A History of Political Trials by John Laughland

Looks interesting!The modern use of international tribunals to try heads of state for genocide and crimes against humanity is often considered a positive development. Many people think that the establishment of special courts to prosecute notorious dictators represents a triumph...

Jokerman wins the Nobel Prize

Dylan!I am extraordinarily pleased that Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature.I am not a hard-core Dylan fan, and I know little of his work from the past 40 years. But I was witness to his phenomenal early career, and that's why I feel confident in concurring with the Nobel Prize committee, probably for entirely different reasons. Here is a guy who by most standards could...

The Book of Horsemanship by Duarte I of Portugal, translated by Jeffrey L. Forgeng

A new translation of this fascinating treatise on horsemanship by a fifteenth-century king. This interview with Jeffrey Forgeng comes from Boydell and Brewer's newsletter on their line of medieval history books, the Medieval Herald. Anyone interested in how horses and knights...

Canadian ideals, 1957

This is how the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration greeted a new Canadian citizen in 1957:Dear Madam,I wish to take this opportunity of congratulating you personally upon the attainment of Canadian Citizenship. By this certificate of citizenship you have been granted the rights and privileges of the citizen of Canada. These rights and privileges entitle you to freedom of speech,...

The French Revolutionary Calendar

At a certain point, the dominant revolutionary party in France decided that the new Republic needed to be purged of all traditional, Christian and monarchical symbolism. The new calendar went far beyond a mere renaming of the months. The year and the months were given new starting...

Purge those evil foreigners

From the Guardian: Leading foreign academics from the LSE acting as expert advisers to the UK government were told they would not be asked to contribute to government work and analysis on Brexit because they are not British nationals.The news was met with outrage by many academics,...

Review of Woolgar, C. M. The Culture of Food in England 1200-1500

Reviewed by Paul FreedmanYale University paul.freedman@yale.eduNo longer a neglected field, the study of medieval food has flourished recently. At one time it was the dearth of food, outright famines or food-supply problems that occupied the attention of historians, but taste...

Thanksgiving

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Review of Will a Frenchman Fight? ed. Steven Muhlberger Deeds of Arms, 4.

I'm grateful for this positive review but I wish the reviewer had said more about the main theme of the book, the often conflicting demands of military effectiveness and individual honor in the minds of men at arms of the time.Muhlberger, Steven, ed. and trans. Will a Frenchman...

Short History of Reconstruction by Eric Foner

I have read other books by Eric Foner and have yet to find one that I didn't learn a great deal from. One of the things I learned from this one, which is a condensed version of a much larger work, is that the racial politics of the United States shows an amazing amount of continuity. Other works I have recently read have shown the discourse of immigration and religious identity...