Notes Ancient and Modern

Congratulations to Peter Brown, Princeton's Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History, and Romila Thapar, Professor Emerita of Ancient Indian History at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. They are recipients of the Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Study of Humanity for 2008. If you are unfamiliar with their work, you might try these, for starters:

Brown's Charles Homer Haskins Lecture in 2003,"A Life of Learning"; and

Thapar's Solomon Katz Lecture in 2005,"Interpretations of Early Indian History".

Sam Leith,"Grand Theft Auto, Twitter and Beowulf all demonstrate that stories will never die," Telegraph, 25 November, cites David Kirkpatrick of MIT's"Center for Future Storytelling" as claiming that"The idea as we move forward with 21st-century storytelling is to try to keep meaning alive." Surely they jest, says Leith.

Joseph Tartakovsky,"Documents and Disorder," WSJ, 1 December, reviews Jonathan Brent's Inside the Stalin Archives: Discovering the New Russia. Hat tip.

Thelma Gutierrez and Wayne Drash,"Iconic Image Brought Shame to Family," AOL News, 4 December, revisits the child depicted in Dorothea Lange's classic 1936 photograph,"Migrant Mother". It brought shame and determination to the family, says 77 year old Katherine McIntosh. Thanks to Les Baitzer for the tip.

Ben Macintyre and Paul Orengoh,"Beatings and abuse made Barack Obama's grandfather loathe the British," London Times, 3 December, reports on the experience of Hussein Onyango Obama, the President-elect's paternal grandfather, in the Kenyan rebellion against British colonial rule. The larger context for this painful story is told in Caroline Elkins's prize-winning book, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya.