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.
I'm preparing a pretty substantial response for the Floating Feature thread (worst misconceptions about your area of research) next Wednesday; I've been working on it for a couple weeks.
TIL that Gettysburg was a Revolutionary War battle and that Americans celebrate the 4th of July because it is George Washington's birthday. Are there any comparative studies out there on American public awareness of American history?
Long story short, I was trying to get some buddies to take a road trip with me out to Gettysburg. Got a sarcastic response back: "Can we stay in a historically accurate tavern and denounce the British while drinking tankards of ale?" I got curious and discovered that this person also had no idea why we get a day off on the 4th of July.
I'm curious to know what percentage of the American population has no clue about their history. I know there are plenty of late night talk show video quizzes out there, but are there any academic studies?
PS: Public history professionals...git gud plz! ;)
Me before reddit: "laissez-faire is clearly the best mode of doing business! The state will only make things worse for everyone! What is best for businesses will be best for everyone - it's in their best interest to not do unethical things!"
Me after reddit: me_irl
The setting itself is a great handicap, for even the popular reading public is beginning to feel the basic unreality & theatricality of the cinema Wild West with its stereotyped stock characters - The Dead Dawg Saloon & Gambling Parlour, the mysterious tenderfoot, the honest, open, hearty [cowpuncher/rancher/miner], the malign villain, (horse thief or road-agent of any but the sentimental Robin Hood type), the Big Near-Lynching scene, the eleventh-hour rescue, &c. &c. The trouble is, that this depicts a milieu & reflects an atmosphere based entirely on popular literary precedent & not on life. No such west exists, & only in sketchy outlines did such a west ever exist. In its details & glamour it is purely a fictional (& wholly Eastern) creation so that it has not the deep appeal of anything taken out of life.
Ran across this today, and it had me thinking of Robert E. Howard's Breckinridge Elkins tales. Now on the one part, Lovecraft praised Robert E. Howard's tales of the west - particularly those stories in his letters - for their realistic character, and I think part of the reason Lovecraft did encourage Howard's historical western and regional writing was because it was the diametric opposite of the black hat/white hat cowboy western image which was already rife in American culture. On the other hand, many of the tropes that Lovecraft describe appear directly in many Breckinridge Elkins tales - but they work! The difference is, I think, that Howard was so skillful in his set-up of Elkins as a cartoonish character, his comic timing and presentation so fresh and on-point, that he could make use of these tropes stereotypes effectively without it feeling like a paint-by-numbers western.
My laptop decided to give up the ghost this week and am struggling through life with just a smartphone. I decided to do things the old-fashioned way and write notes for current reading by hand.
Result: 54 pages of notes so far, which are mostly illegible scrawls to anyone but me. But I'm rather pleased at how writing with a pen seems to focus my thoughts.
I got John Hatcher's Black Death: A Personal History yesterday and it already jumped up very high on my list of "things someone needs to make a miniseries from".
Anyone else listen to Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast? I'm a pretty extreme hobby historian, and I find it more entertaining as narrative history than most books I've read and more detailed than some undergraduate courses I've taken on the same topics.
Hello all, I'm making up a reading list to prepare for uni next year and thought I'd try and read a book for each class in the course. Anyone have any recommendations for the subjects below?
Why did Israel attack the US Liberty on June 8, 1967? Was it a false flag to blame on Egypt? I just learned about this the other day and was flabbergasted that we never learned it in History class.
