papers at Stanford's Hoover Institution. At Legal History, Mary Dudziak offers some tips for research at the Hoover Archives.
David Berreby, "Only in America?" Slate, 17 November, questions the exultation about the election of Barack Obama as an outburst of American exceptionalism. What about England's Benjamin Disraeli, France's Napoleon Bonaparte, Germany's Cem Ozdemir, Peru's Alberto Fujimori, India's Sonia Gandhi, or Kenya's Daniel arap Moi? Or the Roman Empire's North African, Syrian, and Balkan emperors? Outsiders, all.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
More Noted Things
Frances Wilson, "Exccentrick Patrick Brontë," TLS, 13 November, reviews Dudley Green's Patrick Brontë: Father of Genius.
Michael Wood, "Double Thought," LRB, 20 November, reviews Stanley Corngold, Jack Greenberg and Benno Wagner, eds., Franz Kafka: The Office Writings, trans. by Eric Patton and Ruth Hein.
Two weeks after the United States' presidential election, we're still busy graphing and mapping it: "From Cotton Pickin' to Pickin' Presidents," Strange Maps, 15 November, overlays a map of bales of cotton picked in 1860 on a map of Southern counties carried by Barack Obama in 2008; and Andrew Gelman's "Race, Region and Obama," red state blue state/rich state poor state, 17 November, compares voting along racial lines by section of the country. See also: Eric Rauchway's variations on those charts at The Edge of the American West. The "cotton belt" appears to persist into the 21st century, but now without sufficient voting strength to win South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, or Arkansas. Deep South voters seem more likely to vote along racial lines than voters in other sections of the country. Yet, see Nate Silver's "For Obama, Will Familiarity Erode Contempt?" FiveThirtyEight, 17 November: "The driving factor in determining how Obama performed vis-à-vis John Kerry, however, appears as though it might not be race, but rather how much Obama camaigned in a given state." The power of the "sun belt" seems diminished when Democrats and Republicans divide the electoral votes of Florida and Texas.
Congratulations to Gabor Boritt, Richard Brookhiser, and Harold Holzer who were awarded the National Humanities Medal yesterday at the White House; and to Clement Price, Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of History and director of the Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience at Rutgers University, Newark, who will co-chair the NEH transition team for the Obama administration.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Things Noted Here and There
Andrew Higgins, "Professor Hired for Outreach to Muslims Delivers a Jolt," WSJ, 15 November, reports the story of Muhammad Sven Kalisch. He was hired to teach Islamic Studies at Münster University and his doubts about the existence of the historical Muhammad are causing a stir in Germany. Hat tip.
Roger Atwood, "Fool's Gold," Washington Post, 16 November, reviews Sharon Waxman's Loot: The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World and Nina Burleigh's Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed, and Forgery in the Holy Land.
Art Winslow reviews John Demos's The Enemy Within: 2,000 Years of Witch-hunting in the Western World for the Chicago Tribune, 15 November.
David Brown, "16th-Century Mapmaker's Intriguing Knowledge," Washington Post, 17 November, explores what Martin Waldseemueller knew about the contours of the trans-Atlantic world.
Karl E. Meyer, "The Gift of Governance," Washington Post, 16 November, reviews Piers Brendon's The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997.
Andrew Cayton, "The Presidency That Roared," NYT, 14 November, reviews Jon Meacham's American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Modern History Notes
The Giant's Shoulders #5, the history of science carnival, is up at PodBlack Cat.
Steven Poole, "The Mischievous Oracle," Guardian, 15 November, reviews Manjit Kumar's Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality.
James Campbell, "Heavy Reading," NYT, 14 November, and Wendy Smith for the Chicago Tribune, 15 November, review Alex Beam's A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books.
David Orr, "Love, Your Ted," NYT, 14 November, reviews Christopher Reid, ed., Letters of Ted Hughes. Hat tip.
Toby Lichtig, "Paul Theroux in Asia," TLS, 12 November, reviews Theroux's Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, published 35 years after his The Great Railway Bazaar.
Niall Ferguson, "Wall Street Lays Another Egg," Vanity Fair, December, looks through the looking glass, at Planet Finance.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Weak Endnotes
Congratulations to Cliopatria's friend, Randall Stephens, who's just become editor of Historically Speaking, the very lively bulletin of The Historical Society. Randall also edits the online Journal of Southern Religion and blogs at Religion in American History.
Richard Eyre, "The Seven Ages of Shakespeare," Guardian, 15 November, reviews Jonathan Bate's Soul of the Age: The Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare.
Louis P. Masur, "Downsizing Andrew Jackson," Slate, 10 November, reviews Jon Meacham's American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House and David Reynolds's Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson.
Barry Gewen, "The Overlooked Economic Crisis, Influential Still," NYT, 13 November, reviews Robert J. Samuelson's The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath: The Past and Future of American Affluence.
Sam Tanenhaus, "The Imperial Vice Presidency," TNR, 19 November, reviews Barton Gellman's Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency.
Joseph Levine, "History Matters," Boston Review, September/ October, insists that Israel and its supporters must take the claims of Palestinians seriously.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Thursday's Notes
Dr. Denny, "The Gray Lady turns pasty white: Is the financial demise of The Times at hand?" Scholars & Rogues, 11 November, looks at the NYT's balance sheet. The picture looks grim. Hat tip.
Bruce Cole, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, announced yesterday that he will leave in January to become President and CEO of a new museum and research facility, the American Revolution Center, at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Hat tip.
Joan Nathan, "A Short History of the Bagel," Slate, 12 November, reviews Maria Balinska's The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread.
Janet Maslin, "Elites and Rivals, Beware: He's Tough as Old Hickory," NYT, 9 November, reviews John Meacham's American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
More Noted Things
Remember Steven Hoch, the Russian historian who left the University of Kentucky to become the Provost at Washington State University, had a fight with WSU's vice president for business and finance, and agreed to step down as Provost to a teaching position at $245,000? Now, he has been re-assigned to teach at WSU's branch campus at Richland, Washington. Would you say he's being encouraged to move on? Anyone want to offer him $245 grand a year to teach? Hat tip.
Our colleague, Rachel Loew's "bookporn #36: asian civilizations museum, singapore," a historian's craft, 8 November, features an extraordinary 15th century Ottoman Turkish scroll. In tiny, hair script, within its large script prayer, is the entire Qu'ran.
Zakintosh's "Zore hua kis par?" Windmills of My Mind, 11 November, sees a misreading by emphasis in most recounts of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
Joe Stephens, "The FBI's 15-Year Campaign To Ferret Out Norman Mailer," Washington Post, 11 November, looks at the Bureau's file on Norman Mailer. We paid agents to collect these banalities!
Rob MacDougall's remarkable "American for a Day," Old is the New New, 5 November, was widely acknowledged on the net, from Crooked Timber and Daily Kos to HNN and Metafilter. Rob's "I Have Until January 20," Old is the New New, 10 November, has a symposium of comparable responses to the election, including those by Manan Ahmed and Rachel Leow. Contrarily, Marc Comtois's "Obama Already Among the Best," Spinning Clio, 9 November, thinks that Historians for Obama have locked themselves in as court historians. That's only if Obama retains or appoints any Republicans to his cabinet or doesn't insist that Joe Lieberman be barred from the Senate Democratic caucus, of course.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Modern History Notes
Our colleague, Dan Todman's "How we remember them: the 1914-18 war today," Open Democracy, 7 November, considers World War I's place in British history.
The Guardian, 10 November, anthologizes some of World War I's most remarkable pieces of writing: Richard Aldington's "Bombardment"; Robert Graves, "The Useless Officer"; Graves, "It's a Queer Time"; Erich Maria Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front"; Siegfried Sasson, "'This wild strangeness somehow excited me'"; and Sasson, "Suicide in the Trenches".
Ryan Lizza, "Battle Plans: How Obama Won," New Yorker, 17 November, reports from within the Obama campaign. Lizza may have had to give up plans for a campaign book when he left TNR for the New Yorker. Newsweek's Richard Wolffe apparently has a reporter's book on the campaign in the works; and the Washington Post's David Marannis may also be doing one. You can look forward to an Obama biography by David Garrow.
P. J. O'Rourke, "We Blew It" Weekly Standard, 17 November, laments 28 years of conservative failure in the United States. "Let us bend over and kiss our ass goodbye," he begins.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Miriam Makeba, 1932-2008
Things Noted Here and There
In "What it meant," Boston Globe, 9 November, John Dittmer, Eric Foner, Jacqueline Jones, Steve Lawson, and Thomas Sugrue reflect on where Obama's election fits in the American narrative. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
Miranda Seymour, "Troubled Water," NYT, 9 November, reviews Peter Ackroyd's Thames: The Biography.
Tony Horwitz, "The Ideal Colonist," Washington Post, 9 November, reviews David Hackett Fisher's Champlain's Dream.
Stephen Prothero, "Those Wacky Puritans," Washington Post, 9 November, reviews Sarah Vowell's The Wordy Shipmates.
Max Byrd, "The Bullet Machine," NYT, 7 November, reviews Julia Keller's Mr. Gatling's Terrible Marvel: The Gun That Changed Everything and the Misunderstood Genius Who Invented It.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
"Good Crazy"
Ta-Nehisi Coates, "The Man of Tomorrow," Washington Post, 9 November, calls attention to this clip. On 4 March 2007, when Barack Obama was to speak at historic Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma, Alabama, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's Dr. Joseph Lowery preceded him in the pulpit. This was at a time in the Democratic primaries when many of Lowery's peers in the civil rights movement, including John Lewis and Andrew Young, believed that Obama's campaign was "just crazy." Lowery saw a distinction that makes a difference:
Twenty months later, "good crazy" seized the land. Now, it's time to get serious and get busy.
Sunday's Notes
Allister Heath, "Survival of the Fittest," Literary Review, November, reviews Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World.
Richard B. Woodward, "The Melancholy Easel," NYT, 7 November, reviews Jed Perl's Antoine's Alphabet: Watteau and His World.
Terry Eagleton, "Palace of Pain ...," Guardian, 8 November, reviews Alexander Waugh's The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War.
Alan Wolfe's "Uncommon Ground," NYT, 7 November, reviews Thomas Sugrue's Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Weak Endnotes
Michiko Kakutani, "Bonds That Seem Cruel Can Be Kind," NYT, 3 November, and John Updike, "Dreamy Wilderness," New Yorker, 3 November, review Toni Morrison's most recent novel, A Mercy.
David Brown, "Lincoln, Unexposed," Washington Post, 8 November, reviews "The Mask of Lincoln," an exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.
Peter Schjeldahl, "Angry Young Man," New Yorker, 10 November, reviews "Joan Miró: Painting and Anti-Painting, 1927-1937," an exhibit at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art.
Holland Cotter, "Old South Meets New, in Living Color," NYT, 6 November, reviews "William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961-2008," an exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan.
Ian Buruma, "The Lessons of the Master," NYRB, 20 November, reviews Patrick French's The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul.
Orlando Patterson, "An Eternal Revolution," NYT, 7 November, looks at the election of Barack Obama in historical perspective.
Finally, thanks to AHA Today, Airminded, American Creation, Archaeoastronomy, Blogenspiel, Civil War Memory, Early Modern Notes, In the Middle, Legal History, Mercurius Politicus, Progressive Historians, Public Historian, Rogue Classicism, Spinning Clio and Walking the Berkshires for helping to get the word out about nominations for The Cliopatria Awards. Whether it's Ancient, Pre-Modern, United States or Regional histories, history of science, K-12, digital, or military history, if you think more recognition of excellent blogging in your corner of the history blogosphere is due, this is a fine way to do it.
Friday, November 7, 2008
A Distinction without Honor
As I suggested three years ago, the Organization of American Historians uses the word "distinguished" fairly casually. After multiple arrests for shoplifting, Rick Beard, executive director of Springfield, Illinois' Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, a member of the OAH's Distinguished Lectureship Program and kleptomaniac, has been placed on paid leave from his position at the Lincoln Library. He seems fond of DVDs from Target and men's ties from Macy's. Beard is paid $150,000 a year by Illinois state government and additional salary of an undisclosed amount by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation.
Recent Political Notes
David Bromwich, "The Co-President at Work," NYRB, 20 November, reviews Jane Mayer's The Dark Side: The Inside Story on How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, Barton Gellman's Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, Ron Suskind's The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism, Charlie Savage's Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy, Scott McClellan's What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, Jacob Weisberg's The Bush Tragedy, Stephen F. Hayes's Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President, and Bob Woodward's The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006–2008.
