Historic Maps and Digital Mapping Roundup

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Historic Maps and Digital Mapping Roundup
"Was your street bombed during the Blitz?" Telegraph, December 6, 2012

The year-long mapping project, devised by geographer Dr Kate Jones of the University of Portsmouth, uses red bomb symbols to illustrate where each bomb landed.>>>

Neal Conan, "'A History Of The World' Through A Mapmaker's Eyes," WWNO npr, November 26, 2012

World maps help us make sense of the world around us, and our place in it.

While mapmakers may portray their world maps as accurate, scientific and neutral, every single one describes the world from a certain worldview and culture. From ancient Babylonia to the Renaissance, cartographers have been driven by politics, religion, emotion and math.>>>

Edel Howlin, "World Wants A Little Piece Of Texas On A Map," KUHF npr, November 29, 2012

The Texas General Land Office has been selling map reprints since 2002 with sales numbers jumping around November and December. James Harkins is with the Land Office and says many of their holiday orders come from customers across the pond.

“And that’s because during the 19th century there was a mass immigration movement into Texas from Europe and there are dozens of maps of Texas that were written in German that talked about what a great place Texas is. That the hills in the hill country remind Germans of what it’s like back in Germany.”>>>

Bill Bowden, "Researchers pinpoint historic Prairie Grove sites," Atlanta Journal Constitution, December 9, 2012

The locations were found using a combination of old and new technologies — everything from ground-penetrating radar to shovel tests. Historical descriptions, a map drawn by a Union soldier and aerial photographs from 1941 also provided valuable information.>>>

"The king's name is a tower of strength": Richard III's (Possible) Bones, Roundup

Detail from a late 16th century painting
of Richard III, artist unknown.

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"Richard III dig: Results expected in January," BBC, November 19, 2012

The remains were found underneath a Leicester car park on the former site of the Greyfriars church in September.

Prof Lynn Foxhall, from the University of Leicester, said the team has got to be sure of its facts before it confirmed whether it was the monarch.>>>

Anthony Faiola, "Unverified remains dig up the twisted legacy of England’s Richard III," Washington Post, November 24, 2012

Underneath a drab parking lot 90 miles northwest of London, archaeologists have unearthed what may become one of this nation’s finds of the century — half-a-millennium-old bones thought to be the remains of the long-lost monarch. But if the discovery has touched off a feverish round of DNA tests against his closest living descendants, it has also lurched to the surface a series of burning questions in a country where even arcane points of history are disputed with the gusto of modern-day politics.>>>

"History could be rewritten if remains of Richard III have been discovered, say Leicester historians," University of Leicester News and Events, November 9, 2012

For Professor Norman Housley and Dr Andrew Hopper of our School of Historical Studies, if the remains found by the University of Leicester are Richard III's, it would rewrite history by bringing closure to the fate of the mysterious king. In addition, by observing that Richard's deformity may have been a result of scoliosis, the idea of him being a 'hunchback' will fade away.>>>

Martin Hickes, "Should Richard III - the last Yorkist king - be reburied in Yorkshire?" Guardian, September 18, 2012

Two major organisations which have exhaustively researched and promoted the 'true' name and history of Richard, which they assert is at odds with the traditional Shakespearean 'evil hunchback' depiction, are expecting much debate at their forthcoming conferences.>>>

Roundup: The History Classroom

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Janet Bagnall, "Teaching Sovereignty in Quebec Classrooms," The Gazette, November 6, 2012

. . . . Éric Lamoureux, 45, a history teacher at Vanier College, instructs students who have already had several years of Quebec history classes in high school. Students’ reaction to another course on Quebec history, complete with discussion of the two independence referendums, is “Oh, no, not that again,” he said. “Yet I teach a course on Montreal history and it’s full to the rafters.”>>>

Nicholas Ferroni, "Using Music in the Classroom to Educate, Engage and Promote Understanding," Huffington Post, November 8, 2012

. . . . Educators have been using music to effectively educate for as long as there has been music. Many of us were fortunate to have those unconventional and edgy teachers (mine were Mr. Caliguire and Mr. "Weez," and I can't thank them enough), who played the iconic protest songs from the anti-war movement of the '60s and '70s, and then we analyzed and discussed the lyrics. This was one of my favorite activities and it helped me understand the nation and its differing political views better than any textbook or lecture ever could. This, however, is not the method of using music in the classroom to which I am referring. The method of using music that I will be discussing can be applied to all subject areas and used to engage all learners.>>>

Lara Harmon, "Teaching with Food," Teachinghistory.org blog, October 15, 2012

We need food to live, but don't always think about where food that comes from. We carry foods and foodways with us as we immigrate, emigrate, or migrate. We share food and celebrate with it. Every bite we eat has a long history involving geography, trade, science, technology, global contact, and more.>>>

James M. Lang, "Teaching What You Don't Know," Chronicle of Higher Ed, October 22, 2012

. . . . I can confirm that easily enough from my own dozen years of teaching at a liberal-arts college. Although my background is in 20th-century British literature, I regularly have to dip back into the 19th century for my survey course on British literature. With almost no formal training in rhetoric, I count "Argument and Persuasion" among my standard course offerings. Every member of my department could make similar claims.>>>

Roundup on Presidential Politics and History

"Historian reflects on George McGovern's enduring impact on presidential politics," Public Radio International, October 22, 2012

McGovern, an icon of liberalism, was a senator and representative from South Dakota, serving from 1957 to 1981. Princeton University professor Julian Zelizer said McGovern played a key role in changing the rules of politics conventions.>>>

"Everything you need to know about presidential debate history," The Week, October 14, 2012

When were the first debates held? The seven encounters between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in 1858 are widely considered to be the first "presidential" debates — even though they took place two years before the men were actually running for president.>>>

Sarah Rainsford, "Cubans remember missile crisis 'victory,'" BBC, October 16, 2012

The countryside around San Cristobal is littered with traces of the Cuban missile crisis, when the world came the closest yet to nuclear war.

