Content tagged with “history”

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1913: In Search of the World Before the Great War
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
March 25, 2022
Words
201

“An interesting look at the world in 1913, before the Great War. The book doesn’t mention the looming war, and that’s kind of the point. It goes city-by-city, discussing what was happening in each, on the eve of World War 1. The result is…interesting. The book paints the picture of the world as a…”

1976 Swine Flu Vaccine
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
February 13, 2022
Words
676

“I am a vaccine skeptic skeptic , meaning I absolutely believe in vaccines and have little time for people who imagine negative health outcomes from them. I think there’s ample evidence that vaccines are the single greatest health advancement that Mankind has ever known, and most beliefs that…”

Age of Exploration
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
November 14, 2021
Words
144

“The informal period from the 1400s to the 1700s when Europeans sailed the ocean to new lands. Here’s a list of some of the places Europeans visited (‘discovered’) during this period. The western coast of Africa and the Cape of Good Hope (Portugal) A sea route to India (Portugal) Central and North…”

Albion
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
September 16, 2023
Words
69

“ This is a historic name for the island of Great Britain. It might come from the Latin word for ‘white,’ referring to the white cliffs of Dover. ”

Algonquin Round Table
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
February 21, 2023
Words
198

“This was a group of creatives that would meet for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City during the interwar period of the 1920s. Many of them were newspaper writers and columnists, and the subjects of their conversations were often printed in the papers of the day. Later, several actors and…”

Anarchism
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
January 18, 2025
Words
807

“Anarchism rejects any type of hierarchical government or authority. It believes in ‘free association,’ which means humans coming together voluntarily to solve problems, rather than being forced by the state. I’ve always wondered how someone committed to anarchy would create a society, since…”

And the Band Played on: Politics, People, And the AIDS Epidemic
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
August 25, 2025
Words
803

“A couple contextual notes – First, this book was written back in 1987, when the AIDS epidemic was still raging.' Second, the author was gay (he died of AIDS in 1994). Those two facts are important, because they affect how the book is perceived. So much of the history of AIDS happened after the book…”

Anglo-Saxon
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
September 8, 2021
Words
102

“This technically refers to the English people of the Middle Ages. Saxony is a German state. The ‘Saxons’ of the Middle Ages were seafaring people, like the Vikings of Scandinavia. Some of them migrated to England, where they combined with the ‘Anglos’ of that region (who had also migrated from…”

Antebellum
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
May 3, 2023
Words
69

“ This literally means ‘before war’ in Latin. It’s most often used to discuss the period of Southern life prior to the American Civil War. Less known is the antonym ‘postbellum,’ which means the period after a war. ”

Antediluvian
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
March 24, 2023
Words
120

“ This technically means ‘before the Great Flood.’ ‘Diluvial’ means ‘related to a flood.’ But, over the years, it’s become a synonym for ‘old’ or ‘ancient,’ when used to refer to non-historical things. ‘Diluvian’ means ‘related to or brought about by a flood’ and ‘ante’ is the prefix for ‘before.’ ”

Anthropocene
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
June 23, 2024
Words
111

“This is a general term meaning ‘the era of Mankind,’ or the period of Earth’s history where humans have existed and have had an impact on the planet. It’s often used in an environmental context to encapsulate the changes humans have had on the planet. The term is not totally accepted as a formal…”

Appian Way
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Words
124

“This was a very important road in Ancient Rome. It was named after a guy called ‘Appius.’ It was a technologically advanced road for the time (300s BC). It was paved with interlocking stones, and was crowned to run water off to gutters on the sides. It was about 350 miles long, and in one section,…”

Arabic Numbers
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
December 28, 2021
Words
295

“ Arabic Numbers are the common, base-10 numeric system most people in the world use: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. They’re not from Arabia specifically, but they were brought to Spain in the 900s by Arabic speakers from North Africa across the Straight of Gibraltar. ”

The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
August 7, 2021
Words
142

“An interesting book, but also not what the title would suggest – the subtitle anyway. This was not an all-encompassing history of money and finance. The book starts with Jewish moneylenders in Venice, and then goes on to discuss the bond market, the stock market, real estate, etc. It’s basically a…”

Auto-da-fé
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
September 20, 2023
Words
134

“It’s Portuguese for ‘act of faith.’ In most cases, it refers to a series of events during the Inquisitions of the 1500s through the 1800s. These were public punishments and executions of those believed to be heathens or witches. Prisoners were whipped, hanged, or burned at the stake in front of…”

