Facing History

Going back in history, it's possible to imagine digital technologies — from websites to cell phones to Facebook and Twitter — making a real difference. Imagine if these options were available to Soviet dissidents and refuseniks who, back in the 1970s, were limited to secretly communicating by one handwritten samizdat at a time. Maybe the "Iron Curtain" would have come down a decade earlier. Or perhaps the outcome would have been different in Tienanmen Square in 1989 had Chinese protesters been able to communicate and organize instantaneously.

Abraham Cooper on the Facebook blog.

History needs a regulator? Like the Web?

David Cannadine is now Sir David. But what about "history" in the era of "zeitgeist history".

...Professor Cannadine has just published a book in which he maintains that the morale of professional historians (whose collective name in AL Rowse’s time was reputedly “a poison”, and is now supposedly “a malice”) is at an all-time low. Andrew Roberts, another Downing Street invitee, agrees. He has called for a regulatory authority for historians and suggests it could be called Ofhist. Its task would be to protect what he designates “proper historians” from incursions by “amateurs” into writing history books, and to restrain literary editors from commissioning “Clist celebs” and the writers of “chick lit” to review such historians’ work.

So, where does the truth lie? Are historians the repository of the nation’s past wisdom, essential policy wonks’ adjuncts? Or an endangered species in need of protection from today’s nasty, dumbed-down world? Let’s attempt a historian’s answer: it depends where you stand. Certainly, if that’s in most parts of Europe, the answer would be that the reputation of British historians has never been higher.

From The Times earlier this year.

21st Century starts soon says Washington Post

Barack Obama will have as free a hand as history ever allows to chart a new course and to define a new era. He may or may not succeed, but the country was right to seize the opportunity he offered to put the previous century and its assumptions behind us.

All is explained by E. J. Dionne Jr.

The Economist & Boob Bait to Bubba

An older piece, but important in mythology of the 2008 election, I think.

Conservative intellectuals are also engaged in their own version of what Julian Benda dubbed la trahison des clercs, the treason of the learned. They have fallen into constructing cartoon images of “real Americans”, with their “volkish” wisdom and charming habit of dropping their “g”s. Mrs Palin was invented as a national political force by Beltway journalists from the Weekly Standard and the National Review who met her when they were on luxury cruises around Alaska, and then noisily championed her cause.

From the Economist.

And in a desperate attempt to serve boob bait to Bubba, he appointed Sarah Palin to his ticket, a woman who took five years to get a degree in journalism, and who was apparently unaware of some of the most rudimentary facts about international politics.

Did the Economist come up with the Boob bait line, does anyone know?

Trust, Bob Dylan & the BBC

BBC Dylan - News 24 Revisited (Full Version) from James Adam on Vimeo.


From James Andrews mash.

History is in at the White House (and Camp David)

You know, I'm the President during this period of time, but I think when the history of this period is written, people will realize a lot of the decisions that were made on Wall Street took place over a decade or so, before I arrived in President, during I arrived in President.

I'm a little upset that we didn't get the reforms to Fannie and Freddie - on Fannie and Freddie, because I think it would have helped a lot. And when people review the history of this administration, people will say that this administration tried hard to get a regulator. And there will be a lot of analysis of why that didn't happen. I suspect people will find a lot of it didn't happen for pure political reasons.

ABC gets Bush. A little of Charlie Gibson's interview.

GIBSON: Was not saving Lehman a mistake?

BUSH: We'll let the historians look back on that. At the time, the recommendation was not to, obviously. And some are second-guessing that. And in a situation like this, Charlie, where the administration is making big decisions and big calls, that there's going to be a lot of second-guessing. The one thing that I don't want to have happen is people say this thing was in a financial meltdown and we didn't do anything. And so we're moving -- hard.

How Many Levels of 'Unknowns' does it take to make History?

Great blog on one of those Front Page of History Scenes that probably didn't happen...

Henry Morton Stanley pretended to have written something in his diary on November 23rd, 1871. Perhaps he did, though the pages in his diary are torn out, so we can’t know for sure. The event he claimed to have recorded — but probably didn’t — also probably didn’t happen, or at least not the way it’s usually “remembered.” He most likely didn’t say “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” on meeting the older doctor (Tim Jeal says so in his new biography), and he didn’t even meet him in the jungle at all. He met him in a town...

From the Edge of the American West blog.


And here is an interesting take on the above from the Nieman Journalism blog.

The value of unmediated information, direct from the source closest to the scene, versus the value of an older tradition that filters that information through the methods and mores of a profession? Substitute “those bloggers” for Stanley and “the mainstream media” for the Royal Geographic Society....

Is it just speed we're talking about...?

Yesterday already being rewritten: Saving Private Bush

"24" Redemption I can take...

Then you wonder — fear, might be the better word — if this is but the vanguard of a new wave of revisionism, a pre-emptive strike against history, if you will, to impose a sunnier, more forgiving view on the past eight years than the facts will support. If so, we should gird for a very long rest of our lives.

