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CLIOPATRIA: A Group Blog

Aaron Bady (∞); Chris Bray (∞); James C. Cobb (∞); Jelani Cobb (∞); Mark Grimsley (∞); Brett Holman (∞); Jonathan Jarrett (∞); Robert KC Johnson (∞); Rachel Leow (∞); Ralph E. Luker (∞); Bruce Mazlish (∞); Scott McLemee (∞); Claire B. Potter (∞); Jonathan T. Reynolds (∞); Sage Ross (∞)

Nominations for the best history blogging will be open through November. Final selections will made by panels of history bloggers and announced at the American Historical Association Annual Meeting in early January. The complete list of past winners is here

Cliopatria's History Blogroll Part I / Part II.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Ralph E. Luker

Because I Love Good Country Music, ...

I could listen to the Carolina Chocolate Drops all day. Here, they do "Corn Bread and Butterbeans": That's Justin Robinson singing and on the fiddle, Rhiannon Giddens joins in song and plays the banjo, and Dom Flemons works the jug and bones. They carry on a tradition of African American string band music that Mebane, North Carolina's Joe Thompson taught them.

The Wiyos is a well-regarded white, urban group, with roots in New York and New Orleans. When they do their own, quite different, version of "Corn Bread and Butterbeans," the harmonica, guitar, bass and washboard, with bell and horn, replace the fiddle, banjo, jug and bones.

Posted on Saturday, November 21, 2009 at 12:54 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Friday, November 20, 2009

Ralph E. Luker

Friday's Notes

Michael O'Sullivan, "An army for the afterlife," Washington Post, 20 November, reviews "Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China's First Emperor," an exhibit at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, DC.

Edward Rothstein, "Flights of Mind, Brought to Life," NYT, 19 November, reviews "Leonardo da Vinci's Workshop," an exhibit at Discovery Times Square Exposition in Manhattan.

Harvey J. Kaye, "Palin's Unlikely Hero," Daily Beast, 17 November, argues that Sarah Palin and much of the American Right misunderstand Thomas Paine.

Matthew Cobb, "How the Americans bought the French Resistance," TLS, 18 November, reviews Robert Belot's and Gilbert Karpman's L'affaire Suisse: La Résistance a-t-elle trahi de Gaulle?

Posted on Friday, November 20, 2009 at 12:57 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Chris Bray

Self-Satirizing Institutions

UC Berkeley needs to cut $150 million from their budget...so they hired a consultant for $3 million to tell them what to cut. Now they have to cut $153 million, but never mind -- the funny part is that the chancellor told the New York Times that he had to hire consultants to figure out his budget, because he has no expertise in organizational matters. He doesn't know anything about running an institution, understand -- he just, you know, runs an institution. I never understand how people like this manage to not feel embarrassed by themselves.

Posted on Thursday, November 19, 2009 at 5:40 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ralph E. Luker

Notes Ancient & Modern

Congratulations to T. J. Stiles, whose The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt has won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, and to Philip Hoose, whose Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice has won the Award for Young People's Literature.

Adam Kirsch, "A Prophet's Pen," Tablet, 17 November, reviews David Rosenberg's A Literary Bible: An Original Translation.

Bonnie S. Benwick, "A tasting menu of savory dishes," Washington Post, 18 November, reviews Andrew Dalby's Cheese: A Global History, Sarah Moss's and Alexander Badenoch's Chocolate: A Global History, and Colleen Taylor Sen's Curry: A Global History.

Diana Athill, "Lore of the Land," Literary Review, November, reviews Madelaine Bunting's The Plot: A Biography of an English Acre.

Posted on Thursday, November 19, 2009 at 12:08 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Ralph E. Luker

Midweek Notes

"The Giant's Shoulders #17 - Darwin Sesquicentennial Edition," the history of science carnival, is up at The Primate Diaries.