Babylon
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
May 7, 2022
Words
328

“It is just south of present-day Baghdad, Iraq, about 50 miles, along the banks of the Euphrates. It no longer exists as a major population center, but there are significant ruins of the ancient walled city remaining. Here it is on Google Maps. Babylon was no longer a ‘city’ by about the 900s – was…”

Bacchanal
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
December 25, 2022
Words
141

“ This comes from Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and revelry. In some context, it has a sexual subtext, used to describe and orgy or indulgent sexual performance. Humorously, one of the top search results for the word is the Bacchanal Buffet at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas . ”

Bad Land: An American Romance
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
November 26, 2015
Words
367

“This is a book about a place. Not the Badlands of South Dakota (which I initially thought), but the ‘bad land’ of Eastern Montana. It’s the story of immigrants who settled there and claimed homesteads on the promise of dry farming techniques and decent weather. But the weather was bad, and dry…”

The Balfour Declaration
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
April 24, 2023
Words
300

“This was a 1917 letter from the British Foreign Secretary (their Secretary of State, basically) to a leader of the British Jewish community which expressed support for a Jewish homeland in the area of (then) Palestine. It was the first open acceptance and validation of Zionism . The letter was both…”

Balkanization
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
December 30, 2023
Words
269

“This refers to the fragmentation of something into smaller units that are hostile to each other. So, if a country were to break down into smaller regions, all of which went to war with each other, this would be an example of balkanization. I was familiar with the term from context, and from the…”

Bauhaus
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
December 12, 2021
Words
590

“There are multiple contexts here, but it’s most often used to refer to a specific German art and design school which operated in the 20s and 30s, and the aesthetic which emerged from it. It was a specific organization, but has become a general movement and approach to design. The Bauhaus school and…”

Bebe Rebozo
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
October 16, 2022
Words
162

“Bebe Rebozo was a close friend, confidante, and adviser of Richard Nixon. ‘Bebe’ was a nickname – it’s Spanish for ‘baby’ as he was the youngest of 12 in a Cuban family. Rebozo was often suspected of criminal activity, but nothing was ever proven, other than a minor tax penalty. Rebozo was also…”

Biblical Lifespans
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
January 14, 2022
Words
585

“In the Old Testament, several people are stated to have lived almost 1,000 years. Is this literal, figurative, or a mistake? One theory says that a simple translation error caused months to be counted as years. If someone was said to have died at 950 years, it was really 950 months , which is 79…”

Blackshirts
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Words
190

“In the context I decided to investigate, it refers to the starting defense of the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers. To differentiate players during practices in the 1960s, the Nebraska coach put his defenders in black jerseys, and the name stuck. When Nebraska keeps opponents to a low score, it…”

Bloody Sunday
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
February 9, 2022
Words
411

“Lots of people have been killed on Sundays, and the phrase is used to describe lots of mass killings. Wikipedia shows 20+ events that are connected to the phrase. The most recent event and the one most clearly associated with the phrase from this generation is a 1972 shooting of protesters in…”

Boer
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
March 22, 2022
Words
173

“ The more modern term in use today is ‘Afrikaners,’ though their are subtle differences. ”

Bohemian
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
April 3, 2022
Words
388

“‘Bohemia’ was an actual place – it was the western end of the current Czech Republic, though it’s not technically named this anymore. The word ‘Bohemian’ has come to refer to a carefree, counter-cultural, often traveling lifestyle. This usage comes from a French reference to the Romani people of…”

Bonfire Of The Vanities
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
September 8, 2021
Words
341

“A ‘vanity’ is some physical object that’s considered sinful or promoting of sinfulness (e.g. alcohol, pornography). So a ‘bonfire of the vanities’ is a burning of these objects as a symbolic act to promote holiness and rid the world of temptation. The original ‘bonfire of the vanities’ was an…”

Broadway: A History of New York City in Thirteen Miles
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
July 25, 2024
Words
399

“This is a lovely history of New York City, focused down to a single street. It follows Broadway north from the southern tip of Manhattan, mile by mile, and talks about the history of the city as the street moved northward. Along the way, it has random vignettes of things that happened on the…”

Cambrian Explosion
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
September 8, 2021
Words
151

“The Cambrian Period was an evolutionary timeframe occurring about 541 million years ago, and lasting for about 55 million years. It was named for the Latin name for Wales (‘Cambria’), which is where considerable fossil evidence was discovered. The Cambrian Explosion was an event during that period….”

