January 2012
2 posts
The Joy of Quiet - NYTimes.com →
by Pico Iyer
October 2011
2 posts
“Historians read, and when we look up at the world around us we see dead people.”
– Scott Reynolds Nelson in Steel Drivin’ Man
“For the sake of those workers, engineers, and ourselves, we should resist any...”
– Siva Vaidhyanathan
September 2011
2 posts
WatchHow The South Was Lost - Anniversary Edition (by Ramsey Bros. Pictures)
“It’s nice when music can eclipse the reality outside the door or the everyday...”
– Pianist and composer Vijay Iyer
August 2011
2 posts
“… the historical study of what often amounts to perennial human problems...”
– Bruce Kuklick
“So what are books good for? My best answer is that books produce knowledge by...”
– William Germano
July 2011
1 post
June 2011
2 posts
Shaving Made Easy: What the Man Who Shaves Ought... →
A 1905 manual dedicated “to those men who have difficulties in shaving, in hope that its contents will of assistance in remedying their troubles.”
May 2011
7 posts
“My formula has always been I’m big on preparing. Prepare like crazy. But...”
– Conan O’Brien (also relevant to teaching)
My OAH 2011 talk on C-SPAN →
” … most of the rest of the world [was] remarkably patient about this [book] being finished.
Not everyone was so kindly, and I often took solace in Wallace Steven’s sensible reply to why it took him so long to publish. ‘A book of poetry is a serious thing.’ A work of history is at least as deadly serious, and it needs footnotes, too. The thick seriousness of this...
April 2011
6 posts
“Sometimes using Word is like going out for lunch and getting this huge platter...”
– James Hoover, developer of Bean
“There is neither a proportional relationship, nor an inverse one, between a...”
– Annie Dillard
“Argument has never been the sole guarantee of cultural sanity, nor the all-in-one solution on the quest for the golden balance between freedom and social justice. In fact, one could argue that argument and democracy share the distinction of remaining the best two unfulfilled promises of history. And yet those of us who teach continue to hope, because we know that the good argument, the one...
Big Map Blog →
“Interesting maps, historical maps, but above all, BIG maps.”
March 2011
7 posts
Virginia Postrel on the iPad: Why We Prize That... →
“So [Lincoln] started off as a non-abolitionist caterpillar, and became an...”
– Stephen Colbert, interviewing Eric Foner
“Lignin, the stuff that prevents all trees from adopting the weeping habit, is a...”
– From Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez’s Perfumes: The Guide (via @johndresner, by way of The Green Apple Core)
February 2011
2 posts
Kids' Drawings of Space Submitted to NASA →
January 2011
5 posts
“I think those kind of albums should be made illegal, they are such a bad idea.”
– Jack White, on “Sinatra-and-friends” style duet albums recorded by veteran performers (via nytimes)
A Forgotten Abolitionist, Death, and the... →
At Ph.D. Octopus
Obama’s Finest Hour →
by Garry Wills
“I’m not exactly a slow writer—when I’m really cooking I can do 800-1,000 good,...”
– Michael Chabon (via ayjay)
November 2010
1 post
“In turbulent times, knowledge of life and business are rapidly obtained; but a...”
– John Stuart Mill
October 2010
5 posts
“Why had my husband saved all this material? We had known scholars who kept all their papers because they expected their fame to live after them and assumed that others would want to read every scrap that they had written. But Roy was apt to laugh at fantasies of self-importance. Moreover, the stuff he kept seemed less about his development as a scholar—he almost never saved drafts he had...
September 2010
12 posts
“Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement;...”
– Winston Churchill (via Rob MacDougall)
Reading for Relevance →
By Elisa Tamarkin
“Twitter doesn’t just shorten posts and move things along quicker. The single...”
– The great Sharon Howard on Twitter, blogging and historians
“But jazz is my thing, and I think it’s the greatest music in the world....”
– Sonny Rollins