Blog

Thursday links

September 10, 2020

Some more stuff here, and my opinions thereupon:

 

 

This review does a good job of telling the story behind this book. But I also think the reviewer goes to great lengths to excuse the behavior of Prof Karen King, or to deflect attention from her behavior.  Has she...

Read More Thursday links

Mid-week links

September 09, 2020

Yesterday I had what, at the end of the evening, I thought was my most successful day so far of the semester; but then, my wife and I were awake for half of the night dealing with a mysteriously sick child.  So it feels like we're back to square one this morning.  Oh well!  Here are some links for you.  

 

 

“There is a big conversation to have about what to do about Turkey,” a senior European diplomat said. “But it’s not for now.”  After Trump leaves office do you have to walk in front of number of foreign policy...

Read More Mid-week links

Links for a Tuesday

September 08, 2020

Here, public school begins today. Our son starts seventh grade! Of course, it's all remote. What a year it will be. 

 

Meanwhile I have links for your own continued education: 

 

 

Using some advanced mathematics to talk about cryptology; most of this is just beyond me. But it seems pretty cool...

Read More Links for a Tuesday

Yet more links

September 07, 2020

Some stuff for you all!

 

This is an incredible review—ten years old now—of Mark McGurl’s The Program Era, a book about post-war American fiction writing.  Elif Batuman really takes on the book in a serious way, from a position of strong dissent, but she does not, I think, slander the book, trash or disparage it; she just disagrees.  It’s very...

Read More Yet more links

Some links

September 06, 2020

Good stuff here.

 

 

sharp essay about English historians of the mid-Twentieth century, such as EH Carr, Hugh Trevor-Roper, and the like.  They were genuinely popular historians, that is, historians who is writing was not only for fellow professional academics, but for an intelligent general audience.  What happened to render such an audience...

Read More Some links

Start of September links

September 01, 2020

It's a new month!  Always a chance to start afresh.  Read some stuff!

 

A good analysis of the 1994 crime bill—a topic of interest now because of Biden’s support for it back in the day—and a careful accounting for what we can say about its effects, and what it was doing at the time.  As ever, policy...

Read More Start of September links

Books I'm reading: John Lewis Gaddis, ON GRAND STRATEGY

August 28, 2020


I picked this book up in a charity shop in the UK, and having read a couple of his history books, and knowing of his work with the so-called “grand strategy“ undergraduate program at Yale University, I was interested to see what he would do here. But it was not good.

 

There’s a lot here to sniff at, legitimately or no. First of all, he relies on something called dictionary.com for his word definitions. This reminds me of...

Read More Books I'm reading: John Lewis Gaddis, ON GRAND STRATEGY