It was here that the Soviet Union installed dozens of nuclear missiles, pointing at America. Fifty years on, a local guide called Stalin took me to explore what remains of that history.>>>

Joseph Crespino, "Moderate White Democrats Silenced," NYT, October 2, 2012

Part of the story of working-class whites in the Deep South lies in the demise of the moderate white Democrats who used to win their votes. And that story is wrapped up very much in the history of voting rights and redistricting.>>>

Christopher Benfey, "The Empty Chair that Keeps Me Awake at Night," NYRBlog, October 17, 2012

I have no idea what Clint Eastwood had in mind when he dragged an empty chair up to the stage at the Republican Convention in Tampa last August. Maybe he was thinking, as some have suggested, of some bygone exercise in a Lee Strasberg acting class. “Please, Clint. Talk to the chair. You are Hamlet and the chair is Ophelia. Please. Just talk to her.” Or maybe a marriage counselor had used an empty chair to teach the tight-lipped gunslinger from Carmel how to empathize with his wife. “Go ahead, Clint, make her day. Tell her what you’re feeling.”>>>

Roundup: The History and Academic Job Market

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Ryan Cordell, "Useful Resources for the Academic Job Market," Chronicle of Higher Ed, September 26, 2012

Last week on my personal research website I published a link roundup, “Useful Resources for the Academic Job Market.” I prepared this list for a job market workshop offered to graduate students in my department. The post was well received both at Notheastern and on Twitter, and I thought ProfHacker readers might also find it useful. While tailored to graduate students entering the market for the first time, I suspect these resources will be useful to others braving the market as well. This could be considered a “From the Archives” post, as I link to many of my ProfHacker colleague’s best posts on the job market.>>>

Gerry Canavan, "Going on the Job Market, ABD -- II," Inside Higher Ed, September 26, 2012

. . . . Don’t assume you can know in advance where you will be competitive. There are so many different factors at work in these things that you can’t possibly predict in advance which departments will be interested in you and which won’t. You just have to apply everywhere.>>>
Stacey Patton, "Stale Ph.D.'s Need Not Apply," Chronicle of Higher Ed, September 19, 2012

When Harvard University and Colorado State University recently posted job ads indicating that applicants should be very recent recipients of Ph.D.'s, many people saw the ads as confirmation of something they already suspected about the unspoken hiring preferences for entry-level positions in the humanities.>>>

Gwendolyn Beetham, "Recruitment in academia: is there no room for compassion?" Guardian, September 17, 2012

We all know the score: despite the continued growth in postgraduate degrees, full-time permanent positions in academia are increasingly rare. Certainly, to search for work in today's over-saturated academic market, in the depths of a recession, is no easy task – as a newly minted PhD, this is a fact I know all too well. In such a market, every position opening receives scores, if not hundreds, of applications. With so many qualified individuals for each post, the question arises: how can one ethically respond to unsuccessful applicants?>>>

Allen Mikaelian, "AHA and Employment: Recent Activities Concerning the Job Market and the History Student," AHA Today, September 12, 2012

There’s a possible bright spot emerging in the job market. The October issue of Perspective on History last year included 133 job ads, but this year’s issue will feature 189. This does not in itself constitute a breakthrough, and we should point out that what matters most is how many total ads are placed by the end of the season. Still, we hope that this increase over last year’s numbers is the start of a trend. Over the past year, the American Historical Association has been active in addressing the tough academic job market, the single most important issue faced by history students and recent graduates. These efforts have taken place on several fronts.>>>
 
Cathy, "Help wanted: Thoughts on the recent boom in academic public history jobs," History@Work, September 17, 2012

In recent years, the number of tenure track academic jobs in history has dropped to some of the lowest levels in 25 years. In response, Anthony Grafton, James Grossman and Jesse Lemisch have suggested that historians shift their attentions outside of the ivory tower, with Grafton and Grossman encouraging PhDs to get jobs in public history and Lemisch calling for historians to create new public history opportunities. Meanwhile, as they debated these issues, public history became a hot commodity in the academic job market. In 2008, the number of job announcements rose 27.9 percent and last year the number of postings rose significantly again.>>>

History Book Reviews Roundup

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"Views of the world: There is no such thing as an objective map," Economist, September 1, 2012

AROUND 150 AD an astronomer named Claudius Ptolemy wrote a book about how to make a proper map of the world. Penned in Greek on a papyrus scroll, the work, known as the “Geography”, is one of the most famous ancient texts on the science of mapmaking. It placed the job firmly in the domain of the geographer, who could use astronomy and mathematics to calculate from the stars what the world looked like below.>>>

Richard J. Evans, "Merchant, Soldier, Sage: A New History of Power by David Priestland – review," Guardian, August 23, 2012

In this concise but extremely ambitious book, the Oxford historian David Priestland sets himself the task of taking the long view of the financial crisis that afflicts the world today. His argument is that the year 2008, when the credit crunch began, is as important as 1917, the year of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, or 1945, when the second world war came to an end. Four years on, the crisis shows no sign of coming to an end, and political systems, economies and societies seem in a state of disarray – even looming collapse.>>>

Dan Olson, "Historical accounts of U.S.-Dakota War change through years," Minnesota Public Radio, August 17, 2012
 
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Historians agree that the U. S. - Dakota War of 1862 was one of Minnesota's most momentous events.

