Hullo everyone! I'm on holiday in Slovenia, sitting at a pub in Ljubljana drinking beer and moderating AskHistorians! What am I doing with my life what could possibly be better? But seriously, AH modding, like most things, is easier with a pint. :)

Ljubljana is amazing, and the rest of Slovenia is just as breathtaking. I was in the highlands to the northwest on the weekend with my boyfriend. We were at the Gora Rocka rock festival, but one thing I was fascinated by when I went hiking during the days was the large number of abandoned hamlets across the region. I know the whole border region has been a site of frequent upheaval since the First World War, where it saw fierce fighting between the Italians and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But I'd love to know more about the demographic movements in the region since then. Some of the ruins I came across looked like they'd been abandoned for a couple of decades, while some were basically just foundations I couldn't pretend to date. What struck me was that the whole alpine northwest seemed very sparsely populated relative to most of Slovenia, and yet there was so much evidence that there'd been widespread habitation until fairly recently. I'd love to know where the people went, and when, and why. I'll have to do some digging in the coming weeks, I suppose. :)

(And the rock festival was amazing too!)

There is an interview with me in the latest issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists about nuclear risk, nuclear salience, NUKEMAP, etc.

Last week I finally (finally!) got a draft of an article done and more or less "out the door" on Truman's changing views on the atomic bomb, which tries to be the be-all and end-all of interpreting what he knew and when, and how it helps us understand his later (postwar) nuclear policies (which were immensely important to establishing the "nuclear taboo"). It also attempts to deal with some broader methodological questions in these sorts of questions, e.g., how do we judge a historical interpretation as "plausible," and how should we present evidence versus subjective judgments in such a situation? I am pretty pleased with it because it is about 50% "very hard-nosed empirical facty facts" (tracking, sometimes to the minute, what Truman might have seen/known/said on the bomb, esp. at Potsdam and the days after the bombing), and about 50% "let me address you as the writer and interpreter and tell you why some of these interpretations appeal to me, and acknowledge that interpretation goes beyond the facty-facts." Which is to say, it manages to synthesize two very different epistemic regimes, I think, and summarizes in a sense how I think we can do solid, empirical research without abandoning the insights of postmodernism, etc.

And next week I will have some very exciting news, but I cannot speak of it yet!

We (my archives) just got word we were approved for an LSTA grant to digitize some old stuff and put it on the webnets for free! \o/ \o/ \o/

It's some German-American stuff in cursive Fraktur (this is real) and of no use to almost anyone in our geographic area due to the whole problem that like, a dozen people can read cursive Fraktur, so we're hoping this (along with some transcription in to standard typeface German) helps the collection get some use.

Whenever I get depressed studying history I just remind myself that Ivor Montagu, founder of the International Table Tennis Federation, founded the ITTF to allow him to freely travel back and forth between Great Britain and communist countries, using his work as ITTF chairman as a cover for Soviet espionage. The best book on this is probably Ping-Pong Diplomacy: The Secret History Behind the Game that Changed the World by Nicholas Griffin. It's a little sensationalistic at times, but at the same time a wonderful read, especially when trying to understand the role ping pong diplomacy played in US-China relations.

Sent in my third draft of my dissertation a little while ago, and I've just been relaxing since then :D I may have a few things to correct in my fourth draft, but aside from those...I should be very close to gettin mah Ph.D 8D

On an unrelated note, though, I figured I'd ask here cause you guys might know more about this. Has anyone ever included internet communities in the acknowledgements of their dissertation or book? While, of course, nobody here answered any questions related to my research or did any writing for me, I have derived no small degree of comfort from the well-wishers on my dissertation update posts, and someone here gave me some good advice about making my way through the Library of Congress that was really helpful. Would it seem very strange if I were to include a little shout-out to this place alongside my friends and family?

One of those little historical episodes which make you realize how much has - and hasn't - been preserved.

By the way, I’m sending you a Sport Story magazine containing a yarn of mine, the first of a new series, the continuance of which I have an idea will depend a great deal on the expression of the readers’ opinions. If you like the yarn, I’d be greatly obliged if you’d drop Street & Smith a line saying so, that is if it isn’t too much trouble. If the publishers receive some letters approving my work, they’ll be more likely to continue buying stories of the series.