Andrew Gelman's "Election 2008: what really happened," red state/blue state/rich state/poor state, 5 November, charts the data of recent electoral shifts; and should be read in conjunction with the map featured by Eric Rauchway and Matt Yglesias. In 21 months of campaigning, did Obama so much as make an appearance in West Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, or Oklahoma? That's how you make absolutely clear that you want to be their President, too.
Rob MacDougall, "American for a Day," Cliopatria, 6 November, is a must read, if you haven't had the pleasure. Edward Blum, "Neither Christ Nor Antichrist: A Reflection on the Election of Barack Obama," religion dispatches, 6 November, is a sober – John Turner says "a Niebuhrian" – reflection on Obama's election.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Modern History Notes
Jonathan Karl, "Revolution Is No Tea Party," WSJ, 3 November, reviews Ira Stoll's Samuel Adams: A Life.
Andrew Motion, "Meeting Harry," Guardian, 5 November, interviews Great Britain's last surviving veteran of World War I's trenches. Hew Strachan, "Back to the Trenches," TLS, 5 November, reviews Michael Howard, et al., A Part of History: Aspects of the British experience of the First World War.
Ian Bostridge, "The Court of Benjamin Britten," TLS, 5 November, reviews Philip Reed, Mervyn Cooke and Donald Mitchell, eds., Letters from a Life: The selected letters of Benjamin Britten IV, 1952–1957.
Paul Harvey, "Post-Racial America? Not Yet.," Books & Culture, September/October, reviews Thomas J. Sugrue's Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North.
The Volokh Conspiracy's Jim Lindgren claims that "this has easily been the most corrupt election in my lifetime." The Corner's Ramesh Ponnuru sees "Clintonite axe-grinding" in David Greenberg's "McCain Ran the Sleaziest Campaign in History? Not even close.," Slate, 5 November.
Our colleague, Rachel Leow's "The Politics of Grace (An Entreaty to Malaysia)," a historian's craft, 5 November, offers a thoughtful view of the American elections from abroad.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Barack Obama, 04/11/08
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Looking Ahead ...
Anne Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, has suggested our colleague, KC Johnson, as an ideal candidate for Secretary of Education in a new administration. He "understands firsthand how the politically correct university is undermining America's ability to understand and sustain itself as a nation," she said. As "a recognized scholar of American military and diplomatic history, KC inspires students at Brooklyn about topics and people that are ignored on many campuses and is an eloquent spokesman for how and why American higher education needs to reclaim its academic mission." Although a member of Historians for Obama, said Neal, Johnson "should be secretary of education in any administration."
Finally ...
In honor of election day here in the United States (finally!) and because Ari Kelman is a connoisseur of the Best of the Muppets:
Also, Rob MacDougall has awakened Old is the New New from 10 weeks of slumber for "One More Sleep." Btw, in early reports, Barack Obama has won Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, by 15 to 6; and Hart's Location, New Hampshire, by 17 to 10. It is only the second time a Democrat has won in Dixville Notch since 1948 when it began voting at midnight and immediately reporting the results; and the first time a Democrat has won in Hart's Location since it re-instated the practice in 1996.
Don't forget to vote!
Monday, November 3, 2008
People in the Middle
Errol Morris's "Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg?" Zoom, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3, won last year's Cliopatria Award for the Best Series of Posts. Now, his "People in the Middle," Zoom, 28 October, comments on the history of "real people" spots in American political advertising and his production of "People in the Middle for Obama" for the People for the American Way Voters Alliance.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Sunday's Notes
History Carnival LXX is up at Disability Studies!
Jennifer Howard, "The Birth of 'Frankenstein'," CHE, 7 November, reviews Charles E. Robinson, ed., Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, the original two-volume novel of 1816–1817 from the Bodleian Library Manuscripts by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (with Percy Bysshe Shelley).
Douglas Brinkley, "The Warrior President," Washington Post, 2 November, reviews Jon Meacham's American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, David S. Reynolds's America in the Age of Jackson, and Robert V. Remini's Andrew Jackson.
Jonathan Yardley reviews Fred Kaplan's Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, Chandra Manning, "The Travails of Lincoln's Transition," reviews Harold Holzer"s Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter 1860-1861, and Michael F. Bishop, "Commander-in-Chief," reviews James M. McPherson's Tried By War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander In Chief for the Washington Post, 2 November.
Michael Dirda reviews Paul Mariani's Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life for the Washington Post, 2 November.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Weak Endnotes
Barry Gewen, "You Thought It Was Hell? War Is Sporty," NYT, 30 October, reviews Martin van Creveld's The Culture of War.
Gary Rosen, "Body of Knowledge," NYT, 31 October, reviews Russell Shorto's Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason.
Max Boot, "They Didn't Name That Lake for Nothing," NYT, 31 October, reviews David Hackett Fischer's Champlain's Dream.
Blake Gopnik, "Beside Rembrandt, Another Brush With Greatness," Washington Post, 2 November, reviews "Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered," an exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
Josef Joffe, "Entangling Alliances," NYT, 31 October, reviews George C. Herring's From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776.
Finally, farewell to Studs Terkel, the father of popular oral history in the United States.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Modern History Notes
U.S. Intellectual History sponsored the first annual American Intellectual History Conference at Grand Rapids, Michigan's Grand Valley State University on 17 and 18 October. The conference program is here; and the blog now features three retrospectives.
Lynda Pratt, "Who wrote the original Frankenstein?" TLS, 29 October, reviews Charles E. Robinson, ed., Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus: The original two-volume novel of 1816–1817 from the Bodleian Library Manuscripts by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (with Percy Bysshe Shelley).
Colm Tóibín, "I Could Sleep with All of Them," LRB, 6 November, reviews Andrea Weiss's In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story.
Patrick Wilcken, "The century of Claude Lévi-Strauss," TLS, 29 October, reviews Lévi-Strauss, Oeuvres, edited by Vincent Debaene, Frédéric Keck, Marie Manzé and Martin Rueff.
Dan Chiasson, "Works on Paper," New Yorker, 3 November, reviews Saskia Hamilton and Thomas Travisano, eds., Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Thomas Lowell.
Christopher Lydon's "A Longer View of 2008," Open Source, 29 October, features a half hour interview with Brown's Gordon Wood about the United States' "historic" national election. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
History Blogosphere Business
History Carnival LXX goes up at Penny Richards's Disability Studies on Saturday 1 November. Send nominations of the best in October's history blogging to: turley2*at*earthlink*dot*net or use the form.
Shortly before the Jewish New Year, I was updating Cliopatria's History Blogroll. After making the new entries, I hit the button and the whole damn thing disappeared! Thinking I must have hit "delete" rather than "enter," I was about to slit my wrist, when Rick Shenkman replied to my desperation. My entries had probably exceeded HNN's capacity for a single page, he said, and the system handled the overload by deleting all of it. Fortunately, he had a recent copy and could repost it as two pages. The history blogosphere has simply grown beyond the system's capacity for a single page, so it is now divided into two different pages. I've also recently updated it with new additions, particularly a dozen or so additional Pre-Modern History Blogs. You may want to have a look at them.
On Saturday 1 November, we will open nominations for The Cliopatria Awards, 2008. Prior winners of the Awards are listed here. Between 1 and 30 November, you are invited to nominate candidates for Best Group Blog, Best Individual Blog, Best New Blog, Best Post, Best Series of Posts, and Best Writer. The period of eligibility is 1 December 2007 through 30 November 2008. In December, committees of three judges will choose the winners from among your nominees. Judges are ineligible to make nominations in categories they will be judging and Cliopatria is ineligible for the Best Group Blog award. You may want to refer to the History Carnivals and to Cliopatria's History Blogroll to stimulate your recollection for nominations.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
More Noted Things
Kathryn Hughes, "Plague Ahoy," Guardian, 25 October, reviews Ian Mortimer's The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the 14th Century.
Richard Dorment for the Telegraph, 10 September, and Michael Kimmelman, "In a Faceoff, the Masters Trump Picasso," NYT, 27 October, review "Picasso and the Masters," an exhibit at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Andrew Motion, "Impressions of rapture," Guardian, 25 October, reviews Jackie Wullschlager's Chagall: Life, Art, Exile.
Sam Anderson, "Five Lives," NY Magazine, 26 October, reviews Edmund White's Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel, Laura Claridge's Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners, Steven Watts's Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream, Philip Norman's John Lennon: The Life, and Eminem's The Way I Am.
Bruce Falconer, "The Torture Colony," American Scholar, Autumn, tells the story of a utopian colony, founded in rural Chile by a German evangelical, that cooperated with Pinochet's torture regime. Hat tip.
Finally, from friends of Cliopatria and the department at UC, Berkeley, come two poignant notes:
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Things Noted Here and There
"The History Major and Undergraduate Liberal Education" is a report by a National History Center working group chaired by Stan Katz and Jim Grossman. Scott Jaschik's "A Broader History Major (and Professor)," IHE, 27 October, hits the highlights.
Lawrence A. Husick, "From Stone to Silicon: A Brief Survey of Innovation," FPRI's Wachman Center for International Education Newsletter, October, offers a list of the top 25 innovations in human history, from relativity and quantum mechanics at #25 to _______ at #1.
Gordon Wood, "American Unions," TNR, 22 October, reviews Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.
Alexandra Mullen, "Eminence Without Irony," WSJ, 21 October, reviews Mark Bostridge's Florence Nightingale: The Making of an Icon.
Michael Dirda reviews Timothy W. Ryback's Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life for the Washington Post, 26 October.
Donna Rifkind, "Native Speaker," Washington Post, 26 October, reviews Ariel Sabar's My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq.
Finally, our colleague, KC Johnson, has created a website to accompany his book, All the Way with LBJ: The 1964 Presidential Election, which is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. If you want to sample the delicious sources KC had to draw on, try LBJ's telecon with Congressman Albert Thomas (D-Texas), ca January 1964 (2nd call, scroll down) or his telecon with Bill Moyers during the Democratic National Convention, 21 August 1964 (1st call): "... even a goddamned college professor could understand that."
Monday, October 27, 2008
Tool-breaking as day-to-day resistance: a re-examination of evidence
This vigorous challenge to a standard claim in North American slavery studies is guest-posted from H-Slavery by David Paterson of Norfolk, Virginia.
In H-South's review of Stephanie M. H. Camp, Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South, the reviewer stated that "Camp examines how force upheld limits to enslaved people's autonomy of action; more importantly, she considers how bondpeople redefined these limits for themselves. Tool-breaking, foot-dragging and flight were each tactics that allowed for the bending--even the breaking--of the plantation's temporal rules."[1] In fact, Camp's book never mentions tool-breaking, so why did the reviewer feel compelled to mention it?
It has become a commonplace mantra among historians to recite a list of acts of day-to-day resistance that typically includes, "Sabotage of machinery, tools and personal possessions, surreptitious destruction of crops or maiming of animals. . . . feigning ignorance, clumsiness, self-mutilation, and suicide."[2] Indeed, James Oakes states that "the prevalence of day-to-day resistance is no longer in dispute. Slaves engaged in a variety of acts designed to ease their burdens and frustrate their masters' wills. They broke tools, feigned illness, deliberately procrastinated, 'stole' food, and manipulted tensions between master and overseer." Oakes footnote asserts that "the literature on slave resistance is immense" -- but research suggests that the evidence for the first item in his list, tool-breaking, is far from immense.[3] Apparently accepted as beyond dispute, claims that slaves "'accidentally' broke agricultural implements" sometimes don't even merit a footnote.[4] Another historian states that "On the plantations, slave masters saw sabotage everywhere - in broken tools, maimed animals, and burned barns" -- but his citation is to an irrelevant discussion of depredations by runaway slaves and maroons, and never mentions broken tools. The same writer's further insistent that slaves "refused to work, broke tools, burned barns, turned truant" is unfootnoted.[5]
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Sunday's Notes
At Mercurius Politicus,
Nick hosts XLIV, an early modern edition of the festival.
John Sweeney, "The killing fields," New Statesman, 23 October, reviews David Loyn's Butcher and Bolt: Two Hundred Years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan.
Jay Winik, "Young America's Wild Side," NYT, 24 October, reviews David S. Reynolds's Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson.
"New York Times Endorsements Through the Ages," NYT, 23 October, is a timeline of the NYT's presidential endorsements from 1860 to 2008. Rob Farley hits the highlights at Lawyers, Guns, and Money, 24 October.