The war's history has been documented and shared by people who have a range of perspective and accounts of it have changed over time.

Historian William Lass has reviewed 13 histories of the war, and he recommends reading, "The Dakota War of 1862," for several reasons.>>>

Pat Padua, "Book Review: Atomic Comics: Cartoonists Confront the Nuclear World by Ferenc Morton Szasz," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 15, 2012

The year's biggest summer blockbuster, The Dark Night Rises, may be forever marred by a tragic footnote, but the fear that the movie itself plays on is time-honored and even old-fashioned: nuclear anxiety.

Pop culture has a long history of dealing with nuclear promise and danger, and the late historian Ferenc Morton Szasz argues in Atomic Comics: Cartoonists Confront the Nuclear World that the pluses and minuses of splitting the atom were most efficiently conveyed to the general populace in comic books.>>>

Sameer Rahim, "From the Ruins of Empire by Pankaj Mishra: review," Telegraph, August 6, 2012

Reviewing Niall Ferguson’s Civilisation in the London Review of Books last year, the Indian writer Pankaj Mishra was fearsomely critical of the historian’s account of the West’s rise. Ferguson had identified the six “killer apps” that enabled European domination: property rights, competition, science, medicine, consumer society and the work ethic. Emphasising these qualities, Mishra pointed out, underplayed the role of slavery, colonialism and indentured labour in the West’s triumph. Seen in this light, Ferguson’s “killer apps” looked less benign.>>>

Historians in the News Roundup

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Melody Burri, "Historian Nancy Hewitt to present new work on Quaker Amy Post," MPNnow, August 22, 2012

Farmington, N.Y. - Nancy A. Hewitt, Professor of History and Women's Studies at Rutgers University, will give the fourth talk in the summer series for the 1816 Farmington Quaker Meetinghouse Museum.>>>

Professor Hewitt will present "Faith and Politics: The Spiritual Journeys of Amy Post."

Edward Helmore, "UK Harvard star Niall Ferguson accused of intellectual fraud," The Week, August 22, 2012

 THE British-born journalist and Harvard-tenured historian Niall Ferguson has landed himself in a nasty spat with some of America's most distinguished economists, among them Princeton's Nobel Prize-winner - and venerable New York Times columnist - Paul Krugman.

Ferguson is a promoter of Chancellor George Osborne's cut-to-growth economic philosophy. Krugman is a spend-to-grow man, as is President Obama.>>>

An interview with Victor Davis Hanson on his essay "There is No One California," Forum, KQED, August 20, 2012

California has become a target of mockery in the presidential campaign, with GOP challenger Mitt Romney holding the troubled state up as an example of where the country is headed under Barack Obama. Historian and conservative columnist Victor Davis Hanson also slams the state in a recent article entitled, "There is No One California." He joins us to talk about the piece, and to give us his take on the presidential campaign.>>>

Rebekah Higgitt, "(Pseudo)scientific history?" Guardian blog, August 16, 2012

There have been many writers who have claimed that history can be, or should be, scientific. Different things are meant by this, of course, and such statements are provoked by different motivations, although generally they trade on the perceived successes, rewards, professionalism and certainty of the sciences.>>>

"Historian Taylor Branch Critiques College Sports," Only a Game, WBUR (rebroadcast), August 25, 2012

The NCAA is facing growing scrutiny from college athletes, coaches and the people who follow college sports. The September 2011 issue of the Atlantic Monthly featured an article by Pulitzer-prize winning historian Taylor Branch — author of Parting the Waters, The Clinton Tapes, and others — entitled “The Shame of College Sports,” which criticizes the corruption within the NCAA.>>>

Roundup: The Trials and Tribulations of David Barton

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Elise Hu, "Publisher Pulls Controversial Thomas Jefferson Book, Citing Loss Of Confidence," NPR, August 9, 2012

Citing a loss of confidence in the book's details, Christian publisher Thomas Nelson is ending the publication and distribution of the bestseller, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson.>>>

Chris Beneke and Randall Stephens, "Lies the Debunkers Told Me: How Bad History Books Win Us Over," Atlantic blog, July 24, 2012

Earlier this month, George Mason University's History News Network asked readers to vote for the least credible history book in print. The top pick was David Barton's right-wing reimagining of our third president, Jefferson's Lies: Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed about Thomas Jefferson. But just nine votes behind was the late Howard Zinn's left-wing epic, A People's History of the United States. Bad history, it turns out, transcends political divides.>>>

John Fea, "What Can We Learn From the David Barton Controversy?" Patheos, Anxious Bench, August 15, 2012

In case you have not heard, last week Thomas Nelson, a Christian publisher based in Nashville, ceased publication of David Barton’s The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson, saying it has “lost confidence in the book’s details.”>>>

Paul Harvey, "David Barton: Falling from Grace?" Religion Dispatches, August 10, 2012

This has been the summer of discontent with David Barton. First, in a poll taken by History News Network, Barton’s newest work, The Jefferson Lies, topped the list of “least credible history works in print.” The same work met a unanimous chorus of refutations from Jefferson public humanities scholar and radio personality Clay Jenkinson, from religious historians ranging from Martin Marty to John Fea, and (in the full length work Getting Jefferson Right) from Grove City College professors Warren Throckmorton and Michael Coulter.>>>

Jennifer Schuessler, "Hard Truth for Author: Publisher Pulls ‘The Jefferson Lies’" NYT, August 14, 2012

Last month the History News Network voted David Barton’s book “The Jefferson Lies” the “least credible history book in print.” Now the book’s publisher, Thomas Nelson, has decided to stop publishing and distributing it.

