Last week, historian Brigid O'Keeffe published a new book, Esperanto and Languages of Internationalism in Revolutionary Russia, which I haven't gotten my hands on yet but I'm looking forward to reading it. It's basically what it says on the tin: traces Esperanto in Russia from the language's creation in 1880s Pale of Settlement, to the role of Esperantists in the Revolution, up to their persecution by Stalin in Soviet Russia. It's a bit pricey, but if you get it from the publisher, you can get 35% off with the code ESPER21, if that helps. You can also read a review of the book here.

Last week was the Esperanto-USA Congress, and O'Keeffe had a session where she talked about the book. She said something that I loved early on, about how Esperantists and other conlangers/conlang-speakers are often ignored by historians because they tend to operate on the margins of society. But in this book she views them as grassroots activists, like a lot of other (dare I say 'normal'?) people in the period, and in turn they're actually much more representative of their population than they've been given credit for, so they deserve more attention.

Something unique about this book is that it's actually written by a historian. A lot of history books about conlangs are written by non-historian scholars (linguists, sociologists, etc.) and/or people who are deeply interested in the topic of conlangs or of a specific language (some books about Esperanto are written by Esperantists with training in history). O'Keeffe, however, isn't an Esperantist (she actually said during the panel that she's only minimally conversant in the language): she's a historian of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. She's written about Esperanto before, a lot of which became this book, but it's not a focal point for her. So it's really cool to see a book published by someone a little more distant from the community.

Anyway, as an advocate of conlang history, I figured I'd spread the word of it here.

[META] is anyone else bummed that no one answered the question about parental interaction in the 70s and 80s vs now? Not an area I have any expertise in but I was curious about it.

This is a tough one to research, but I tried. Who decides what the "center" is. When discussing right wing and left wing ideologies, what is the center? Certainly people on either side have different views on the definition. How can we rely on someone's statement that something is left or right when we don't know their own definition of center. And center must also differ on the specific issue.

A popular graphic floating around tries to categorize news outlets by their perceived political leanings. From my perspective, many rankings are just plain wrong, but that is based on my definition of center.

It would be nice, perhaps, to have a definition of center, but of course that is impossible.

What contemporary media do you consume in the modern languages you learned for research? If you are a non-native English speaker, I would hear about that too. I figure even if you study Ancient Rome you still had to learn other modern languages to understand the historiography. Another way of stating the question is: Do you get to use these languages for fun? Or do you mostly associate it with work? Curious about music, books, movies, TV, etc.

After La Salle claimed the Louisiana purchase? How did he get back up the Mississippi river to the great lakes? Did they pole Themselves up the entire river? Like Louis and Clark did on the Missouri? Seems insane. No one seems to be able to tell me the answer to this. Thank you.

What Are the Number of Books You Had to Read Before Completing Your Research Paper/Book? More Generally, How Many Books Do You Read Per Year?

It is a strange question, yes. It occurred to me when I took a look at the massive bibliography that aided in the completion of a history book regarding the development of a nation. The list spanned 20 pages filled with references to other works, and to be honest, I felt intimidated. Intimidated at the idea of someone putting the effort of going through all of them, and then, compiling information selectively into his own work. It made me wonder how much knowledge does one need to consume to have a good grasp of a topic. Sure, the more, the better, right? Not to mention, there are bad literature out there as well which is another thing you must be cautious of. The endeavor seems near goliathic, which is why it is impressive for anyone who achieves their goal, and they have my utmost respect. The work of a historian is truly underappreciated, thanks to school, I guess. I want to know the answer to the question because I require an approximate estimation beforehand to know what I might be facing if I ever take on such an endeavor myself. Personally, I love the idea of professional scholarly work. Contributing to humanity by preserving valuable knowledge and through its distribution.

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Do anyone have any recommendations for good podcast covering ancient greece?

I listened to the In Our Time episode on the Plague of Justinian recently and the historians on were struggling to find any answer to "what effect did the plague have", basically concluding it had no effect at all beyond a bunch of people dying. No change to politics, to medicine, to society, to anything. And it seems to me the same can be said about the Spanish Flu pandemic: we keep looking for some kind of effect because something so huge surely must have had an effect? But there just isn't anything to find.

And then I think about the book I read on the Vietnam War, and how America could rain literally millions of bombs, napalm, Agent Orange etc and not even slow down the flow of troops south from a desperately poor nation; or on the other hand the North threw all their disciplined, unified people against a divided, miserably unpopular government with no support at all and yet never accomplished anything; or on the grasping hand thousands to millions of antiwar protesters can completely dominate the media landscape and not even make the slightest dent in the war machine -- indeed elect fucking Richard Nixon in massive landslides; all of this for decades, just nothing mattering at all.

I guess it just makes me wonder whether anything affects history at all, much less Great Men (or classes if you're a Marxist or nations if you're a nationalist asshole), if even plagues and pandemics, even the most awe-inspiring acts of nature or God or whatever mean nothing. Does stuff just happen, regardless, is it even contingent, or completely disconnected from any relationship to events and conditions.

I enjoy listening to history podcasts/youtube vids while I play video games; anyone got entertaining recs focused on pre-columbian America, Mesoamerica, or food history?

[META] question: when do us users find out how the mods feel about this month's "example-seeking questions" free-for-all experiment?

I was rewatching My Fair Lady and started to wonder how accurate a fear of bathing was during that time. Did the lower classes actually fear bathing?