I asked this in yesterday's Free-for-All, but was a bit late to the game: Can anyone direct me toward a decent biography or any other detailed source on silent film comedian Max Linder? (Doesn't have to be in English.)

I just started watching his stuff this past week (naturally, since I was supposed to be working on my dissertation) and would really like to learn more about his tragic life.

(It seems I accidentally posted an unfinished review, which I deleted; this one's done!)

Review time!

Warwick Ball, Rome in the East: The Transformation of an Empire. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. 523 pages.

The blurb on the back of the book should raise alarms:

In this lavishly illustrated and arresting study, Warwick Ball presents the story of Rome's overwhelming fascination with the East through a coverage of the historical, architectural and archaeological evidence unparalleled in both breadth and detail. This was a fascination of the new world for the old, and of the mundane for the exotic--a love affair that took literal form in the story of Antony and Cleopatra. From Rome's legendary foundation by Aeneas and the Trojan heroes as the New Troy, through the installation of Arabs as Roman emperors, to the eventual foundation of the new Rome by a latter-day Aeneas at Constantinople, the East took over Rome,--and Rome eventually ditched Europe to the barbarians... Warwick Ball is a Near Eastern archaeologist. He has excavated mainly in Jordan, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan and has conducted the restoration of monumental Roman remains in Jordan. He was formerly Director of Excavations at the British School of Archaeology in Iraq.

More accurately, as Ball himself mentions in his preface, it's a work of "self-indulgence." Now, I've always been frustated by Helleno- and Romano-centric approaches to ancient history, which often seem to reflect a genuine love for the Greeks and Romans and what they've contributed to the modern construct known as "Western civilization." This unfortunately ignores the many other strands that formed the diverse fabric of the ancient world. Ball, however, goes to the opposite extreme and then off the deep end; he actually thinks "the East" is better than "the West." Problems begin on page 1, where he states: "Near Eastern civilisation was a very homogeneous one. There was a thread of cultural continuity making it essentially one civilisation that lasted an incredibly long time from its origins in the still little understood fifth millennium BC until its eventual transformation and dissemination by the Romans." As such, "our brash Romans must have appeared awkward backwater rustics" in comparison to the timeless, primordial East. In the course of a migraine-inducing discussion on why colonnaded streets are uniquely "eastern," he provides us photos of a twentieth-century "[t]radtional bazaar street in Afghanistan" and a "traditional Iranian covered bazaar"--because, y'know, things never really change over there. And on Palmyra, Ball, ever-incapable of nuance, reminds us that the "overriding Semitic and other oriental elements of its character" completely overshadow any signs of Greco-Roman influence.

By the end of the book, readers will have learned that some peoples and places were just "fundamentally eastern" or "fundamentally Semitic" and thus unable to engage in cultural exchange with the Greeks and Romans; that ancients writers like Ammianus Marcellinus, Josephus, Herodian, and Eusebius actually belonged to a "long tradition of Phoenician historiography"--except when Ball needs to cite one of them as an example of Roman ignorance (and I must emphasize that we know damn little about Phoenician historiography; my impression from the few fragments is that it was more similar in character to the historical books of the OT); that "the Christian god owes more to Zoroastrianism than Judaism," because Ahura Mazada was apparently the first to embody the concept that "God is good"; and that "the existence of the 'Silk Road' is not based on a single shred of historical or material evidence" (in fact, Chinese records do refer to a silk trade with Rome, with the Parthians acting as middlemen). Medievalists will be happy to know that "the acquisition of the eastern provinces in the first centuries BC and AD led directly to the rise of Rome and of Roman greatness, the first period of greatness in European history," but that "their loss after the seventh century led to the European Dark Ages."

Rome in the East is an embarrassment to the field despite its wealth of detail (mostly archaeological) and breadth, and Ball's essentialized "East," while not the worst expression of Orientalism, would still leave Edward Said spinning in his grave. Read it with caution!

If I have time later, I also want to write a brief review of Douglas Northrop's Veiled Empire: Gender & Power in Stalinist Central Asia (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2004), which I enjoyed for the most part. :P

So I've been trying to track down accurate numbers on how many red army soldiers were executed for desertion or cowardice. The soviet experts on this sub have been helpful in giving me primary sources which state that around 20,000-30,0000 men were executed. This number however clashes with some western historians who claim that as many as 158,000 were executed. It's harder to track down the sources western historians are using because they all feel it's necessary to cite each other. After jumping from book to book, I think Im finally closing in on these "Russian reports" that they keep citing. Apparently they are located in a book by John Erikson. Which one? I have no idea.

On the plus side, with the great help of /u/Acritas I seem to have tracked down the origin of the "2 men for every rifle" myth. It comes from Nikita kruschev's memoirs . Who'd a thought.

I know I requested something similar to this a couple of weeks ago, but does anyone have any recommendations on books/articles related to the demographics of individuals that played the Baroque and the Early Romantic guitar? I am in the midst of writing an essay for one of my classes, and I seem to have hit a bit of a roadblock :/

Anyone have a good suggestion for a short reading on the Afghan-Soviet war that would work for advanced, clever high schoolers? Or, more broadly on Cold War geopolitics in general?

I'm looking for some introductory sources on samurai and ninja. Scholarly but accessible is the hope. I'm trying to start wading through the fog of pop culture misrepresentation, so if anyone knows a good starting point, I'd be much obliged.