The book, which argues that Thomas Jefferson was an enthusiastic orthodox Christian who saw no need for a wall of separation between church and state, has attracted plenty of criticism since it appeared in April, with an introduction by Glenn Beck. But the death knell came after Jay W. Richards, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and the author, with James Robison, of “Indivisible: Restoring Faith, Family and Freedom Before It’s Too Late,” began to have doubts and started an investigation.>>>

History and Memory of American Slavery Roundup

Eastman Johnson, "A Ride for Liberty: The Fugitive," 1862

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"Piecing Together Stories Of Families 'Lost In Slavery,'" NPR, July 16, 2012

For decades, slavery tore apart African-American families. Children were sold off from their mothers, and husbands were taken from their wives. Many desperately tried to keep track of each other, even running away to find loved ones. After the Civil War and emancipation, these efforts intensified. Freed slaves posted ads in newspapers and wrote letters — seeking any clue to a family member's whereabouts.

In Help Me to Find My People, author Heather Andrea Williams examines the emotional toll of separation during slavery and of the arduous journey many slaves took to reunite their families.>>>

Christian Boone, "Controversial slavery mural gets new home," Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 16, 2012

A controversial mural depicting slavery that until recently greeted visitors to the Georgia Department of Agriculture will be back on display starting in August.

The Georgia Museum of Art, located on the University of Georgia campus, has rescued the painting — part of a series of murals produced by Atlanta-based artist George Beattie in 1956 chronicling the state's agricultural history — from a state storage facility and will debut the collection Aug. 1.>>>

Amy Wimmer Schwarb, "U.S. conference highlights slaves' southern path to freedom," Reuters, June 20, 2012

With the North Star as the guiding light for runaway slaves and Canada as the Promised Land, the underground railroad that U.S. schoolchildren read about in textbooks points to freedom in just one direction - the north.

But scholars gathering this week for the National Underground Railroad Conference will head south to St. Augustine, Florida, home to the former capital of Spanish Florida and a flight-to-freedom story rooted in the 17th century that is unknown to most Americans.>>>

Ira Chernus, "Slavery and 'Big Government': The Emancipation Proclamation’s Lessons 150 Years Later," History News Network, July 12, 2012

One hundred fifty years ago today, on July 13, 1862, Abraham Lincoln went out for a carriage ride with his Secretary of State, William Seward, and his Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles. Lincoln told them (as Welles recalled it) that he had “about come to the conclusion that it was a military necessity absolutely essential for the salvation of the Union, that we must free the slaves.” That was the seed of conception for the Emancipation Proclamation, which came to birth five and half months later, giving Lincoln his greatest legacy: “He freed the slaves.” It’s a story everyone knows.

But it’s not quite accurate. Only the slaves in the Confederate states were emancipated. Citizens of the Union could still own slaves.>>>

Dawn Turner Trice, "First lady's ancestry an American story," Chicago Tribune, June 18, 2012

Many Americans are fascinated by the family history of Michelle Obama, a descendant of slaves who is the nation's first African-American first lady.

You've learned a lot about her ancestry in this newspaper. Now, add to that a new book due out Tuesday, "American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White, and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama.">>>

Roundup: The University of Virginia Board vs. . . . Everyone

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Sara Hebel, "A UVa Board Member Resigns and a Prominent Faculty Member Leaves in Protest of 'Fiasco,'" Chronicle, June 19, 2012

Ousted UVA president Teresa Sullivan

The vice rector of the University of Virginia board resigned on Tuesday, saying that he hopes his decision will help begin a "needed healing process" at the university, which has been reeling during the past week-and-a-half over the board's decision to force Teresa A. Sullivan, a president popular with faculty and students, from office.>>>

Siva Vaidhyanathan, "Strategic Mumblespeak: Er, UVA’s Teresa Sullivan was fired for what?" Slate, June 15, 2012

. . . . We were all baffled. So Sullivan did nothing wrong? The board would not even hint at the reason she was fired. Conspiracy theories quickly circulated to fill the vacuum. And they got worse after Kiernan’s letter unleashed an unfounded fear that an MBA “cabal” was in cahoots with Goldman Sachs to loot the university.>>>

Zinie Chen Sampson, "UVa vice rector resigns after president's ouster," Guardian, June 19, 2012

The vice rector of the University of Virginia's Board of Visitors resigned Tuesday, saying he wanted to help quell the turmoil surrounding the abrupt ouster of President Teresa Sullivan.>>>

Kevin Kiley, "Going Another Round?" Inside Higher Ed, June 22, 2012

After a highly unusual -- arguably unprecedented -- series of events over the past two weeks, the University of Virginia's Board of Visitors will meet on the campus Tuesday to reconsider the controversial forced resignation of President Teresa Sullivan.>>>

Marie Griffith, "What Can We Learn from UVA?" Religion & Politics, June 21, 2012

The forced resignation of University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan, announced June 10, did not go as planned. Pushed out by a faction of the university’s governing body, the Board of Visitors, Sullivan was said to lack vision and “strategic dynamism,” a term appearing in a widely distributed email from Peter Kiernan, the then-chair of UVA’s Darden Business School Foundation Board. (He resigned shortly after the email went public.) Reporting on the forces behind the orchestrated firing, The Washington Post revealed that Sullivan’s Board critics felt she “lacked the mettle to trim or shut down programs that couldn’t sustain themselves financially, such as obscure academic departments in classics and German.” Classics and German, “obscure departments”? raged university stakeholders. What else is on the chopping block? Any subject that doesn’t easily lend itself to direct monetary gain?>>>

Roundup: THS Conference - Popularizing Historical Knowledge, May 31 - June 2, 2012

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Peggy Binette, "USC to host The Historical Society May 31 – June 2," USC News, May 28, 2012

University of South Carolina historian Walter Edgar will open The Historical Society’s 2012 conference Thursday, May 31, on the USC campus.