David Greenberg, "Presidential Firepower," Slate, 24 October, explains "how FDR saved capitalism in eight days."
The few survivors of the Spanish Civil War's International Brigade were honored yesterday in Barcelona, just as judge Baltasar Garzón seemed to open the door to prosecution of the surviving henchmen of Francisco Franco's regime.
David Garrow reviews Nicholas Katzenbach's Some of It Was Fun: Working with RFK and LBJ for the LA Times, 24 October.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Weak Endnotes
Margaret Soltan's "News from Sweden," University Diaries, 24 October, reports that the country's King Karl XIII illustrated his diaries with drawings of – ah – penises. In comments, in time for Halloween, Dave Stone points to a photograph of Karl XII's exhumed body, showing "quite vividly" what an 18th century .50 caliber bullet did to the man's skull.
Holland's Nationaal Archief, the largest public archive in the Netherlands, has 14 million images in its collections. Nearly 400 of them, illustrating pre-World War II working conditions, are now on Flickr. Paris en images offers 25,000 historical photographs of the city. Thanks to AHA Today and Manan Ahmed for the tips.
Manan's "Gandhi in Western Academy," Chapati Mystery, 23 October, draws on Vinay Lal's "The Gandhi Everyone Loves to Hate," Economic & Political Weekly, 4 October, to consider our limited engagement with the Mahatma.
Robert Draper, "The Making (and Remaking) of McCain," NYT, 26 October, is a report from the inside of the McCain presidential campaign – the kind that isn't supposed to appear until after it's all over, if at all.
Friday, October 24, 2008
20th Century Notes
Caitlin Moran, "Using Images to Teach History," CHE, 23 October, reports on a conference co-sponsored by NEH and the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom on the use of art in teaching history.
Timothy Noah, "McCain's Hero: More Socialist Than Obama!" Slate, 23 October, suggests that John McCain should re-read his Theodore Roosevelt.
William E. Leuchtenburg, "Bush Is No Hoover," TNR, 21 October, defends Hoover from the Bush analogy. Hat tip.
Laura Shapiro, "Emily Post's Secret," Slate, 22 October, reviews Laura Claridge's Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners.
Charles McGrath, "Shadows of Yaddo," NYT, 23 October, reviews "Yaddo: Making American Culture," an exhibit at the New York Public Library.
Nick Currie, "The Post-Materialist," The Moment, 23 October, reviews "Cold War Modern," an exhibit at London's Victoria and Albert Museum.
Laura Cumming, "Welcome to his dark side ...," Guardian, 28 September, and Julian Bell, "Lost in Rothko," TLS, 22 October, review "Rothko: The Late Series," an exhibit at the Tate Modern in London.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
More Noted Things
Christine Kenneally, "A Dolphin or a Lonely Transvestite?" Slate, 13 October, reviews Henry Hitchings' The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English and a clutch of this year's other books on our mother tongue.
Peter Schjeldahl, "Dutch Master," New Yorker, 27 October, reviews Edward Dolnick's The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century and Jonathan Lopez's The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han van Meegeren. Hat tip.
On the BBC, 18 October, Eric Hobsbawm argues that a free market has created the conditions of an enormous instability. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
David S. Tanenhaus, "Barack, Bill and Me," Slate, 10 October, explains how the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, legal historian and editor of the Law and History Review, met and worked with Chicago's controversial education professor, William Ayers. Subsequently, Tanenhaus appeared on "The O'Reilly Factor" to defend his association with Ayers:
Paul Berman, "Bill Ayers Fan Club," The Daily Beast, 15 October, has some hard words of reply to Ayers and his supporters. Berman concludes: "... if Obama loses, one of the reasons will be your moronic and dishonest refusal to draw a distinction between the democratic ideals of the left, and terrorist notions of totalitarian communism."
For the Chess- and Music-Lover in You
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Wednesday's Notes
Maureen Corrigan, "Too Few Books, Too Many Books," Washington Post, 19 October, reviews Fernando Báez's A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern Iraq and Larry McMurtry's Books: A Memoir.
Harold Bloom, "The Glories of Yiddish," NYRB, 6 November, reviews a new edition of Max Weinreich's History of the Yiddish Language.
Paul Richard, "India's ‘Garden' State," Washington Post, 13 October, reviews "Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur," an exhibit at Washington, DC's Sackler Gallery.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Things Noted Here and There
Military History Carnival XVIII is up at Chronologi Cogitationes. Relatedly, Erica Perez, "UW hopes to hire military historian," Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, 17 October, is the latest news about an extended search. Hat tip.
Hilary Mantel, "Prospects of a golden prince," Guardian, 18 October, reviews David Starkey's Henry: Virtuous Prince, on the youth of Henry VIII.
The Virginia Center for Digital History has launched "Virginia Emigrants to Liberia," a project that exploits the very rich American Colonization Society Papers at the Library of Congress to illuminate the experience of 3700 African Americans who left Virginia for Liberia between 1820 and 1865.
Angela Thirlwell, "The secret love of Ford Madox Brown," TLS, 8 October, is an essay on the occasion of "Ford Madox Brown: The Unofficial Pre-Raphaelite," an exhibit at Birmingham, England's Museums and Art Gallery.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Things Nearby
Ian Kershaw, "The Writing Life," Washington Post, 19 October, argues that "sometimes history just depends on that next cup of coffee."
Our colleague, Hugo Schwyzer's "‘Performative Ambiguity' and heterosexual privilege," Hugo Schwyzer, 10 October, reflects on being "a straight man teaching queer history."
Jill Lepore, "Bound for Glory," New Yorker, 20 October, is an essay about Andrew Jackson and the American campaign biography.
Jean Edward Smith, "Crisis Manager," NYT, 19 October, reviews James McPherson's Tried By War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief.
Randy Kennedy, "The Cuba Libre Clan," NYT, 17 October, reviews Tom Gjelten's Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause.
Claire Messud, "A Maid of One's Own," NYT, 17 October, reviews Alison Light's Mrs. Woolf and the Servant: An Intimate History of Domestic Life in Bloomsbury.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Things Remote
Indian History Carnival #10 is up at DesiPundit.
Paul Richard, "Day of Wrath," Washington Post, 19 October, reviews "Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture Around the Bay of Naples," an exhibit that opens today at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
Kwame Anthony Appiah, "How Muslims Made Europe," NYRB, 6 November, reviews David Levering Lewis's God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Modern Europe, 570–1215. Appiah takes seriously a book that has had rough treatment by earlier reviewers.
John Tagliabue, "Bringing a Trove of Medieval Manuscripts Online for the Ages," NYT, 18 October, reports on the project to digitize the manuscripts at the abbey library, or Stiftsbibliothek, at St. Gallen, Switzerland. It is part of a larger project to digitize all 7,000 of Switzerland's medieval manuscripts. You can already view 144 of St. Gallen's manuscripts here. Hat tip.
Kathryn Shevelow, "An Earlier European Union," Washington Post, 17 October, reviews Lisa Jardine's Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland's Glory.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Weak Endnotes
The history of science carnival, The Giant's Shoulders #4, is up at Second Order Approximation.
History Compass: Theory & Methods hosts a debate on "Is British History European?" The contributors are UManchester's Stefan Berger, UAlberta's Andrew Gow, UMass, Boston's Malcolm Smuts, and UArkansas, Little Rock's Laura Smoller.
In August, Steven L. Hoch, a Russian historian, left the University of Kentucky to take a tenured position at $300 K as Provost at Washington State University. Six weeks later, he had a fight with the Vice President for Business and Finance. Fired as Provost, he's taken a leave of absence, but will return as a tenured professor of history at $245 K. That great sucking sound you hear is the disappearance of the department's next five open lines for assistant professors. Hat tip.
Charles McGrath, "Two Generals, Still Maneuvering," NYT, 16 October, reviews "Grant and Lee in War and Peace," an exhibit that opened yesterday at the New York Historical Society in Manhattan.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Friday's Notes
Timothy Garton Ash, "The freedom of historical debate is under attack by the memory police," Guardian, 16 October, decries the legislation of memory. Ash joins Eric Hobsbawm, Jacques Le Goff, Heinrich August Winkler, and other European and Israeli historians in the "Appel de Blois," Le Monde, 10 October. Here is an English translation of the "Call of Blois." You can add your name to it by emailing: contact*at*lph-asso*dot*fr . Hat tip.
Richard A. Fortey, "A flood of fossils," TLS, 15 October, reviews Ralph O'Connor's The Show on Earth: Fossils and the poetics of popular science, 1802–1856 and Martin J. S. Rudwick's Worlds Before Adam: The reconstruction of geohistory in the age of reform.
Trev Broughton, "Yours rudely, Katherine Mansfield," TLS, 15 October, reviews Vincent O'Sullivan and Margaret Scott, eds., The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield. Volume Five: 1922-1923.
Matthew Sutton, "A Tale of Two Mavericks," The Immanent Frame, 16 October, suggests that, if you're having trouble absorbing John McCain and Sarah Palin, consider the possibility of Huey Long and Aimee Semple McPherson. Yah. That's the ticket! Hat tip.
Andrew Sullivan, "Why I Blog," Atlantic Monthly, November, puts his apologia for blogging in historical perspective.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Thursday's Notes
The nominees for the National Book Award for 2008 in Nonfiction are:
You can access Mary Beard's Sather Lectures at UC, Berkeley, here. Her theme is ancient Roman humor.
Patricia Fara, "Watchers of the Skies," Literary Review, October, reviews Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. Hat tip.
Elizabeth Kolbert, "Place Settings," New Yorker, 20 October, reviews Laura Claridge's Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners. [Emily Post was one formidable looking lady!]
David Hajdu, "Get Back," TNR, 22 October, reviews Philip Norman's John Lennon: The Life.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Quarreling Siblings
Robbie Brown, "Dr. King's Children Battling Over Book," NYT, 13 October, and Brian Feagans, "Auditor to help Kings catalog MLK love letters," AJC, 14 October, bring you up to date on the struggle between Dexter King, on the one hand, and his surviving siblings, Martin and Bernice, on the other, for control of the Martin Luther King estate. This is the third lawsuit that they have recently filed against each other.
The Martin Luther King Papers Project would have an interest in the papers that are being withheld by Bernice (a suitcase of letters, now scattered over a hundred boxes?). Coretta maintained that correspondence between her husband and herself was part of the Coretta Scott, not the Martin Luther, King Papers, but that didn't keep her from asking thousands of other people to share their privately owned documents with the MLK Papers Project. I would know, because I drafted those letters for her to sign. I have long believed that the editor of the King Papers, Clayborne Carson, ought to examine early federal grant applications that were signed by Coretta for her commitment to make all MLK-related documents available to the Project. The city of Atlanta, which recently paid $32 million for a major collection of the MLK Papers, ought also complain about what the family withheld from it, but it is unlikely that it will.
Wednesday's Notes
The Guardian, 10 October, has an extract from Alec Ryrie's The Sorcerer's Tale: Faith and Fraud in Tudor England.
John Guy reviews Glyn Redworth's The She-Apostle: The Extraordinary Life and Death of Luisa de Carvajal for the TLS, 12 October.
Betty Smartt Carter, "Serf, Diva, Countess," Books & Culture, September/October, reviews Douglas Smith's The Pearl: A True Tale of Forbidden Love in Catherine the Great's Russia.
Saul David reviews David Loyn's Butcher & Bolt, a 200 year history of foreign interventions in Afghanistan, for the Telegraph, 4 October.
Tim Stafford, "Created Equal," Books & Culture, September/ October, reviews Sally McMillen's Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women's Rights Movement.
National Public Radio's All Things Considered is running a five-part series on losing candidates in earlier American presidential campaigns. Part I is on Victoria Woodhull's campaign in 1872; Part II, on William Jennings Bryan's 1896 campaign, features Cliopatria's Michael Kazin. Today: Adlai Stevenson.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Things Old and New
Jack Stripling, "In Defense of Ayers," IHE, 14 October, looks at the response to attacks on the University of Illinois, Chicago's controversial education professor, William Ayres.
Nora Krug, "History and Chutzpah," Washington Post, 12 October, reviews E. H. Gombrich's A Little History of the World.
Germaine Greer, "Crucibles," NYT, 10 October, reviews John Demos's The Enemy Within: 2,000 Years of Witch-Hunting in the Western World.