• Robert E. Howard to H. P. Lovecraft, August 1931, *Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard 2.243

By the way—Robert E. Howard himself wishes the gang would speak a good word for his new story in Street & Smith’s Sports Stories. It is the first of a series, & the fate of the later ones depends largely on its public reception.

• H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 9 Sep 1931, Essential Solitude: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth 1.378

Howard’s story, “College Socks”, is in Sports Stories for Septr. 25. I’ll enclose it herewith, since despite my admiration for the author’s vivid letters on Texas history & tradition I have no burning urge to retain this especial narrative.

• H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 18 Sep 1931, Essential Solitude: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth 1.384

Thank you very much for the nice things you said about “College Socks” and thanks very much indeed for the letter to Street & Smith, which I know will help me along a great deal with the editors.

• Robert E. Howard to H. P. Lovecraft, Oct 1931, Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard 2.256

The story in question was "College Socks," a boxing tale starring Kid Allison, first published in Street & Smith's Sport Story Magazine (vol. 32 no. 6, 25 Sep 1931); Lovecraft's letter with his thoughts on the story is, sadly, no longer extant.

I was up in the Canadian Rockies for Canada Day, and there's a gazebo built in the 30s by the Canadian equivalent to the WPA, work camps set up under the Unemployment Relief Act. The gazebo's absolutely covered in carved and written graffiti: people signing their names and the date. It amused me that there's a sign saying the historical graffiti is valuable, but please stop now!

We played a game of find the oldest signature, and got back to 1942.

I’m confused on u/commiespaceinvader’s and u/Snapshot52’s dismissal of Charles Mann’s work in the American Indian Genocide Monday Method post. While I am well aware r/AskHistorians dismisses Jared Diamond’s work, I thought this subreddit respected Mann. 1491 is on the AskHistorians Booklist and u/anthropology_nerd once said you should read 1491 as an alternative to Guns, Germs, and Steel.

So my question is, CSI and Snapshot, is your dismissal of Charles Mann unique in this subreddit, hence why 1491 is on the booklist, or did r/AskHistorians change their mind on his work since then? I haven’t read either Diamond or Mann so I can’t comment on their work.

Also, as a followup question: you said Diamond and Mann have a political bias. Exactly what is that political bias? Is it a simple conservative/liberal spectrum thing or is it something more complex?

Thanks

I recently noticed that through my experience on the internet, Benjamin Disraeli is the only pre-20th century British Prime Minister I see frequently mentioned online. Since I am American, I do not know why that is. Why is Benjamin Disraeli an important British Prime Minister and why is he talked about more than his immediate predecessors and successors?

Also, what is the current British consensus on Disraeli? (Both academically and general public)

Thanks!

Does anyone know what it was like to have consumption in the 19th century before they had sanatoriums and before people knew it was contagious? All I can find is information about the disease but not how society treated or thought of them and how the sick lived out the rest of their lives. I'm researching a late 19th century family from New Hampshire were all four of the children and mother died at a young age due to consumption. I'm just curious what it may have been like, how they were treated or what people thought of them. Things like that.

I found an edition of "Sir Orfeo" done by Sylvia Wallace for a PhD thesis in the 60s. Is doing editions as a thesis still like...a thing? Can you do that? I was under the impression you had to be someone really well-known to be unofficially "allowed" to edit a manuscript.

For the historians here,

Do you find that there are any sub reddits that commonly bring up history but are frequently wrong?

I have an odd question, and I recognize that this is possibly the wrong thread/sub for it, but bear with me. In the United States in the mid to late 1970s, with car culture still being big and EPA regulations strangling the output of muscle cars, especially in California, would it have been more desirable to buy a new Corvette (say, a 1978) or buy one that's 10-15 years older that had more power but less technology? I understand that this is a subjective question abut being that I was not born in that era, I'm looking for insight from someone who was in that era or has some sources from that era.

I am not sure if the following is a well formed question: when, if ever, has a private citizen been the most powerful person in the world? The motivation for this question came from noticing that Bill Gates has had the highest slot in Forbes' list of most powerful people for a non-government or royalty person for many years, at between 5-10.