Yesterday, I was on Fox News, of all places. Kind of amusing. The scene of me typing is pretty accurate.

Separately, I wrote a blog post about all of the fatal accidents (two dozen of them) at Los Alamos during the war and immediate postwar. Grim stuff, but very interesting. How to die at Los Alamos. Note that if you are worried about hugging my server, the blog is actually on a completely different server than the poor NUKEMAP.

I met the Dean yesterday. This is the internal high hurdle to tenure, and it's harrowing. They sit you down and the Deans look at you as they read a letter that will be covering your file when it's sent to the central administration. At least, it's meant to be harrowing; our meeting actually ended up nerding out on historical boundary issues and settler colonialism, which touches the Dean's own research interests, so he had actually read my whole file which is rather unusual. Their letter is easily the nicest thing anyone other than my mother has written about me, and it includes quotes from the external letters (names redacted) which were laudatory and far beyond anything I expected or even hoped for them to say. I think I'm safe now, and so do they, but the final thumb only gets turned in June.

Beyond that, I won an external grant for summer research in Africa which is a big win, and tendered three (!!!) book reviews besides taking one midterm exam and giving another--so it's been a busy week but a very good one. It exemplifies the terror and the satisfaction of this profession all at the same time. I'm hoping the sense of terror will go away once the tenure hurdles recede into memory.

Michael Hirst, the creator of the show The Vikings, did an AMA this week. As much as I love the show, to say it takes liberties with the source material is an unerstatement--the easiest example is that we see King Aelle (regned ~860 CE) reacting to the news of the sack of Lindisfarne (793 CE). Naturally, I asked what I thought was a good question about how he balances the needs of the story with the desire to stage history.

It went unanswered despite being one of the first ones, and as I read the thread later Hirst spent the AMA pretending that the show is some sort of meticulous recreation of historical events and deeply researched, when it quite transparently isn't: one of the characters is named "Siggy", which I can only assume came about because the creators misheard the name "Sigrith", and the evil jarl is named "Jarl Haraldsson", which doesn't make a lick of sense. The formal duels that have been staged are also completely unlike what we see in the sagas. I love the show, but I don't see why he doesn't admit that it is simply inspired by history rather than a recreation of it.

Also, /u/ConanofCimmeria is a saint for the amount of patience he had during the thread due to all of the kind of weird responses he got to his pointing out that the show really isn't very accurate. The weirdest ones were people insisting that the show captures the "essence" of Vikingness, which is somehow completely divorced from historical fact.

I have to go home today. Boo!

My podcast comes out in two weeks. That might be the one podcast that I'm not listening to, because I know what was said, but I'm curious to see if I do sound good. Choices, choices.

Listening to the podcast about Daniel on my way home or at home, one of the two. Haven't gotten to Daniel yet, almost done with Isaiah. Bible reading is gong slowly but steadily.

Why was the word "brah" so popular during the great depression?

http://i.imgur.com/F58Du6P.png

So, I've encountered bad bits of writers block in crafting what was to be the next installation of my whaling historiography project. Bias in the field can be pretty extensive, but there's a lot of angles and context to it that requires a lot of explanation and formation, so it's been fairly exhausting going through those sources and views. It is coming though, that I promise!

In the meantime, I'll use this as an aside to talk about the issues surrounding my collection and examination of the sources (primary and secondary) in the body of literature that creates Whaling History.

The common problem I find in my hunt of sources is an issue of dated major works. A quick glance at the New Bedford Whaling Museum's introductory bibliography only gives a handful of works that were published in the last decade. Now there are a couple of works I can add off the top of my head that have been published recently, Eric Jay Dolin's Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America and D. Graham Burnett's Trying Leviathan, both of which were published around 2005-07 roughly. Even so, the actual importance of the former to the Whaling History (Leviathan treads little new ground, but serves as an accessible introduction to the American whale fishery) is debated, while the latter can be praised for taking a curious court case and using it to examine the development and presence of scientific, professional, and cultural views towards Whales.