Electronic Enlightenment, a University of Oxford project, is hosted by the Bodleian Library and distributed by Oxford University Press. It currently offers 53,000 letters by 6,000 European intellectuals in the long 18th century and will be periodically updated with new additions. You can explore Electronic Enlightenment with the username, presspass, and the password, autumn08.
Richard Hell, "I Is Another," NYT, 12 October, reviews Edmund White's Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel.
Jesse McKinley, "Promoting Offbeat History Between the Drinks," NYT, 13 October, introduces The Order of E Clampus Vitus.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Things Noted Here and There
Arthur Lubow, "Bernini's Genius," Smithsonian, October, features the remarkable baroque architecture and sculpture of Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
Jenny Uglow, "Brave New World," Guardian, 11 October, reviews Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science.
Jill Lepore, "Rock, Paper, Scissors," New Yorker, 13 October, is a fine essay on the American electoral system as a patchwork of adjustments:
That we grant our rulers the right to govern us is the genius of eighteenth-century republicanism. That we all can vote is a consequence of nineteenth-century politics. That we vote secretly is the Gilded Age's answer to universal manhood suffrage. How our votes are counted is, generally, a product of twentieth-century technology. ... It really is patches all the way down. In places—like the Electoral College—the patchwork gets pretty shoddy.
Still, a patch, even a patch upon a patch, isn't necessarily bad.
Richard Rayner, "The Truman Show," LA Times, 11 October, reviews Capote's Portraits and Observations -- The Essays of Truman Capote. Hat tip.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Friday's Notes
Peter Berkowitz, "Leviathan Then and Now," Policy Review, October/November, argues for the urgent relevance of Thomas Hobbes's classic.
Christopher Benfey, "Emily Dickinson's Secret Lover!" Slate, 9 October, draws attention to the findings of Carol Damon Andrews in this summer's New England Quarterly.
Nicholas Stargardt, "Hitler in the driving seat," TLS, 8 October, reviews Richard J. Evans's The Third Reich at War, 1939-1945.
Mark Brown, "Historian says Beatles were just capitalists, and not youth heroes," Guardian, 9 October, features Cambridge's David Fowler, whose Youth Culture in Modern Britain, c. 1920- c. 1970: From Ivory Tower to Global Movement, a new history* argues that the Beatles were mere creatures of consumer culture. Hat tip.
*Bit of a mouthful for a title, no?
William Leuchtenburg (emeritus, UNC, Chapel Hill), remembering the "Declaration of Conscience" against McCarthyism by Maine's Margaret Chase Smith and six colleagues, calls on Republicans of conscience for a public statement repudiating their party's vilification of Barack Obama; and Democrats of conscience for a similar statement repudiating their party's invoking the "Keating Five" against John McCain; and Diane McWhorter compares Sarah Palin to George Wallace for whipping up hatred in a political crowd.
The inclination of academic administrations to suppress free speech is widespread, but shallow. The latest to qualify their folly? U-Illinois, Champaign-Urbana and U-T, Austin.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Thursday's Notes
THE-QS Top Universities has released its list for 2008 of the top 100 universities in the world. No great surprises here, but for the first time Israel breaks into the top 100 rank with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Janet Maslin, "Alas, Poor Descartes: Meditations on a Well-Traveled Skull," NYT, 8 October, reviews Russell Shorto's Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason.
Stuart Jeffries, "Cross purposes," Guardian, 8 October, interviews Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, about why – in the midst of his struggle to hold the Anglican community together – he published a book on Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction.
Thomas Mallon, "Set in Stone," New Yorker, 13 October, reviews Looking for Lincoln: The Making of an American Icon by Philip B. Kunhardt III, Peter W. Kunhardt, and Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
20th Century Notes
David Carr's "Editor of Note, Perched Online," NYT, 7 October, introduces Tina Brown's new web journal, The Daily Beast.
Jennifer Howard, "New Ratings of Humanities Journals Do More Than Rank — They Rankle," CHE, 10 October, features a European effort to rate and rank academic journals and the rebellion against it by American historians of science, technology, and medicine.
Erica Westly, "No Nobel for You: Top 10 Nobel Snubs," Scientific America, 6 October, features prominent scientists, including several women, who were ignored by the Nobel Prize committees.
Donald A. Yerxa, "The Other World War II," Books & Culture, September/October, is a conversation with Max Hastings, the author of Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-1945. Genzo Yamamoto, "Divine Wind," ibid., reviews Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney's Kamikaze Diaries, Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers.
Sean O'Hagan, "Rock from a hard place," Guardian, 5 October, reviews Philip Norman's John Lennon: The Life.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Things Old and New
William Dalrymple, "The Egyptian Connection," NYRB, 23 October, reviews Michelle P. Brown's The Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality and the Scribe, Éamonn Ó Carragáin's Ritual and the Rood: Liturgical Images and the Old English Poems of the Dream of the Rood Tradition, and William J. Diebold's Word and Image: An Introduction to Early Medieval Art.
The new Common-Place is up! It's a carnival of early American political history, with an introduction by Jeff Pasley.
Stacy Schiff, "The Woman Who Never Stopped Talking," Slate, 6 October, reviews Francine du Plessix Gray's Madame de Stael: The First Modern Woman.
Cornelia Dean, "Audubon's Species: Bird Art, in All Its Glory," NYT, 6 October, reviews Darryl Wheye's and Donald Kennedy's Humans, Nature and Birds: Science Art From Cave Walls to Computer Screens, Jonathan Elphick's Birds: The Art of Ornithology, Audubon: Early Drawings, with an introductory essay by Richard Rhodes, and Rosamond Purcell's, Linnea S. Hall's and René Corado's Egg and Nest.
Freeman Dyson, "Struggle for the Islands," NYRB, 23 October, reviews Paul D. Stewart and others, Galápagos: The Islands That Changed the World.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Recommended Political You Tubes
Scott Kleeb, the Democrats' nominee for the Senate from Nebraska, is probably the most important historian/candidate this year. He's a decided underdog in this race, but Kleeb's rising in the polls and his message is a powerful one:
On a different note, for swing voters, here's your chance:
Where's Tera Hunter? I need a dance partner!
Thanks to Ahistoricality for the tip.
And, on yet another note, Oh Brother, Here art thou!
That one's running on radio in southwest Virginia. The Obama campaign ought to cover eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, West Virginia, and western North Carolina with it.
Modern History Notes
Eric Foner, "The Master and the Mistress," NYT, 3 October, reviews Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.
Barbara Ehrenreich, "The Communist Manifesto Turns 160," The Nation, 1 October, celebrates an anniversary.
Ron Cowen, "The First Sound Bites," Science News, 26 September, argues that the "political sound bite" was born in the presidential campaign of 1908, when candidates recorded brief messages for phonographs. The piece is illustrated with fine political cartoons of the period and accompanied by early sound bites.
Owen Hatherley, "Dreams of Leaving," New Statesman, 25 September, reviews Alastair Gordon's Naked Airport: A Cultural History of the World's Most Revolutionary Structure and Mark B Salter, ed., Politics at the Airport. Hat tip.
"Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes Trial Photographs," is a selection of photographs from the trial, now deposited at the Smithsonian Institution. They, and others, are published for the first time in Marcel C. LaFollette's Reframing Scopes: Journalists, Scientists, and Lost Photographs from the Trial of the Century.
Patrick Cockburn, "Man in the Middle," NYT, 3 October, reviews Nigel Ashton's King Hussein of Jordan: A Political Life and Avi Schlaim's Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Weak Endnotes
Charlotte Higgins, "Stoics, cynics and the meaning of life," Guardian, 1 October, reported, in part, that "JK [Rowling] studied classics and French at Exeter University and is rumoured to have based Dumbledore on the splendidly bearded Peter Wiseman, Exeter's classics professor emeritus." Two days later, in "Dumbledore's Beard," Wiseman replied: "If only! I'm afraid the rumour is no more than a journalist's invention. My beard makes no pretensions to splendour - and it was black (Snape's colouring, not Dumbledore's) when JKR was a student at Exeter in 1983-85." "I am not Dumbledore," BBC News, 3 October, has more, including a photograph of Wiseman and his splendid beard. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
Norman Stone, "1077 and all that," Guardian, 4 October, reviews Tom Holland's Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom.
Martin Levin, "The genius of Gershwin and co," TLS, 3 October, reviews Wilfrid Sheed's The House That George Built, With a little help from Irving, Cole, and a crew of about fifty.
Richard Eder, "Yours Sincerely: A Poet on Fish, Bulls and Love," NYT, 2 October, reviews Christopher Reid, ed., Letters of Ted Hughes.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Friday's Notes
Art History Carnival #4 is up at The Earthly Paradise. Asian History Carnival #21, Part II is up at Tang Dynasty Times.
The universities of Michigan's and Sheffield's Worldmapper has nearly 600 world maps or cartograms. On them, each country is scaled in size by "their demographic importance on a vast range of subjects ..., from population, health, wealth and occupation to how many toys we import and who's eating their vegetables." Here, for instance, is the world by population in the year "1 AD Gregorian calendar, 3761 Hebrew calendar, 7.17.18.13.3 Mayan calendar, 544 Buddhist calendar." Daniel Dorling, Mark Newman and Anna Barford, The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the way we live reproduces 366 of the maps between hard covers.
The Gallup Poll puts presidential election polling in historical perspective with its graphic of polling results in the run-up to November elections from 1936 to 2004. Hat tip.
Joseph E. Stiglitz, "Reversal of Fortune," Vanity Fair, November, foresees a grim economic prospect for the United States. His lede:
When the American economy enters a downturn, you often hear the experts debating whether it is likely to be V-shaped (short and sharp) or U-shaped (longer but milder). Today, the American economy may be entering a downturn that is best described as L-shaped. It is in a very low place indeed, and likely to remain there for some time to come.Virtually all the indicators look grim. Inflation is running at an annual rate of nearly 6 percent, its highest level in 17 years. Unemployment stands at 6 percent; there has been no net job growth in the private sector for almost a year. Housing prices have fallen faster than at any time in memory—in Florida and California, by 30 percent or more. Banks are reporting record losses, only months after their executives walked off with record bonuses as their reward. President Bush inherited a $128 billion budget surplus from Bill Clinton; this year the federal government announced the second-largest budget deficit ever reported. During the eight years of the Bush administration, the national debt has increased by more than 65 percent, to nearly $10 trillion (to which the debts of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae should now be added, according to the Congressional Budget Office). Meanwhile, we are saddled with the cost of two wars. The price tag for the one in Iraq alone will, by my estimate, ultimately exceed $3 trillion.
Finally, yet once again, the Ig Nobel Prize committee has Ig Nored history. Only once in the Ig Nobel Awards' 18 years has it recognized a historian. In 2005, James Watson of Massey University in New Zealand won a prize for his study, "The Significance of Mr. Richard Buckley's Exploding Trousers." There's a lot of Im Probable research in history that's going Un Recognized!
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Thursday's Notes
Carnival! History Carnival LXIX is up at American Presidents Blog.
Exhibits: "Byzantium, 330 - 1453," an exhibit of 300 stunning works of art, some of which have not been previously exhibited, will open on 25 October at London's Royal Academy of Arts.
Eastern Science: John Keay, "What the West makes of Chinese science," TLS, 1 October, reviews Simon Winchester's Bomb, Book and Compass: Joseph Needham and the great secrets of China and Donald B. Wagner's Science and Civilization in China. Volume Five: Chemistry and Chemical Technology Part Eleven: Ferrous Metallurgy.
Hard Times:
Historical Google: Finally, in honor of its 10th anniversary, you can do a Google search as of January 2001. Cliopatria existed only in James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. Hat tip.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Wednesday's Notes
Happy Eid al-Fitr and happy Rosh Hashanah to all of Cliopatria's readers!
For the American Library Association's Banned Books Week, the Guardian offers its quiz about which books the censors feared you would read.
Congratulations to the University of Washington's Stephanie Smallwood, whose Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora has won the Frederick Douglass Prize for 2008. It is awarded by Yale's Gilder Lehrman Center, sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Anthony E. Kaye's Joining Places: Slave Neighborhoods in the Old South, Kristin Mann's Slavery and the Birth of an African City: Lagos, 1760-1900, and Chandra Manning's What this Cruel War was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War were other finalists for the prize.
Jonathan Bate reviews Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science for the Telegraph, 26 September.
From Hans Ohanian's Einstein's Mistakes: The Human Failings of Genius, Discover identifies the 23 biggest ones. Andrew Robinson's review of the book for New Scientist points out that Ohanian made some mistakes of his own.