The conference, which is open to faculty, staff and students and runs through June 2, will take place in the Daniel-Mickel Center, located on the eighth floor of the Darla Moore School of Business. Edgar’s address, “Whose History is it Anyway? Reaching the People,” will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Belk Auditorium.>>>

Mark R. Cheathem, "THS 2012: Popularizing Digital History," Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics, June 7, 2012

At last week’s THS conference, I also attended the roundtable, “The Perils and Promises of Popular History in a Digital Age.” Yoni Appelbaum, Chris Cantwell, John Fea, and Elizabeth Pardoe each addressed a different aspect of digital history.>>>

Dan Allosso, "America by Bus," danallosso.com, June 7, 2012

I took the bus from New England to South Carolina last week, to attend The Historical Society’s conference. I knew I didn’t want to fly, for several reasons. The cost, of course – but even more, the disastrous environmental effects and the obnoxiousness of the whole TSA-centered security regime. The only way to really object to this, I thought, was to boycott flying.>>>


John Fea, "The Historical Society Conference Recap," Way of Improvement Leads Home, June 4, 2012

This past weekend I was in Columbia, South Carolina for the biennial conference of The Historical Society.  The focus of this year's conference was "Popularizing Historical Knowledge: Practice, Prospects, and Perils."  It was hosted by the University of South Carolina.

On Friday morning I chaired a session entitled "Religious History and the Public Imagination."  Adam Brasich, a graduate student at Florida State working with John Corrigan, gave a presentation on the way Reformed Evangelical minister and author John Piper utilizes the legacy of Jonathan Edwards to promote his 12st century religious agenda in the same way that Jonathan Edwards used the life of David Brainerd to promote an 18th century version of evangelical Reformed piety.>>>

Mark R. Cheathem, "THS 2012: Popularizing Jacksonian America," Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics, June 4, 2012

I consider my first visit to The Historical Society’s biennial meeting a success. In today’s post, I’ll cover the session in which I presented. On Thursday, I’ll discuss the session on digital history.>>>

Roundup on Writing

From a cafe in Grunerløkka, Oslo

William Zinsser, "Looking for a Model," American Scholar blog, ND

Writing is learned by imitation; we all need models. “I’d like to write like that,” we think at various moments in our journey, mentioning an author whose style we want to emulate. But our best models may be men and women writing in fields different from our own. When I wrote On Writing Well, in 1974, I took as my model a book that had nothing to do with writing or the English language.>>>

PageView Editor, "My Daily Read: [an interview with] Helen Sword," Chronicle, May 2, 2012

Q: What is your greatest criticism of much academic writing?

A. In contrast to Sinclair’s lucid and engaging paper, many academic articles are quite frankly unreadable, not only by disciplinary outsiders but by close colleagues.  Often the problem is simply poor craftsmanship:  perhaps the author has tried to cram three or four major ideas into a single sentence, leaving the reader to do the hard work of disentangling all those nested subordinate clauses.  Another common issue is an excessive allegiance to the discourse of abstraction: it’s not uncommon to find nine, ten, or more spongy abstract nouns (examples: allegiance, discourse, abstraction) cohabiting in a single sentence. The human attention span has trouble coping with that much vagueness.  Stylish academic writers anchor abstract ideas in the physical world, using stories, case studies, metaphors, illustrations, concrete nouns, and vivid verbs, and lots and lots of examples.>>>

Isabel Kaplan, "Classic Literature Isn't Dead: No Ifs, Ands, or Buts," Huff Post Books, June 5, 2012

THIS JUST IN: Contemporary writers are no longer influenced by classic literature -- or so claim a team of mathematicians from Dartmouth and Wisconsin in a recently published paper entitled, "Quantitative patterns of stylistic influence in the evolution of literature.">>>

Gail Collins, "How Texas Inflicts Bad Textbooks on Us," New York Review of Books, June 21, 2012

No matter where you live, if your children go to public schools, the textbooks they use were very possibly written under Texas influence. If they graduated with a reflexive suspicion of the concept of separation of church and state and an unexpected interest in the contributions of the National Rifle Association to American history, you know who to blame.>>>

Maria Popova, "Ray Bradbury on Facing Rejection ... and Being Inspired by Snoopy," Atlantic Monthly, May 21, 2012

Famous advice on writing abounds—Kurt Vonnegut's 8 tips on how to make a great story, David Ogilvy's 10 no-bullshit tips, Henry Miller's 11 commandments, Jack Kerouac's 30 beliefs and techniques, John Steinbeck's six pointers, and various invaluable insight from other great writers. In Snoopy's Guide to the Writing Life, Barnaby Conrad and Monte Schulz, son of Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz, bring a delightfully refreshing lens to the writing advice genre by asking 30 famous authors and entertainers to each respond to a favorite Snoopy comic strip with a 500-word essay on the triumphs and tribulations of the writing life.>>>

Animals in History Roundup

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Jerry Adler and Andrew Lawler, "How the Chicken Conquered the World: The epic begins 10,000 years ago in an Asian jungle and ends today in kitchens all over the world," Smithsonian Magazine (June 2012)

The chickens that saved Western civilization were discovered, according to legend, by the side of a road in Greece in the first decade of the fifth century B.C. The Athenian general Themistocles, on his way to confront the invading Persian forces, stopped to watch two cocks fighting and summoned his troops, saying: “Behold, these do not fight for their household gods, for the monuments of their ancestors, for glory, for liberty or the safety of their children, but only because one will not give way to the other.”>>>

"Modern dogs have 'little in common' with ancient breeds," BBC, May 21, 2012

The cross-breeding of dogs has made it difficult to trace the genetic roots of today's pets, according to a new study.

Scientists from Durham and Aberdeen analysed data from the genetic make-up of modern dogs while assessing the archaeological record of dog remains.

They found that modern breeds genetically have little in common with their ancient ancestors.>>>

"How to Build a Dog: Photo Essay," National Geographic (February 2012)

Scientists have found the secret recipe behind the spectacular variety of dog shapes and sizes, and it could help unravel the complexity of human genetic disease.>>>

Sarah C. P. Williams, "Whence the Domestic Horse?" Science, May 7, 2012

Shards of pottery with traces of mare's milk, mass gravesites for horses, and drawings of horses with plows and chariots:
These are some of the signs left by ancient people hinting at the importance of horses to their lives. But putting a place and date on the domestication of horses has been a challenge for archaeologists. Now, a team of geneticists studying modern breeds of the animal has assembled an evolutionary picture of its storied past. Horses, the scientists conclude, were first domesticated 6000 years ago in the western part of the Eurasian Steppe, modern-day Ukraine and West Kazakhstan. And as the animals were domesticated, they were regularly interbred with wild horses, the researchers say.>>>

Jared Diamond, "What Makes Countries Rich or Poor?" New York Review of Books, June 7, 2012

. . . . Europe has had a long history (of up to nine thousand years) of agriculture based on the world’s most productive crops and domestic animals, both of which were domesticated in and introduced to Europe from the Fertile Crescent, the crescent-shaped region running from the Persian Gulf through southeastern Turkey to Upper Egypt. Agriculture in tropical Africa is only between 1,800 and 5,000 years old and based on less productive domesticated crops and imported animals.>>>

Beatles History Roundup

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Steve Marinucci, "Beatles' Apple has nothing to fear from 'Strange Fruit' film," Examiner, April 21, 2012

It finally hits the street Tuesday, but the release of "Strange Fruit: The Beatles' Apple Records,” the new unauthorized documentary on the history of the record label founded by the Beatles, has had a few rough spots.

Amazon.com and at least one other dealer stopped selling it, but others continued to take orders. And though a few writers suggested it might not get released, it's been available all along direct from the distributor.>>>

Jon Friedman, "Myth-busting, from The Beatles to Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust," Wall Street Journal, April 19, 2012

Ken Scott has as many great stories to tell as anyone in the rock and roll world. And he isn’t shy about sharing them.

Talk about being a fly on the wall. Scott was the engineer on The Beatles’ White Album, among other sessions by the fabled band, and the producer on David Bowie’s classic 1972 album, “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.”>>>

"Beatles unseen photos to be sold," BBC, April 22, 2012

Unseen photos of the Beatles are to go up for sale after lying in a family album for almost half a century.

The 20 black-and-white images show the band as they made their first film, A Hard Day's Night, in March 1964 at the Scala Theatre in London.>>>

"Sir Peter Blake recreates The Beatles' 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' cover," Uncut, April 2012

The Beatles' iconic 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' album cover has been redesigned by original sleeve designer Peter Blake on his 80th birthday.

Noel Gallagher, Amy Winehouse, late Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis, The Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger and Paul Weller all feature in the new collage entitled 'Vintage Blake.'>>>

Native American History and Culture Roundup

"Native American tribe worries pipeline will disturb graves," Washington Post, March 26, 2012

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — As President Barack Obama pushes to fast-track an oil pipeline from Oklahoma south to the Gulf Coast, an American Indian tribe that calls the oil hub home worries the route may disrupt sacred sites holding the unmarked graves of their ancestors.

Sac and Fox Nation Chief George Thurman plans to voice his concerns this week in Washington. He said he fears workers placing the 485-mile Keystone XL pipeline that would run from Cushing to refineries on Texas' Gulf Coast could disturb holy ground without consideration of the tribe. He and another tribe member say the pipeline's route travels through areas where unmarked graves are likely buried>>>

"Bowers Museum Opens ‘Sacred Gold’ Exhibit," Antiques and Arts Online, March 27, 2012

The Bowers Museum's newest exhibit, "Sacred Gold: Pre-Hispanic Art of Colombia," opens to the public March 31 and remains on view through July 1.

This rich exhibit traces the legacy of gold in pre-Hispanic Colombia in more than 200 exceptional objects, supplemented by text, map, chronology and photographs that put in context the pieces that make up this collection from the Museo del Oro and the Banco de Republica, Bogotá, Colombia.>>>

Ray Mark Rinaldi,"Anschutz Collection of Western art to open to the public in 2012," Denver Post, March 27, 2012

The Anschutz Collection, one of the country's most-respected collections of Western paintings, will open its doors to the public full-time later this year, adding another attraction to Denver's growing portfolio of small, quirky art museums. . . .

The Anschutz Collection is built around the biggest names in Western art, starting in the early part of the 19th century, and includes works by such standard bearers as Frederic Remington, George Catlin and Charles Marion Russell.>>>

Sarah Yager, "Making New Promises in Indian Country," Atlantic Monthly, March 23, 2012

On December 2, President Obama delivered the keynote address at the third annual White House Tribal Nations Conference. His adoption into the Crow Tribe on the 2008 campaign trail had been a historic step in the relationship between the federal and tribal governments, and that warmth still lingered in the applause that greeted his appearance onstage.

