Change of title

When I first started writing this blog in 2005, I was using it mainly to communicate with my undergraduate students in history. That year, as for most years before that, I was teaching what might be called "early history." (Ask the average academic historian if before 1800 counts...

This blog has moved

This blog is now located at http://smuhlberger.blogspot.com/. You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here. For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to http://smuhlberger.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default....

Living in the future, Egyptian politics section

Steven A. Cook writing in Foreign Policy [thanks to Arabist.net]:Perhaps more important was the return to Egypt in February of Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), after a 12-year absence. ...Foreign news outlets estimated that as...

A remarkable story about one of the United States and Iran

Every once in a while a news story shakes up your comfortable view of what the world is like. I have my cliché views of Mississippi, backward and conservative, and though I am not nearly so paranoid about Iran as most people in North America, it is a place with a repressive government, tremendous economic problems, which poses certain dangers to people in countries that its government...

Magical thinking -- a scary survey of the present crisis

Allan Gregg talks to Chris Hedges on his book Empire of Illusion. Thanks to Arabist.net for drawing my attention to this TVOntario intervi...

NGC 2442: A distorted galaxy

Click on the pic, or read about it he...

Benefactors of humanity

More than once in the past I have said that Roger Pearse is a benefactor of humanity. It still seems to be true. Why is he our benefactor? He has taken it upon himself translate or commission translations of a great many early Christian works which have until now been available...

Test

t...

A curious, moving memoir of an Iranian mother

I have just started following the blog IranWrites, though it has been around for a while. Today a post called A Woman by Her Own Rights showed up. It would be impossible to make a representative excerpt, so I will just recommend it to y...

It was a big quake

Concepcion, Chile, from The Big Picture. Click to see a larger ima...

Now the walls say “Long Live Barcelona”.

After extensive travels outside of Baghdad, Nir Rosen reports:As worldwide attention has returned to Iraq in the run-up to the March 7 elections, a new chorus of worry has emerged, concerned that the corrupt political manoeuvring of some Shiite parties – who have succeeded in banning...

Lies, damned lies, and the official version

At the Harper's site is an article by Sam Smith called The revision thing: A history of the Iraq war, told entirely in lies. with a further subtitle, "All text is verbatim from senior Bush Administration officials and advisers. In places, tenses have been changed for clarity."I have to wonder how many ancient monuments are the exact equivalent of this, except they were meant to...

Matthew Paris really did not like the papal court

The great English chronicler and illustrator Matthew Paris is famous for his dislike of foreigners. Among the worst of foreigners were the Romans, the term he used primarily to mean members of the papal court, who used their positions to enrich themselves. In the 1250s, King Henry III of England and the Pope made an agreement which obliged Henry to conquer the kingdom of Sicily...

A Matthew Paris illustration, mid-13th century

Just for the heck of it -- the French defeat at Ga...

Some of Matthew Paris's favorite words

Extortions, oppressions, legate.There's always a bad papal legate practicing extortions and oppressions.Image: A legate at work, drawn by Matthew Par...

Steampunk

Here is a nifty article at the Smart Set, via the League of Ordinary Gentlemen (how appropriate!).The aesthetic movement Steampunk wants to bring the wonder back into our relationship with machines. Its tack is to fully embrace (and affect) an Edwardian orientation to the world....

Military ordinances in St. Louis's army in Egypt, 1250

I am currently writing a book about Charny's Questions on War, which are concerned with resolving conflicts between men at arms according to the laws of arms. One thing that I have learned in the process of researching this book is that the law of arms as Charny saw it, and not just...

"The crisis we are in"

I thought I did not have an hour to listen to Stephen S. Cohen talk about his recent book with Brad DeLong, The End of Influence: What happens when other countries have the money. But I was wro...