What’s On Your To-Be-Read Pile?
Those of you who also subscribe to my newsletter* know that I include the cover of a book from my to-be-read shelves in each issue. A recent email from a new reader** got me thinking about the fact that most of you are not only history buffs, but serious book people who have to-be-read piles or shelves or lists of your own that you might be willing to share.
I would like to open up an occasional guest post spot for reader recommendations. Here’s how it will work:
1. Send me a brief review of a work of historical non-fiction you’ve loved, or are eager to read: what it’s about, why you loved it (or why you want to read it). I’m thinking 300 words or less.
2. If it’s an older book, a photo of the cover would be nice.
3. I need to be able to at least use your name–though I suppose if you come up with something like Constant Reader I’ll accept it.*** I’d love to include a brief bio. I’ll be happy to include a link to your website or blog if you have one.
4. I reserve the right to edit for clarity, grammar, or spelling.
Assuming anyone responds, I won’t publish these more than once a week. More likely twice a month.
I’m looking forward to hearing from you.
*In the newsletter I talk about writing in generally and specifically writing about history. If that’s your drink of choice, I’d love to see you there. Here’s the sign-up link: http://eepurl.com/cobpk9
**Hat tip to Fred Moss. Look at what you’ve started!
***But you can’t use Constant Reader unless you’re Dorothy Parker.
Looking Stuff Up: The Ancient History Encyclopedia
Recently I’ve been spending a lot of time in the distant past, writing about women who fought against the Roman empire,against the Persian empire, as part of the Persian empire or here and there around the edges of the Mediterranean.* I’ve been fascinated with the ancient world since childhood, but it is definitely Not My Field in academic terms. When I need to find my way into a specific topic about the ancient world,** my first stop is the Ancient History Encyclopedia The AHE is an on-line encyclopedia that makes full use of the benefits of the digital world with videos, interactive features etc. More important from my perspective, it features clear narratives, with timelines, links to related materials,**** a useful bibliography and the name of the person who wrote the entry, so you can check him on line and see if you think he is a reliable guide to a new topic or a crackpot. (So far I have not found a crockpot, but it’s always nice to be able to check.)
For my purposes, the AHE is no more than a doorway, but for the casual user it could be a source of many happy hours looking stuff up. Nerd, you say? Guilty as charged.
* I haven’t even tried to deal with the myths about or historical roots of the Amazons. For that I recommend Adrienne Mayor’s excellent The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World.
**Say, Alexander the Great’s older half-sister, Cynane. Also spelled Cynna, or Cynnane, transliteration being a moving target. (And not just for ancient languages. I am currently tracking down a woman who formed a resistance group during the German occupation of Greece during World War II. Her name is alternately spelled Carayanni and Karagianni. This doubles the research time.***)
***If anyone can point me to a good source, I’d be grateful.
****For instance, the article on Boudicca includes a link to the relevant passages of Tacitus, who is one of our main sources for her revolt against the Romans. Very useful for a quick and dirty check on the details.
From the Archives: From Confucius to Air Traffic Control
In 130 BCE, the Chinese emperor Han Wudi came up with a new idea for how to choose government bureaucrats. He established a civil service of Confucian scholars, known in English as mandarins, who earned their positions by passing a standardized examination. The system still favored those from privileged families who could afford to give their sons* a formal education. But at least in theory, getting a government job in imperial China now depended on what you knew instead of who you knew or what family you were born in.
In Wudi’s day, the examinations tested candidates’ understanding of the tenets of Confucian moral and ethical thought on which Han dynasty government was based–the equivalent of asking candidates for jobs in the United States government to pass a test on the Magna Carta, the Constitution, and the Federalist papers. Over time, the examinations became more and more divorced from the realities of government. By the Manchu dynasty of the seventeenth century, candidates were tested on their knowledge of Chinese history, their ability to compose poetry, and the quality of their calligraphy.
Wudi’s civil service exams controlled who got a government job in China from the seventh century CE through 1905, when the system was abolished in response to pressure from a new western-educated elite. The west didn’t adopt the concept until the nineteenth century. In 1853, the British East India Company was the first European power to use competitive examinations as a means of reforming an increasingly corrupt system in which positions were acquired through patronage and purchase. The East India Company consciously copied the Chinese exam system, creating a class of “new Mandarins”.
Other western governments, faced with the hazards of civil service based on “who you know”, thought Wudi’s idea that government employees should pass a test proving their fitness for government service was a good one. The United States entered the game in 1883, after a disgruntled would-be federal employee assassinated President James Garfield. Civil Service exams controlled who got a job in the United States civil service until 1978, when the general civil service examination was abolished. Today, civil service exams are still required for jobs requiring a specific set of skills, such as air traffic controllers and intelligence agency linguists.
* Just to put this in context: roughly 2000 years later Clara Barton was one of only FOUR women to work for the United States Federal government in the years just before the American Civil War. At the time, plenty of people thought the presence of women in government jobs was a sign that the system of patronage had gone awry.
Image credit: iqoncept / 123RF Stock Photo