Mark Greif, "The Corrupter of Youth," TAP, 19 September, reviews Neil Gross's Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher.
Finally, yet another casualty to the financial markets: farewell to the New York Sun. Whatever you may have thought about its politics, week in and week out the Sun was among the very best places in the American press for excellent coverage of the arts and literature. I will miss it.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
More Noted Things
Carnivalesque XLIII, an ancient/medieval edition of the festival, is up at Archaeoporn! History Carnival LXXIX goes up on Wednesday 1 October at American Presidents Blog. Send nominations of the best in history blogging since 1 September to coppertop67*at*hotmail*dot*com or use the form.
Adam Gopnik, "Right again: The Passions of John Stuart Mill," New Yorker, 6 October, reviews Richard Reeves's John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand.
At Religion in American History, Paul Harvey says Thomas Sugrue's Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North may be "the most important work of American history published this year." We'll hear more about it in November.
Janet Maslin, "The Richest Man and How He Grew (and Grew His Company, Too)," NYT, 28 September, reviews Alice Schroeder's The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life.
Jane Mayer, the author of The Dark Side: The Inside Story Of How The War On Terror Turned Into A War On American Ideals, joins Christopher Hitchens, Spencer Ackerman, and others at Talking Points Café to discuss her book.
Simon Jenkins reviews Simon Schama's The American Future: A History for the TLS, 28 September.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Things Noted Here and There
Tim Burke's "Planning for Contraction," IHE, 29 September, looks at the economic prospect for American institutions of higher education.
Jonathan Gottschall, "Hidden histories," Boston Globe, 28 September, argues that The Odyssey and The Iliad are still teaching us new things about the ancient world. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
Goeffrey Wheatcroft, "'Munich' Shouldn't Be Such a Dirty Word," Washington Post, 28 September, sketches an argument for Munich revisionism. See also: Brett Holman, "The Sudeten Crisis," Airminded, 29 August-28 September.
Dave Lester has created an American Studies Tagline as "a visual historiography of an evolving discipline" from 1957 to 1996. Dragging the slider yields shifting word clouds from canonical texts in the field. Hat tip.
Peter Hitchens, "China's new slave empire," Daily Mail, 28 September, reports on China's new interests in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Robert J. Shiller, "Everybody Calm Down. A Government Hand In the Economy Is as Old as the Republic.," Washington Post, 28 September, is a smart reminder that, whether the Wall Street bailout is good legislation or not, it is consistent with precedent in American economic history.
Finally, farewell to the distinguished historian, William Woodruff.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Sunday's Notes
History Carnival LXIX goes up at American Presidents Blog on Wednesday 1 October. Send nominations of the best in history blogging since 1 September to Jennie Weber at coppertop67*at*hotmail*dot*com or use the form. If you'd be interested in hosting November's History Carnival, contact sharon*at*earlymodernweb*dot*org*dot*uk.
Three men are being held under suspicion of responsibility for setting a fire early on Saturday in the London offices of Gibson Square. It is the publisher of The Jewel of Medina, Sherry Jones's fictional account of the Prophet Mohammed and Aisha, his child bride. Earlier this year, Random House canceled plans to publish the novel in the United States.
Bruce Barcott, "On Top of the World," NYT, 26 September, reviews Maurice Isserman's and Stewart Weaver's Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering From the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes.
David S. Reynolds, "Sons of the South," NYT, 26 September, reviews Philip Dray's Capitol Men: The Epic Story of Reconstruction Through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen.
Johann Hari, "A Marriage of Convenience," NYT, 26 September, reviews David Fromkin's The King and the Cowboy: Theodore Roosevelt and Edward the Seventh, Secret Partners.
Wendy Smith, "New Books Take a Look at the Man Who Forged Vermeer 'Masterpieces'," Chicago Tribune, 3 September, reviews Edward Dolnick's The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century and Jonathan Lopez's The Man Who Made Vermeers. Hat tip.
Jill Abramson, "The Final Days," NYT, 26 September, reviews Bob Woodward's The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006–2008.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Weak Endnotes
"50 greatest villains in literature," Telegraph, 20 September, reports a panel of judges' topmost "foul fiends in literature," excluding children's and comic books.
Charles McGrath, "Milton Regained: A Helluva Party," NYT, 25 September, previews the Grand Paradise Lost Costume Ball at New York's Williamsburg Art and Historical Center in honor of the 400th anniversary of John Milton's birth.
For a PBS documentary on Alexander Hamilton, who was a leading 18th century political journalist and publisher, there's a call out for bloggers who will be covering 1) the candidates' debate on October 7, 2) the candidates' debate October 15, or 3) election night. If you're willing to be video taped and interviewed for the PBS documentary while blogging those events, contact shennessey*at*manifoldproductions*dot*com.
Stephen Budiansky, "Slogging Through Georgia," Washington Post, 25 September, reviews Noah Andre Trudeau's Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Children of History; Children of Hitler
Kate Connolly, "Terrorist chic or debunking of a myth? Baader Meinhof film splits Germany," Guardian, 25 September, reviews Der Baader Meinhof Komplex, which will be Germany's entry in next year's Oscar competition for Best Foreign Language Film. Andreas Baader was the secondary-school-dropout son of a talented German historian who disappeared on the eastern front in 1945. Ulrike Meinhof was the daughter of an art historian father, who died early in her life, and was heavily influence by another historian, Renate Reimeck, who became her guardian when Meinhof's mother subsequently died. It's been thirty years since the most important studies in English of the Baader Meinhof Gang appeared: Jillian Becker's Hitler's Children (1978; republished 1998), Hans Josef Horchem's West Germany's Red Army Anarchists (1974), and Walter Laqueur's Terrorism: A Study of National and International Political Violence (1977) and his The Terrorism Reader: A Historical Anthology (1977). There are claims that Becker's book is unreliable. There's clearly an important story to be told here; and a first-rate young historian ought to revisit it.
Friday's Notes
Margaret Atwood, "Debtors Prism," WSJ, 20 September, looks at the historical significance of debt. Hat tip.
Graham Robb, "The mountains of Les Miserables," TLS, 24 September, reviews Julie Rose's new translation of Victor Hugo's massive classic.
Christopher Clark, "A Habsburg loser and the New Europe," TLS, 24 September, reviews Timothy Snyder's The Red Prince: The fall of a dynasty and the rise of modern Europe.
Roy Foster, "Roger Casement versus the British Empire," TLS, 24 September, reviews Séamas Ó Síocháin's Roger Casement: Imperialist, rebel, revolutionary.
Scott McLemee, "Darkness Becomes Him," The Nation, 23 September, reviews Bernard-Henri Lévy's Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism; and McLemee, "The Anti-Intellectual Presidency," IHE, 24 September, reviews Elvin Lim's The Anti-Intellectual Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W. Bush.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Israeli Historian Injured by Pipebomb
Zeev Sternhell, an Israeli political scientist and one of the world's leading historians of fascism, was slightly wounded by a pipe bomb at the door to his house earlier today in Jerusalem. Police suspect that he was targeted for his outspoken criticism of West Bank settlements. Here are reports in the Independent and the LA Times. Isabel Kershner's "Radical Settlers Take on Israel," NYT, 25 September, puts the story in a broader context. Hat tip.
Books and Conflict
Victor Davis Hanson, "Why We Fight," NY Sun, 24 September, reviews Martin van Creveld's The Culture of War.
Eric Ormsby, "Book-Burning and Other Bibliocausts," NY Sun, 24 September, reviews Fernando Báez's A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern Iraq.
Steven Nadler, "The Great Rambam," NY Sun, 24 September, reviews Joel Kramer's Maimonides.
Adam Kirsch, "A Peculiar Association," NY Sun, 24 September, reviews Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello.
Barry Gewen, "Cuba Libre: Rum, Revolution and a Family Tale," NYT, 23 September, reviews Tom Gjelten's Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Wednesday's Notes
xtimeline is a potentially useful site for creating and archiving chronologies.
Andrew Marr, "History is Finally Sexy," Intelligent Life, Autumn, argues that there's a new intellectual vitality in historical narrative. Hat tip.
Ellen Meiksins Wood, "Why It Matters," LRB, 25 September, reviews Quentin Skinner's Hobbes and Republican Liberty.
Annette Gordon-Reed, "Sally Hemings in Paris," The Root, 23 September, is excerpted from Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello. Gordon-Reed will be here for an online discussion of the book at 12:00 EST today.
Brenda Maddox, "Books Maketh the Man," Literary Review, September, reviews Thomas Wright's Oscar's Books on Wilde's library.
George F. Will, "McCain Loses His Head," Washington Post, 23 September, questions whether John McCain has the temperament to be President of the United States. Lawrence Lessig compares Sarah Palin's experience with that of all previous Vice Presidents.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
More Noted Things
Patricia Cohen, "Conservatives Try New Tack on Campuses," NYT, 21 September, looks at some conservative initiatives at places as different as Hamilton College and the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.
Paul Harvey, "Liberation and Oppression, All Tangled Up," Books & Culture, September/October, reviews Mark Noll's God and Race in American Politics: A Short History.
Victorino Matus, "Burger Triumphant: Or, requiem for the hot dog," Weekly Standard, 29 September, reviews Josh Ozersky's The Hamburger: A History.
D. D. Guttenplan, "An Inky, Well-Paneled Place," The Nation, 29 September, reviews David Hajdu's The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America and Douglas Wolk's Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean. Hat tip.
Louis Menand, "Regrets Only," New Yorker, 29 September, reviews Lionel Trilling's The Liberal Imagination and Trilling's and Geraldine Murphy's The Journey Abandoned: The Unfinished Novel.
Congratulations, below the fold, to historians as new MacArthur Fellows and Dartmouth's Best Teachers ...
Monday, September 22, 2008
Things Noted Here and There
Tom Holland, "Passing the dormouse test," Guardian, 20 September, reviews Mary Beard's Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town.
The LA Daily News profiles Jay Rubenstein, the University of Tennessee's MacArthur Prize-winning medievalist. Hat tip.
Ronan Bennett, "Brute Force," Guardian, 20 September, reviews Micheál Ó Siochrú's God's Executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the Conquest of Ireland.
Ian Pindar reviews Paul Anderson, ed., Orwell in Tribune: 'As I Please' and Other Writings 1943-7 for the Guardian, 20 September.
In the NYT Magazine's "College Issue," Jonathan Mahler's "The Thinker" features the chairman of Auburn University's philosophy department, Kelly Jolley. The article sparks a lively discussion at Neddy Merrill's "Spelunking," Edge of the American West, 21 September.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Sunday's Notes
In response to a lawsuit by the AHA, the OAH, the Society of American Archivists, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Stanley Kutler and Martin Sherwin, Federal District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has issued a preliminary injunction to Vice President Cheney, his office, the National Archives, and the Archivist of the United States to preserve records from Cheney's time in office.
Caroline Weber, "Hello, Gorgeous," NYT, 19 September, reviews Stephen Gundle's Glamour: A History.
Patricia Cohen, "Seeing Past the Slave to Study the Person," NYT, 19 September, reviews Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.
James J. Sheehan, "Lebensraum," NYT, 19 September, reviews Mark Mazower's Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe.
Christina Hoff Sommers reconsiders Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, NY Sun, 17 September.
Christopher Hitchens, "Bons Mots and Bêtes Noires," NYT, 19 September, reviews Bernard-Henri Lévy's Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Weak Endnotes
Vasso Lindi polls the classicists on the question: "Why is laughter almost non-existent in ancient Greek sculpture?" Eurozine, 18 September.
Michael Dirda, "Love's Possibilities and Impossibilities," Washington Post, 21 September, reviews Jed Perl's Antoine's Alphabet: Watteau and His World.
Jabari Asim, "The Right Men at the Right Time," Washington Post, 21 September, reviews Philip Dray's Capitol Men: The Epic Story of Reconstruction Through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen.
H. W. Brands, "Westward Bound," Washington Post, 21 September, reviews David Roberts's Devil's Gate: Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy and Massacre at Mountain Meadows by Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr., and Glen M. Leonard.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Modern History Notes
Indian History Carnival #9 is up at varnam.
Paul Basken, "College Students Show Poor Knowledge of History, Civics," CHE, 18 September, brings another report of our students' underperformance on a test of historical knowledge.
Edmund S. Morgan and Marie Morgan, "Jefferson's Concubine," NYRB, 9 October, reviews Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.
