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Cliopatria

  • Nov 15, 2005

    More Noted Things

    by Cliopatria

    Carnivals: History Carnival XX is up at Tigerlily Lounge! There's a lot of good history blogging to enjoy over there. Teaching Carnival III is up at Scrivenings. More reading!

    Burke Outta Control: At Easily Distracted, Tim Burke gives up on sweet reason in"

  • Nov 14, 2005

    Andrew Nathan: Review of Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday

    by Cliopatria

    Mao Zedong’s long, wicked life has generated some lengthy biographies in English. Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s is the longest, having overtaken Philip Short’s Mao (1999) and Li Zhisui’s The Private Life of Chairman Mao (1995). It represents an extraordinary research effort. The authors have been working on the project since at least 1986, to judge by the date of the earliest interview cited, which – and this is typical of the access they gained to many highly-placed and interesting people – was
  • Nov 14, 2005

    Thus Always to Tyrants?

    by Cliopatria

    I'm just catching up on some of the Guy Fawkes commemorative TV from last week. The BBC's Timewatch had an interesting programme devoted to the Gunpowder Plot, which argued that even if the conspirators had been successful in killing James I and the English political elite then the only likely result would have been a wave of anti-Catholic pogroms across the country - that England would have emerged from the chaos a more, rather than less, Protestant country than it already was. Which mad
  • Nov 13, 2005

    A New Appreciation for Old History

    by Cliopatria

    I just looked at a good graduate essay on the antebellum United States. The high point was the student’s use of a 1950 Church History article by Ralph Gabriel on Christianity and romanticism. His thesis intrigued my student, who had a good time with it.

    I actually don’t know how Tim found it. Perhaps it was a reference from one of his readings. Still, it struck me that one of the subtle but very real benefits of the shift from journals on shelves to journal databases like JSTOR i

  • Nov 13, 2005

    History of Science

    by Cliopatria

    If you've looked at Cliopatria's History Blogroll over the past year, you'll know that it has grown. I now count nearly 275 blogs on the list. It grows by fits and starts, when Jon Dresner or I find additional ones. Often, that means raiding someone else's rich sidebar of like-minded blogs. Last night, I was lurking among the history of science blogs.

    History of science is often taught in history departments, but is also often set ap

  • Nov 13, 2005

    Las Vegas history packed with crises and corruption

    by Cliopatria

    Not being clairvoyant, the Spanish explorers who found a spring in the desert in 1829 named the site Las Vegas --the meadows. The 1905 founders of a sun-baked train repair station optimistically kept the name.

    The far, far out community then began a precarious existence that regularly seemed to be rescued by divine intervention.

    Of course, as viewers of "Las Vegas: An Unconventional History" will see in thrilling detail, the salvation was unlikely from any fo
  • Nov 13, 2005

    Rick Perlstein: Review of Mary Hershberger's Jane Fonda’s War: A Political Biography of an Anti-war Icon

    by Cliopatria

    You don’t know America if you don’t know the Jane Fonda cult. Or rather, the anti-Fonda cult. At places where soldiers or former soldiers congregate, there’ll be stickers of her likeness on the urinals; one is an invitation to symbolic rape: Fonda in her 1980s ‘work-out’ costume, her legs splayed, pudenda at the bulls-eye. Every night at lights-out midshipmen at the US Naval Academy cry out ‘Goodnight, bitch!’ in her honour. They’ve learned, Carol Burke writes in her study of military folklore,
  • Nov 12, 2005

    Another Wood Review

    by Cliopatria

    Gordon Wood has his second important review in as many weeks. In tomorrow's Times Book Review, he hails publication of Sean Wilentz's"monumental" The Rise of American Democracy.

    I'm one of the academics Wood notes are likely to"slog through" this enormous work, and I'll defer judgment on the text itself till I have had time to reflect on it some. As with his review of Ackerman, however, Wo

  • Nov 12, 2005

    NCH WASHINGTON UPDATE (Vol. 11, #43; 10 NOVEMBER 2005)

    by Cliopatria


    by Bruce Craig (editor) with Nathaniel Kulyk NATIONAL COALITION FOR HISTORY (NCH) Website at http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~nch/

     

    1. THOUSANDS OF IRAQI RELICS STILL MISSING; UNIMPEDED PILFERING OF
    ARCHEOLOGICAL SITES CONTINUES
    2. HISTORIANS AND HISTORY PATRONS AMONG THIS YEAR’S HUMANITIES AWARD WINNERS
    3. BILL INTRODUCED TO DESIGNATE CLINTON HOME AS A NATIONAL PARK UNIT
    4. NEH TO ESTABLISH NEW GRANT APPLICATION PROCEDURE
    5. MICROSO

  • Nov 11, 2005

    Frenchmen and Peasants

    by Cliopatria

    Some analysts of military affairs have lately argued that the world is seeing the rise of"fourth-generation warfare," an emergence of significant non-state military actors whose confrontation with formal government will challenge the very legitimacy of the state. Such"warfare" doesn't always look like the kinds of activity we associate with that word. At the website Defense and the National Interest, the deeply cons
  • Nov 11, 2005

    Armistice Day

    by Cliopatria

    Although it became known as Veterans' Day in the United States after the Second World War, before that November 11 was a day of remembrance for the long-hoped-for end of the Great War. The Armistice specified that the war end at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

    Vera Brittain, a British nurse serving in France, wrote of the Armistice:

    "When the sound of victorious guns brust over London at 11 a.m. on November 11th, 1918, the men and wome
  • Nov 11, 2005

    Montgomery Mugs

    by Cliopatria

    In late February 1956, authorities in Montgomery, Alabama, indicted and arrested the leaders of the Montgomery bus boycott. Their fingerprints and mug shots were taken. Several of the mug shots have already been published, but The Smoking Gun has now put them all on the net. They include the well known -- Ralph D. Abernathy,
  • Nov 10, 2005

    Additionally Noted

    by Cliopatria

    Jonathan Edelstein,"Making Money," Head Heeb, 8 November, looks at counterfeit coinage and prosecuting it in 17th and 18th century England. And if you intend"to utter" some of it, be prepared for an unpleasant punishment. Thanks to Sharon Howard at Early Modern Notes for the tip.

    Some of the most dreadful prose I've ever pl

  • Nov 10, 2005

    Yet More Noted

    by Cliopatria

    Then and Now: On this day, 230 years ago, the Continental Congress created the Marine Corps as a division of the Navy. Semper Fidelis. On this day, 140 years ago, Captain Henry Wirz, commander of Georgia's Andersonville Confederate Prison Camp, was executed for having abused Union prisoners of war who were his responsibility.
  • Nov 10, 2005

    King for Four Years?

    by Cliopatria

    Georgetown Law Prof. David Cole takes on administration supporter John Yoo's new book on constitutional powers. His conclusion? [via] Yoo's history is terrible, but he's supplying the kind of rationalizations that we seem to need:
    Yoo's evidence does not undermine the conclusion that the framers intended Congress to take responsibility for the
  • Nov 9, 2005

    Alito Moments

    by Cliopatria

    The Alito Supreme Court nomination has churned up some embarrassing moments for several of us:
    A) Stephen Koff,"Brown's Alito Letter Lifted from Blogger," Cleveland Plain-Dealer, 8 November, reports that about 90% of a letter by Representative Sherrod Brown (D, Ohio) to Senator Mike DeWine (R, Ohio) outlining concerns about Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito was plagiarized from <