That morning, Obama announced, in his administration's latest effort to reduce obstacles facing Indian communities, he had signed an executive order to lower the dropout rate and start closing the achievement gap for Native American and Alaska Native students. "Standing in this room, with leaders of all ages," he said, surveying the densely packed auditorium at the Department of Interior headquarters, "it's impossible not to be optimistic about the future of Indian Country.">>>

Stephanie Taylor and Dana Beyerle, "Warning issued to Alabama Historical Commission," Tuscaloosa News, March 21, 2012

MONTGOMERY | The sponsor of a bill that would change the underwater artifacts law warned members of the Alabama Historical Commission after a commission employee sent an email opposing the bill.

At stake is what lies at the bottom of Alabama's waterways and who it belongs to — the state or to the private divers who uncover artifacts.>>>

Are You Shakespearienced? Roundup

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"How should Shakespeare really sound?" Telegraph, March 12, 2012

Inspired by working with Kevin Spacey, Sir Trevor Nunn has claimed that American accents are "closer" than

contemporary English to the accents of those used in the Bard's day.

The eminent Shakespearean scholar John Barton has suggested that Shakespeare's accent would have sounded to modern ears like a cross between a contemporary Irish, Yorkshire and West Country accent.>>>

"Was Macbeth Irish? Juliet from Cornwall?" Guardian, March 18, 2012

If you listen to a new CD that tries to capture the original pronunciation of Shakespeare, you might think so.

I'm not a great fan of "authenticity" in Shakespeare: partly because tastes change, and partly because we can never be absolutely sure how the plays once looked and sounded. But a new 75-minute British Library CD, seeking to recapture the original pronunciation of Shakespeare through a selection of scenes and speeches, has a certain historical curiosity.>>>


Nick Clark, "Is this a dagger which I see before me? Historian to explore Shakespearean violence," Independent, March 21, 2012

Rising knife crime in London, youth gangs out of control, and helpless lawmakers attempting to curb the fighting by banning certain types of blade. It may sound familiar, but this was the London of William Shakespeare's day, and gives an insight into one of his most enduring love stories.>>>

Sarah Fay, "How to Talk to Shakespeare, H.G. Wells, and Emily Dickinson," The Atlantic, March 14, 2012

Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris envisions the ultimate creative writing program. In the film, Gil Pender, an American screenwriter and struggling novelist, travels back in time and gleans writing advice from literary luminaries living in Paris during the 1920s and the fin de siècle. Pender is a 21st-century, wannabe writer, a Hollywood hack who is awkward and uncertain in the presence of iconic figures like Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway. When Pender asks how he can become a "real" writer, Stein tells him to strengthen the plot of his novel. Hemingway—speaking in "clean," "honest" prose—recommends he overcome his fear of death. We never find out if Pender makes it, but many of us would prefer his experience to that of enrolling in one of America's 300 graduate writing programs: no silly workshops, no other aspiring writers, and direct instruction from "true"—i.e., deceased—masters of the craft.>>>

Letters, Memoirs Roundup

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Michael Dirda, "The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Otto Rank," Washington Post, March 8, 2012

Freud insisted that during the analytic hour, the psychoanalyst should maintain the detachment of a surgeon, staying reserved, objective and unemotional. It’s hard not to find this ironic, given the often soap-operatic lives of the men and women who formed Freud’s inner circle. Doctors sometimes like to be perceived as Olympian gods, but these letters remind us how often gods are venal, petty, jealous and spiteful.>>>

Graham Robb, "Balzac's Business," TLS, March 14, 2011

What does a novelist need? Balzac’s letters suggest the following: a peaceful place to work; a home full of beautiful, expensive objects to create “happiness and a sense of intellectual freedom”; coffee strong enough to maintain the flow of inspiration for two months; debts and publishers’ contracts with draconian penalty clauses to reinforce self-discipline with compulsion; several aliases and hiding places to prevent the creditors’ bailiffs from confiscating the expensive objects; and a constant state of romantic excitation without the time-consuming consequences of love.>>>

The Letters of Henry James (1920), Archive.org

Colm Tóibín, "A Man with My Trouble," LRB, January 3, 2008 (Colm Tóibín reviews 'The Complete Letters of Henry James)

After the death of Henry James’s father in 1882, his sister-in-law Catharine Walsh, better known as Aunt Kate, burned a large quantity of the family papers, including many letters between Henry James senior and his wife. Henry James himself in later life made a number of bonfires in which he destroyed a great quantity of the letters he had received. He often added an instruction to the letters he wrote: ‘Burn this!’ To one correspondent, he wrote: ‘Burn my letter with fire or candle (if you have either! Otherwise, wade out into the sea with it and soak the ink out of it).’ In two of his stories, ‘The Aspern Papers’ and ‘Sir Dominick Ferrand’, valued letters are turned to illegible ashes – ‘as a kind of sadism on posterity’, in the words of his biographer Leon Edel. James was fully alert to the power of letters, having paid close attention to the published correspondence of Balzac, Flaubert and George Sand, and alert to the power of editors. After reading Sidney Colvin’s edition of the letters of his friend Robert Louis Stevenson, he wrote: ‘One has the vague sense of omissions and truncations – one smells the thing unprinted.’>>>

Michel Martin, "Can I Just Tell You? The Power Of Memoirs, Biographies," NPR, February 29, 2012