Captain Bligh
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
September 8, 2021
Words
171

“William Bligh was the (purportedly) ruthless and cruel captain of the HMS Bounty , the crew of which famously mutinied in 1789. Bligh and his loyalists were set adrift in a small boat, and the Bounty continued on to the Pitcairn Islands , where the mutineers settled with some Polynesian women they…”

Cartesian
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
December 21, 2022
Words
262

“In general, this refers to something that can be linked back to Rene Descartes, the French scientist, famous for uttering the phrase, ‘I think, therefore I am.’ There are several scientific, mathematical, and philosophical branches that are named for Descartes: Cartesian geometry Cartesian…”

Cathay
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
September 16, 2023
Words
180

“ It may stem from a Turkish word to describe an ancient ruling dynasty. Marco Polo used the word quite often when describing his travels. ”

Cecil Rhodes
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
November 19, 2021
Words
177

“A British businessman and politician who operated mainly in Southern Africa in the late 1800s, where he moved as a child. Rhodes is known for several things: One of the governors of the main British imperial presences in Southern Africa – the Cape Colony (now South Africa) Creator of the De Beers…”

Chevy Chase
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
September 13, 2024
Words
361

“Neither. Both the actor and the city were named (indirectly) for a medieval English hunting ground. The actor, who was born in 1943, is actually named Cornelius Chase. ‘Chevy’ is a childhood nickname. (Apparently, he was also indirectly named after the English land, not the city.) The city in…”

The Cold War: A World History
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
October 6, 2017
Words
50

“ Fantastic, detailed history of the Cold War. covers all the bases, from World War I on, including quite a bit of coverage of India and Africa, outside of the big players – the U.S., Soviet Union, and China. Really, well done. 800 pages, but never got bogged down in it. ”

The Covenant
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
May 23, 2022
Words
407

“There are ‘epic’ novels, and then there’s this. It’s the history of South Africa, starting in 14,000 BC and ending in 1978. There are 14 chapters, and each chapter handles a different time period. We start about 10,000 years back with cave dwellers wandering the southern part of the continent,…”

Cultural Revolution
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
April 10, 2023
Words
286

“This was a political movement in China in the late 1960s. Chairman Mao Zedong had lost power due to the failure of the The Great Leap Forward, and he was concerned that he was losing his grip on the Communist Party. He began the Cultural Revolution by stirring up fears that capitalists had…”

Dag Hammarskjöld
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
January 28, 2022
Words
112

“He was the second Secretary-General of the United Nations, and is considered one of the greatest diplomats in world history. He served from 1953 to his death in 1961. He was killed in a plane crash in Congo. There are conflicting reports of the cause, and it was still being investigated into the…”

Drupal’s Query Builder, Circa 2008
Section
The CMS UI Database
Type
Captioned Photo
Date
November 5, 2020
Words
400

“In the previous post , a quick tour of Drupal’s earliest click-and-drag SQL query building tool turned into a history of the CMS’s early years. Drupal’s 4.7 and 5.0 releases (shipping in 2006 and 2007, respectively) were average launches in terms of core functionality and editorial UX, but the…”

Erasmus
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
January 14, 2024
Words
182

“ Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus was a Dutch theologian and philosopher in the 1500s. ”

Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
May 11, 2023
Words
1030

“This is the inside story of The Plame Affair – the revelation that Valerie Plame was a CIA operative, allegedly initiated by the Bush White House because Plame’s husband, Joe Wilson, had been critical of the administration’s reasoning for starting the Iraq War. The most obvious part of this book is…”

The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
September 19, 2024
Words
902

“This is a long look into the Bush family dynasty. Turns out that before George H.W. (the 41st President) and George W. (the 43rd President), there is a long history of powerful people in the Bush clan. The book starts back with Samuel Prescott Bush, in the 1800s. He was a powerful and wealthy…”

The First Man in Rome
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
June 14, 2022
Words
559

“This is a ‘historical novel.’ It’s sort of fiction, but sort of not. It’s a narrative of history, but apparently quite accurate. The book mainly follows two men: Gaius Marius (a real person ) and Lucius Cornelius Sulla (also a real person ), during the period of 110 - 100BC in Ancient Rome and its…”

The First World War
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
July 11, 2021
Words
238

“It is what it claims to be – a detailed history of WWI. Actually, I understand that this is the short version. The author is apparently one of the most renowned WWI scholars in the world, and has a three-volume history in the works, but he decided to make an easier-to-digest version. He approaches…”