David Martin, "Have Pentecostalism, will travel," TLS, 17 September, reviews Randall J. Stephens's The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South, Michael Burgunder's The South Indian Pentecostal Movement in the Twentieth Century, Asonzeh Ukah's A New Paradigm of Pentecostal Power: A study of the Redeemed Christian Church of God in Nigeria, and Ogbu Kalu's African Pentecostalism: An Introduction. Stephens is featured as HNN's Top Young Historian of the Week and blogs at Religion in American History.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
The Vapid and the Despotic
Nicole Galland's new novel, Crossed: A Tale of the Fourth Crusade, may set your teeth on edge and turn your knuckles white. Ms. Galland's superficial presentism ill-serves both the past and the present:
Fortunately, those who remember the past are not condemned to read it. Hat tip to Manan Ahmed.
Leon Aron, "The Problematic Pages," TNR, 24 September, looks at the teaching of history in Putin's Russia. Pavel Danilin, the author of a chapter in a new, official text, writes:
You may ooze bile but you will teach the children by those books that you will be given and in the way that is needed by Russia. And as to the noble nonsense that you carry in your misshapen goateed heads, either it will be ventilated out of them or you yourself will be ventilated out of teaching .... It is impossible to let some Russophobe shit-stinker [govnyuk], or just any amoral type, teach Russian history. It is necessary to clear the filth, and if it does not work, then clear it by force.
Now, there's a regimen that's really politically correct. Hat tip to Kevin Drum.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Wednesday's Notes
Mary Beard is at UC, Berkeley, this semester to give its Sather Lectures, but she flew back to England for the release of her new book, Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town. In "10 things you need to know about Pompeii," A Don's Life, 16 September, she beards some hoary myths about the ancient city.
Todd M. Endelman, "The Making of Benjamin Disraeli," NY Sun, 17 September, reviews Adam Kirsch's Benjamin Disraeli.
Adam Gopnik, "Freeing the Elephants," New Yorker, 22 September, previews "Drawing Babar: Early Drafts and Watercolors," an exhibit at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City.
Adam Kirsch, "Against Oblivion," NY Sun, 17 September, reviews The Terezin Album of Marianka Zadikow.
Michiko Kakutani, "How First Mate Shifted the Ship of State's Course," NYT, 15 September, reviews Barton Gellman's Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency.
Finally, Scott McLemee's "D.F.W., R.I.P.," IHE, 17 September, remembers David Foster Wallace. See also: Caleb Crain's "Approaching infinity," Boston Globe, 26 October 2003; and Crain, "‘The great postmodern uncertainty that we live in'," Steamboats Are Ruining Everything, 14 September. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Modern History Notes
Brian Doyle's "No," Kenyon Review, Spring, finds amusement in rejection letters. Tell me you never received one. Were you amused?
The Giant's Shoulders #3, the history of science carnival, is up at Entertaining Research.
Jill Lepore, "President Tom's Cabin," New Yorker, 22 September, reviews Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.
Richard Marggraf Turley, "Second Only to Byron," TLS, 3 September, explains "how Keats's most popular rival rescued him from the critics."
Gillian Sutherland, "The Nursing of Nightingale," TLS, 12 September, reviews Mark Bostridge's Florence Nightingale: The woman and her legend.
At Airminded, Brett Holman has been blogging the Sudeten Crisis of August-October 1938, day by day. He introduces the series here and it is indexed here.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Things Noted Here and There
"The Promise of Digital History," JAH, September, is an extended conversation among George Mason University's Dan Cohen, SUNY, Buffalo's Michael Frisch, Patrick Gallagher of Gallagher & Associates, a design firm, Columbia University's Steven Mintz, Indiana University's Kirsten Sword, SUNY, Albany's Amy Murrell Taylor, Nebraska's William G. Thomas, III, and our colleague, William Turkel, of Western Ontario.
Mark Agrast, "Congress Must Act to Preserve Presidential Records for Future Generations," CAP Action Fund, reports the urgent appeal of leading American historians for congressional action to preserve the records of the Bush administration.
Fran Wood, "Football U. is letting its plant wilt," Newark Star-Ledger, 14 September, is the most recent report on Richard L. McCormick's stewardship as president of Rutgers. He's an able historian and should have been retired to the department years ago. Hat tip.
Sarah 'n Hillary
See also the University of Chicago's Wendy Doniger, who claims that Sarah Palin's "greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman." Hat tip to Claire Potter and Jonah Goldberg (how often will you see them thanked in the same breath?).
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Sunday's Notes
Military History Carnival #17 is up at Military History and Warfare. The Giant's Shoulders #3, the History of Science festival, goes up at Entertaining Research on Monday 15 September. Use the form to nominate the best in History of Science blogging since 15 August. Carnivalesque XVII, an ancient/medieval edition of the festival, goes up at Archaeoporn on Sunday 21 September. Use the nomination form or the host's contact form to nominate the best in ancient/medieval history blogging since 23 July.
Peter Parker reviews Giles Tillotson's Taj Mahal for the Telegraph, 13 September.
Fergus M. Bordewich, "American Roots," Washington Post, 14 September, reviews Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Story.
Margot Canaday, "We Colonials," Nation, 23 September, reviews William N. Eskridge, Jr.'s Dishonorable Passions: Sodomy Laws in America, 1861-2003.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Weak Endnotes
Eric Hanson, "Innocence and Experience," Atlantic, October, finds that every age has its landmarks. Many are signposts of our folly.
Matthew Price, "It's just war," The National, 11 September, reviews Gary J. Bass's Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention.
Machado 21: A Centennial Celebration is New York City's remembrance this coming week of the Brazilian novelist, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis.
François de Rose, "Meetings that changed the world: Paris 1951: The birth of CERN," Nature, 11 September, looks back at the meeting that launched the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire and reshaped the direction of research in nuclear physics. This article begins Nature's series on "meetings that changed the world."
Adrian Searle, "Painted screams," Guardian, 9 September, previews "Francis Bacon," a retrospective exhibit of work of 20th century Britain's most prominent artist which is opening at the Tate Britain in London.
Finally, adios to Cliopatria's friend, Ambrose Hofstader Bierce, III.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Modern History Notes
Sharon Howard and Gavin Robinson are looking for hosts for Carnivalesque, History Carnival, and the Military History Carnival in the coming months.
Marcus Rediker, "dark page in our history," American Scholar, Summer, is Rediker's lecture at Mt. Vernon, where he received the George Washington Book Prize for his The Slave Ship: A Human History.
Noel Malcolm reviews Alexander Waugh's The House of Wittgenstein for the Telegraph, 7 September.
Sean O'Brien, "Auden not our contemporary," TLS, 10 September, reviews Edward Mendelson, ed., The Complete Works of W. H. Auden: Prose Volume III, 1949-1955.
Adam Kirsch, "The God That Failed," NY Sun, 10 September, reviews Bernard-Henri Lévy's Left in Dark Times.
Niall Ferguson, "The End of 'Chimerica'," Standpoint, September, re-assesses the relationship of China and the United States.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Andrew Bacevich on 9/11 Plus 7
See also: Bacevich, "Worshipping the Indispensable Nation," TomDispatch.com, 9 September.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
More Noted Things
William Amelia, "Machiavelli's Daring 'Gift'," WSJ, 30 August, and Claudia Roth Pierpont, "The Florentine," New Yorker, 15 September, review Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince and Peter Constantine, ed., The Essential Writings of Machiavelli.
Scott McLemee, "Prospero's Island?" IHE, 10 September, reconsiders the location of William Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Allen C. Guelzo, "Whiggish History," Books & Culture, September/October, reviews Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848.
David Darlington's "Ghosts of Elections Past," AHA Today, 3 September, recently introduced us to the University of Richmond's remarkable site: Voting America: United States Politics, 1840-2008. Sterling Fluharty's "Voting America Web Site," PhDinHistory, 3 September, checks a sample of its data against the record and finds some problems. They could be known as Ed Ayerors.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Ambrose H. Bierce, III, Pseudonymity and A Tale of Three Bloggers
Some things just need to be said. Take, for example, the fact that a well-known historian, Richard L. "Dick" McCormick, is the president of Rutgers and that he's presiding over a gross distortion of its academic purpose. The distortion is symbolized in the companion fact that its football coach, Greg Schiano, now rakes in New Jersey's largest public salary. That's on top of the interest-free $800,000 loan on his house, the gift of an SUV, the free use of a helicopter and a jet, etc. I can count on Margaret Soltan to tell me those things, but she's been too gracious to hold President/historian "Dick" McCormick directly responsible for them and you'd never learn them from his bio at Wikipedia, which is a piece of public relations if ever there was one.
Not everything that needs to be said is directed at individuals. There are privileged classes of academics who are improved by periodic criticism. Several years ago, for example, I admitted that one of my occasional callings was "to tweak a Yalie's nose." Do they need it? Not all of them. Not always. Occasionally. Some Yalie noses need tweaking when they look down on the rest of us laboring in less pretentious and privileged academic vineyards and make supercilious judgments from on high.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Things Noted Here and There
Jeffrey Burton Russell, "Bad to the Bone," Wilson Quarterly, Summer, reviews Alan Jacobs's Original Sin: A Cultural History.
Dahlia Lithwick, "I Now Pronounce You Totally Confused," NYT, 5 September, reviews Susan Squires's I Don't: A Contrarian History of Marriage.
Joshua Muravchik, "Help is on the Way," WSJ, 21 August, and Robert D. Kaplan, "Feeling Flush and Doing Good," Washington Post, 7 September, review Gary J. Bass's Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention. Hat tip.
In a symposium on "The Gay Movement and the Left," with contributions by Bettina Aptheker, John D'Emilio, Martin Duberman, and others, Christopher Phelps, "On Socialism and Sex: An Introduction," New Politics, Summer, features a little known story in mid-20th century American sexual politics.
Michael Meyer, "Chinese Characters," NYT, 5 September, reviews Liao Yiwu's oral histories, The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories, China From the Bottom Up, translated and with an introduction by Wen Huang.
Mills Kelly, "Making the History of 1989," edwired, 27 August, introduces the Center for History and New Media's most recent project, Making the History of 1989: The Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe.
Current American politics under the fold ...
Sunday, September 7, 2008
20th & 21st Century Notes
Michael Kimmelman, "The ‘Mash of Myriad Sounds'," NYRB, 25 September, reviews Alex Ross's The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century.
Alexander Waugh, "The Wittgensteins: Viennese whirl," Telegraph, 30 August, is excerpted from Waugh's The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War. Hat tip.
Hugh Barnes, "Unnatural Selection," Moscow Times, 5 September, reviews Peter Pringle's The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov: The Story of Stalin's Persecution of One of the Great Scientists of the Twentieth Century.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Weak Endnotes
Caleb Crain, "English, the Omnivorous Tongue," NY Sun, 4 September, reviews Henry Hitchings's The Secret Life of Words. Blogging at Steamboats Are Ruining Everything, Crain won last year's Cliopatria Award for Best Writer.
Nicolas Rapold, "This Old House," NY Sun, 5 September. When film critic Godfrey Cheshire hears that his family's ancestral plantation home in North Carolina is to be moved, he decides to make a documentary film, "Moving Midway," about it. In making the film, he meets his African American cousins, including NYU's Robert Hinton.
Joyce Carol Oates, "The Woman in White," NYRB, 25 September, reviews Christopher Benfey's A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade and Brenda Wineapple's White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Friday's Notes
Marianna Torgovnick, "File Under Fleeting," CHE, 5 September, is a meditation on our time as the age of the archive. We are the archive and our time is passing. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
Christopher Miles, "Baroque Then and Now," LA Times, 4 September, reviews "Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture," an exhibit at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.
Biancamaria Fontana, "Enlightenment geniuses together," TLS, 3 September, reviews Renée Winegarten's Germaine de Stael and Benjamin Constant: A Dual Biography and Angelica Goodden's Madam de Stael: The Dangerous Exile.
Burhan Wazir, "The enigma of arrival," The National, 29 August, reviews Ziauddin Sardar's Balti Britain: A Journey Through the British Asian Experience.
Sam Tanenhaus, "The Movement's Remains," TNR, 10 September, reviews Thomas Frank's The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule and Rick Perlstein's Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America.
Finally, of which historian was this most recently said? "It is clear that as a pundit [______] possesses a rather less subtle and sophisticated mind than he does as historian." A) Victor Davis Hanson or B) Sean Wilentz ?
Thursday, September 4, 2008
More Noted Things
Art History Carnival #3 is up at The Earthly Paradise.
