I'm currently working on a Merovingian hagiography, the Passio Praeiecti, about the martyrdom of Praeiectus (Fr: St-Prix), bishop of Clermont, in 676.

It's not so much the history I want to mention here as it is the language. The text is a bit awkward, which is to be expected from Merovingian Latin, but it does produce some unexpected gems, for example when the author was looking for the phrase stridor dentium, "gnashing of teeth" (see Luc. 13:28 and Matth. 8,12; 22,13; 24,51; 25,30) and instead wrote stridulis dentibus, "with whizzing teeth".

Some other amazing little phrases include:

• An invitation to dine: rogatum prandii causa - "invited for the purpose of lunch."

• Praeiectus' actual martyrdom: in capud eius gladium uibrauit cerebrumque eiecit - "the sword flashed into his head and threw out his brain." Game of Thrones has nothing on the Merovingians.

• With regard to the infamous Ebroin, the Mayor of the Neustrian Palace and Praeiectus' political ally: strenuum uirum sed in nece sacerdotum nimis ferocem - "A worthy man, but a bit to fierce in the murder of priests."

Tm Stoppard's great play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead summarizes the Merovingians perfectly:

We're more of the love, blood and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.

I'm currently in Harrisburg PA for a conference, and spent a couple of happy hours yesterday at Midtown Scholar. It purports to be one of the largest second-hand bookshops in the country, and boasts a heavy emphasis on academic works -- many at happily discounted prices. I found a collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's letters and a history of Ezra Pound's experimental radio operas on one floor, and a cheap copy of Matthew Stibbe's history of the Ruhleben internment camp for British civilians in Germany (in WWI, to be clear) on another.

There are another dozen volumes I would have happily snapped up too, if I didn't have to carry them all the way back to another country, but I am not unhappy with what I found.

I'm officially starting the revisions on my MA thesis today. Fall PhD applications, here I come.

I'm wondering if anyone has an resources about Alcohol and American Politics. I'm looking to do some big-picture level research before I delve into specific time periods. I have a generalized knowledge of what seem to be the two big political alchohol-related events in American history, the Whiskey Rebellion and Prohibition from teaching American Politics, but there are a number of other interesting things that I would like to cover as well. Washington becoming a whiskey producer, the claim that Zachary Taylor was a man that sat down with a mug of hard cider every day, even up through our modern political relationship with alcohol. If you've got any suggestions I would appreciate it!

Request: Pre-Industrial Economic history. I already read Janet L. Abu-Lughod's Before the European Hegemony.

I have a request: Can someone recommend a food history type of book on how and when various food items made it across the Atlantic? For example, how and when did tomatoes come into common use in Italy? When were pumpkins used it England? I'd also be interested in books discussing the same information from the other direction. When did pasta become common in Italy and under what circumstances? How about things like eggplants, and how did they spread westward? I am really, really interested in how Now World foods arrived and were used during the Renaissance (whether English, Italian or whatever), but really I am game for any food history texts at all.

I recently found a complete two-volume set of the English translation of Fernand Braudel's The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II for only $10 (both volumes!) at a local used bookshop. An excellent deal, since when I read it years ago a a student I paid the equivalent of over $100 for the two-volume set.