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Cliopatria

  • Sep 12, 2007

    Wise Words

    by Cliopatria

    "The Vietnam experience left the military leadership feeling that they should advise against involvement in counterinsurgencies unless specific, perhaps unlikely, circumstances obtain -- i.e. domestic public support, the promise of a quick campaign, and freedom to employ whatever force is necessary to achieve rapid victory. In light of such criteria, committing U.S. units to counterinsurgencies appears to be a very problematic proposition, difficult to conclude before domestic support erodes and
  • Sep 11, 2007

    What Spanish for Chutzpah?

    by Cliopatria

    [Crossposted to Europe Endless.] I tend to lose track of time. It's a bad quality for an historian, but confronting the same boring file for hours speeds the passage of time even though one perceives it grinding to a halt. I had been picking away at the same document today (in between bouts of looking after my son) before I gave up, turned on the TV, and surrendered to the pablum of cable news.

    Only I didn't realize what time it was. Suddenly, the dreaded words, "
  • Sep 10, 2007

    Think Twice

    by Cliopatria

    My essay on the 20th anniversary of Russell Jacoby's The Last Intellectual will run in the new issue of Bookforum. It is currently available at the website -- though at 4000 words, minus any of the section breaks used to structure the piece, it is hard to believe that anyone could actually read it online.

    Here's hoping the print incarnation is easier on the eyes. As if to provide evidence that some folks <
  • Sep 8, 2007

    Matthew D. Norman: Review of Michael W. Kauffman's American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies

    by Cliopatria

    Michael W. Kauffman. _American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies_. New York: Random House, 2004. xvi + 508 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-375-50785-X; $15.95 (paper), ISBN 0-375-75974-3.

    Reviewed for H-CivWar by Matthew D. Norman, Gettysburg College

    Abraham Lincoln delivered a rather extraordinary speech to a crowd that gathered outside the White House on April 11, 1865. Though Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Ulyss

  • Sep 7, 2007

    Crooked Timber on Wikipedia

    by Cliopatria

    John Quiggin, Crooked Timber blogger and some-time Wikipedian, has a good post about Wikipedia and its upcoming milestone (millstone?) of 2,000,000 articles,"Wikipedia at 2 million".

    It's followed by a lively discussion: 124 comments and counting. Well worth the price of admission.
  • Sep 7, 2007

    Roger Owen: Review of Juan Cole's Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East

    by Cliopatria

    [Roger Owen is the A.J. Meyer Professor of Middle East History at Harvard University. His books include Cotton and the Egyptian Economy, 1820-1914 (1969), The Middle East in the World Economy, 1800-1914 (1981), State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East (1992), Lord Cromer: Victorian Imperialist, Edwardian Proconsul (2004) and, with Sevket Pamuk, A History of the Middle East Economies in the Twentieth Century (1999).]

    Try as we might, it is difficult for most
  • Sep 7, 2007

    Week of Sept. 3, 2007

    by Cliopatria

  • Re: 9-11 Susan Faludi:

    Sept. 11 cracked the plaster on that master narrative of American prowess because it so exactly duplicated the terms of the early Indian wars, right down to the fecklessness of our leaders and the failures of our military strategies. Like its early American antecedents, the 9/11 attack was a homeland incursion agains
  • Sep 5, 2007

    Lawrence Culver: Review of Jeff Wiltse's Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America

    by Cliopatria

    Jeff Wiltse. Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. xii + 276 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8078-3100-7.

    Reviewed for H-Environment by Lawrence Culver, Department of History, Utah State University

    Until I read Jeff Wiltse's new book, I had never really thought about the fact that I have never taken a swim in a public swimming pool. During t
  • Sep 5, 2007

    Caviar and Mountain Oysters

    by Cliopatria

    “What is it about Bush,” the always reliable Victor Davis Hanson asks, “that evokes such furor?” You’ll never guess what he comes up with for an answer:

    ”Let's start with the hard left, whether in Hollywood or the blogosphere, or among the academic elite. They hate George Bush. To them, his tax cuts, alliance with the religious right, opposition to abortion and gay marriage, and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq foster