CLIOPATRIA: A Group Blog
Friday, September 3, 2010
On Either Side of War
For the Washington Post, 2 September, Michael Dirda reviews Edmund de Waal's The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss, about one of pre-World War II's leading German Jewish families.
Donald Rayfield, "Killing Fields," Literary Review, September, reviews Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin and Norman M. Naimark's Stalin's Genocides: Human Rights and Crimes Against Humanity.
The late Bernard Knox was a distinguished classicist. Earlier, he had fought beside the Republican forces in Spain and been parachuted behind enemy lines in France to help coordinate its resistance work with the Allies. The New Republic reproduces his remarkable report on "the Jedburgh Operation".
Jonathan Mirsky, "'Livelihood Issues'," Literary Review, September, reviews Frank Dikötter's Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62.
Dwight Garner, "Simon Wiesenthal, the Man Who Refused to Forget," NYT, 2 September, and Ron Rosenbaum, "Self-Made Golem," Tablet, 2 September, review Tom Segev's Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends, trans. by Ronnie Hope.
Manan Ahmed, "The cultural damage of the 'war on terror'," The National, 2 September, reviews Amitava Kumar's A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb and features the art of Daisy Rockwell. She paints and blogs as Lapata, but the artist is the granddaughter of Norman Rockwell and has a doctorate in south Asian literature from the University of Chicago.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Thursday's Notes
The Biblical Studies Carnival for August 2010 is up at Jim West's Zwinglius Redivivus. Four Stone Hearth C, the anthropology/archaeology festival, is up at Martin Rundkvist's Aardvarchaeology.
Stuart Jeffries reviews Kathryn Schulz's Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error for the Guardian, 28 August.
Paul A. J. Davis, "Rochester's salacious textual history," TLS, 1 September, reviews John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester's The Poems and ‘Lucina's Rape', ed., by Keith Walker and Nicholas Fisher.
Ruth Scurr, "John Aubrey and the roots of the Royal Society," TLS, 1 September, reviews "John Aubrey and the Development of Experimental Science," an exhibit at the Bodleian Library, and William Poole's John Aubrey and the Advancement of Learning.
Howard Falcon-Lang, "Charles Darwin's ecological experiment on Ascension isle," BBC, 1 September, explores the artificial ecosystem that Darwin and Joseph Hooker created.
Barron YoungSmith, "Warriors, Hot and Cold," The Book, 2 September, reviews Nicholas Thompson's The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Midweek Notes
Tom Scocca, "Cover Story," Boston Globe, 29 August, interviews Andrew Pettegree, the author of The Book in the Renaissance.
Janet Maslin, "Hard Science, Softened With Stories," NYT, 4 August, and Neil Gussman for Books & Culture, 26 August, review Sam Kean's The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements.
Brenda Wineapple, "Voices of a Nation," American Scholar, Summer, studies 19th century American writers' effort to understand who they and who Americans were. It anticipates the publication of her new anthology, Nineteenth-Century American Writers on Writing, in November.
Peter Asden reviews Gabriel Josipovici's What Ever Happened to Modernism? for the Financial Times, 13 August.
Roger Scruton, "The Post-Modern Ear," Axess, 31 August, looks at the evolution of modern classical music from the late-19th Century crisis in the musical language that had been the "common property of Western composers since the Renaissance."
Adam Kirsch, "Founding Document," Tablet, 31 August, reviews Jonathan Schneer's The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
More Noted Things
Saul David, "Tall tales from history: Are historians best placed to write historical fiction?" Independent, 13 August, searches the fashion of historians publishing historical fiction.
"Das Lied der Deutschen," The Economist, 5 August, reviews Ruth H. Sanders's German: Biography of a Language.
The William James Centennial:
Jill Lepore, "The Uprooted," New Yorker, 6 September, reviews Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration and Richard Wright's 12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States. See also, the accompanying slide show: "Life on the South Side," New Yorker, 6 September.
Finally, because of staff turmoil at the Virginia Quarterly Review, the University announced yesterday that the Review's winter issue has been put on hold.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Things Noted Here and There
From Sharon Howard:
The Broadside is a regularly updated collection of history bloggging (and some other online history news) that has been popular among the historians who are followed by @historycarnival on Twitter.