The Seattle Times: Historical Revisionism comes Early this Transition.

Like it's 1899...

...

When asked about his perspective on social issues—gay marriage, abortion— [X] tapped his Bible and said, “God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out. He was, like, ‘Enough.’ ”

Close the shop, let's take a drive.

Tower of Babel is Back

The story of the Tower of Babel stands at the heart of how we imagine architecture. This myth hovers over every tall building; behind all criticism of skyscrapers lurks the spectre of Babel, smote for its hubris. It is a great myth but the British Museum's show reveals it is a true story.

Jonathan Jones on the new British Museum show.

Who is our Soul of the Age? AKA the Golden Triangle

From a review of Jonathan Bate's new Shakespeare book...

One could pleasurably read it as a collection of brief essays, in the freewheeling, interrogative sense of the word associated with the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne, whose Essais were translated into richly flavoured prose by John Florio in 1603, and whose name crops up frequently in these pages because of his demonstrable influence on Shakespeare.

One of the benefits of this approach is that it permits a cheerful agnosticism where a more linear narrative would require a decisive act of faith. There are the 'lost years', for instance, of Shakespeare's mid-twenties – a period of unknown activity between 1585 (when his twins Hamnet and Judith were baptised in Stratford) and 1592 (when he is first recorded as an actor and dramatist in London). Was he a 'schoolmaster in the country', or a lawyer's clerk, or a fugitive from justice after a poaching incident on the estates of Sir Thomas Lucy – all of which were canvassed by early biographers? Or was he that mysterious player called Shakeshaft who is documented in a Catholic household in Lancashire?

Charles Nicholl on Jonathan Bate's new Shakespeare, ah, non-fiction.


Review of Nicholl's The Lodger here.


Review of reviewer's Shakespeare by...Jonathan Bate....


All's well that ends well.

First drafting of the second draft of History 2: Georgia "Not acting defensively"

The accounts are neither fully conclusive nor broad enough to settle the many lingering disputes over blame in a war that hardened relations between the Kremlin and the West. But they raise questions about the accuracy and honesty of Georgia’s insistence that its shelling of Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, was a precise operation. Georgia has variously defended the shelling as necessary to stop heavy Ossetian shelling of Georgian villages, bring order to the region or counter a Russian invasion.

From the NYT.

First drafting of the second draft of history: Bush "unlucky" & "battered"

Like fish?

"One of the things that has been conventionally done is to compare George W. Bush to Harry Truman, both of whom had upon leaving office dismal approval ratings and of course as it is well known by now, Harry Truman's reputation has, by virtually every account, not only improved, but I would say escalated nearly to the top of the list of greater American presidents," Kellerman added.

CNN gives us a sneak preview of the historians' take on Bush.

The End of History is Cancelled, again

America has been living in a dream world for the past few years, losing its basic values of thrift and prudence and living far beyond its means, even as it has lectured the rest of the world to follow its model. At a time when the U.S. government has just nationalized a good part of the banking sector, we need to rethink a lot of the Reaganite verities of the past generation regarding taxes and regulation. Important as they were back in the 1980s and ’90s, they just won’t cut it for the period we are now entering.

From The American Conservative: Fukuyama endorses Obama.

5000 Days old, Kevin Kelly on the next 5000 days

Worth a viewing.

The scholarly community online by Harvard's Stephen Greenblatt

[Stephen] Greenblatt continued to say that last year Harvard passed a vote that faculty would be required if they wrote an article to allow access to a digital version for Harvard, so that all their scholarly work would be universally accessible digitally. "As a general principle, the idea that the work that we do should have value digitally and have universal access," is what Greenblatt says he had been calling for for years. In an article for the MLA, he said we must transform our understanding of what it means to appear on the web and how we can use that. We must make more broadly accessible our work. We must feel that work is significant; though the web must take into consideration the feeling of community that is subscription-based. You feel you are part of a community when you subscribe to a scholarly journal. But ultimately your work can reach a larger scholarly audience with the internet.

A great piece from the Future of the Book site.

Good grief, what next? A Three Day Week?

More surprising is the comment of Peer Steinbrück, the [German] finance minister, who has been in the thick of recent discussions to find a way out of the financial crisis. "Generally one has to admit that certain parts of Marx's theory are really not so bad," he reportedly told Der Spiegel.

From The Economist's Certain Ideas of Europe blog.

Tudorial

Today I channel hopped and came upon the point in the show where the actor playing Thomas Cromwell was introducing a new invention - a secret weapon that would win the propaganda war with the Roman Catholics. The printing press (spoken with special stress) - introduced to the show with cries of "by God, what is that?", and other such, from the actors.

Sadly the printing press was introduced to England during the reign of Edward IV - some sixty years before the time the scene was set, so everyone would have known exactly what a printing press was.

Getting angry with the BBC take on Tudor history.