Today:
You know the drill: this is the thread for all your history-related outpourings that are not necessarily questions. Minor questions that you feel don't need or merit their own threads are welcome too. Discovered a great new book, documentary, article or blog? Has your Ph.D. application been successful? Have you made an archaeological discovery in your back yard? Did you find an anecdote about the Doge of Venice telling a joke to Michel Foucault? Tell us all about it.
As usual, moderation in this thread will be relatively non-existent -- jokes, anecdotes and light-hearted banter are welcome.
Ave again! The full trailer for my upcoming free online course, A Virtual Tour of the Ancient City, has just been released and everyone at the University of Reading is very proud of it: https://youtu.be/MF9_CNi2IDg
If you'd like to sign up to learn more about Rome, you can do that at http://rdg.ac/FLvirtualrome or if you would like to ask any questions you can AMA in AskHistorians on Thursday 9 March.
Valete!
Dr Matthew Nicholls - @DrMCNicholls
I've been reading a little about the Landsknechts, a loose grouping of 15th-16th century German mercenary knights who considered themselves a little bit (okay, a lot) better than the average marauding brigand. Despite pretty much making their living off plunder, since getting paid by the noble they served was...questionable. One part of their surrounding culture/mystique was the composition of lots of songs and poetry glorifying their lifestyle and deed.
One of those mercenary knight-poets was Georg Niege. He decided to become a mercenary warrior after graduating from college and realizing that he couldn't get a good-paying job.
sob
So, I'm applying to top PhD programs in U.S. history. My file is borderline in terms of my quantitative measures, but if you actually read it closely, it's pretty good if I say so myself. My mentors told me that I would need to get lucky and have my app fall into the hands of someone who reads it, but when that did happen, I would get in.
4 months later, I'm sitting at 1 acceptance (top 10 program, nominated me for university-level merit/recruiting fellowship) and 8 rejections -- all impersonal save for Stanford, where the professor I wanted to work with said in an email that I had come close but was just a couple votes short. Thankfully, the school that has accepted me seems to be a wonderful place, by all accounts.
but, y'all. I knew I was warned about graduate admissions being a shit shoot, but damn. It's amazing how much luck is truly involved in the process. I'm beyond grateful that my acceptance came in the second week of January, or else I would be deeeeeeeeep in crisis right now.
/rant
Lately I've been on a reading binge about Joseph Stalin. I've found most of the material is recycled from Khrushchev's memoirs or from Stalin's daughter. The Russians have been declassifying stuff like Stalin's bodyguard's diary in recent years. Does anyone have any suggested readings with additional information taken from newer sources such as the diary?
The best material I've read so far is from Robert Conquest.
I discovered the other day that not only did Adela Breton create site maps for Los Guachimontones during her visit in the 1890s, but she also took photos of the site* as well. I believe that these are the earliest photos of Los Guachimontones and show the site to be in rather excellent condition. I find it amusing that even in the 1890s someone was farming in the patio space just as they were in the 1990s when Phil Weigand began his restoration efforts.
Some pretty good news, friends. I finally, finally handed off the second draft of my dissertation to my advisors on Monday :D They said they got the the stuff, so all that remains is to wait until they get back to me. I have a bit more on that, along with how I've been relaxing and unwinding, in this entry:
As the name implies, after unwinding a little more I'll probably write up something on the challenges I faced with the second draft of this dissertation(I've touched on them before, but not extensively), which I'll probably post up next Friday :D
What's the general consensus on works by Frances and Joseph Gies? I have a copy of "Daily Life In Medieval Times" and wanted to get a sense of how reliable it is.
Howard, too, has had his troubles. He wrote me some months ago that his mother was very ill. They live in a small town, and he took her to doctors, hospitals, etc., for observation. While he didn't tell me the details, I judge that she must have some lingering, incurable disease like cancer, as he has been so worried about her he has not been able to do full justice to his writing, and also has had most of the care of her, which took his time from his writing. For several weeks he didn't touch his machine, and only now is trying to get back into the harness.
Okay, so this probably doesn't mean anything to most of y'all and needs a bit of explanation. Otis Adelbert Kline was a fairly successful pulp writer in the 1920s and 30s, most remembered today for a tiff with Edgar Rice Burroughs over their respective sword-and-planet novels set on Mars (said tiff apparently not actually having happened, being debunked many years after the first mention of it); Kline later shifted to being a literary agent for pulp authors, most notably Robert E. Howard and E. Hoffmann Price, and employed fellow pulp writer Otto Binder (one-half of the team that worked under the pseudonym "Eando Binder") in that regard. I found this snippet in a letter that was published in OAK Leaves - a fanzine dedicated to Otis Adelbert Kline (OAK, get it?)
This particular snippet re: Robert E. Howard is fairly accurate, and telling considering that in just a couple months Howard would receive new of his mother's imminent death and take his own life. The illness of Mrs. Howard was tuberculosis - which at the time carried something of a social stigma with it; you can read a bit more about that in an article on Hester Jane Ervin Howard and Tuberculosis by Barbara Barrett.
Another tuberculosis "sufferer" around the time, and a correspondent of Robert E. Howard's, was the California poet, artist, and pulp writer Clark Ashton Smith. However, his diagnosis has come under suspicion lately, since it was delivered by Dr. Albert Abrams - who is, today, notorious as a quack who got rich off the proceeds of bupkiss electrical medical diagnostic devices, called "Radionics." Patients would typically be informed that they had terminal illnesses (cancer) and/or socially unacceptable ones (tuberculosis, syphilis), and be charged for cures - all of which could be done by mail. Smith's friend and mentor George Sterling was convinced of Abrams' bonafides, with several references in the Sterling-Smith correspondence, but with hindsight it may be more likely that Smith suffered from malnutrition (he and his family were poverty-stricken), rather than TB.
Random question for the sub: Do you visit other history related subreddits in any sort of frequency?
So...how do you say cuneiform? Is koon-if-orm, kyoon-if-orm, koon-ey-if-orm, or what?
I'd love to learn more about the Reconquista.
Are there any books you would recommend?
Can anyone recommend a fairly unbiased biography of Vladimir Putin and the Russian federation under his rule. I'm aware of First Person and The Man Without a Face. And I will probably read both of them at some point, but I have heard that both are both pretty bias.
A full time course load on top of a 9-5 is starting to kick the shit out of me and I'm just wrapping up undergrad work. I'm starting to worry about what it's gonna be like with graduate courses. Am I getting ahead of myself?
I know one obvious solution is to take fewer classes, but I'm not yet willing to go that route.
Just wondering how others here have dealt with the full time work/school experience? Especially with reading and writing intensive coursework?
okay so I'm not really sure where I'm supposed to post this so I'm just going to post it here. I need some information on the South Carolina Militia in the Revolutionary War. Did the people who joined the militia get to stay at home when they weren't needed? also when they had their meetings did they meet with the continentals too or did they just meet by themselves?
Does anyone know of a good book on the history of Zoroastrianism? I'm interested in the period from it's foundation to it being replaced by Islam as the state religion in Persia. If it covers the theological aspects of it as well, that's fine, but I want the main focus to be the historical events.
I found (what was labeled as) a WWII era Blood Chit while flipping through a stack of old ephemera at a junk store a couple of days ago. Researching online, I know these are reproduced often... and this one's colors are so bright, I assume it isn't authentic, but I wouldn't mind an expert's opinion. I really like it fake or not, so I'm happy either way.