The First World War: A Complete History
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
November 6, 2021
Words
290

“This is a magisterial history of The Great War. Nothing is left out. The book proceeds down a strict timeline, battle by battle, event by event, mutiny by mutiny. It starts just before, and ends just after. The numbers are staggering – all the numbers. The dead, the wounded, the costs, the number…”

Floppy Disk Fever: The Curious Afterlives of a Flexible Medium
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
April 16, 2024
Words
154

“This is an odd book. It’s…neat, but I don’t understand why on Earth anyone published it. It’s a series of interviews about people who are still doing interesting things with floppy disks. They’re using them to distribute ‘diskmags,’ or using them in artwork, or hoarding them, or doing something…”

The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic – and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
November 11, 2019
Words
120

“Thrilling story of a cholera outbreak in London in the 1850s, and the physician who tracked down the source. At the time, illness was thought to come from ‘bad air,’ but a physician named John Snow mapped the illnesses and determined that they were clustered around a water pump in Broad Street. No…”

Gilded Age
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
July 8, 2023
Words
225

“This a period of American history at the end of the 19th century. Opinions differ on when it started – certainly post-Civil War, but various accounts have it starting in the 1860s or 1870s and running through the end of the century. The period was characterized by enormous post-bellum economic…”

The Gipper
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
September 8, 2021
Words
123

“George Gipp was a football player at Notre Dame in the late 1910s. His nickname was ‘The Gipper.’ He died of an infection during his senior year. In the 1940 film, Knute Rockne, All-American , he was portrayed by Ronald Reagan. In his deathbed scene, Reagan implores his teammates to ‘…win just one…”

God’s Secretaries : The Making of the King James Bible
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
January 12, 2019
Words
299

“What’s interesting about this book is that there’s just very little information about the actual process of creating the King James Bible. Not much of the historical record of the actual translation process remains. So, what the book does is concentrate on the societal, political, and religious…”

Gran Meccanismo: Clockpunk Roleplaying in Da Vinci’s Florence
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
February 23, 2023
Words
403

“This is a role-playing game rulebook. I love to read these, I think because I love to put rules around domains of information, and there’s nothing as amorphous as life itself. (Maybe read this: Are Computers Just Really Expensive Dice? ) The setting is Florence, Italy of the Italian Renaissance –…”

The Gulag
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
September 8, 2021
Words
277

“No, this wasn’t a specific place. It was technically the name of the Soviet agency that managed the forced labor camps of the Lenin and Stalin eras. In the Western world, the term ‘gulag’ came to refer to the generic Soviet system of camps, regardless of where they were. There were hundreds of…”

The Gutenberg Revolution
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
April 30, 2017
Words
71

“I love the subject but just couldn’t connect with the writing style. I found it confusing. Not an entirely bad book – it presents Gutenberg as a businessman (and not a very good one), and covers all the religious and political conflict in Mainz, Germany that helped the printing revolution along….”

Historiography
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
April 27, 2023
Words
166

“This is the discipline of studying history. It doesn’t refer to the actual study of history, but rather to the practice, process, and tools that we use to study history. Wikipedia makes an interesting point: The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians have studied that topic by…”

A History of the World in 6 Glasses
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
February 23, 2021
Words
156

“A fun book about six beverages that have figured heavily in world history: Beer Wine Spirits (hard liquor, basically) Coffee Tea Soft drinks Each of these have influenced the world enormously in different ways. The world grew up around these drinks – People wanted access to them Congregating over…”

How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
December 27, 2020
Words
206

“Fantastic book about the history of American colonialism, from the Philippines (which we set free) to Puerto Rico (which today exists in some weird in-between state), to dozens of islands (which we keep for geopolitical reasons). There are untold stories here about how the US never quite figured…”

Keynesian Economics
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
January 16, 2022
Words
220

“John Maynard Keynes was a British economist. He had a lot of theories about economics, but it basically boils down to this – The government has to intervene in the economy . In a rescission, government has to increase spending to increase demand. During a boom, the government needs to reduce…”

Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
April 21, 2023
Words
150

“I eventually abandoned this book, but I read quite a bit of it. What I came to appreciate is that history of the Middle East and history of the British Empire are wildly intertwined. The British were all over that region, and when they left, they made some attempts to split it up, but then left…”

The Kurds: A People in Search of Their Homeland
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
December 31, 2023
Words
331

