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.
Ran across something that fit my mood today:
I’m not reading anything these days. It’s all wind and shadows. Books, books, books — great God, there’s no end to them. New writers, new publishers springing up, all cloaking ancient whores with new petticoats. Scarcely a new thought in ten thousand. Books — the most futile and cumbersome of man’s inventions. Art — philosophy — culture — literature — ghosts of smoke that the wind blows away. In a century, an age, an eon — all in a breath in the life of the planet. Nothing is stable, nothing enduring. I think this or I think that and it matters not one single damn what I or you or anyone thinks. Water whipping over the millrace of time; waves on the shores of eternity. A breath, a whisper in the wind. And ten million forests give up their virgin wood annually to furnish paper for fools to scribble on and worse fools to strain their eyes over.
On Monday I wrote up a description of the research behind my recent Radiolab episode and some other interesting things I've found on the state of the nuclear chain of command: The President and the Bomb: Part III
I learned that Michael Smith has a new book on Aztec daily life and it won an award. I wonder how it differs from Jacques Soustelle book from 1961. My guess is, a lot.
I <heart> Charles Sumner. He's most famous as the blunt object against which Preston Brooks broke his gutta-percha cane. The notional casus belli there is Sumner insulting Brooks' relative, Senator Andrew Butler. I dug back into his earlier stuff to get a feel for Sumner before Kansas matters took center stage, so in process research yadda yadda.
Chased a couple of footnotes and came to Sumner, just about to become a Senator, addressing a free soil crowd at Faneuil Hall about how they should respond to the then-new Fugitive Slave Act. It's a treasure trove of stuff, so meaty that I have brain gout. Mainly, though, Sumner is delightful. He comes to how as an officer of the court, he might be called upon to rule in a fugitive rendition case. He says he would resign, but he can't speak for others. That would be judgey of him. This is Charles Sumner being non-judgmental:
Surely no person of humane feelings and with any true sense of justice, living in a land “where bells have knolled to church,” whatever may be the apology of public station, can fail to recoil from such a service. For myself let me say, that I can imagine no office, no salary, no consideration, which I would not gladly forego, rather than become in any way the agent in enslaving my brother-man.
Such a deed would haunt Sumner -not judging anyone, mind!- all his waking and dreaming hours, alone or in company of others. If he failed, then he wold have to live with facing his victim,
From distance rice-fields and sugar-plantations of the South, his cries beneath the vindictive lash, his moans at the thought of Liberty, once his, now, alas! ravished away, repeating the tale of his fearful doom, and sounding, forever sounding, in my ears, “Thou art the man!”
No pressure, dudes!
("Our Immediate Antislavery Duties," Charles Sumner; His Complete Works, Volume III.)
Well, my thesis was approved by my advisor yesterday. Now on to the defense. No amount of praise from him will change the crushing terror of it all.
God I wish it was a month from now and I was moving on to my PhD program already.
This is about source criticism in education.
TL;DR Question: At what part of the education system where you come from is source criticism part of the history curriculum? How is it structured and how old are the students?
So, in a historical gaming community I'm part of, we're consistently plagued by outbursts from Balkan (relevant to this weekly theme), Georgian and Turkish 'historians' who can be quite nationalistic and vocal. This is unlike every other historical group of people that traffic our global site and it can be quite disruptive at times where emotional posts often end in nasty conflicts. At the end of the day, what is being brought up as content of discussion are often clearly outlined to me as Victorian fabricates or secondary sources (such as modern illustrations from old soviet era). At other times, the sizes of an army or claims made 1000 years ago are taken at face value, such as a standard field army was numbered 1 000 000 strong, straight from Wikipedia's finest. Anyway, this is a part of the world that I know little of, but it just boggles my mind when I see it. I just shake my head when I'm trying to process it.
So the other day I talked to a historian from Georgia (Caucasus) the other day, and he told me Source Criticism as a subject is something specialized for the University. That can't be true? Is that a normal way of structuring curriculum in general? Here in Norway it's the first order of business during general history in high school, the introductory subject.
Thank you and have a nice weekend!
Going to go work on a manuscript with mine own two hands for the first time next week! Can't wait to pay £5 for a library coffee
Somewhat late, but still:
Are there any "old news" outlets that summarize (daily or weekly) what happened on the fronts of the Great War on this day (or week) exactly one hundred years ago?
I've been getting back into my interest of food history and medieval gastronomy. I even set up my own subreddit, /r/Archaiccooking for people who want to discuss ideas or post recipes and finished products. I don't expect it to take off, but it'll be my little slice of reddit.
Not sure if anyone saw my question about Sister Rosetta Tharpe before the Great Council of Elvis Impersonators kept it from reaching double digits (because surely it's not disinterest), but I was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of some decent resources on her and her career.
I hereby formally accuse the AskHistorians mods for being shills for Big History. Please join us in our new sub, /r/AskHistoriansInAction, where we discuss the lapse of ethics in historical journalism.
I'm looking for comprehensive books on the North Africa Campaign (and possibly a book on Rommel) and the Russian revolution, just because I've realized I know very little about either. Any suggestions ?
Book request, please: history of drug cartels in Central America.
As a future history student, (I'm going to be at Ohio University with their Honors Tutorial College for History and a double minor in Political Science and English this fall) I'll like to ask these questions.
For those in History Academia and current students-
Thanks and I can't wait for the fall! I'm interested in 1945-1968 American Politics, Internet culture, Rome, US Presidential Campaigns, Ancient Egypt, and Heraldry as possible studies for myself in and out of the classroom.
I'm interested in reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but I found the books at different lengths and varying translations. Is there a version that is unabridged and translation stays relativity faithful to the original?
Thomas Jefferon's birthday was yesterday. Half democratic, half republican, 100% loser. Happy 274th!
For this week's theme "the Balkans:" I recently stumbled upon The Southeast Passage podcast. It's
This Podcast is a platform for sharing knowledge about the History and the Society of Southeastern Europe, presenting interviews with young researchers on their current projects.
Check it out. I've enjoyed it.
I'm researching medieval pickling all weekend. You can see it on @gothwalk on twitter, should you be nerdy enough to be interested.
How do i prove to a holocaust deniar that the homocaust did happen?