Blogs > Cliopatria > Tuesday Notes

Apr 10, 2007

Tuesday Notes


by Cliopatria


A recent national survey in Japan yielded this list of"History's 100 Most Influential People: Hero Edition". Japan Probe, 1 April. Quibble with the list all you want, but the large number of people on it of whom I've never heard is a humbling reminder of how much I have yet to learn. Hat tip.

Michael Balter,"Falling in Love with France and its Troves of Ancient History," NYT, 10 April, tells the remarkable story of NYU's Randall White and his findings in the archaeology of prehistoric France.

Lucy McDonald,"And that's renaissance magic ...," Guardian, 10 April, reviews Luca Pacioli's De viribus quantitatis (On the Power of Numbers). This heretofore unpublished manuscript, written between 1496 and 1508 CE and rarely seen since then, is Europe's earliest book of magic. Pacioli was a Franciscan monk, friend of Leonardo di Vinci, and father of modern accounting.

Peter D. Kramer,"Hearing Voices," NYT, 8 April, reviews Daniel B. Smith's Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Rethinking the History, Science, and Meaning of Auditory Hallucination.

Anthony Barnes,"Darwin's Doubts Revealed in His Letters to Friends," Independent, 8 April, draws on the Darwin Correspondence Project. Already 5000 letters are online. Eventually, there will be 3 volumes of selected letters and 30 volumes of the complete letters.

John Updike,"The Changeling," New Yorker, 16 April, reviews Hermione Lee's Edith Wharton. Hat tips.

Mark Sherman,"Justice Kennedy the Key in Close Cases," Boston Globe, 7 April, argues that it's a Kennedy Supreme Court. Kennedy has been in the majority on all the Supreme's 5/4 decisions this term, but Alito and Ginsburg have not always voted along liberal/conservative lines.

Finally, John Ridley,"The Lessons of Fat Albert," Boston Globe, 8 April, traces the trajectory of Bill Cosby's career, from his UMass doctoral thesis in 1976 to his rants about the black underclass today. Hat tip.


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David Lion Salmanson - 4/10/2007

Anybody who is not taking Cosby seriously in his commitments is just kidding themselves. The Little Bill books are terrific, but are so hard to find. I was in my local Borders recently and found other books from the same series but no Little Bill books.

Jonathan Dresner - 4/10/2007

That's a very Japanese list....

The ones you don't recognize? Mostly figures from Japanese history, important but many aren't actually what I'd call first-tier names except in literary impact (number one on the list, for example, Sakamoto Ryoma, was featured in a very, very popular historical drama about fifteen years back; he was important in the Meiji restoration, but top on the list?). The Chinese ones, too, heavily favor people who figure in romantic literature (including one who may be purely fictional!). Most of the rest? Pop culture figures, from Sakamoto Kyu (singer of "The Sukiyaki Song" aka Ue o muite) to the founder of Japan's pro wrestling federation.