Elspeth Barker, "Words, Glorious Words," Literary Review, November, reviews Christian Kay, Jane Roberts, Michael Samuels and Irené Wotherspoon, eds., Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Laura Claridge, "Best Books About Etiquette," WSJ, 14 November, recommends five: Erasmus, On the Civility of Children's Conduct, 1530; George Washington, Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior, 1748; Emily Post, Etiquette, 1927; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Learning How to Behave [sic], 1946; and Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process, 1969.

Finally, this graphic tracks the expansion and decline of four major European maritime empires between 1800 and 2000: Hat tip.

Posted on Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at 12:45 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Robert KC Johnson

Cory Maye Reversal

In an injustice that my colleague Ralph Luker several years ago highlighted, the Mississippi Supreme Court has overturned Cory Maye's conviction for murder and remanded the case for a new trial.

The grounds for the decision were exceedingly narrow--a finding that the trial court judge erred in his response to Maye's second request for a change of venue--suggesting perhaps that even this very conservative Supreme Court was troubled by the circumstances of the conviction.

Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 7:00 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ralph E. Luker

Additionally Noted

Rosemary Hill, "The re-enchantment of the present," TLS, 11 November, reviews Megan Aldrich and Robert J. Wallis, eds., Antiquaries and Archaists: The past in the past, the past in the present.

Robert Irwin, "Onward Christian Soldiers," Literary Review, November, reviews Jonathan Phillips's Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades.

Tim Blanning, "High Notes," Literary Review, November, reviews Daniel Snowman's The Gilded Stage: A Social History of Opera.

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, "The Arctic heart of darkness," TLS, 11 November, reviews Andrew Lambert's Franklin: Tragic hero of polar exploration and Glyn Williams's Arctic Labyrinth: The quest for the Northwest Passage.

Caryl Phillips, "The Explorer," TNR, 16 November, reviews Lafcadio Hearn's American Writings.

Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 5:20 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, November 16, 2009

Robert KC Johnson

Celebrating Ernest Gruening

A rare shout-out to my favorite former Alaska senator, in Chris Hitchens' dissection of a fawning Palin book.

That the McCain team never seems to have understood just how much Alaska politics differed from that of the Lower 48 is one of many failures in the vetting process that netted Palin.

Posted on Monday, November 16, 2009 at 6:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Chris Bray

Baked

Improper focus on Internet-based procrastination caused me to miss news of another bake-off at the American Antiquarian Society. In this episode, three very old recipes produce apple pies with flavors that range from "perfumy and off-putting" to "vile...gross...disgusting."

One day, I will teach a class on the history of ordinary life in the early United States. And we will bake. Is there a better way to make the past tangible?

Posted on Monday, November 16, 2009 at 1:46 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ralph E. Luker

More Noted Things

Judith Shulevitz, "Was Paul a Jew?" Tablet, 11 November, looks at recent revisionist studies of Paul of Tarsus by Pamela Eisenbaum, John G. Gager, Sarah Ruden, and Garry Wills.

Deirdre Foley-Mendelssohn, "Scandal and Success," New Yorker, 13 November, reviews "Candide at 250: Scandal and Success," an exhibit at the New York Public Library.

Steve Fraser, "The Misunderstood Robber Baron: On Cornelius Vanderbilt," The Nation, 11 November, reviews T. J. Stiles's The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Martin Amis, "The problem with Nabokov," The Guardian, 14 November, is an essay occasioned by the publication of Nabokov's The Original of Laura. Hat tip.

Posted on Monday, November 16, 2009 at 12:01 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Ralph E. Luker

Things Noted Here & There

The Carnival of Genealogy LXXXIII is up at Janet the Researcher; Biblical Studies Carnival XLVII is up at Paul of Tarsus in Historical Perspective; and Indian History Carnival #23 is up at varnam.

Edward Rothstein, "Information Highway: Camel Speed but Exotic Links," NYT, 12 November, reviews "Traveling the Silk Road," an exhibit at Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History.