It's intended as a supplement to the monthly Carnivals - the content is largely automated and will be much less selective and individual. (For more information, read here.)
Aminatta Forna reviews V. S. Naipaul's The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief for the Guardian, 29 August.
John Smolens reviews Alex Butterworth's The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Agents for the Washington Post, 29 August.
Fresh from the slammer, Conrad Black publishes "Decline, but Not Inevitable Decline," NRO, 26 August, which surveys American history since 1940. Except for Viet Nam, it's onward and upward to 1989. Then it's declension under four failed administrations.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Sunday's Notes
George Johnson, "Den of Antiquities," NYT, 26 August, reviews Craig Childs's Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession.
Henrik Bering, "True Barbarians," Policy Review, n.d., reviews Adrian Tinniswood's Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean.
Joseph Berger, "Revolutionary Road," NYT, 26 August, reviews Eric Jaffe's The King's Best Highway: The Lost History of the Boston Post Road, the Route That Made America.
John Schwartz, "Steam-Driven Dreams," NYT, 26 August, reviews William Rosen's The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention.
Peter Conrad for the Guardian, 29 August, reviews Eadweard Muybridge, an exhibit at London's Tate Britain Gallery.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Reclamation
Just because it's worth remarking on how deeply perverse it is for Glenn Beck to want to "reclaim the civil rights movement" because "we were the people that did it in the first place," here's Beck's take on civil rights counterposed with a marginally important figure within the movement, Martin Luther King, Jr:
Beck: "the movement of the 1960s has been perverted and distorted” by people “like the Reverend Al Sharpton telling people that Martin Luther King's dream was really about redistribution of wealth…I don’t remember that. Really?"
King: "…we are dealing with issues that cannot be solved without the nation spending billions of dollars -- and undergoing a radical redistribution of economic power."
Beck: "Who were the civil rights marchers?…They weren't crying for social justice, they were crying out for equal justice.”
King: (in his speech “Social Justice”) “we will be able to go this additional distance and achieve the ideal, the goal of the new age, the age of social justice.”
Beck: "They have infiltrated our churches" and "confused the gospel with government-run programs."
King: "If America does not use her vast resources to end poverty ... she too will go to hell."
(These quotes were stolen shamelessly from the good people at MediaMatters, by the way)
Weak Endnotes
Dave McNair, "Genoways takes charge, VQR staffers pull names," The Hook, 24-26 August, reports, in a bit of a surprise, that Ted Genoways has the support of University authorities and that, except for the daughter of a major financial contributor, all other VQR staff members have withdrawn. Tom Bissell, "From Tragedy to Trend Story: In Defense of Virginia Quarterly Review Editor Ted Genoways," New York Observer, 24 August, explains the devotion of writers for the VQR, if not its staff members, to Genoways.
A. W. Purdue reviews Adrian Smith's Mountbatten: Apprentice War Lord 1900-1943 for the THE, 26 August.
Oralandar Brand-Williams, "Rare collection of Nation of Islam papers discovered," Detroit News, 26 August, reports an extraordinary find of early Black Muslim documents.
David Thomson, "Chinamen," TNR, 27 August, reviews Yunte Huang's Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and his Rendezvous with American History.
Robert Messenger, "Contemplating Death From Above," WSJ, 27 August, reviews Daniel Swift's Bomber Country. If trench warfare caught the poets' imagination in World War I, aerial bombing captured it in World War II.
R. Scott Appleby and John T. McGreevy, "Catholics, Muslims, and the Mosque Controversy," NYR Blog, draws on the historical experience of American Catholics to urge American Muslims to make a forceful assertion of their constitutional rights.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Friday's Notes
David Dobbs, "Tut DNA: The Risks and Rewards of Royal Incest," National Geographic, September, discusses the advantages and widespread practice of royal incest.
Adam Kirsch reviews Fred Inglis's A Short History of Celebrity for the Barnes & Noble Review, 20 August.
Alastair Macauley, "The Protean Master of the Ballets Russes," NYT, 25 August, reviews Sjeng Scheijen's Diaghilev: A Life, trans. by Jane Hedley-Prôle and S. J. Leinbach.
Anne Karpf reviews Francine Prose's Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife for the Guardian, 21 August.
Leslie Sprout, "Unlocking the Mystery of Honegger," NYT, 26 August, searches the evidence of Arthur Honegger's political loyalty during World War II.
