Cliopatria

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• Aug 12, 2011
  

  Military History Digest #162

  by Cliopatria

  Contents

   

  The Military History Digest is a self-chosen collection of recent military history from around the web.

  ANNOUNCEMENT: The next Military History Carnival will be on August 29th. Nominations are needed of the best of the military history web. Go here to submit a blog post.

  

• Aug 12, 2011
  

  Friday's Notes

  by Cliopatria

  Holland Cotter, "When East Met West Under the Buddha's Gaze," NYT, 10 August, reviews "The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Art of Gandhara," an exhibit at The Asia Society Museum in Manhattan.

  Russ McDonald, "Shakespeare's beasts," TLS, 10 August, reviews Andreas Höfele's Stage, Stake, and Scaffold: Humans and animals in Shakespeare's theatre.

  Timothy Snyder, "Toleration and the Future of Europe," NYRBlog, 10 August, argues that it is much too simple to call the Polish defeat of Ottoman armies at Vienna in 1683 a Christian defeat of Islam.

  

• Aug 11, 2011
  

  More Modern Notes

  by Cliopatria

  Colin Woodward, "The History of Torture—Why We Can't Give It Up," Quarterly Journal of Military History, 9 August, recalls a time when torture had nearly disappeared.

  Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "Moses Montefiore and the Jews of Europe," TLS, 10 August, reviews Abigail Green's Moses Montefiore: Jewish liberator, imperial hero. Lisa Hilton, "Samuel Palmer, the English Van Gogh," TLS, 10 August, reviews Rachel Campbell-Johnston's Mysterious Wisdom: The life and work of Samuel Palmer.

  Tamar Jacoby, "The Power of the Powerless," The Book, 10 August, reviews Dorothee Schneider's Crossing Borders: Migration and Citizenship in the Twentieth-Century United States

  

• Aug 10, 2011
  

  Modern History Notes

  by Cliopatria

  James McAuley, "Talking About A Revolution," New Yorker, 9 August, interviews Maya Jasanoff, the author of Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World.

  Laura Marsh, "All About Eve," The Book, 9 August, reviews Michael Holroyd's A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers.

  David Clay Large, "The Games the Nazis Played," NYT, 8 August, recalls the Berlin Olympic Games of 1936. Montana State's Large is the author of Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1936 and kindred books. Dwight Garner, "A Foreign Correspondent in Nazi Germany Who Interpreted It for the World," NYT, 9 August, reviews Steve Wick's The Long Night: William L. Shirer and "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich".

  

• Aug 9, 2011
  

  Things Noted Here & There

  by Cliopatria

  London High Court's award of £65,000 to Sarah Thornton for a "malicious" review of her book, Seven Days in the Art World, prompts Francis Wheen's "The hunting of the snark," Financial Times, 5 August. "Writers ought to fight with their own weapon – language," Wheen argues. "Thirty years ago I rubbished Clive James's epic (and, as I thought, shamelessly genuflecting) poem about the Prince of Wales, 'Charles Charming's Challenges on the Pathway to the Throne'. James never complained. But a few years later he published a poem that began: 'The book of my enemy has been remaindered/And I am pleased.' And I thought: touché!"
  See also: Tim Burke, "Seven Days in the World of Books on Fire," Easily Distracted, 8 August.

  

• Aug 8, 2011
  

  I Beseech You, in the Bowels of Christ, Think it Possible You May Be Mistaken

  by Cliopatria

  In 1906, the Bronx Zoo opened an extraordinary new exhibit that was designed to improve the scientific knowledge of zoo patrons: in the Monkey House, interacting with the primates, they displayed a young Congoloese man named Ota Benga, who had also been put on exhibit at the Natural History Museum and the 1904 World's Fair. The exhibit helped laymen to understand the "missing link" in the evolutionary progress from monkeys to humans; as such, it reflected the very latest in racial science, as it was being objectively studied by scholars like the distinguished Harvard PhD and University of Chicago Professor Charles B. Davenport, the author of several highly regarded monographs (on, for example, the objective use of quantitative methods in scientific inquiry). Unfortunately, a group of black clergymen objected to the display, arguing that Ota Benga was a human being who should be treated with dignity.

  

• Aug 7, 2011
  

  Up the Down Staircase

  by Cliopatria

  New candidate for worst historical analysis of the Tea Party movement and our current political moment: the consistently denser-than-a-poundcake Richard Cohen at the Washington Post, who wrote last week (via) that we can understand the Tea Party by applying Hannah Arendt's observations about totalitarianism. "As we have known since Lenin’s day," Cohen warned, "a determined minority is hands down better than an irresolute majority."