Holland Cotter, "Compassionate Masters of the Universe," NYT, 12 November, reviews "Victorious Ones: Jain Images of Perfection, " an exhibit at Manhattan's Rubin Museum of Art, and "Peaceful Conquerors: Jain Manuscript Painting," an exhibit at Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Harold Bloom, "Road Trip," NYT, 11 November, reviews Peter Ackroyd's The Canterbury Tales: A Retelling.

Michael Dirda, "Jung at Heart," Washington Post, 12 November, reviews Carl G. Jung's The Red Book: Liber Novus.

Posted on Sunday, November 15, 2009 at 12:17 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, November 13, 2009

Ralph E. Luker

20th Century Notes

Terry Eagleton, "Waking the Dead," New Statesman, 12 November, is an essay occasioned by the republication of Eagleton's Walter Benjamin: or Towards a Revolutionary Criticism.

Bernard Porter, "Other People's Mail," LRB, 19 November, reviews Christopher Andrew's The Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5.

Walter Isaacson, "How Einstein Divided America's Jews," Atlantic, December, explores the reaction of prominent American Jews to Einstein's Zionism.

Adam Mars-Jones reviews Blake Bailey's Cheever: A Life for the Guardian, 8 November.

Posted on Friday, November 13, 2009 at 12:47 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Claire B. Potter

The American Historical Association Annual Meeting: To Boycott Or Not To Boycott?

As many of you are aware, in the wake of the passage of Proposition 8 in California, the decision to hold the Annual 2010 Meeting of the American Historical Association (AHA) became controversial. This is because the meeting will be held at a hotel owned by someone who helped to finance the campaign to repeal reforms that had extended political marriage to same-sex couples (nothing required churches to perform those marriages.) Your favorite Radical is, as we speak, making final preparations to depart for South Africa, where such discrimination is viewed in the national constitution as the equivalent of racism and is banned. What I think is also important to note is that South Africa is reputedly still a very homophobic country where, if it were put to a vote, discrimination against GLBTI (the I stands for "intersex" and is always included by South African queer activists) would be perfectly legal, although the return of institutionalized racism would not be. One legacy of colonialism is the strong association among many black South Africans between homosexuality and the general deformation of indigenous societies by white European domination. And yet, according to the reading I have done to date, the political legacy of apartheid is such that human rights are not viewed as something one puts to a vote. The fact that the vast majority of South African citizens are deeply homophobic is not, according to the constitution, justification for enshrining it in law that would re-classify South Africans in invidious ways that their -- and our -- history has shown to be disastrous.

Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 at 10:40 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Ralph E. Luker

Mid-Week Notes

Peter Stothard, "The School of Athens," WSJ, 10 November, reviews Donald Kagan's Thucydides: The Reinvention of History.

Jan Swafford, "Nature's Rejects: The music of the castrati," Slate, 9 November, revisits an outcast dimension of 16th to 19th century European music.

Philip Kennicott, "Far out of Africa," Washington Post, 11 November, reviews "The African Presence in México: From Yanga to the Present," an exhibit at Washington, DC's Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum.

Paul Harvey, "Inventing a Tradition," Books & Culture, 9 November, takes apart Jonathan Bean's claim in Race and Liberty in America: The Essential Reader to have identified a classical liberating tradition in American race relations.

Julian Barnes, "On we sail," LRB, is an essay about Guy de Maupassant, occasioned by new English translations of two of his novels.

Adam Kirsch, "The November Pogrom," Tablet, 10 November, reviews Alan Steinweis's Kristallnacht 1938.

Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 at 4:30 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Ralph E. Luker

Things Noted Here & There

Over the weekend, The Root and Howard University's student newspaper, The Hilltop, reported a crisis at the University's Moorland-Spingarn Research Center. Its staffing had declined from 50 to 12 positions and, by the end of the semester, there would be no employees. Yesterday, Howard's administration said that there are no plans to close the MSRC, but there's every indication that one of the most important centers for research in African American history is in serious difficulty.