Can I just tell you? The stories of other people's lives are the one true remedy of arrogance. When you think about what your forebears went through so you could have the luxury to judge them, it is truly humbling. But it is also exciting because however ridiculous the political campaigns get, however high gas prices go up, however hard it gets to make that mortgage payment, you can be assured that someone has gone through worse.>>>

Writers and Writing Roundup

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Elise Blackwell, "Is Everyone a Writer?" Chronicle, March 3, 2012

The only aspect of my job as an MFA director and creative writing professor that I dislike—aside from those “and then I woke up” stories freshmen sometimes write—is gatekeeping.>>>

Patricia Hampl, "F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Essays From the Edge," American Scholar (Spring 2012)

The first readers to comment on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Crack-Up” essays made no pretense to literary criticism. They just wanted to dish—and diss. The dismay of old or former or soon-to-be-former friends came at Fitzgerald fast and furious, along with smack-downs from those critics who bothered to remark on the essays as they appeared in three successive issues of Esquire, in February, March, and April 1936.>>>

Rob Latham, "The Exegete: On the career of Philip K. Dick, up to and including The Exegesis," Los Angeles Review of Books, February 24, 2012

When Philip K. Dick died in 1982 of a series of strokes brought on by years of overwork and amphetamine abuse, he was seen within the science fiction genre as a cult author of idiosyncratic works treating themes of synthetic selfhood and near-future dystopia, an intriguing if essentially second-rank talent.>>>

"Five Female Writers Who Changed The Course Of Chicago Literary History," Chicagoist, March 8, 2012

March is Women's History Month; for 31 days we celebrate the women who have made our employment, the oration of our opinions, and our lifestyles possible. When it comes to contemporary authors, there's plenty of strong female voices in Chicago.>>>

Scott Martelle, "Book review: 'Watergate,'" Los Angeles Times, February 19, 2012

A few months ago I attended a book launch party for Adam Hochschild's World War I history, "To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918," where he offered a concise dissection of the difference between writing novels and writing history. To write history, he said, the story needs only to be true. To write a novel, the story must be plausible — an often much more difficult thing to accomplish.>>>

Documentary Films and History Features Roundup

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The Amish, American Experience (2012)

An intimate portrait of contemporary Amish faith and life, this film examines how such a closed and communal culture has thrived within one of the most open, individualistic societies on earth. What does the future hold for a community whose existence is so rooted in the past? And what does our fascination with the Amish say about deep American values?

Clinton, American Experience (2012)

The biography of a president who rose from a broken childhood in Arkansas to become one of the most successful politicians in modern American history, and one of the most complex and conflicted characters to ever stride across the public stage.

Melvyn Bragg on Class and Culture, BBC Two

Melvyn Bragg explores the relationship between class and culture from 1911 to 2011 in a new, three-part series.

Into the White (2012)

Into the White is an anti-war movie. High above the harsh Norwegian wilderness, English and German pilots shoot each other to the ground after a violent chance encounter. Isolated, they must fight to survive the brutal winter. Though war has made them enemies, antagonism is hard to maintain as days go by. Through mutual need, unlikely friendships bloom. Somehow, they become comrades. War, after all, is absurd.

Nicolaus Mills, "Why 'Downton Abbey' is a hit in America," CNN, February 25, 2012

Americans love a period drama, and they dote on the British aristocracy. That's the way the popularity of "Downton Abbey," the British television series that drew 5.4 million viewers for the finale of its second season on PBS, is being explained these days.

It's an explanation that reflects our television history. In the 1970s, the British series "Upstairs Downstairs" was wildly popular on PBS. "Downton Abbey," which this season took place during and after World War I, covers much of the same social territory in following the trials of the fictional Crawley family, headed by Robert, the earl of Grantham.

Roundup: Exhibits, Preservation, and a Stuffed Horse

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Steve Kastenbaum, "History amended by earliest recording of sound," CNN, February 8, 2012

(CNN) -- Thomas Edison came up with a way to play back recorded sound in 1878. But 20 years before the inventor patented the phonograph, French scientist Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville was fiddling around in his laboratory trying to come up with a way to record sound. His invention, the phonautogram, enabled him to create a visual representation of his voice.>>>

Christine Legere, "1912 capsule opens Old Abington tricentennial," Boston Globe, February 9, 2012

ABINGTON - Fifty residents from three towns that composed Abington before their late 19th-century split eagerly awaited the opening of a 100-year-old time capsule Sunday afternoon, but when the sealing wax was broken, the red twine snipped, and the brown wrapper removed, the contents were a little disappointing.

The capsule contained five programs from the weeklong 1912 celebration of “Old Abington’s’’ 200th anniversary and a handful of sepia images of buildings and local landscapes from 100 years ago, most of those familiar from copies already in possession of local historians.>>>

"Historians to uncover and preserve DC history," NECN, February 5, 2012

WASHINGTON (AP) — With its wooden sign in imperfect French advertising "frittes, ales, moules" seven days a week, Granville Moore's on H Street NE looks like any other hip gastropub. But its exposed brick and chalkboard menu of craft beers belie the tavern's rich history. In the 1950s, the Formstone row house housed the office of Granville Moore, one of the city's most respected African American doctors.>>>

Alex Garrison, "Historians help honor horse of a different era," Lawrence Journal World, February 2, 2012

Comanche, the horse that famously survived — reportedly with 20 bullet wounds — the battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, is 150 years old. But what exactly his equine legacy should be so many years later is still being debated.

A commemorative event in Kansas University’s Dyche Hall on Thursday acknowledged all sides. Historians spoke about how the beloved horse came to KU, how he was heavily restored in 2005 and how the community so fascinated by him should process its interest with reverence for the lives lost at Little Bighorn and other battles.>>>