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Cliopatria

  • Nov 27, 2007

    A Lost World--the Journals of Arthur Schlesinger

    by Cliopatria

    Arthur Schlesinger's abbreviated journals provide a window on the second half of the twentieth century and a clue to what happened to liberalism.

    This may sound rather odd, but my principal complaint about Schlesinger's Journals, 1952-2000 is that they are much too short at 858 pages. His editors--two of his sons--explain that they culled them from about 6000 pages, and I suspect I would have been delighted to read every one of them. Bowing presumably to the brass at Pengu

  • Nov 27, 2007

    Lott's Departure

    by Cliopatria

    Yesterday, former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott announced that he will resign from the Senate by the end of the year.

    Lott’s decision to resign is significant in three respects. First, it brings to a close an era of Southern politics. Lott was essentially the last of the first generation of Southern Republican officeholders—people who started in politics either working for segregationist Democrats or in opposing the 1960s Southern Democratic Party from the right.

    Lo
  • Nov 25, 2007

    Gray Dawn

    by Cliopatria

    At a certain point while working on my review of Black Mass, the little light bulb went off over my head and I thought:"The best way of characterizing John Gray's outlook would be to say that it's like Isaiah Berlin in a really bad mood."

    Quite right -- and yet not something I had room to unpack, since the word count assigned for the piece was strict.
  • Nov 23, 2007

    History That Isn't

    by Cliopatria

    We all know that the army in the early republic was vanishingly small in peacetime, because anti-standing-army sentiment prevailed in the post-revolutionary United States. Military history has long reflected this assumption.

    Here's the historian and retired Army officer James Ripley Jacobs, in his 1947 book The Beginning of the U.S. Army, 1783-1812, explaining that the central government paid little attention to the development of an American army under either the Articles o
  • Nov 23, 2007

    Week of Nov. 19, 2007

    by Cliopatria

  • Yamaguchi Jiro

    In terms of policy, Abe [Shinzo’s] LDP fell into two contradictions: between nationalism and universal values, and between the liberty proclaimed by the strong and the equality that takes into consideration the weak.

    The first contradiction was exacerbated by Abe’s call for an escape from the postwar regime and by his enhancing of statism and nationalism. On the one hand, Abe proclaimed a

  • Nov 23, 2007

    Friday Notes

    by Cliopatria

    Thomas Doherty,"Response to Human Apparatchiks," The Brandeis Hoot, 16 November, protests Brandeis administration's appointment of student monitors of"linguistic conformity and political orthodoxy" in its classrooms. I urge you to read it. Similar apparatchiks, known as"diversity monitors" at Antioch College, not only lied in what they claimed I said in the classroom, but later returned to disrupt student
  • Nov 22, 2007

    Some Things For Which I'm Thankful ...

    by Cliopatria

    There will, as usual, be some serious gratitude around our Thanksgiving table this year. Lest they be lost in the mention of other things there, here are some other things for which I'm grateful:

  • Renée Friedman,"Zombie Attack at Hierakonpolis," Archaeology, 6 November, weighs the evidence for and the dating of Solanum virus outbreaks in pre-dynastic Egypt.
  • Nov 21, 2007

    Malaise and Thankfulness

    by Cliopatria

    I’ve been away for a while. Deadlines and duties have kept me snared. Also, quite honestly, I have found so much of the news depressing of late. It feels like another time of “malaise”, and I have found it hard to write.

    In my first draft, I started giving examples of why I think that, but I have rejected it. Instead, I want to focus on tomorrow.

    Thanksgiving is a day in which, if the tradition is at all t

  • Nov 20, 2007

    More Noted Things

    by Cliopatria

    Marc Lynch,"Biddle's Best Case," Abu Aardvark, 16 November, reports on a presentation by Stephen Biddle,"a first-rate military strategist who has been working with General Petraeus, about military progress in Iraq." According to Biddle,
    ... if everything goes right and if the US continues to"hit the lottery" with the spread of local ceasefires and none of a dozen different spoilers happens
  • Nov 18, 2007

    Best Served With Freedom Fries

    by Cliopatria

    My review of Cathy Wilkerson's book about how she came to be in the Weather Underground ran last week in Newsday. I've now posted it at my own website as well, so that it will remain available after the paper withdraws it. The text is available here.

    A number of other reviews from the past several months, several on popular books of historical interest, are also available, listed on the hom
  • Nov 18, 2007

    Sunday Notes

    by Cliopatria

    The Awards and Honors to be conferred at the AHA's January annual convention include those for Scholarly Distinction to: Martin Duberman, Jack P. Greene, and Anne Firor Scott. The Troyer Steele Anderson Prize goes posthumously to Roy Rosenzweig. Sam Wineburg, a Contributing Editor at Cliopatria, shares the William Gilbert Prize with Susan Mosborg, Dan Porat, and Ariel Duncan for their article,"
  • Nov 16, 2007

    Friday Notes

    by Cliopatria

    Another Damned Medievalist will host Carnivalesque 33, an ancient/medieval edition, on 20 November at Blogenspiel. Send nominations of the best in ancient/medieval history blogging since 24 September to her at Another_Damned_Medievalist*at*hotmail* dot*com, in comments here, or use the form.

    Michael Kim