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Cliopatria

  • Aug 15, 2007

    Many or Any?

    by Cliopatria

    From Rudy Giuliani's simple-minded and scary Foreign Affairs outline of his likely foreign policy comes this claim:

    "Many historians today believe that by about 1972 we and our South Vietnamese partners had succeeded in defeating the Vietcong insurgency and in setting South Vietnam on a path to political self-sufficiency. But America then withdrew its support, allowing the communist North to conquer the South.”

    I'm an old-fashioned literalist, I guess. "Many h
  • Aug 14, 2007

    Mayank Austen Soofi: Review of Alex Von Tunzelmann's Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire

    by Cliopatria

    This first book by a 30-year-old Oxford historian is full of scorching insanity and shimmering evil. London and Delhi, Buckingham Palace and Birla House are the settings for its dramatic narrative where the consequences would exceed the worst nightmares.

    Indian Summer follows a now-fashionable school of history writing where dates and numbers are considered slightly less important than details like what the kings ate and the queens wore. Be seduced by a beautiful British heiress who
  • Aug 13, 2007

    The Return Of The Students Of History

    by Cliopatria

    The latest Atlantic has a new article called"The Karl Rove Presidency" that contains this jarring passage:

    But he was and remains an autodidact, and a large part of his self-image depends on showing that his command of history and politics is an order of magnitude greater than other people’s. Rove has a need to outdo everybody else that seems to inform his sometimes contrarian views of history. It’s not enough
  • Aug 12, 2007

    Bleeding Past Empty

    by Cliopatria

    How much pain?

    As subprime mortgages crater, here's one of the likely -- and as-yet-undiscussed -- consequences: Deficiency judgments, and perhaps a massive wave of them.

    Here's how it works: Buying a $500,000 house, you put $50,000 down and take out an interest-only housing loan for $450,000. Then you can't make your house payments, two or three years later, and the bank forecloses. But
  • Aug 12, 2007

    Shoot-to-Kill

    by Cliopatria

    The Times is reporting that, for the first time, a written shoot-to-kill order from the East German government has been found.

    The unsigned order, found in Stasi files, stated that border guards needed to"stop or liquidate" those trying to flee the state:"Do not hesitate to use your firearm, not even when the border is breached in the company of women and children, which is a tactic the traitors have

  • Aug 10, 2007

    Hayden Smith: Review of Walter J. Fraser Jr.'s Lowcountry Hurricanes: Three Centuries of Storms at Sea and Ashore

    by Cliopatria

    [Hayden Smith is a graduate student in history at the University of Georgia.]

    Walter J. Fraser Jr. _Lowcountry Hurricanes: Three Centuries of Storms at Sea and Ashore_. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006. xiii + 319 pp. Plates, tables, map, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $24.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-8203-2866-9.

    In the wake of hurricane activity during the first decade of the twenty-first century, historians have begun to make sense of the natural disaster's re
  • Aug 10, 2007

    Religious Contradance: Everybody swing to the right?

    by Cliopatria

    During a rather blasé search for new material concerning German history on the blogosphere, I came upon an unusual new blog: one written by Ludwig Windthorst, one of the founders of the Zentrum and a towering figure in Catholic democracy, called Der Vasall!

    I doubt that it is the historical Windthorst, or even a coincidental appellation, but the blog takes on an interesting subj
  • Aug 10, 2007

    The Biblicals

    by Cliopatria

    It's time for another installment of Victorian didactic fiction.  Today, as a change from the usual diet of Protestant fiction, we have a Catholic novel: The Biblicals; Or, Glenmoyle Castle.  A Tale of Modern Times (Keating & Brown, 1831).  Although the publisher is based in Londo

  • Aug 9, 2007

    An Ignatieff Roundup

    by Cliopatria

    Michael Ignatieff,"Getting Iraq Wrong," NYT, 5 August, drew more commentary on the blogs than the usual NYT's piece. Much of it was highly critical, even scornful. Here are some of the more thoughtful responses:

    Tim Burke,"Ignatieff," Easily Distracted, 8 August.
    Phil Carter,"