Even so, the seminal and established "essentials" of the Whaling literature are often those that are hopelessly out of date with the ever developing understanding of our relationship with whales and our history of their exploitation. Johnsen & Tonnessen's The History of Modern Whaling might be the benchmark of Whaling History, but it was originally published in 1982, the year of the Moratorium. For all of it's due praise, there is the trouble fact that since then, a lot has happened to the field. The revelation of illegal Soviet whaling only occurred in the 1990s, the whaling debate has evolved substantially from the introduction of NGOs and Greenpeace in the 1960s/70s in it's political and cultural battlegrounds, our turn to aboriginal and environmentally originated lenses of history have rendered the Norwegian-Euro-American focus of The History of Modern Whaling hopelessly incomplete at it's core. This is pretty common with the majority of the established Whaling Literature, and I've discussed before the prominent and budding views from which the history is written.

It is more common to see Whaling History being brought up and examined in the confines of scientific journals and/or publications (which, again, I brought up in my last post. Repetition, ironic_username, repetition). The 'new direction' of Whaling History appears to be increasingly in the hands of scientists - and all that entails - and outside of the traditional liberal arts. Which isn't bad at all, don't get me wrong, but it also leaves a lot of questions on what the 'new' and 'latest' Whaling History will look like, and if it can remove itself from it's own historiographical past and find a place in the present.

At a glance, it may be confusing why many lay-people point to Herman Melville's literary classic Moby Dick, published in 1851, as the Bible of historical whaling. On closer inspection, it is much more telling.

On a minor 'ranting' note, the specialization of "Whaling History" also makes it hard for a non-academic, such as myself, to gain access to the original sources that are often drawn by other whaling historians in their constructs. New Bedford Whaling Museum, in it's bid to replicate the town's history of being the whaling capital of America, is the American whaling history capital. It is great that there are centers for these specialization, it is not so great when they are in New England (speaking from a Chicago guy) with the majority of them physically stored! But these are more personal problems, I've done very well in my searches online and procurement of whaling books, articles, and overviews that I'm confident in my handling of the field as an amateur. It would still be nice to have easier access to those primary documents as a non-academic (I do intend to visit New Bedford at least one hundred times!), though I'm sure I share these thoughts with my fellow 'history enthusiasts'.

So I recently had a fairly awkward moment as a TA. I was leading an exam review session for an intro class on US history from 1877. I e-mailed the class beforehand saying that I didn't want to simply re-lecture what the professor had already talked about, and that they should come prepared with questions. With that being the case, I thought that the session could really just be a back and forth discussion between the students and I about the structure of the exam and some of the topics they were unclear about. What happened instead was they obviously didn't come prepared with any questions and I didn't have anything really prepared to present to the class. What ensued was an hour of painfully awkward silences and a very unstructured session that would go from topics about Reconstruction to the Depression then backwards to the Progressives then back to Reconstruction and then repeating what was already said about the Progressives. It didn't help that I wasn't as prepared as I thought I was, leading to me drawing blanks on what the Grange movement was and which amendment dealt with the direct election of senators. All around one of the most awkward experiences I've had as a graduate student, but at least I know how not to do a review session.

Now that I was able to release into writing some of my pent up feelings of cringe, I'd like to know from other people who have TA'd how they have structured exam review sessions. Also, for other TAs or professors, what are some of your most awkward moments in the classroom?

Gave a presentation to my class on Monday regarding what my MA will be focused on, the first one to do so. Actually ran out of time talking about it at 15 minutes, partially because I went in without notes. I had slightly modified my idea last week, so I knew I was missing a bit of stuff, and that's what everyone's commentary on the topic said, so that's good there aren't any other major issues. Really enjoyed hearing about 12 other students comment on my proposal, and got some good insight and ideas on how to continue. Now just got to actually use what was said.

I have an unexpected opportunity to do some historical research at work. I'm just a self-taught historian, actually working as a writer, for an employer I had no idea did this sort of thing. It's only for three weeks and I can't really give details, as it's a rather hyper-specific project that would tell far too much about me and my employer, but I'm pretty excited about it.

I've noticed on the FX show The Americans all of the employees of the Soviet embassy use the full name of their coworkers in casual conversation. Was this actually the cultural norm at the time in the Soviet Union? If so, was it widespread or only in government? I really want to know but I don't think this warrants its own thread.

I remember hearing, once upon a time, that the people wanted to celebrate Washington's birthday when he was president, but he didn't want them too because it was too similar to celebrating the King of England's birthday. However, I can't find anything that verifies this. Is this anecdote true?

Hello /r/askhistory! I am from a small town in Tennessee called Westmoreland. Our town is named after a civil war army official. Can anyone give any kind of information on this man?

