Saturday Notes
(use the form for nominations); and John McKay will host the Carnival of Bad History at archy (use the form for nominations).Jesse Wilbur,"Lapham's Quarterly, or ‘History Rhymes'," If:Book, 19 October, discusse Lewis Lapham's new quarterly, which
take[s] a current event, like the Israeli conflict in Lebanon, and a current topic, like the use of civilian homes to store weapons, and put them up against historical documents, like the letter between General Sherman and General Hood debating the placement of the city's population before the Battle of Atlanta. Through the juxtaposition, a continuous line between our forgotten past and our incomprehensible now. The journal is constituted of a section"in the present tense", a collection of relevant historical excerpts, and closing section that returns to the present. Contributing writers are asked to write not about what they think, but what they know. It's a small way to counteract the spin of our relentlessly opinionated media culture.
If:Book has been asked to develop an online companion to Lapham's Quarterly. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
Peter Hainsworth,"Dante on Drugs," TLS, 18 October, reviews Barbara Reynolds, Dante: The poet, the political thinker, the man, and Prue Shaw, ed., Dante: Monarchia. Thanks to Arts & Letters Daily for the tip.
Finally, you've probably heard of the report at Brown University calling for a response to its own entanglement with the slave trade. On H-Slavery, Brown's Seth Rockman calls attention to the website of the report. Beyond the report, itself, remarkable documents from the Brown Family Business Papers are digitized there.
Most relevant are those pertaining to the 1764-65 slave-trading voyage of the brig Sally. Theentire logbook is available, making it possible to watch Capt. Esak Hopkins negotiate the price of every single man, woman, and child he purchased along the West African coast. The records also document a shipboard rebellion during the Middle Passage.