Andy Guess, "The Little Engine That Can," IHE, 4 September, features the History Engine's "tools for collaborative education & research," an Ed Ayres project, newly relocated to a University of Richmond site.
Jonathan Mirsky, "Animals Before the Fall," Literary Review, September, reviews Philip Hoare's Leviathan, or The Whale.
Lisa Foderaro, "Historic Fort Sustains a Breach," NYT, 3 September, discusses the financial distress of historic Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York; Edward Rothstein, "Away Down South, 2 Museums Grapple With the Civil War Story," NYT, 2 September, looks at changes at Richmond, Virginia's American Civil War Center and Museum of the Confederacy; and Philip Kennicott, "Character Study," Washington Post, 31 August, features Edith Wharton's The Mount, now a house museum in the Berkshires, facing serious financial challenges.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Academic and Political Snark
In Christopher Shea, "An academic gossip makes his (or her?) debut," Brainiac, 27 August, and Shea, "Princeton pushes back against Ambrose Bierce," ibid., 29 August, Shea scoops the Louella Parsons of the history blogosphere and Princeton's Jeremy Adelman gives her an F. In Ambrose Hofstadter Bierce, III, "Scoop and Spin at Princeton," The Broad-Gauge Gossip, 2 September, Professor Bierce replies with a well-earned A for Shea and a C+ for Adelman.
For the opening of the new academic year, Radar, September, offers up its "annual semiscientific guide to the worst colleges in America."* The winners and runners-up by category are:
Worst College in America
Most Degenerate Student Body
Most Superficial
Ugliest Campus
Biggest Rip-Off
Most Dubious Degree
Most Intolerant
Most Stoned Student Body
Most Overrated
Most Closeted
Most Insufferable
Most Ironically Named Christian College
Most Radio Active
*This offering is a revision of Helen Pfeffer's and Harold Goldberg's "Bad Education," Radar, 20 September 2006.
Richard Byrne, "Dispute Widens Between Southern Illinois U.-Carbondale and Ulysses S. Grant Association," CHE, 2 September, and Sean McGahan, "Association sues university, makes accusations of forgery," Daily Egyptian, 2 September, report a legal dispute in which the USGA charges the University with forgery after the university's firing of John Y. Simon, a history professor and longtime editor of the Grant Papers, in response to sexual harassment allegations against him.
And, so long as we're doing gossip here, unless I'm mistaken, William Saletan's "Miss Conceptions," Slate, 2 September, misses the best bet: Theodore Roosevelt's daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth. Her own daughter, Paulina, was almost certainly the child – not of her husband Nicholas Longworth, the Speaker of the House – but of Senator William Borah. It was Alice, after all, who had said: "If you can't say something good about someone, sit right here by me!"
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Things Noted Here and There
Alastair Harper, "A popular history of history," Guardian, 23 August, sees warning signals in popular history's "self-satisfied nostalgia-fests."
In "indulgence & sin," our colleague, Rachel Leow, google-maps her way through Marco Polo's Travels.
Kathryn Hughes, "Six Johns and a Jock," Guardian, 30 August, reviews Humphrey Carpenter's The Seven Lives of John Murray and Jeremy Lewis's Grub Street Irregular.
Piers Brendon, "The open veins of Italy," Guardian, 30 August, reviews Mark Thompson's The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1918.
Clive James, "The exiles who wowed America," TLS, 27 August, reviews Joseph Horowitz's Artists in Exile: How refugees from twentieth-century war and revolution transformed the American performing arts.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Labor Day Notes
History Carnival LXVIII is up at Osprey Publishing Blog. Ted Vallance has posted a one-time-only carnival marking the 350th anniversary of the death of Oliver Cromwell.
Martha C. Nussbaum, "The First Founder," TNR, 10 September, reviews James Calvin Davis's On Religious Liberty: Selections From the Works of Roger Williams.
William H. Pritchard, "Bishop's Time," Hudson Review, Summer, reviews Robert Giroux's and Lloyd Schwartz's Elizabeth Bishop: Prose, Poems, and Letters.
Robert Hughes, "Horrible!" Guardian, 30 August, previews "Francis Bacon," an exhibit soon to open at the Tate Gallery in London.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Sunday's Notes
The Washington Post's Book World previews the fall's offerings, including new works by H. W. Brands, Jay P. Dolan, David Hackett Fisher, Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas J. Sugrue, and many others.
Alexander Waugh, "Will he, won't he?" Spectator, 27 August, reviews Frank Westerman's Ararat, trans. by Sam Garrett. It is, says Waugh,
a short book of stupendous richness and complexity, a cornucopia of jumbled facts about geology, history and science, woven into a personal memoir and travelogue that combines stories about the lives of his teachers with information about Dutch mining, family sentiment, religious belief, academic rivalry, portraits of fellow travellers, mountaineering history, politics, personalities and an abundance of lesser, uncategorisable side-detail.
A day or so before 3 September, Ted Vallance will host a one-time-only carnival marking the 350th anniversary of the death of Oliver Cromwell. If you have an entry to suggest, send him a link to: ted.vallance*at*liv*dot*ac*dot*uk.
Scott W. Berg, "The Beginning of the Road," Washington Post, 31 August, introduces Donald Alexander Hawkins's project using digital technology and historical research to recreate Washington, DC, as Pierre Charles L'Enfant first saw it in March 1791 and as it was when the British burned it in 1814. Don't miss either the interactive "D.C., 1791 to Today: How Washington Became Washington" or the video embedded in Berg's story. Berg and Alexander will be online at noon EST on Tuesday 2 September to discuss the project. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
Sam Tanenhaus, "The Art of the Possible," NYT, 30 August, draws on a contrast between Edmund Burke and Sir Robert Peel to pose the question of leadership for Barack Obama and John McCain.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Weak Endnotes
Ambrose Hofstadter Bierce, III, offers up a weekend's worth of idle chatter about UC, Berkeley, UCLA, Chicago and Columbia (scroll down), Emory, Yale, historians as public intellectuals, and whither labor history.
Allison Flood, "American literary prize blacklists Random House," Guardian, 29 August, reports that the Langum Charitable Trust, which gives annual prizes for a work of American historical fiction and a work of American legal history or biography, will not consider books published by Random House until it reverses its decision not to publish Sherry Jones's novel, The Jewel of Medina.
Adam Hochschild, "With the Best Intentions," NYT, 29 August, reviews Gary J. Bass's Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention.
Adam Kirsch, "The Magic Mountain," NY Sun, 29 August, reviews a new English edition of the 19th century Austrian novelist, Adalbert Stifter's Rock Crystal.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Friday Notes
History Carnival LXVIII will go up at Osprey Publishing Blog on Monday 1 September. Send nominations of the best in history blogging since 1 August to michael*dot*ramalho*at* ospreypublishing*dot*com or use the form. The 21st Asian History Carnival is up at Tang Dynesty Times.
Rachel Campbell-Johnston reviews "The Ramayana: Love and Valour in India's Great Epic," a major exhibit at the British Library until 14 September. Neil Gaiman's accompanying podcasts about the Ramayana are here.
Mills Kelly, "You Have Been Warned," edwired, 25 August, features his new course, "Lying About History." Its practicum in the second half of the course will create a historical hoax and set it afloat on the net. You have been warned. Thanks to Rob MacDougall for the tip.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Thursday's Notes
Two years ago, I wrote about the troubled history of endowed chairs in higher education and the embarrassing historical memories they often perpetuate. In it, I failed to mention the Alger Hiss Chair for Social Studies at Bard College. It would have made a neat companion to the Richard Nixon Chair in Public Policy at Nixon's alma mater, California's Whittier College. Not to worry. The tradition continues. The University of Texas is proposing to establish a Charlie Wilson Chair in Pakistani Studies, in honor of the former congressman from Texas who aggressively promoted American aid to Afghanistan's mujahedin in their fight against the Soviet Union's occupation. Our colleague, Manan Ahmed, speculates that the Wilson chair might be located in the "Department of Unintended Consequences Emanating from Secular Fundamentalism." This is the same Charlie Wilson whose call for new leadership at a Texas anti-war rally on Monday yielded this gaff: "'We should be led by Osama bin Laden', he said, then quickly corrected himself. ‘I mean Obama and Biden.'"
Dushko Petrovich, "Handcrafted data," Boston Globe, 24 August, previews Audubon: Early Drawings, Introduction by Richard Rhodes, Scientific Commentary by Scott V. Edwards, Foreword by Leslie A. Morris, and discusses why, in our high tech era, specialists often prefer handcrafted illustrations. Hat tip.
Edward Kosner, "Inquiring Minds Still Want to Know," WSJ, 12 August, reviews Jack Vitek's The Godfather of Tabloid: Generoso Pope, Jr., and the National Enquirer.
John Lewis Gaddis, "Ending Tyranny: The Past and Future of an Idea," American Interest, September/October. Beyond the running drivel of Victor Davis Hanson's contemporary commentary, this may be the first attempt at a positive reappraisal of the Bush administration's legacy in foreign policy. Can you say the Stanford/Yale axis of hackery? Thanks to an unnamed Yale graduate student in history for the tip.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Wednesday's Notes
Things Ancient: Ethan Bronner, "Israel to Display the Dead Sea Scrolls on the Internet," NYT, 26 August, announces the digitization of the Dead Sea fragments. And they really did use Scotch Tape to piece them together in the 1950s!
Richard Covington, "Lost & Found," Smithsonian, September, reviews "Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures From the National Museum, Kabul," an exhibit at Washington, D.C.'s National Gallery of Art (through September 7) and which travels to San Francisco's Asian Art Museum (October 24, 2008-January 25, 2009), Houston's Museum of Fine Arts (February 22-May 17, 2009), and New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art (June 23-September 20, 2009).
Midterm Madness: Patrick McGrath, "Brought to mind," Guardian, 23 August, reviews Catharine Arnold's Bedlam: London and Its Mad.
Things Modern: Adam Kirsch, "How Jacob Riis Lived," NY Sun, 27 August, reviews Tom and Annette Buk-Swienty's The Other Half: The Life of Jacob Riis and the World of Immigrant America.
David A. Skeel, "Trustbusting 101," Books & Culture, July/August, reviews Steve Weinberg's Taking on the Trust: How an Investigative Journalist Brought Down Standard Oil.
John Updike, "Makeup and Make-believe," New Yorker, 1 September, reviews Fred E. Basten's Max Factor: The Man Who Changed the Faces of the World.
Our colleague, Manan Ahmed, takes questions from callers on Chicago Public Radio's "Worldview" about the resignation of Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
More Noted Things
Maurice Earls, "History is to Blame," Dublin Review of Books, Spring, is an essay on the life and times of Samuel Pepys. It draws on James and Ben Long's The Plot Against Samuel Pepys, Robert Latham, ed., The Diaries of Samuel Pepys: A Selection, and Edward Vallance's The Glorious Revolution: 1688 – Britain's Fight for Liberty. Edward Vallance blogs at Edward Vallance and Samuel Pepys blogs at Samuel Pepys. Hat tip.
Christopher Hitchens, "Just Causes," Foreign Affairs, September/October, reviews Gary J. Bass's Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention.
Sean Wilentz's "A Liberal's Lament," Newsweek, 23 August, to which I linked yesterday, may have been the day's favorite target of criticism. See, for example: Kevin Drum's "One Last Shot," Kevin Drum, 25 August, and comments there; Scott Lemieux, "A Sycophant's Lament," Lawyers, Guns and Money, 25 August, and comments there; and publius, "The Continuing Decline of Sean Wilentz," Obsidian Wings, 24 August, and comments there. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
David Greenberg's "The Write Stuff," Slate, 25 August, revisits Joe Biden's plagiarism of a Neil Kinnock speech in 1988. Greenberg is right to remind us that it was genuinely troublesome because Biden not only borrowed Kinnock's words without attribution, but he assumed Kinnock's persona without acknowledging it. See also: Jonathan Beecher Field, "Why Doesn't Plagiarism Matter?" IHE, 26 August.
Finally, Another Damned Medievalist at Blogenspiel has a list of "You Might Be A Medievalist If ...." My favorites: "... -Your secondary sources are somebody else's primary sources," "... -Everyone else on your conference panel has taken holy orders," and "... -You call the renaissance ‘a dirty lie.'"
Monday, August 25, 2008
Things Noted Here and There
As the Democratic National Convention opens in Denver, Sean Wilentz, "A Liberal's Lament," Newsweek, 23 August, lays out what he sees as the challenge that lies ahead for Barack Obama; and David Leonhardt, "How Obama Reconciles Dueling Views on Economy," NYT, 20 August, looks at his perspective on the economy.
