Regulation: In Juliet Gardiner,"
Are historians live David Cannadine and Andrew Roberts an endangered species?"*
London Times, 27 July, Andrew Roberts proposes an official history authority"to protect what he designates ‘proper historians' from incursions by ‘amateurs' into writing history books, and to restrain literary editors from commissioning ‘C-list celebs' and the writers of ‘chick lit' to review such historians' work."
*Classic typo in the
Times' headline. We know they are"live"; the issue is who they are"like."
Eric Rauchway engages the issue in"Ticked offhist," The Edge of the American West, 29 July, with an argument for letting"a thousand flowers bloom." Imho, the regulation problem is -- not one of failing to police the perimeters of the profession -- but one of refusing to police its core.
Greek Geeks: John Noble Wilford,"Discovering How Greeks Computed in 100 B.C.," NYT, 31 July, describes the findings about the Antikythera Mechanism that are revealed in T. Freeth, et al.,"Calendars with Olympiad display and eclipse prediction on the Antikythera Mechanism," Nature, 31 July.
Mahler Extenuendo: Hugh Wood,"Mahler Triumphant," TLS, 30 July, reviews Henry-Louis de La Grange's Gustav Mahler: IV, A New Life Cut Short (1907–1911). Five years in 1777 pps.
MLK's Berlin and Barack Obama's Berlin: Jane Dailey,"Obama's Omission," Chicago Tribune, 30 July, ponders the significance of Barack Obama's omission of any reference in his Berlin speech to Martin Luther King's 1964 speeches in East and West Berlin.
Congratulations: if you haven't yet heard the news,
our former colleague, Caleb McDaniel, has left the history department at the University of Denver for an appointment in the history department at Rice University, where he'll be teaching with our former colleague, Rebecca Goetz.our former colleague, Jonathan Dresner, has left the history department at the University of Hawai'i, Hilo, for an appointment in the history department at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, where he'll be teaching with ... mmm, she's semi-anonymous. Three cheers for Caleb, Rebecca, and Rice! Three cheers for Jonathan, semi-anonymous, and Pittsburg State! And three more cheers for
the University of Tennessee's John Bohstedt, whose quick action may have saved the lives of dozens of people at the Unitarian-Universalist Church in Knoxville.