It is nine years since 9/11:
Jen Phillips, "Ground Zero's Slave Graves," Mother Jones, 25 August, argues that, since about 10% of North American slaves were Muslim, it seems likely that Manhattan's Twin Towers were built on Muslim holy ground. At Lal Salaam, Vinay Lal has a three-part series, "The Mosque at ‘Hallowed' Ground":
It is five years since Hurricane Katrina:
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Thursday's Notes
David A. Bell, "Hope and Play," The Book, 25 August, reviews Natalie Zemon Davis's A Passion for History: Conversations with Denis Crouzet.
Emily Hodgson Anderson, "Who were the Bluestockings?" TLS, 25 August, reviews Elizabeth Eger's Bluestockings: Women of reason from Enlightenment to Romanticism and Arianne Chernock's Men and the Making of Modern British Feminism.
Michael Marrus, "The Dreyfus Affair and why it matters today," TLS, 25 August, reviews Louis Begley's Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters and Ruth Harris's The Man on Devil's Island: Alfred Dreyfus and the affair that divided France.
We've featured the early color photography before at Cliopatria. There is both the Library of Congress's "The Empire That Was Russia," showcasing the work of of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii and displays of the work of Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud and other color photographers of World War I. "Russia in color, a century ago," The Big Picture, 20 August, is the Boston Globe's display of Prokudin-Gorskii's work. The photographs are simply stunning.
Michael Dirda reviews Yunte Huang's Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective for the Washington Post, 26 August.
For the Telegraph, 18 August, on the 50th anniversary of its original publication, Andrew Rosenheim reviews a new, revised edition of Ernest Hemingway's memoir, A Moveable Feast. It is, says Rosenheim, "a study in character assassination," "a masterpiece of malice."
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Elsewhere: Post-blogging 1940
Just a quick note to say that I'm post-blogging 1940 at my blog. By 1940 I mean the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, and by post-blogging I mean a series of regular posts designed to give a sense of the way some historical event evolved over time, in real time. The first entry is for 25 August 1940. I won't cross-post them here as they will clog up Cliopatria for the next month or two, but please join me at Airminded if you'd like to follow along. There are also a number of other 1940 and Second World War post-blogs underway which are listed here (or here).
20th Century Notes
Stephen M. Walt, "Lessons from the Weimar Republic," Foreign Policy, 23 August, recalls Gordon Craig's interpretation of a liberal intellectual's responsibilities.
Adam Kirsch, "Hareloom," Tablet, 24 August, reviews Edmund de Waal's The Hare With Amber Eyes, a recollection of one of pre-World War II's leading German Jewish families.
Anne Helen Petersen, "‘Tells the Facts and Names the Names'," Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style, 22 August, is an illustrated and endnoted chapter from her dissertation on the scandal mag Confidential in the late 1950s.
Sean Wilentz, "New Dylan Recordings Unveiled," Daily Beast, 24 August, announces Columbia Records release of two new collections of Bob Dylan recordings and anticipates the publication of Wilentz's Bob Dylan in America.
Matilda Battersby, "Hendrix in Britain and Handel's house," Independent, 18 August, reviews "Hendrix in Britain," an exhibit at Mayfair's Handel House Museum. "Jimi Hendrix memories inhabit Handel House," Guardian, 24 August, is a gallery of photographs.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
More Noted Things
Patricia Cohen, "Scholars Test Web Alternative to Peer Review," NYT, 23 August, glimpses the future in scholarly publishing.
Among Cliopatria's alums,
Geoffrey Wheatcroft reviews Jonathan Schneer's The Balfour Declaration: the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict and Richard J. Evans reviews Adrian Weale's The SS: a New History for the New Statesman, 23 August.
Adam Gopnik, "Finest Hours: The Making of Winston Churchill," New Yorker, 30 August, reviews Max Hastings's Winston's War: Churchill, 1940-1945, Richard Holmes's Churchill's Bunker: The Cabinet War Rooms and the Culture of Secrecy in Wartime London, Paul Johnson's Churchill, and Richard Langworth, ed., Churchill by Himself: The Definitive Collection of Quotations.
