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 started a podcast about fashion history last weekend: you can find it on LibSyn, iTunes, and Google Play, if you're interested.
Maybe give it a shot even if you think you're not interested! I've gotten a lot of responses to my answers here that say "I never thought I would find fashion history appealing, but this is pretty cool," just saying.
Reddit has taught me nothing if not the importance of precise language. Strunk & White ain't got shit on these valiant crusaders. With that in mind, I'm considering buying two books:
The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time
Accidence Will Happen: The Non-Pedantic Guide to English Usage
When I'm done I'll be far better equipped to flood the halls of r/AskHistorians with such important comments as "When you ask about the basket weaving industry in 1914, do you mean in early April or late August of 1914?" I will then offer no answer when that clarification is given because I don't know it.
For this week's historical manga, I would like to shill for Thermae Romae. Long story short, it's about a Roman bath engineer who repeatedly time travels to modern Japan so that he can steal innovate Roman baths based on what he learned in Japan.
The trailer for Armando Ianucci's The Death of Stalin just came out and it looks awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukJ5dMYx2no
hello lovely historians! I have a silly professional development question.
I got a paper accepted into a “pre-circulated paper workshop” for “advanced graduate students and early career scholars” at my subfield’s nat’l conference this year — only I’ve never attended one of these workshops, much less presented at one, so I have no idea what to expect! (I'm a third year.) has anyone attended something like this, or been to one? how does it work? will people ask me specifically questions about my paper, or just make comments more generally? should I prepare to introduce myself/my paper at the beginning? the page limit is 15-25 pages — mine comes in at 22, so that should be all right, but what if my paper doesn’t talk to any of the other papers in the workshop? I haven't heard much from the workshop conveners, but the more I think about it the more questions I have!
I got a book! And it's an amazing book of a rather unlikely kind to be out for sale just lying around. Then again, I was at a table from the Comunn Gàidhlig Thoronto (Gaelic Society of Toronto), so maybe not that weird.
It's called Seanchaidh na coille, and I think the English byline was "Memory-Keeper of the Forest", edited by Michael Newton.
Anyway, it's a collection of Canadian Gaelic poetry collected from the earliest arrival of the Gaels here right up to at least WWII (I'm trying not to peak), along with good, if not poetic, translations, and commentary explaining their role in Gaelic society and situating each in their proper context.
It's amazing just all on it's own, but as a self-taught student of history with asperations, it's beyond what I ever thought I'd get (and that I should be so lucky as to get TWO books of Gaelic poetry in less than a week is flooring). It's already confirmed some conclusions I'd already drawn that I'd never heard framed before, and answered my question about what is up with the odd funny "historical" stories on the front page of Mac-Talla. That I'll have to come back and add, because I'd like to quote a substantial chunk.
But yeah, very, very pleased over here.
I'm back from Mexico!
I’ve seen the quirt Jack McQuirter made out of the hide of the last Indian killed in Brown County, before they gave the corpse to the hogs to eat. It was rather stiff, and inclined to crack; I don’t know whether that’s a characteristic of human skin, used for such purposes, or whether the skin in that case just wasn’t tanned properly. I know some of the old-timers maintained that a broad strip of skin from a Comanche’s back made the best razorstrop imaginable. They cut straight down the line of the spine, from the neck to the small of the back.
This is a bit gory, and references a part in Frontier Generation, written by Howard's friend Tevis Clyde Smith. But it ties in with another anecdote of Robert E. Howard, that was given in One Who Walked Alone by his former girlfriend Novalyne Price Ellis (later made into the movie The Whole Wide World), talking about the last Indian killed in the county:
He didn't have a bit of sense... A few weeks ago, I talked to an old man up in Cross Cut. He told me positively that the last Indian killed in Brown County was killed a couple of miles west of Cross Cut. While I was in Brownwood, I lived close to an old man who'd been one of the first cowboys in this part of the country. He was with the Rangers, too, and he swore to me that the last Indian killed in Brown County was killed around Indian Creek. When ol' Clyde was working on his history of Brown County, he said the last Indian was killed over on the Sears place. Now you tell me he was killed over there, close to the railroads on your grandmother's place... That damn fool Indian didn't do a thing but go around getting himself killed all over the damn county.
This is an interesting example of both Howard as an amateur historian, collecting accounts of frontier life from the old-timers, and possibly (as regards the quirt) his tendency to the Texan "tall lie" tradition, weaving a bit of a gory tale for his friend Derleth in Wisconsin. The last known Native American raid in Brown County was in 1874, a fact Howard used in his story Old Garfield's Heart.
It's 100 years since the Russian Revolution! Can any historian out there recommend a book on the subject? I'm looking for something that acknowledges the brutal tactics of Lenin and Stalin but doesn't try to paint them as devils (like Pipes and Figes did), and isn't simply naive and banal optimism like China Mieville.
edit: I guess I just wanted to read Trotsky's book.
Did Hunter S. Thompson actually have a conversation with Nixon about football in the back of a limo during the 1972 presidential race? It sounds implausible and while I love Thompson, someone who claims to have tried to spray paint "fuck the pope" on the side of a boat during the America's cup may not exactly be entirely reliable.
I'm asking here because this question seems more trivia seeking than anything else.
Modern Christians in some evangelical circles claim that references to 'wine' (especially those involving Jesus) in the Bible are mistranslated from 'grape juice'. Is there any merit to this, did unfermented grape juice even exist as a thing at that time?
I've been reading about a particular local woman who did a lot to popularize ghost town tourism, and this one historian writing on her had some particularly strong words about the phenomenon of newcomers hoping to connect to the history of their new home, not by actually interacting with the locals, but through a guidebook written by a Brooklynite who'd just barely been here longer.
It got me thinking about the authors of hyperlocal histories. Some googling bios turns up the fact that every book I can think of on my county was written by someone who moved here as an adult, which doesn't say much because I'm willing to bet at least 90% of the adult population here is in the same boat. But still, why write these types of histories unless lots of people are moving in and wondering about the landscape before subdivisions, too? Definitely going to be thinking about the author's relationship to their "old timer" informants more now going forward.
What are some good books about the Iran Hostage Crisis? Operation Eagle Claw in particular.
I want to approach History as a hobby. I'm Brazilian and, right now, studying World War II on High School. I'm interested in American History (specially the Conquest of West) and East Asian History. Which books and study methods would you recommend?
Dan Carlin released a new episode of Hardcore History this week, and listening to it brought two questions to my mind to which I'd love to have your feedback.
First: how widespread has the adoption of CE/BCE instead of BC/AD been? I frequently see both being used by historians in this sub, and I understand how hard the introduction of a new standard can be. Is there active resistance to the adoption of the new form by any part of the academy, or is it mostly just the natural difficulty of substituting an ingrained, long-standing tradition?
Second: what are the most sincere opinions you can share about this podcast? Dan Carlin is not a historian and will frequently mention his lack of academic credentials. But does he, overall, present information with a better scientific underpinning than what you call "pop history"?
Edit: I've read the Hardcore History-related answers in the FAQ and elsewhere, but would really like any additional comments.
where does cannabis come from? where did the one true weed come from?
