In the U.S. many of us vacation in the park system during the summer. Interpretation Rangers (or often unpaid volunteers) specialize in teaching about the natural and human history of the park in scheduled lectures or events.

What is your favorite National Park/State Park interpretive program/lecture/demonstration? What made it great and memorable?

What made you specialize in the area of history that you specialize in?

I've just got my A level results back and will be heading off to my first choice uni later this year to study history. Hooray! :)

I recently read Ian Morris article on ISIS and I am pretty conflicted. Aside from the comparison between Abu Bakr and ISIS being a little insulting, he has to mold the narrative of the Arab expansion pretty heavily in order to make the comparison stick. But on the other hand, isn't this true whenever we try to use lesson of the past for the present? This sort of Machiavelli-esque examination of history to find principles that can be applied to current situations is difficult if not impossible to do in an 800 word news column, but if historians aren't willing to write news columns they are essentially shutting themselves out of the conversation.

In a lighter note, the Nobel Prize discussion made we wonder, the normal story for how the shebang got started is that Nobel was wracked with guilt over the creation of dynamite for the destruction it wrought in war--but was it ever actually used in war?

Also I feel like I have posted [this question](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/22222e/how_did_the_wealth_of_different_groups_of_upper/0 three or four times so I will try it here: does anyone know a good answer?

I want to know why so many academic publishing houses continue to outsource English-language typesetting and even copy-editing to big commercial firms (not academic houses) in India, when I have never, ever, ever had a good experience with one? It's required three times as much explanation and correction, and they can't possibly be saving that much money given the loss in time that it entails. They claim to be following publisher house style and the Chicago Manual, but they're doing things that are blatantly against the same guide and forgetting to insert captions and footnotes--to the point that my editor has to scold them directly. Although the actual contact people I talk to are clearly very capable (and problems magically vanish when they take over personally) it's obvious they have a labor force full of people who don't really have the same chops. Are any of you in publishing to the point where you can say how much they actually save by doing this? Now that I hear some Cambridge and Oxford imprints are also doing it, I am really very curious, because it's an unsettling experience for me as an author not to be able to trust the typesetter won't fix things that aren't broken.

I got emailed from my university about a new course, A History of the World in Objects. Here is the description below

Through a multidisciplinary approach, this course opens new perspectives on the history of artifacts, the evolution of a world of things, and the analysis of material culture. Lectures and tutorials are supplemented by hands-on exercises in museums and local communities. In this course we will look at the world around us from a new perspective. Our goal will be to understand how the objects that surround us create the context of our lives and how this ecology of objects has developed over time. This is a topic that requires a flexible methodology and multiple perspectives. Engaging with artifacts also requires a hands-on engaged approach with artifacts ranging from prehistoric stone tools to Renaissance pottery and contemporary material culture.

It sounds really interesting, I like how they are dividing it between different departmental professors for lectures. I realize this is probably influenced from the BBC podcast, nevertheless for this novice I think it will be exciting!

I just started the BBC's "The Death of Yugoslavia" which I hope to use as my own introduction into the Yugoslav Wars. I know very little of the events in the region during that time so I hope this will serve as a good intro before moving on to deeper readings.

What do you guys think of psychohistory?

I just want to say I'm really disappointed seeing that Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs & Steel has so many problems with it from a historical perspective.

I adored that book when I read it - it helped me get over some of my nagging latent racist beliefs. It makes me feel like not bothering to read any "layman's history" non-fiction because it can't be trusted.

I'm glad I got that off my chest.

Any interesting archeological discoveries recently?

Why didn't anyone else try to sail West in the time between the discovery of Vinalnd and Columbus' voyages?

Been doing some backyard garden with tomatoes and such, just got to thinking.

How did the Native Americans differ from the colonial in farming techniques?

/u/MNW I thought I was hearing your words when watching the segment on East Africa during a BBC two-parter about colonial fighting men of the first World War.

David Olusoga is a name I had not heard before but he was a natural hosting The World's War: Forgotten Soldiers of Empire. I'm a bit of a "fanboy" of the East Africa campaign so it's always interesting to hear a non-romanticised take on the events. Although I should say, I thought that particular bit of the program lacked some detail. Perhaps the lack of first-person accounts and talking heads kept this portion from being one of the better segments on this generally-entertaining program.