Some Noted Things Before the Flood ...
The conversation sparked by Arthur Krystal's review for the New Yorker of Roger Ekirch's At Day's Close continued in Sepoy's"A History of Anything" at Chapati Mystery and my"Micro-history and Commodity History" here at Cliopatria. In"Anything Its Own History" at The Scope, Evan Garcia brings his experience as a graduate student and working in bookstores to the subject to wonder about the micro-histories' exceptionalist claims. And Sepoy; and Garcia.
Josh Marshall announces the opening of TPM Café. His own Talking Points Memo will continue largely unchanged, but the new site will feature a powerhouse team of public policy analysts, including The Decembrist's Mark Schmidt. Matt Yglesias has relocated his own blog to TPM Café auspices. Like Eric Alterman, Josh Marshall is a public policy journalist with a doctorate in history. It's always good to remember that there are history empires to be built – even outside the academy.
Is George W. Bush's second term over yet? Somehow, it seems like it's been more than four years already since the last election. What? He's got 3½ more years to go? This could be difficult and we'd best prepare for the long haul. Yet another of Cliopatria's historian/journalist friends, Rick Perlstein, announces the publication of his new book, The Stock Ticker and the Superjumbo: How the Democrats Can Once Again Become America's Dominant Political Party by Prickly Paradigm, an imprint of the University of Chicago Press. Yes, I'm a Republican; but I strike alliances with Democrats in a righteous cause.
Finally, HNN's Rick Shenkman recommends some early reflections by historians about the revelation of"Deep Throat"'s identity. Joan Hoff's"Here We Go Again: Deep Throat Revealed?" continues to raise troubling questions. Shenkman's own"Forget Al Haig, David Gergen, L. Patrick Gray, Fred Fielding, Bush 41 ... Deep Throat Was W. Mark Felt" shows that several others of us leapt too soon to conclusions. Although the New York Times editorial says"... given the current temper of the times, it's likely that by tomorrow at least a few bloggers will have set about trying to prove that it wasn't really him after all." Is Joan Hoff a blogger? I don't see that there's much remaining doubt about who Deep Throat was and I'm with Ben Bradlee ("The thing that stuns me is that the goddamn secret has lasted this long.") and Tim Burke ("It seems obvious to me that Felt is a good example of what *should* happen in public service, though even more ideally it should involve going public.") on this one.