I've been dying to find a good book about the French Revolution or on Napoleon. I'm aware of the two books, The French Revolution, a History by Thomas Carlyle and Reflections on the Revolutions in France by Edmund Burk, but they are both written in the 1700's, and while this might make them very reliable reads, I am daunted to read an 18th century styled book on account of being afraid of not being able to adjust to the style of language. Same thing applies to Napoleon. The only books on the Book List that seem to fit what I am looking for (which is a general, mostly in-depth history of the event) is obvious The Campaigns of Napoleon by David G. Chandler, but it's both hard to find and a lot of money, and I was hoping there was a good alternative?

Might be beating a dead-horse with a question like this, and I apologize, but i'm very intrigued and interested in French (and German) history, and would like some advice on some good books on these two subjects :).

The work this week focuses on analyzing how abolitionists shaped their arguments in favor of dissolution of the slave trade. I touched on this briefly [here] (http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2sfwp4/why_was_slavery_abolished_only_for_racism_to/cnpalmo) I've been analyzing sermons preached in 1808, the 1830s, 1856 and 1858 and there are interesting correlations between all of them. Abolitionist preachers, theologically speaking, dont have a leg to stand on when it comes to slavery (which is sanctioned fairly well in the Bible.) Because they cant turn to the bible, they turn to the next highest document in the land, The Declaration of Independence. Something which i've termed "Appeal to Americanism" or "Appeal to Republicanism." These preachers expound heavily on how great America is, and how closely tied to God and the Bible the nation is. Therefore, our God sanctioned country, cannot allow something as wicked as slavery.

We must come back to the good old doctrine of our forefathers who declared to the world “this self evident truth that all men are created equal, and that they have certain inalienable rights among which are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It is even a greater absurdity to suppose a man can be legally born a slave under our free Republican Government than under the petty despotisms of barbarian Africa. Sarah Grimke 1835

The operation of Slavery in this country has given us painful cause of questioning its compatibility with civil liberty, wherever it exists. The fundamental principle of civil liberty, as it is laid down in our Declaration of Independence is this -"that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with inalieable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" Noah Porter 1856

This requires more sources, and i'd certainly like to see how southern preachers responded to these calls to Republican thought, but I think I smell a paper in here somewhere.

I learned yesterday that my America in the 1920's teacher is going to be excellent, which I didn't think was going to happen because she started an email with "I'm not looking forward to getting back to work."

The class itself surprised me, actually, as I found out America in the 1920's (at the beginning) were in a fantastic mood and didn't see '29 coming at all.

I previously had thought that the entire decade was doom and gloom. So that was nice.

Recently found out one of my best friends will be joining me for a civil war re-enactment in may! The re-enactment I didnt even know about until 2 months ago when I was researching my family history. I found out they were re-enacting the battle so I'm travelling halfway around the world to take part, and my friend will join me.

Very eager for it.

For a silly but fun history-related thing, Smithsonian.com had an article on cakes made by archaeologist Eric Hollinger that are based on exhibits and research at the National Museum of Natural History. They are surprisingly awesome, and it was fun to see someone make cakes and candies related to history. Some of the cake topics are:

• Cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park
• An Aztec calendar stone
• King Tut's tomb
• Terracotta Warriors
• A Southwest style pot
• Easter Island
• Haida house
• Mississippian Temple Mound

Anyway, take a look. It's a fun way to pass a few minutes.

Happy friday everyone! So the other day, I stumbled across Susan R. Grayzel's Women and The First World War, more specifically on a section called Prostitution, Regulation and The Hidden Scourge and it got me thinking about certain aspects that the book didn't cover like because of the lack of consistent men available for services (even though soldiers did go to brothels) would the prostitutes pursue other women to make a profit? Did this affect how people during this time viewed female sexuality?

Also I stumbled across an article called Male Heterosexuality and Prostitution during the Great War: British Soldiers' Encounters with Maisons Tolérées (I haven't read it yet) it got me thinking again about the lack of the opposite sex in the trenches, so was it uncommon for a straight or even "curious" man to have gay sex in the trenches? How frequently do we think this could have happen?

What are your views on my thought that school put to much historical focus on WW1/2-era Germany? How do historians jazz up a subject that people already know a lot about? What areas of history do you think schools should focus on?

Does anyone know of some good general historical anthologies on the Cold War? Thanks to anyone that can help me, I appreciate it :)