“Here’s my problem with this book – it wasn’t a history, it was more of a personal memoir . I was expecting the detailed story of the Kurdish people, but instead I got a story about the author and how he interacted with the Kurds over the course of several decades. The author had some history with…”

Legion versus Phalanx
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
February 14, 2019
Words
211

“I struggled with this book. The author admits that it’s about almost everything except a direct comparison of the legion and the phalanx. After a short introduction to ancient military tactics, it pretty quickly launches into a long history of ancient warfare and battles. About halfway through…”

The LEGO Story: How a Little Toy Sparked the World’s Imagination
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
May 21, 2023
Words
628

“This is an authorized history of the LEGO company . Emphasis there because this is less about LEGO the toy . It’s largely a history of the business of LEGO. And it’s very authorized. Throughout the book are sidebars from Kjeld Kristiansen, who until recently was the head of the company. He is the…”

The Library Book
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
December 30, 2019
Words
152

“I thought this was a novel. It’s not. But it’s wonderful. It’s the story of: The 1986 fire at the Los Angeles library and its subsequent investigation and aftermath The larger Los Angeles library system and its history The future of libraries in general The three topics interweave throughout the…”

The Lost Cause Argument
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
May 6, 2023
Words
1012

“This is a view of history that attempts to paint the Confederacy and its role in the American Civil War in the best possible light. It emerged sometime after the war, when southerners were trying to recover from the damage of the war and rationalize why it was fought. The ‘lost cause’ means that…”

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
August 5, 2023
Words
578

“This is the story of several things, simultaneously. Most prominently, it’s the story of Percy Fawcett, an explorer from England who ventured into the Amazon twenty-some-odd times. He was utterly convinced there was a lost civilization somewhere therein, which he called ‘Z’ It’s also the story of…”

The Medici
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
October 1, 2024
Words
241

“This purports to be a history of a single family, but it’s really a history of the entire Italian renaissance. The Medici just happened to dominate that time period. It’s interesting to see how the Medici crossed paths with so many other legendary people of that period. Da Vinci and Michelangelo…”

Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
August 22, 2022
Words
92

“This was the 1939 agreement between Hitler (Germany) and Stalin (Russia) where they agreed to non-aggression and to divide Poland between them. (It was named for the Foreign Ministers of both countries.) The areas of Poland that were invaded ended up with Russia after the war, and are now in…”

Muscovy
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
February 26, 2024
Words
151

“ This was the region of Asia that eventually became Russia. It was named for the Moskva river, which borders the area to the west. From that grew the city of Moscow, which became the center of Grand Duchy of Muscovy. It was first mentioned in the 1200, and they fought off the Mongols in the 1300s. ”

O’Hare
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
December 7, 2023
Words
148

“Chicago’s largest airport is named for Edward ‘Butch’ O’Hare. He was a Naval aviator during World War II. He’s most known for single-handing attacking nine bombers who were threatening his aircraft carrier. He shot down five of them. O’Hare was awarded the Medal of Honor. He was shot down by the…”

Old Master
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
August 10, 2023
Words
236

“This is a description or name applied to any painting from an known painter in Europe before ‘about 1800,’ according to Wikipedia . Merriam-Webster says: a work of art by an established master and especially by any of the distinguished painters of the 16th, 17th, or early 18th century But what’s an…”

On Intelligence: The History of Espionage and the Secret World
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
March 7, 2018
Words
78

“Wonderfully interesting overview of intelligence, from human spies to spy satellites to computer espionage. Peppered throughout are small case studies of actual historical situations (Manning, Snowden, Ames, the USS Liberty, etc.). Very enjoyable. My only gripe is that the author injects personal…”

ORD
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
August 7, 2024
Words
82

“O’Hare is built on what used to be an airfield complex called ‘Orchard Field.’ It served a Douglas manufacturing plant and an Air Force service depot. That’s where the ‘ORD’ comes from: ‘Orchard.’ When the city of Chicago needed more capacity than the original airport (now Midway), they purchased…”

Paris Commune
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
November 18, 2021
Words
146

“This was a communist government that seized control of Paris for two months in 1871. France was concluding the Franco-Prussian War at the time, and the only reason the uprising succeeded is because the army was outside of Paris. In fact, when the war concluded, the army marched back to Paris and…”

A People’s History of the United States
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
November 17, 2015
Words
326

“the author of this book makes a good point in the afterword: all facts promote or minimize a viewpoint, merely by their selection. So, choosing to retell or convey a fact promotes some point-of-view because that fact tells a story. And conveying that fact means you want to tell that story, and not…”