Jeffrey R. Young, "'Cinematic Maps' Animate Historical U.S. Election Data," CHE, 25 August, introduces "Voting America: United States Politics, 1840-2008," a project developed at the University of Richmond. The project was prompted by U of R's new president, Ed Ayers, whose "Valley of the Shadow" project at the University of Virginia became one of the most important early efforts in digital history.
Carolyn See, "What's Love Got to Do With It?" Washington Post, 24 August, reviews Susan Squires's I DON'T: A Contrarian History of Marriage.
Linda Robinson, "Rum and Revolution," Washington Post, 24 August, reviews Tom Gjelten's Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause.
Andrew Lambirth, "Perennial Cézanne," Spectator, 20 August, reviews "The Courtauld Cézannes," an exhibit at London's Courtauld Institute of Art, 26 June-5 October.
Peter Pringle, "Liquidated," Washington Post, 24 August, reviews Andrew Meier's The Lost Spy: An American in Stalin's Secret Service .
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Sunday's Notes
The current issue of the Journal of the History of Ideas features conversations about history and ethical judgments. In George Cotkin's "History's Moral Turn," our colleague, Rachel Leow, finds Cotkin misrepresenting Richard Evans' argument about historians' judgments of guilt or innocense. Accurate representation of another historian's position, with which one may disagree, should be one ethical attitude about which there is no dispute.
Steve Coates, "A Long, Strange Trip," NYT, 22 August, reviews Edith Hall's The Return of Ulysses: A Cultural History of Homer's Odyssey.
Miranda Seymour, "Emily's Tryst," NYT, 22 August, reviews Brenda Wineapple's White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson.
Jonathan Meades, "Modernist Master," New Statesman, 21 August, reviews Editors of Phaidon's Le Corbusier Le Grand.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Andrew Bacevich responds to Chris Bray
On 15 August, Andrew Bacevich appeared on Bill Moyers' Journal to discuss his book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, and three interlocking crises that the United States faces. On 19 August, our colleague, Chris Bray, raised questions about Bacevich's position in a post, "A Deceptively Pristine History," here at Cliopatria. I invited Professor Bacevich to respond to Chris's criticism and he sends the following note:
1. No need to worry about my failing to understand the narrative of American expansionism. Please see my new book "The Limits of American Power," especially Chapter 1. In interpreting a text, Chris might want to stick to the text. I said that Americans of an earlier era were puzzled over why Brits would engage in misadventures in obscure places like Afghanistan. I said precisely what I meant.2. As for soldiers' lobbies. AUSA and similar organizations represent institutions -- their purpose is to advance institutional interests. Although their efforts are frequently pernicious, they are part of the way Washington works. AUSA does not represent the interests of "soldiers." The lobby that I wrote about in The Atlantic does not purport to represent institutional interests. It represents the views of individual soldiers who oppose U. S. foreign policy and who are engaging in political action to change that policy. These efforts are contrary to good order and discipline and could potentially threaten civilian control. I view that as deeply problematic. I am sorry that Chris is unable to perceive any distinction between the one type of organization and the other.
3. As for Chris's comment: "I don't know Andrew Bacevich, but my guess is that his view of American military history is shaped by his professional background" as "career soldier and West Point grad [who] may have absorbed a history that was meant to teach him the boundaries of his profession." No, he doesn't know me and his speculation is presumptuous, patronizing, and insulting.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Friday's Notes
Ambrose Hofstadter Bierce, III, at The Broad-Gauged Gossip, may have the hottest new site as the "Wonkette" of the the history blogosphere. He* specializes in, well, history gossip -- the latest travail at Princeton, Rutgers, Stanford, Texas, or whatever. As Rebecca Goetz at Historianess points out, internet gossip can be deeply misleading, but so far as I can tell Ambrose Hofstadter Bierce, III, knows his business. Brother Bierce welcomes your contributions, sent to bierce*dot*history* at*yahoo*dot*com. Hat tip.
*Could be "she." Can't be certain.
Peter Stothard, "What Came After The Ides of March," WSJ, 18 August, reviews Maria Wyke's Caesar: A Life in Western Culture. See also: "Christ was Julius Caesar," Peter Stothard, 18 August.
Good Magazine maps some of the world's great journeys, from Marco Polo and the Old Silk Road to Jack Kerouac and the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Trip.
Great Olympic Moments on YouTube – from Jesse Owens' win in the 100 meter dash at Berlin in 1936 to Svetlana Khorkina on the uneven parallel bars at Atlanta in 1996. Still, of all the great moments, Derek Redmond's finish of the 400 meters at Barcelona in 1992 remains, I think, the most remarkable.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
The Modern State of War
Warnings by Denise Spellberg of the University of Texas History Department apparently led to Random House's cancellation of plans to publish Sherry Jones' novel, The Jewel of Medina, about the prophet Mohammad and his wife, Aisha. It was to have been a Book-of-the-Month Club selection for August. Spellberg explained her concerns in a letter to the Wall Street Journal, 9 August.
Adam Kirsch, "Adjusting the Theory of Just War," NY Sun, 20 August, reviews Gary Bass's Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention.
Harold Holzer, "When Lincoln Became Lincoln," NY Sun, 20 August, reviews Lewis Lehrman's Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point.
Eric Ormsby, "A Man and his Gun," NY Sun, 20 August, reviews Julia Keller's Mr. Gatling's Terrible Marvel: The Gun That Changed Everything and the Misunderstood Genius Who Invented It.
20th century below the fold ...
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
More Noted Things
"Gavin Menzies: mad as a snake - or a visionary?" Telegraph, 1 August, looks at Menzies' claims – from the Chinese discovery of America to their inspiration of the Italian Renaissance.
David Kelly, "Anatomy Lessons," Paper Cuts, 18 August, calls our attention to the publication of Tony Perrottet's Napoleon's Privates: 2,500 Years of History Unzipped, which has such chapter titles as "Holding Your Own at Caligula's Orgies," "Who Didn't Have Syphilis in Belle Époque Paris?" and "Columbus Discovers the Clitoris."
James Guida reviews Heinrich Heine's Travel Pictures, translated by Peter Wortsman, for More Intelligent Life, 15 August. Hat tip.
Recent American political history below the fold:
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Things Noted Here and There
Deborah Lawson's "Historical Research Page" is an extraordinarily rich list of links to Euro/American historical sources, primarily medieval to modern. Hat tip. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database is "an enlarged and revised edition of the Cambridge 1998 CD-ROM dataset," now free and easier to navigate. It is jointly sponsored by Emory University, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Harvard's W. E. B. Du Bois Institute, the University of Hull, Victoria University of Wellington, and Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Thanks to H-Slavery for the tip.
Joan Acocella, "The Forbidden World," New Yorker, 25 August, reviews Ingrid Rowland's Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic.
Justin Beplate, "Apollinaire and Picasso in the dock," TLS, 30 July, reviews Peter Read's Picasso and Apollinaire: The persistence of memory.
Joanna Kavenna, "Franz Kafka, party animal," Guardian, 17 August, reviews James Hawes's Excavating Kafka.
John Steele Gordon, "Murder Most Rational and Confounding," NYT, 17 August, reviews Simon Baatz's For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb and the Murder That Shocked Chicago.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Let The History Games Begin!
mcfrosticles, the gaming historian, offers histories of games and consoles on YouTube. He's a computer technician and history major at North Carolina's Elizabeth City State University. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
Boston University's Andrew J. Bacevich appears on Bill Moyers Journal to discuss the United States' three interlocking crises. His book is The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.
Michiko Kakutani, "Literary Soul Mates or Authors Who Were Polar Opposites?" NYT, 14 August, reviews David Lebedoff's The Same Man: George Orwell & Evelyn Waugh in Love and War.
Kate Bolick, "Chic-Lit Pioneer," NYT, 17 August, reviews Irene Gammel's Looking for Anne of Green Gables: The Story of L. M. Montgomery and Her Literary Classic.
Jonathan Yardley reviews William McKeen's Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson for the Washington Post, 17 August. Seriously, I'm still grappling with learning that Thompson's father and my mother were first cousins.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Sunday's Notes
Indian History Carnival #8 is up at DesiPundit and varnam. XLII, an early modern edition of the festival, is up at Early Modern Notes. Enjoy them both!
Deborah Collcutt, "Why does the weasel go pop? - the secret meaning of our best-loved nursery rhymes," Daily Mail, 17 August, adapts explanations of the historical origins of selected nursery rhymes from Albert Jack's Pop Goes The Weasel: The Secret Meanings Of Nursery Rhymes. Jack may say more about why these events -- and not others -- found hidden reference in nursery rhymes and why that form was an attractive means of remembering the events. Count me a bit skeptical. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
David Vandermast, "Blighted Hopes," American Scientist, July/August, reviews Susan Freinkel's American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree. Hat tip.
The 1954 CIA-financed Halas and Batchelor animated production of George Orwell's Animal Farm is available on YouTube in eight parts. It begins here. You can access the other seven parts by clicking on "More info". Hat tip.
Harvey Mansfield, "Man of Courage," Weekly Standard, 25 August, pays tribute to Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
The Caucasus
Donald Rayfield, "Russian bombs, Georgian fragments," TLS, 13 August, reviews Charles King's The Ghost of Freedom: A history of the Caucasus.
Michael Dobbs, "‘We Are All Georgians'? Not So Fast." Washington Post, 17 August, argues that Washington policy-makers have been talking loudly and have a little stick to wield.
Michael Walzer, "Georgia on my Mind," Dissent, 15 August, has "six short contributions to the necessary public debate."
Loreena McKennitt, "Night Ride Across the Caucasus":
Made by Hikmet. Lyrics under the fold:
Friday, August 15, 2008
Friday's Notes
Peter Gwin, "Lost Tribes of the Green Sahara," National Geographic, September, discusses a recently discovered burial site in Niger's desolate Sahara. In addition to potsherds and animal skeletons, it included skeletal remains of both Kiffian people from 6000 to 8000 BCE and Tenerian people from 4500 to 2500 BCE. See also: David Brown, "Excavations Show a Lush Life in the Sahara," Washington Post, 15 August.
Samanthi Dissanayake, "All because the lady loves a foreign accent," BBC News Magazine, 14 August, looks at the romance novels of Great Britain's Mills and Boon publishing house. After 100 years, fainting native women still fall for exotic foreign men. Thanks to our exotic colleague, Manan Ahmed, for the tip.
Anne Applebaum, "When China Starved," Washington Post, 12 August, foreshadows Yang Jisheng's yet untranslated two volume work on China's Great Famine, Tombstone.
Barry Gewen, "The '60s: Once Upon an Optimistic Time," NYT, 12 August, reviews G. Calvin Mackenzie's and Robert Weisbrot's The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s.
Edward Luttwak, "A Truman for Our Time," Prospect, August. This is red meat. Hat tip.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Some Literary Notes
Toby Barnard, "Onward, ye literary pilgrims," TLS, 13 August, reviews Daniel Hahn's and Nicholas Robins's The Oxford Guide to Literary Britain and Ireland, 3rd edition.
Jeremy Axelrod, "Bold English: Anglo-Saxon Poetry," NY Sun, 14 August, reviews Michael Alexander's The First Poems in English.
Bob Thompson, "An Ode to John Keats's Immortality," Washington Post, 13 August, reviews Stanley Plumly's Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography.
Adam Kirsch, "Harvesting the Waste Land: An Anthology of New Criticism," NY Sun, 13 August, reviews Garrick Davis, ed., Praising It New: The Best of the New Criticism.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Wednesday's Notes
Errol Morris, "Photography as a Weapon," Zoom, 11 August, explores visual propaganda.
Christopher Taylor, "Blame It on Boswell," Guardian, 9 August, reviews Peter Martin's Samuel Johnson: A Biography.
Paul Harvey, "Freedom Song," Books & Culture, July/August, reviews Scott Gac's Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Antebellum Reform.
Félix Fénéon's Novels in Three Lines, translated and with an introduction by Luc Sante, is briefly reviewed in the NYRB, 21 August. Writing for the liberal broadsheet Le Matin, Fénéon composed over a thousand quick sketches of "murder, mayhem, and everyday life" in early 20th century France and gathered them in his Novels in Three Lines. You can sample them on Twitter. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
More Noted Things
Things Past: Luke Slattery, "