reviews

Sita Sings the Blues

September 25, 2012

The Ramayana is one of the classic Indian epics. Ascribed to the great Sanskrit poet-sage, Valmiki, it’s a love story, a moral lesson, and/or a foundation myth, depending on what kind of reader you are. Boy gets girl. Boy loses girl to demon king. Boy rescues girl with the help of monkey-god. Boy worries that [...]

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C. W. Ceram and Me

September 11, 2012

One of my favorite books as a child was C. W. Ceram’s Gods, Graves, and Scholars: The Story of Archaeology.* I checked it out from the Springfield public library over and over. It was one of the first books I bought with my own money.** I still have it and dip into it on occasion [...]

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Steinbeck in Vietnam

August 30, 2012

Reading Steinbeck in Vietnam: Dispatches From the War, edited by literary scholar Thomas E. Barden, is a fascinating, and occasionally uncomfortable, experience. In December, 1965, Nobel laureate John Steinbeck, then 65, accepted an assignment from Harry F. Guggenheim to report on the war in Vietnam for Newsday.  A personal friend of Lyndon Johnson, with one [...]

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City

July 12, 2012

Cultural historian P.D. Smith, author of Doomsday Men, argues that the city is humanity’s greatest creation. After reading City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age, it’s easy to believe it’s true. City is not a simple chronological history of urban areas from their first appearance in ancient Mesopotamia to modern megacities. Instead, Smith organizes his [...]

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A Interview with Steve Kemper About A Labyrinth of Kingdoms

July 3, 2012

Sometimes a book grabs you by the throat and won’t let you put it down. I recently experienced that with Steve Kemper’s A Labyrinth of KIngdoms: 10,000 Miles Through Islamic Africa. I got so wrapped up in the story that I broke my long-standing rule about traveling with hardcover books because I wanted to finish [...]

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Antony Beevor’s The Second World War

June 29, 2012

When Antony Beevor’s The Second World War arrived in the mail*, I was intimidated. I read and write about war-related topics a lot, but I wasn’t sure I was up to almost 800 pages of pure military history. I didn’t need to worry. Beevor begins his broad-sweeping history with the story of a single Korean [...]

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Squeeze This!

May 17, 2012

I know it’s hard to believe, but even history bloggers sometimes think about something other than history.  We knit, canoe, wrestle bears, feed people, drink whiskey, and play with the cat.* Whenever we get the chance, My Own True Love and I pull on our dancing shoes and two-step and waltz to a Cajun band. [...]

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Stranger Magic

May 8, 2012

I’m fascinated by the Arabian Nights. By the stories themselves and the way they fit together into their complicated frame story. By their transformation from Arabic street tales to a established position in the Western canon.* By their echoes in Western culture, from the Romantic poets to Disney. So I was delighted to get a [...]

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City of Fortune

April 26, 2012

I thought I knew something about Venice. A floating city carved out of a malaria-ridden lagoon.  Merchant city-state turned maritime empire, with one foot in the Muslim world.  The European end of the desert caravan trade, with merchant entrepôts throughout the Levantine coast.  Canals, gondoliers,  masked balls, gold ducats. Glamor, wealth, decadence, decay.  Or perhaps, [...]

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The Lost History of 1914

April 23, 2012

Anyone who’s been following along on this blog knows that, like most history people, I have events and periods that I return to over and over again. Some I’ve followed for years; others are relatively new interests.  One of the constants in my historical life is the First World War.*  It’s always a pleasure to [...]

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