  And so if the Tea Party wins, dire consequences will follow: "The Tea Party has recklessly diminished the power and reach of the United States. It has shrunk the government and will, if it can, further deprive it of revenue. The domestic economy will suffer and the gap between rich and poor, the educated and the indolently schooled, will continue to widen. International relations will lack a dominant power able to enforce the rule of law, and the bad guys will be freer to be as bad as they want."

  

• Aug 7, 2011
  

  Things Ancient & Modern

  by Cliopatria

  August 2011 Biblical Studies Carnival is up at Daniel O. McClellan's site.

  Andrea Wulf, "Which Way to the Garden of Eden?" NYT, 5 August, and Jennie Erin Smith, "Back to the Beginning," WSJ, 6 August, review Brook Wilensky-Lanford's Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden.

  A. S. Ragnarök: the doom of the gods," Guardian, 5 August, is excerpted from Byatt's Ragnarok: The End of the Gods.

  Randall Stephens, "Life and Debt in the United States," THS Blog, 1 August, looks at times when the US defaulted on its national debt.

  

• Aug 6, 2011
  

  Weak Endnotes

  by Cliopatria

  Carnival of Genealogy, 108th Edition, is up at Creative Gene.

  Tim Richardson, "Stag Parties," Literary Review, August, reviews John Fletcher's Gardens of Earthly Delight: The History of Deer Parks.

  Toni Bentley, "Vita and Violet: The Greatest Bloomsbury Love Story," NYT, 4 August, and Dwight Garner, "In the Fast Company of Women on the Edge," NYT, 4 August, reviews Michael Holroyd's A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers. .

  Holland Cotter, "Populating the Landscape With Idealism," NYT, 4 August, reviews Pissarro's People, an exhibit at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

  

• Aug 5, 2011
  

  Friday's Notes

  by Cliopatria

  Maurice Keen, "O My Chevalier," Literary Review, August, reviews Nigel Saul's For Honour and Fame: Chivalry in England, 1066-1500.

  Robert Fraser, "John Donne in the labyrinth," TLS, 3 August, reviews Francesca Bugliani Knox's The Eye of the Eagle: John Donne and the legacy of Ignatius Loyola, Robin Robbins, ed., The Complete Poems of John Donne, and Jeanne Shami, Dennis Flynn and M. Thomas Hester, eds., The Oxford Book of John Donne.

  Claire Harman, "Island Records," Literary Review, August, reviews Katherine Frank's Crusoe: Daniel Defoe, Robert Knox and the Creation of a Myth.

  

• Aug 4, 2011
  

  Catch-22 at 50: A Symposium

  by Cliopatria

  Tracy Daugherty, "The War for Catch-22," Vanity Fair, August, is an excerpt from his Just One Catch: A Biography of Joseph Heller.

  James Camp, "Joseph Heller Biography Catches the Man," New York Observer, 2 August, reviews Daugherty's Just One Catch.

  Janet Maslin, "The Catching of Two Joseph Hellers," NYT, 27 July, and Walter Kirn, "War Is Heller," Slate, 2 August, review Daugherty's Just One Catch and Erica Heller's Yossarian Slept Here: When Joseph Heller Was Dad and Life Was a Catch-22.

  

• Aug 3, 2011
  

  COINTELPRO Redux

  by Cliopatria

  This is madness, and historically ignorant madness. It will end badly. Period. There is no substantial difference between a red scare and a brown scare. Political policing is political policing is political policing.

  

• Aug 3, 2011
  

  Modern History Notes

  by Cliopatria

  Art History Carnival for August is up at The Earthly Paradise.

  Charles S. Dameron, "A Free Mind, An Unfree Man," WSJ, 3 August, reviews the only North American slave narrative composed in Arabic, A Muslim American Slave: The Life of Omar Ibn Said, Ala Alryyes, editor and translator.

  Tera W. Hunter, "Putting an Antebellum Myth to Rest," NYT, 1 August, challenges persistent misconceptions of the slave family.

  A. W. Purdue reviews Zara Steiner's The Triumph of the Dark: European International History 1933-1939 for the THE, 28 July.

  

• Aug 2, 2011
  

  More Noted Things

  by Cliopatria

  History Carnival CI is up at Culture & Stuff!

  Carl Rollison, "The Biographers' Biography," WSJ, 30 July, reviews Michael Holroyd's A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers.

