I just compiled my thesis (sans bibliography and appendices) into a single document and emailed it to a local printing business to get it printed off. I'm going to read through the printed version one last time to look for any errors/typos/terribly constructed sentences. After that I've got a few minor bibliographical fixes to make as well as a few more images to add to the text and then I'll be finished and ready to print off the final copies for submission. It has been an exhausting couple of months but I'm finally getting excited about almost being finished!

/r/environmentalhistory has existed for a year or so, but over the last few weeks /u/4110550 and I have been working on really getting it off the ground. We still don't have a ton of content yet, but we're hoping to see more as more people learn about the sub. Come check it out if you have any interest in reading and discussing environmental history or just learning more about the field - everyone is welcome! We hope that it will develop into a place for discussion between historians, students, and anyone else interested in learning more about this area of study that we are so passionate about.

I'm putting together my first museum exhibition. Technically, I put together a full proposal for one in grad school and I worked on our class exhibition, but this is the first time I've just been told, "We need a new exhibition for that space by October, please do it." It's very exciting!

The topic (one of three possibilities I put forward) is "Furnishing the Victorian and Edwardian Home." The space is divided into three sections: one for mass-produced home furnishings, accessories, etc.; one for the amazing metal gadgets that were patented during the period, like apple peelers and toasters and dough mixers; and one for things that were still home-made for decoration, mainly textiles that used crochet lace, rag rugs, and so on.

The only real problem I foresee is that the database has no locations for artifacts in the collections, apart from the clothing I've been inventorying. So I've made a list of objects to include based on their descriptions in the database, but I have no idea if I'll be able to find them. Hopefully I will.

Next week, PBS will be showing The Civil War by Ken Burns, remastered for high definition. When the series first premiered in 1990, it became one of their most successful broadcasts of all time. It is also mentioned by many Civil War buffs as key to their decision to study the conflict. Yet, the series was not without controversy, particularly from members of the academic community who took exception to the importance of Shelby Foote to Burns' narrative, and the general whitewashing of the negative aspects of Reconstruction in the last part. The best collection of some of these views is in the book, Ken Burns's The Civil War: Historians Respond. It is still available in ebook form, as well as from some booksellers. Eric Foner's article is particularly critical of Burns' decision to go with the "reunion" view of the post-war period. Anyway, I will be interested in seeing what kind of discussion the series will cause, 25 years after its first premiere.

A few months ago, I agreed to write a chapter on a subject that I only know tangentially for a former (MA) advisor who needs an Africanist to do the necessary framing. I am now regretting that, because I'm having to read and digest material way too quickly to get anything useful out of it, and I have other things to do before a big research trip starts later this month.

Have any of you ever been pulled into something you really don't know well, but you feel like you can't say no because it's a personal request AND it's valuable on the CV? I'm told having job security means being able to say no, but in some ways, it's becoming harder to do--if only because there are so many more requests now. Have you been able to say no? Do you wish you hadn't? Great stories and horror stories welcome!

I've been looking up some basic creative writing advice on narrative structure this week (like Dan Wells' seven point structure videos), and seeing if it can be profitably applied to my academic prose. I think it's helping me to better understand why some of the papers/articles I've written in the past have been more or less engaging to read (leaving aside for the moment questions of content).

Have any of you turned to fiction writing for ideas for shaping narrative structures in your academic prose? Are there any books or resources on fiction writing that you have found especially helpful for improving your academic work's use of narrative structure, story arcs, etc?

Late to the party but: I had a book review in Science come out today. I enjoy that I can occasionally write for them because it is the sort of thing that holds a lot of weight at an engineering school ("Oh, yes, well, you know, my latest article in Science came out.. oh, yes, well, it is my third you see... oh, it's no big deal, really..."). The book is a biography of the physicist Ernest Lawrence. My review focuses mostly on the subject (Lawrence) but I thought the book was unfortunately very indicative of journalistic history of science — mostly rehashing old scholarship, a light amount of looking at the same papers in the same archives that everyone has looked at, ultimately not very thoughtful in terms of making sense of the scientist, his science, or his context.

(And before someone asks: yes, it is possible to write a good scientific biography! Janet Browne's books on Darwin, Richard Westfall's books on Newton, Mario Biagioli's books on Galileo — all essentially biographies, none of them fall into the old standard traps, all are very interesting. Those looking for more insightful work on Lawrence would do better to turn to Gregg Herken's Brotherhood of the Bomb, which nails the Cold War context.)

It is behind a paywall (PM me if you want a copy). I've written a blog post to go along with it which includes a list of really irritating errors (fun!) and also the unedited copy of the review (which I am allowed to circulate, and is a somewhat longer essay).

TA'd my first discussion groups of the semester. Those kids had their faces learned off.

What's everyone's opinion on the Greece-Macedonia name dispute?

hoping someone's going to ask a question about Deflategate and the history of sports commissioners powers (longshot i know)

I just started the Safehold series and was hoping someone might have a simple, preferably visual, guide to pre-industrial/ealy industrial sailing/naval warfare. A couple questions I can think of right this second are:

How did canons (and their teams) work before trunions, wheeled carts, and premeasured firing powder [a major point in the first novel is the invention of these]?

What are the differences between a schooner, a galley, and a galleon? And why were so many naval battles in this era determined by boarding parties and not through artillery power? [I kind of get it's because galleys could be rowed and were thus able to ram into other ships badabingbadaboom (https://youtu.be/nr0zoGjulZ4&t=59s)[raiding party!] but the book keeps mentioning how galleons were pretty much useless before the above mentioned inventions]

In the book they devise a new kind of sail rigging (well, reinvent, it's a long story) that supposedly makes them much faster and able to sail closer to the eye of the wind? What up with that? There's talk about square rigging, but I'm not sure what that is.

Also, just a general crash course in boating terms (of that age, especially) would be cool.

Edit: I'm on mobile and the formatting isn't happy. Too bad. I tried. Enjoy your Age of Empires nostalgia.

Are there any recommended books that discusses everyday life and the customs of Japan during the Tokugawa Shogunate? Am enjoying myself by reading Lone Wolf and Cub and Samurai Executioner, and it's making me curious about the the era.

I am looking for documentaries/podcasts on battles throughout history (military formation, strategy etc.). I have found a fair bit for WWII and WWI, but nothing before. My personal interests revolve around mainly Roman warfare, Chinese and Japanese warfare, and Napoleonic warfare. Finding military history for Eastern wars has been particularly difficult.