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Cliopatria

  • Mar 30, 2005

    Bamboo v. Lonesome

    by Cliopatria

    Japan Focus has a"three-fer" this week on the Korean-Japanese dispute over a rock. Well, technically"islets" but it's just rocks about big enough for a large playground: What the Koreans call Tokdo (Lonesome Island) and the Japanese, less literally, call Takeshima (Bamboo Island) , has been a matter of territorial dispute for years, mostly because of the attendant fishing rights that come with the extension of territory. There's a nice short

  • Mar 30, 2005

    Power and Politics in Zimbabwe and Namibia

    by Cliopatria

    On Monday Hifekepunye Pohamba took over the Namibian presidency, replacing the only head of state the country has ever known, Sam Nujoma. Nujoma was the leader of the South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO) from the 1960s, and as with so many of Africa’s revolutionary leaders, he was well positioned to become the country’s first president fifteen years ago. There was a time when Nujoma appeared ready to follow another familiar path of his revolutionary brethren. Whispers from Windhoek i
  • Mar 30, 2005

    Making fun of Yankee Fans for Fun and Fame

    by Cliopatria

    Andrew Ackerman (of The Nation and other assorted publications) gave me props in his weblog. Apparently sometime last fall in the Red Sox Diaries, I called Yankee fans"prehensile slackjawed mouth breathing troglodytes" (I must admit, that does sound like me . . .) and he liked the phrase so much, he used it in his blog. I'm truly touched that my jackassery can mean so much to so ma
  • Mar 29, 2005

    Sappho, but not Potidea

    by Cliopatria

    I just had a rather unhappy young man in my office hours; I'll call him Jeremy.   Jeremy is one of the brightest students in my ancient history course; he asks interesting questions and has done well on the one test we've had so far.  He's a likeable fellow.

    Jeremy is not happy with the way I teach my class.  He wants battles and politics, while my lectures are filled with social and cultural history.  Covering the Greeks, I spent as much time on Sappho as on the P

  • Mar 29, 2005

    My Take on Gil Troy's Take on Ronald Reagan

    by Cliopatria

    HNN this week presents as a special feature: Gil Troy’s interview with Gil Troy, a piece puffing his new work on Ronald Reagan, MORNING IN AMERICA. I must confess to a certain distaste for all such self-interviews, which put me in mind of the saw about the lawyer who argues his own case having a fool for a client. It is difficult to do such an article without appearing self-serving. Professor Troy even manages the astounding feat of ducking his own q
  • Mar 29, 2005

    Who owns history, part MCLVIIIIIIIII

    by Cliopatria

    Historian v. Hollywood, but this time it's about who got it right. Apparently more than one Crusade historian and buff were shopping projects around at the same time, and now lawyers are involved:
    Michael J. Plonsker, a lawyer with the Los Angeles firm Alschuler Grossman Stein & Kahan who litigates such cases, said winning them was difficult but not impossible."History is not copyrightable," Mr. Plonsker said."But if th
  • Mar 28, 2005

    Adapt or Die?

    by Cliopatria

    I was reading an interesting review of an interesting-sounding book (Brian D'Agostino,"Tribute to Seymour Melman: Review of After Capitalism: From Managerialism to Workplace Democracy" Z Magazine, March 2005, pp. 58-60. subscription required) which argues that managerial (i.e. US-style) capitalism is in decline. Partially this is a result of the"permanent war economy" (a term which D'

  • Mar 28, 2005

    How Did Los Angeles Get Its Name?

    by Cliopatria

    Bob Pool, in the LAT (3-26-05):

    The name of the game is historical accuracy. Everyone agrees on that.

    What historians cannot agree on is the name given to Los Angeles when its Spanish founders formed it Sept. 4, 1781.

    The early settlers meant to name the town after angels; that much is known. But for more than 75 years, local historians have been quarr

  • Mar 28, 2005

    Noted Here and There ...

    by Cliopatria

    Boss Tweed: Pete Hamill's"Boss Tweed: The Fellowship of the Ring" is an excellent review of Ken Ackerman's The Rise and Fall of the Corrupt Pol Who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York. Once you've read Hamill's essay, you too may yearn for a time when our politicians were merely corrupt.

    DeLay: If you haven't read Walter F. Roche, Jr., and Sam Howe Verhovek,"

  • Mar 28, 2005

    Lunch with Chuck ...

    by Cliopatria

    At Blog Them Out of the Stone Age, Mark Grimsley has been giving us a rendition of his"BreakfastwithDenny." It's a version of his conversations with the conservative military historian Dennis Showalter at the Society for Military History convention in Charles
  • Mar 26, 2005

    On Historical Proliferation

    by Cliopatria

    I thought that Technorati's tag function would be an effective way to find people who write about history in the blogospher. It categorizes blog posts according to their subjects as defined by the user. Every day, I look up a few of these — including history — to see what bloggers have written about things that interest me. At the very least, I find a blog or two every week to add to the sidebar.<
  • Mar 26, 2005

    George Woodrow Wilson Bush

    by Cliopatria

    I was reading H.W. Brands's little biography of Woodrow Wilson last night. Since Bush often sounds so much like Wilson--and acts like him, too, in his willingness to send troops to countries to make them reform--I thought it would be useful to read up on Wilson.

    Brands makes an interesting observation with some relevance to Bush. Brands describes Wilson as being almost wholly ignorant about foreign affairs when he became president. He had rarely traveled abroad. He was unconcern