Just some minireviews!

#Plucked: A History of Hair Removal by Rebecca M. Herzig, 2015

This book really surprised me, but in the best way. The book does of course cover exactly what it says on the tin, discussion of the various ways people have removed their body hairs, but the historical undercurrents of why they’ve done it, and to what levels, are wonderfully laid out and explored, and it is deep and disturbing and fascinating. The book is a complicated braid of scientific racism, caustic skin-melting patent medicines, sexual anxiety, homosexuality vs. heterosexuality, radiation hair removal vs. laser hair removal, femininity vs masculinity, and the medicalization of beauty.

The short and simple "Acknowledgements" section at the end is unexpectedly one of the loveliest parts. She talks about her reluctance to tell others what she's been working on, immediate assumptions from people about her personal habits on body hair, the covert and overt professional discouragement from other academics, including being told point blank to drop the topic in graduate school. Naturally, she then does go on to thank the people who did encourage her. But this section really spoke to me, for reasons which are probably pretty obvious. I know that feel bro. Academic freedom is all well and good, but freedom doesn't equal respectability. What good is the ivory tower if we do not encourage the weird and uncomfortable things?

A great case study in how personal is political and the political is personal, and now I’ll never be able to shave my pits again without having to take a good, long, uncomfortable look at why I’m doing it.

(FCC required disclaimer: my copy of this book was free from the publisher, because librarians are considered “professional readers.” That is a real term of art in the book industry. “Professional readers” get free books. The rest of you are filthy amateur readers, you pay for them. Or you know, get them from the public library, like I usually do. Professionally.)

#Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life: The Plants and Places That Inspired the Classic Children's Tales by Marta McDowell, 2013

Soft, quiet, and a bit sleepy; a pleasant, unchallenging book for some pleasant, unchallenging reading. Very much Gentlehistory for Gentleladies, but still very good popular history. The text is intertwined with beautiful full-color photographs of her gardens, as well as prints of her watercolors and sketches, and there is an appendix at the back of all the plants she painted in her books, which is somehow my favorite part. I now have this elaborate and unrealizable fantasy of taking out my shitty fenced in patio area and putting in an excruciatingly correct Beatrix Potter Garden with foxgloves and puddleducks and all that. A nice book for reading in a dreamy mood as you watch the rain on your patio.

(FCC: once again, this one was free from the publisher)

#Ask the Past: Pertinent and Impertinent Advice from Yesteryear by Elizabeth P. Archibald, 2015

This is yet another case of cool-blog-got-a-book-deal, and it has some of the problems intrinsic to this genre. Which is: things which are charming when published in bits and pieces over time in a blog, doesn’t necessarily make any sense as a book. The blog publishes interesting bits and bobs of bad advice from historical books and manuals, and then we all have a giggle at how silly they are. The blog publishes them randomly, with no theme tying one quote to another, or chronological presentation, or anything like that, which totally works for a blog. However, put together randomly in book form it doesn’t quite work. I really think they needed to be organized. And there’s as far as I can tell just repeats from the blog. Still it’s kinda cute. The quotes are funny. It’s a good bathroom book (for people who do that) or small coffee-table book.

But a cute enough concept to poach for a Trivia theme, apparently. Hey you try coming up with those all the time.

(FCC: this one was free too lol)

This is a much belated post. I read Jonathan Lyon's Princely Brothers and Sisters: The Sibling Bond in Medieval Politics, 1100-1250 a few weeks ago. The argument is that magnate siblings in the empire cooperated as a larger family unit in order to shore up power across the family. He uses charter evidence for a lot of his work, showing which siblings were likely to have been close and most powerful based on the charters that they witnessed.

The most interesting things that he pointed out:

• inheritance patterns were extremely complex during this period. The major families had holdings composed of multiple duchies, counties, and marches. This meant that large families with several sons could distribute lands and titles across several siblings.

• Not many male children from the most important families entered the church during this time. Those that did seem to have done so out of religious devotion, not necessity.

• He analyzes the relationship of Henry the Lion and Frederick Barbarossa, pointing out that both had few siblings (Henry none, Frederick one) compared to groups of four or more for all the other major families. This left both men without natural allies, and may have predisposed them to create a strong political alliance. It was only when the other sibling groups were forging bonds with Frederick that he was able to discard Henry.

• In the later part of this period, the magnates had fewer holdings to distribute to their sons. This corresponds to lower birth rates among those families. This suggests that they deliberately had fewer children.

I was struck by the differing ways that sibling relationships were structured in Medieval Germany as opposed to modern western families. Siblings were interested in and intervened in the affairs of each other in order to strengthen family wealth and power. They were also heavily involved in securing the inheritance of nephews. This means that they were concerned with the success of both their generation and the entire next generation. In comparison, we are mostly concerned with the success of the nuclear family.

I'm hunting down literature on Tingambato, an Epiclassic site in Michoacan that has talud tablero architecture. Apparently it has tombs, but not shaft tombs like the ones found further north. Unfortunately, publications on Tingambato are few and far between so many of the things need to be requested through interlibrary loan.

The only other sites that have possible Central Mexican connections (i.e. talud tablero, ballcourts) in Michoacan are Tres Cerritos and El Otero which I know even less about. Pollard cites them in her 1997 article "Recent Research in West Mexico". I'm going to hunt down those sources, as well.

Finally started Elizabeth Varon's Disunion! The Coming of the Civil War 1789-1859, which was recommended to me here...more than a year ago.

I was a little disoriented in that I expected something like a fairly straight history of sectional conflict but instead seem to have more of a history of ideas approach to disunion as a concept and its uses, if necessarily one that includes a great deal of attention for the sectional conflict for the obvious reasons, but it's still really good so far. Wish I'd picked it up sooner.

This might be a bit late, but - oh well, here goes. Does anyone know of anything written on beards in Byzantium?

This question brought to you by: a little while ago, I felt very high and mighty for seeing a modern icon (on Wikipedia, I think) labeled "Patriarch Ignatios of Constantinople" and smugly thinking "Oho! Not so, that figure has a beard," before going on my merry way. (I thought it must just have been to protect modern sensibilities, since the fact that Ignatios was a eunuch is omitted from e.g. his biography on the OCA website.) But since then I've found out that there are numerous medieval depictions of him wearing a beard, so I'm just wondering if there's any kind of explanation for this unusual fashion accessory.

Editing to add: I've also thought of another question - less academic, this time, so I'll just add it on here. I just recently started re-reading the John the Lord Chamberlain series and while I love reading about John's manfully anguished adventures I'd love some recommendations for more historical fiction set in Byzantium (especially with non-evil eunuchs).

In addition to the /r/askhistorians book list, I'd love some additional suggestions on Meiji & Taisho era Japan. I'd definitely prefer something that covers antecedents of modernization present in Tokugawa. I'm particularly interested in the notion of forced and self-imposed modernization. Additionally, could you recommend essential monographs in this topic/time period? I'm considering designing a self-study seminar in the Fall if there aren't any somewhat related to this. Thanks in advance!

I am looking for some books on the following topics:

Archaic Italy, The the Pyrrhic war, The Roman–Seleucid War, The Etruscan's ,The Samnite wars and Corsica and Sardinia in Antiquity.

Thanks for the Help.

I was wondering if anyone could recommend to me some good books to read for the following time periods. I am mostly interested in political and military(strategic, operational, and tactical) subjects.

Bronze age kingdoms.

Roman Republic before the punic wars

Greece around the greco-persian war timeframe.

Alexanders successors/Diadochi.

Thanks for your help.