My mom said she was there on a field trip between June and August of 1968 and said there were protesters between the washington monument and the lincoln memorial. She's always been curious about what was happening that summer.

In the early eighteenth century, Italian and French literati were embroiled in a debate over the relative merits of their national dramatic products (I'm mostly interested in opera at this point). The French stance in this debate makes total sense: "Italian drama and poetry is really dumb, French drama is so much better!" But what doesn't make sense to me is the Italian response. I would expect a response like "nuh, uh! We aren't dumb... YOU'RE dumb!" But instead, the response appears to be "Yeah, you're right, but what if we model our opera libretti on Racine, would you like us then?"

That is, after people like Bouhours and Boileau trash Italianate literature, early eighteenth century opera reformers (Muratori, Zeno, Metastasio, etc.) were using French writers like Racine and Corneille as models, in part because to imitate these writers appeared to pretty much universally assure that your dramatic product would be shielded from criticism.

This seems to me to say something interesting about the status of French drama at this time. Not only could the French use their authors as an "objectively good" yard stick to beat up on Italians, but the Italian Academies in Rome and Bologna seem to roll over and accept that judgment. They adopt the rhetoric of "good taste" that their French writers advance, and use their principles to reformulate their own theatrical practices.

So my question is what are the circumstances that lead to the prestige of French Drama at this time? Beyond the actual aesthetic merits of Racine and others, how did these authors come to acquire the status of objectively good models that were impervious to criticism? Unlike, say, Petrarch (who Italian authors clung to in a "see? We don't all suck!" way), who had centuries of reputation built up around him by this point, the bodies of Moliere and Corneile were still warm when this debate raged, and Racine was still kicking. So their international reputation seems to have been established at a particularly rapid pace. How did this happen? What is their reception history outside of France?

I suspect that there might be political reasons behind tied up in this. Many of these Italian writers are also advocates of "Unification" plans around this time (such as Muratori), and my thoughts were that the glories of the Absolutist state under Louis XIV might have been an important source of inspiration for these guys in a political sense ("man, why can't Italy get its shit together like France? Look how powerful and glorious Versailles is!"), and therefore trying to recast their own drama via French models could have been part of a larger attempt to try to inject a degree of solidarity into their culture by making it "objectively" in good taste. I also wonder if Jansenist / Jesuit debates might be playing into this.

This doesn't seem like a focused question. But I guess at the end of the day, I'm just interested in why French literary culture was seen to be the objective standard by which other countries could measure their own products. Why was their drama accepted in this fashion, rather than resisted in favor of local traditions?

Some sources I've been reading:

• Minor, Vernon Hyde. The Death of the Baroque and the Rhetoric of Good Taste. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

• Strohm, Reinhard. "Apostolo Zeno's Teuzzone and its French Models." In Dramma per Musica: Italian Opera Seria of the Eighteenth Century, 121-33. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.

When Hitler came to power there was a strong nationalistic sentiment after WWI and there was a massive economic depression in Germany. What were Hitler's first actions and what did he do that garnered him such heavy popular support? He also worked to stifle his dissenters, what form did that take in the early part of his power? I'm sure there was a period where he wasn't able to have people outright assassinated right away, right?

By "better off", I mean in terms of quality of life for the average citizen, defensive/military capabilities, and frequency of internal unrest (ie. riots, protests, etc.).

Was it immediate, were there a few round trips?

Also European Colonialists in general

I've recently read Eagle Against the Sun by Ronald Spector. Good book, and I fully accept that it's not the most complete, but for a layman like myself it did quite well to explain the war. He mentions that, after the Hiroshima bombing but before the Nagasaki, there may have been a couple of Japanese officials who thought the Americans may only have had a single bomb to drop, and thus they already used their trump card (a justification to draw out a bloody fight on the main islands as I understand it).

I wasn't able to find a copy of the source for this, but I'm interested in the broader question. What did Japan know about the Atomic bomb after it had been dropped? Did they really think there may have only been one? Did they properly comprehend the devastation, or did some officials think that, though a major bomb, it was something they could fight through?

Thanks!

This book is, I imagine, pretty heavily biased to some side or the other, considering the author and when it was written.

Here's the relevant passage:

"The existence of feudal relations in Russia, denied by former historians, may be considered unconditionally established by later investigations. Furthermore, the fundamental elements of Russian feudalism were the same as in the West."

It seems like he's implying Russia had been treated unfairly by the West. But he isn't kind either. Also says that the lack of evidence "testifies to the incompleteness of Russian feudalism, its formlessness, its poverty of cultural monuments."

Is any of that true, or related to the first question?

Looking for good biographies of Cecil Rhodes -- detailed, comprehensive, unbiased. Doesn't matter how old they are as long as the information is still valid. Any suggestions?

In researching the reasons for the prolonging of the Korean war, most sources point toward the defensive tactics of the Chinese which matched the aggression from US/UN forces. But apart from providing indirect (air support, supply contributions) support, how did the Soviet Union contribute to the stalemate?

So basically the question above

Obviously they can't live or do business in the existing stone pyramid ruins we always see.

When I hear of Mayan and Aztec cities like Chichen Itza, Palenque and the largest city Tenochtitlan, I imagine cities like ancient Roman ones with lots of markets, stores, bath houses, temples, entertainment center, houses but it seems that we seem to only see stone pyramids or what's left.

What will a Mayan or an Aztec city look like with all of its buildings and residential houses present at the time of their height?

It seems like whenever another country is mentioned; in books I read or documentaries that I watch, like Italy, France or Romania, it is mostly unfavorably.

What were they seeking to accomplish, given that their main priority in WW2 was the war against China, and the largest opposition to this goal was the US?

What was the immediate reaction to gunpowder warfare? At what point did people think, "oh this is a big deal and very effective, everybody should have gunpowder weapons..."? At what point did cannons become naval weapons? When did archers become "obsolete"? What kind of psychological impact did seeing things go boom and shooting things at speeds that the human eye could not accurately detect have on soldiers?

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How did people know where to mine in the middle ages? Or even before then? How did they know what they would pulled out of those mines would be suitable for weapons?

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