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Cliopatria

  • May 10, 2008

    Saturday Notes

    by Cliopatria

    The Historical Society meets at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, 5-7 June. The theme of this year's conference:"Migration, Diaspora, Ethnicity, & Nationalism in History." About a third of the conference papers are now available online. Hat tip.

    Robert Irwin,"

  • May 9, 2008

    The Clinton Dozen

    by Cliopatria

    Last night, New Jersey congressman Donald Payne, who represents Newark, withdrew his endorsement of Hillary Clinton and endorsed Barack Obama. Payne didn't mention the item in his announcement, but it's hard to overlook the timing: he moved less than 24 hours after the national press seized on Hillary Clinton's comments
  • May 8, 2008

    A Short Break from Tradition

    by Cliopatria

    A common feature of American life has vanished, and vanished pretty close to completely. But I doubt very much that it’s a permanent absence.

    Rick Perlstein’s much-celebrated new book, Nixonland, opens with violence. Making the point clear, it opens with violence twice: The preface quotes the young Pennsylvania anti-war activist L
  • May 8, 2008

    More Matters of Great Historical Import

    by Cliopatria

    (Am just now resurfacing from end of term grading. My apologies if any of these items have been linked here before.)

    I know this was linked in the last Carnivalesque, but I don't think a solution has yet been found. The American historical profession must step up to the plate if we are to call ourselves historians: Why are there
  • May 7, 2008

    Spin

    by Cliopatria

    Spin—the art of politicians or their advisors seeking to shape how the press covers political and public policy issues—hardly originated with Newt Gingrich or Bill Clinton, Dick Morris or Karl Rove. The most effective spin transforms a political weakness into a strength, changing the narrative by providing a new evidentiary base.

    Take, for instance, the performance of LBJ in the 1964 election. Throughout the summer of 1964, Democratic operatives worried about the “backlash”—Southern
  • May 5, 2008

    Hiroshima's Human Damage

    by Cliopatria

    In 1945, American serviceman Robert L. Capp, who was among the occupation forces, found rolls of undeveloped film in a cave outside Hiroshima, Japan. Unlike most photographs of the Hiroshima bombing, they depict the atomic bomb's human destruction. In 1998, Capp donated the photographs to the Hoover Institution Archives, providing that they not be reproduced until 2008. Three of the photographs are reproduced in Sean L. Malloy's Atomic Tragedy: Henry L. Stimson and the Decision to Use the Bom
  • May 5, 2008

    More Modern Notes

    by Cliopatria

    Alex,"When Watching ‘Lunatics' was Entertainment," Neatorama, 4 May. In the 18th century, admission to watch"bedlam" at the world's oldest psychiatric asylum, London's Hospital of St. Mary, cost a penny. In the United States, it was externalized as politics and made"free and open to the public." [Ed: er, Alex didn't say that last part.]

    Alexandra Mullen,"

  • May 4, 2008

    The Programming Historian is Now Available

    by Cliopatria

    The Programming Historian is now available on the NiCHE: Network in Canadian History & Environment website. This work is an open-access introduction to programming in Python, aimed at working historians (and other humanists) with little previous experience.

    Introductory lessons teach you how to

    • May 3, 2008

      The Art of Condescension

      by Cliopatria

      From the Online Oxford English Dictionary, the second definition of condescend:
      2. fig. To come or bend down, so far as a particular action is concerned, from one's position of dignity or pride; to stoop voluntarily and graciously . . .

      It is hard to remember that condescension once had a positive political meaning. In the colonial and revolutionary era, it indicated the ability of someone of higher class to communicate with his inferiors by carefully lowering his

    • May 3, 2008

      Saturday Notes

      by Cliopatria

      John Keay,"China's cities, imperial style," TLS, 30 April, reviews Geremie R. Barmé's The Forbidden City, Jonathan Clements's Beijing: The Biography of a City, and Arthur Cotterell's The Imperial Capitals of China: An inside view of the Celestial Empire.

      Helen Pidd,"Find o

    • May 2, 2008

      Week of April 28, 2008

      by Cliopatria

    • William Jelani Cobb

      If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, Jeremiah Wright has just been awarded a construction contract. And that's the best case scenario -- in light of his weekend blitz of media appearances there are many doubting that Wright's intentions were benign. Assuming they were, the reverend's appearance before the National Press Club highlighted his n
  • May 2, 2008

    Celluloid-Film Patent Ignites Long Legal Battle

    by Cliopatria

    1887: The Rev. Hannibal Goodwin files a patent application for camera film on celluloid rolls. He beats the Eastman Kodak company by two years and sets off a 27-year legal battle.

    Goodwin was an Episcopal rector in Newark, New Jersey. He liked projecting lantern-slides of Bible stories to his Sunday school classes and wanted to try making his own. However, he found the intricacies of glass-plate photography too daunting and decided he could invent a better medium for holding the pho