Aaages ago I was asked to write a review of HBO's Chernobyl series for the American Historical Review, along with several other nuclear scholars. Instead of making mine about "debunking" (there is a little of that), I tried to instead focus on the questions of, "what made this show so popular?" and "what are the obligations of historical fiction toward historical and scientific fact?" You can read it here.

I've been doing (amateur) research on martial arts, particularly east Asian ones. And I'm quite surprised at how little I can find that's more than the marketing releases of dojos. Is there anyone who could direct me towards something of a little more scholarly bent? I don't have access to most journals anymore at this point (and wouldn't even know which to look at for this).

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I read The Storm Before the Storm: the Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic by Mike Duncan.

I enjoyed it a lot! The point made in the intro - that these historical events parallel in frightening ways current events in America - really struck home for me.

I’d be curious as to what historians specializing in the era made of this book.

The thing, it was averred, was biologically impossible to start with; merely another of those crazy country mutterings which Cotton Mather had been gullible enough to dump into his chaotic Magnalia Christi Americana, and so poorly authenticated that even he had not ventured to name the locality where the horror occurred. And as to the way I amplified the bare jotting of the old mystic—that was quite impossible, and characteristic of a flighty and notional scribbler! Mather had indeed told of the thing as being born, but nobody but a cheap sensationalist would think of having it grow up, look into people’s windows at night, and be hidden in the attic of a house, in flesh and in spirit, till someone saw it at the window centuries later and couldn’t describe what it was that turned his hair grey.

• H. P. Lovecraft, "The Unnamable"

Lovecraft gets a bit of a ribbing for "unnamable," "unspeakable," or "indescribable" critters - which he never had a monopoly on and was never so addicted to as a lot of critics like to think; the story in question in fact begins by making fun of the tendency in stories like Ambrose Bierce's "The Damned Thing" or Guy de Maupussant's "The Horla."

Beyond that though, Lovecraft would take his inspirations where he found them, and this includes the family copy of Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), which purports to be a religious history of New England but manages to cram in so many weird bits and pieces that you'd be amazed - witchcraft narratives, ghost stories, sea monsters, the works. The bit which inspired Lovecraft's story is a very obscure bit of gossip about a "thing with a blemished eye":

At the Southward there was a Beaſt, which brought forth a Creature, which might pretend unto ſomething of an Humane Shape. Now the People minded that the Monſter had a Blemiſh in one Eye, much like what a profligate Fellow in the Town was known to have. This Fellow was hereupon examin'd; and having upon his examination, conſeſ'd his inſandous Baſtialities; for which he was deſervedly Executed.

• Mather, MCM Book VI, Chapter V, Tenth Remark

Which was a hard go, the worse so because while Mather names no names, we know what actually inspired the anecdote.

George Spencer, an ugly balding man with one "pearle" or false eye, had probably been whipped in Boston for receiving stolen goods, and had also been punished in New Haven for botching an attempt to escape to Virginia. He admitted that he had gained no spiritual benefit from the ministry of the famed John Davenport, that he had not said a single prayer during his five years in New England, and that he read the Bible only when ordered to do so by his master. In February, 1642, Spencer's life took a cruel turn when a sow gave birth to a dead deformed piglet. The "monster" was completely bald and had "butt one eye in the midle of the face, and thatt large and open, like some blemished eye of a man." Out of its forehead "a thing of flesh grew forth and hung downe, itt was hollow, and like a mans instrum' of genration."

The magistrates arrested Spencer and put him in prison. New Haven had not yet tried a capital crime. Spencer had seen enough of the colony's system of justice to know that the magistrates expected offenders to confess and repent. He had recently seen a man merely whipped for molesting a child, and as Spencer made clear, he thought that child molestation was a more disgusting crime than bestiality. Yet he denied his guilt until one magistrate "remembered him of thatt place of scripture, he that hideth his sin shall not prosper, butt he yt confesseth and forsaketh his sins shall finde mercie." Spencer then "answered he was sory and confessed he had done itt," only to learn that his confession would get him hanged and that mercy would come only from the Lord, not the Colony of New Haven. He retracted and repeated his confession several times in a desperate attempt to find a formula that would save his life. But on April 8, 1642, two months after the birth of the monster, the sow was put to the sword in front of the unrepentant Spencer, and he was hanged, "a terrible example of divine justice and wrath."

• John M. Murrin, "Things Fearful to Name": Bestiality in Colonial America"

Finding a 300 year old book with a credit to a P. Petri Python like I did this week really sounds like something out of a Terry Pratchett story.

Is it permissible to discuss the meta/historiographical implications of the way in which this subreddit regards history? I'm interested in discussing this issue, but I don't want to spend a bunch of time writing a comment if its not suitable for this thread?

Just finished Stephen Ambrose’s excellent book “Undaunted Courage” on the Lewis and Clarke expedition. So much great insight and seems relatively even-handed. One thing I keep wondering. In as much as Lewis and Jefferson hoped to find an all-water route to the Pacific Ocean, yet they knew the continental divide existed, what could an all-water route have looked like?

They didn’t expect the Rockies to be nearly so high and challenging, but they did know that to the west water flowed to the Pacific and to the east water flowed to the Mississippi. So were they picturing and lake on top of a mountain with water flowing out of each side in a different direction? Is that something that exists in the world?