Finally, farewell to SMU's David Weber, a historian of the American West and Borderlands and an officer of the AHA.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Things Noted Here & There
Carnivalesque LXV, an ancient/medieval edition of the festival, is up at Jonathan Jarrett's A Corner of Tenth Century Europe. Cliopatria's friend, Sharon Howard, is looking for hosts for both History Carnival and Carnivalesque this fall and winter. She wants to hear from you.
Jonathan Yardley reviews Lucy Worsley's The Courtiers: Splendor and Intrigue at Kensington Palace for the Washington Post, 22 August.
Elaine Showalter reviews Ilyon Woo's The Great Divorce: A 19th-Century Mother's Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times for the Washington Post, 22 August.
John Pollard reviews Herbert Wolf's Pope and Devil: the Vatican's Archives and the Third Reich, translated by Kenneth Kronenberg, for the THE, 19 August. Wolf, "Why Did the Pope Keep Quiet about Hitler?" Foreign Policy, 6 May, is an excerpt from the book.
Seamus Perry, "Parody, the vile art," TLS, 18 August, reviews John Gross, ed., The Oxford Book of Parodies.
Finally, Dave Stone notes that, while he's been on "sick leave" from the University of London's Birkbeck College, Orlando Figes is out and about, most recently seen last week, lecturing at Chile's Universidad Gabriela Mistral.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Sunday's Notes
Alberto Manguel reviews Steven Moore's The Novel: An Alternative History, Beginnings to 1600 for the Washington Post, 22 August.
Robert Darnton, "A Republic of Letters," NYT, 20 August, reviews Lewis Hyde's Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership.
Tom Segev, "‘View With Favor'," NYT, 20 August, reviews Jonathan Schneer's The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict.
Stacie Williams for the Christian Science Monitor, 18 August, and Lynell George for the LA Times, 22 August, review James Baldwin's The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings, Randall Kenan, ed. Both reviewers conclude with Baldwin's reply to Robert Kennedy's comment that one day a black man could be president. "What I am really curious about," Baldwin replied, "is just what kind of country he will be president of?"
Linda Robinson, "Christians and Muslims," NYT, 19 August, Christopher Caldwell, "Where Islam and Christianity Collide," Slate, 22 August, and Michael Mewshaw for the Washington Post, 22 August, review Eliza Griswold's The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches From the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
A Complete History of the Soviet Union Through the Eyes of a Humble Worker, arranged to the melody of Tetris
Friday, August 20, 2010
Quite Rather
Of course one does try to civilize the natives, the poor dumb beasts, but it's rather an uphill slog -- why, the very best of them can't even figure out how to open a car door, did you know?
Bloody damn mystery how they ever managed to shoot down all those Soviet aircraft and what have you. The blind luck of the primitive, I suppose.
Friday's Notes
David McNair, "Tale of Woe: The death of the VQR's Kevin Morrissey, The Hook, 18 August, has more details about the tragedy at the Virginia Quarterly Review. Brendan Fitzgerald, "Sullivan on VQR: UVA will conduct management review of literary journal," C-Ville, 19 August, has a statement by UVa's new president, Teresa Sullivan.
Diane Coyle reviews Nicholas Phillipson's Adam Smith: an Enlightened Life for the New Statesman, 16 August.
Donald R. Prothero, "A Cornucopia of Darwinian Gems," eSkeptic, 18 August, reviews Richard Milner's Darwin's Universe: Evolution from A to Z.
Jed Perl, "The Picture: So Bad," TNR, 18 August, relieves me of any felt obligation to see "Salvador Dalí: The Late Work," an exhibit at Atlanta's High Museum.
Robert Darnton, "Talking About Brazil with Lilia Schwarcz," NYRBlog, 17 August, interviews one of Brazil's leading anthropologists and historians.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
It's Dying -- Let's Eat It
Below the fold, received today in response to a request made under the California Public Records Act, the complete employment contract between the University of California and its president, Mark "Manager of a Graveyard" Yudof. I'll let the document speak for itself, but do be sure to look at Section 6, "Retirement Plans," which starts on page 3.
The Empire has a Glitch
I left one thing out of my post on Todd Purdum's emperor worship, yesterday: the main point. I got distracted by the glorious awfulness of Purdum's ponderous paragraphs, and lost track of the larger blindness that he shares with the subjects of his worshipful journalism.
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