Evan R. Goldstein, "Isaiah Berlin, Beyond the Wit," CHE, 8 November, reviews Isaiah Berlin's Enlightening: Letters, 1946-1960.

Christine Stansell, "The Journey of the American Woman," Daily Beast, 10 November, reviews Gail Collins's When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present.

Terry Gross interviews Ken Auletta, the author of 'Googled': Biography Of A Company, And An Age, NPR, 2 November.

Posted on Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 3:15 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, November 9, 2009

Ralph E. Luker

Modern Memory

Jonathan Yardley, "Memories carved in stone," Washington Post, 8 November, reviews Kirk Savage's Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, And the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape.

Alan Pell Crawford, "Grave Matters," WSJ, 27 October, and Fergus M. Bordewich, "Our honored dead, our flawed history," Washington Post, 8 November, review Robert M. Poole's On Hallowed Ground: The Story of Arlington National Cemetery.

Patricia Cohen, "An Ethical Question: Does a Nazi Deserve a Place Among Philosophers?" NYT, 8 November, reviews the debate launched even before the publication in the United States of Emmanuel Faye's Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism Into Philosophy.
____________, "Long-Delayed Opening for History of, and by, Joseph Papp," NYT, 6 November, has the back-story on Kenneth Turan's Free for All: Joe Papp, The Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told.

Arts & Letters Daily has a superb roundup of reflections on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall.

Stefany Anne Goldberg, "In Las Vegas, history has a price, not a past," Washington Post, 8 November, argues that pawned items lose their history for a price.

Finally, thanks to Chris Bray, the Best. Job. Listing. Ever.

Posted on Monday, November 9, 2009 at 1:33 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Ralph E. Luker

Weak Endnotes

Harold Bloom, "The Critic's Critic," NYT, 5 November, reviews David Nokes's Samuel Johnson: A Life.

Gregory Cowles, "Stray Questions for: Woody Holton," Paper Cuts, 6 November, interviews the University of Richmond historian, whose new book on Abigail Adams appeared this week.

Edward Rothstein, "At the Morgan, the Jane Austen Her Family Knew," NYT, 6 November, reviews "A Woman's Wit: Jane Austen's Life and Legacy," an exhibit at the Morgan Library & Museum in Manhattan.

Philip Kennicott, "FDR's stimulus package for artists: No cause for nostalgia," Washington Post, 8 November, reviews "1934: A New Deal for Artists," an exhibit at Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC.

Posted on Sunday, November 8, 2009 at 12:37 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Ralph E. Luker

Aaron Burr Raps on Alexander Hamilton

"Writer and star of the Broadway musical, In the Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda performs "The Hamilton Mixtape" at the White House Evening of Poetry, Music, and the Spoken Word on May 12, 2009. Accompanied by Alex Lacamoire."

Hat tip.

Posted on Saturday, November 7, 2009 at 12:19 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, November 6, 2009

Robert KC Johnson

The New Alabama

On Election Day, Maine voters (of which I am one) did something extraordinary. In record numbers for an off-year election, hundreds of thousands of us went to the polls and stripped from some of our fellow citizens the right to marry.

Posted on Friday, November 6, 2009 at 2:08 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ralph E. Luker

Friday's Notes

Louis Menand, "The Ph. D. Problem," Harvard Magazine, November/December, argues for a change in the professionalization of academic people.

Jenna Weissman Joselit, "Founding Father," Tablet, 5 November, reviews Bruce Feiler's America's Prophet: Moses and the American Story.

Michael Dirda, "Beneath a host of characters lay a writer akin to Shakespeare," Washington Post, 5 November, reviews Michael Slater's Charles Dickens: A Life Defined by Writing.

Melanie Kirkpatrick, "China's Mystery Lady," WSJ, 3 November, reviews Hannah Pakula's The Last Empress: Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China.

Manan Ahmed, "Start a war," National, 5 November, argues that, in Pakistan, "the dysfunctional state remains its own worst enemy."

Posted on Friday, November 6, 2009 at 12:38 AM | Comments (1) | Top

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