  Alex Ross, "Deceptive Picture: How Oscar Wilde painted over "Dorian Gray," New Yorker, 8 August, makes sense of the multiple versions of Wilde's novel.

  Mark Moyar, "An Insurgency and Its Lessons," WSJ, 30 July, reviews James Arnold's The Moro War: How America Battled a Muslim Insurgency in the Philippine Jungle, 1902-1913 .

  

• Aug 1, 2011
  

  Things Noted Here & There

  by Cliopatria

  David D'Arcy, "New book traces the Getty Museum's illegal acquisition of antiquities," The National, 31 July, reviews Jason Felch's and Ralph Frammolino's Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World's Richest Museum.

  Eric Jager, "I've Been Pirated," IHE, 1 August, discusses the French fictionalizing of his book, The Last Duel: A True Story of Crime, Scandal, and Trial By Combat in Medieval France, and its pirating for a Croatian edition.

  Norman Ornstein, "Master of the Gilded Age Congress," NYT, 29 July, reviews James Grant's Mr. Speaker! The Life and Times of Thomas B. Reed, the Man Who Broke the Filibuster.

  

• Jul 31, 2011
  

  Modern History Notes

  by Cliopatria

  Tim Adams, "Simon Schama: 'I'm the inevitable old codger on the dancefloor'," Guardian, 31 July, interviews Schama "about self-doubt, showing off, his Jewish heritage – and cheating death in a helicopter."

  Michael Dirda reviews Larrie D. Ferreiro's Measure of the Earth: The Enlightenment Expedition That Reshaped Our World for the Washington Post, 27 July.

  

• Jul 30, 2011
  

  Weak Endnotes

  by Cliopatria

  Culture and Stuff hosts History Carnival CI on Monday 1 August. Use the form or the form to nominate the best in July's history blogging. The Earthly Paradise hosts August's Art History Carnival on Wednesday 3 August. Use the form to nominate the best in July's Art History blogging.

  William Pannapacker, "Overeducated, Underemployed," Slate, 27 July, has six suggestions for "how to fix humanities grad school."

  Peter Phillips, "The Invention of Our Music," The Book, 28 July, reviews Christopher Page's The Christian West and Its Singers: The First Thousand Years.

  

• Jul 28, 2011
  

  The 2011 World History Association Conference Wrap-up

  by Cliopatria

  Well, the Great Firewall succeeded in keeping me from posting while I was in Beijing, but I can at least make a few comments about this year's World History Association meeting.  Hosted by the Global History Center at Capital Normal University, this was certainly one of the best WHA meetings to date.  There were record numbers of panels and attendees.  And, thanks to the East Asian location, a number of the participants were first-timers for the WHA, which helped give the conference a fresh vibe.

  What stood out for me at the conference?  Well, I have to say I was impressed by Capital Normal University.  The local conference committee did a great job in organizing the meeting, which went off very smoothly.  There was even simultaneous translation for the keynotes and major presentations.  The students at Capital Normal were also very impressive.  They were as tireless and smart as they were numerous, which is saying something.  Every conference room had a student in charge of making sure that the speakers were attended to with water and tech support.

  Once again, also, I was impressed that the

• Jul 28, 2011
  

  2011 World History Association Post-Conference Highlights

  by Cliopatria

  Well, I have to say that this year's World History Association meeting in Beijing, hosted by the Global History Center at Capital Normal University, was one for the record books.   Over 250 papers were presented, and roughly 800 people attended.  Being located in East Asia also meant that a host of first-time WHA attendees were in the mix, which added a delightful freshness to the panels and discussions. 

  A number of things impressed me about the conference:

  Capital Normal did a great job.  The faculty and administration clearly had their act together, and the conference went off without a hitch.

  The students at Capital Normal were first rate.  The only things that exceeded their numbers were their intelligence and enthusiasm.

  The papers on SE Asia in World History were particularly good.  This bodes well for the upcoming Siam Reap Symposium on SE Asian in World History to be hosted from January 2-4 in 2012.

  Once again, the WHA showed that it has a great  knack for knowing how to pace a conference.  A good balance of panels, keynotes, and down time for

  

• Jul 28, 2011
  

  Thursday's Notes

  by Cliopatria

  Alexander Nazaryan, "Waterworld," The Book, 27 July, reviews John Mack's The Sea: A Cultural History.

  Adam Kirsch, "Ideas Are Viruses: How Tacitus' Germania became the bible of German nationalism," Slate, 25 July, reviews Christopher Krebs's A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus's Germania From the Roman Empire to the Third Reich.