Persia
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
September 8, 2021
Words
266

“It’s an alternative name for Iran. The term ‘Persia’ is considered a relic of ancient times by most, and usage of it usually implies a historical reference to Iran. In 1935, the reigning shah announced that the country would henceforth be referred to by its modern name of ‘Iran.’ This wasn’t…”

The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
August 30, 2021
Words
239

“This is the definitive history of oil, from the first discovery in the 1850s through the first Gulf War of of the 1990s. It’s a lot – 900-some-odd pages. Not for the faint of heart. I actually brought back in college in the mid-90s, and never finished it. I promised myself I’d get back to it, and…”

Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution: Lessons for the Computer Age
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
August 28, 2024
Words
572

“This is a history of the ‘Luddite revolution,’ when textile laborers in central English destroyed machinery that was very rapidly taking their jobs. It’s where the general term ‘luddite’ came from, meaning someone who refuses to adopt new technology. I was surprised to find out that this all took…”

The Secret World: A History of Intelligence
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
March 30, 2019
Words
237

“This book is exactly what it claims – a magisterial history of intelligence and espionage. But, it left me a bit frustrated. (I wrote a blog post about this.) The book is a series of anecdotes, with no framework for understanding the larger issues of intelligence. It’s episodic – a series of…”

Shogun
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
April 1, 2024
Words
701

“Oh, goodness, I didn’t like this book. And I feel terrible about that fact, because it’s a classic, but I just didn’t. This is a long, long book. I’ve read comparably long books like The Covenant and The Pillars of the Earth , but this is both long and very, very boring. It’s set in 1600. John…”

The Shortest History of India
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
December 26, 2023
Words
319

“This book lived up to its title – it was a short, competent history of India. That said, it suffers from a problem of any book dealing with ancient history – it can be hard to transition between time periods and know what’s factual and what’s legend. Consider: There’s a period with everything is…”

Silent Night: The Remarkable Christmas Truce of 1914
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
December 18, 2021
Words
124

“I loved the idea of this book, but the reality was a mess. The problem with documenting the Christmas Truce (an actual event ) is that it’s told largely in legend. It was impromptu and distributed – it happened with no advance notice, and it happened all up and down the Ypres front. As a result,…”

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
December 30, 2018
Words
43

“ A spectacular history of Asia. This is a book where I stopped tracking what page I was on, because I just wanted to keep reading it. Also a book that could have been boring, but the writing style is just effortless and wonderful. ”

The Somme
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
July 4, 2022
Words
237

“This book forced me to think about books about wars in general. I think I’ve identified four levels, in descending order of scope. Geopolitical: These books discuss the large-scale political reasons and ramifications of the war. Strategic: These books talk about large battles, and where the…”

The Soul of a New Machine
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
October 5, 2019
Words
78

“Honestly, I just didn’t get it. This book was described in near-mythical terms, but it seemed tedious to me. Maybe I’m just not used to hardware design, or I’m not an engineer anymore – I don’t know what, but the over-arching point of this was lost. There was some philosophy toward the end of…”

Sugar: A Bittersweet History
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
January 9, 2019
Words
217

“This is a very good book, but the title is pretty unclear. It really covers the history of sugar from one angle: slavery, or perhaps labor exploitation in general. It’s fair to say that slavery is a big part of sugar, for sure. And this book covers it up, down, and sideways. And that’s pretty much…”

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
June 1, 2023
Words
561

“This is a book about a poem. It follows a book-hunter in the 15th century named Poggio, while he manages to save the last remaining copy of On the Nature of Things by Lucretius, which is an explanation of Epicurean philosophy. The poem makes lot of secular claims. In the middle of the book, they’re…”

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
June 16, 2023
Words
1219

“Much is made of the title and implied angle of this book, but – to be clear – this is a solid, comprehensive biography of Abraham Lincoln. The purported angle is this: once elected president, Abraham Lincoln appointed his main rivals for the office to important positions in his administration….”

Teapot Dome
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
September 8, 2021
Words
196

“This is known mainly as a political scandal. Teapot Rock is an rock formation in Wyoming that (supposedly) resembles a teapot. It sits on top of an oil field that was discovered early in the 20th century and became known as Teapot Dome. The oil field was owned by the government as a Naval oil…”

Temple Mount
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
April 23, 2022
Words
424

“This is a holy site in Jerusalem. It’s actually several overlapping sites, important to all three Abrahamic religions. The Template Mount itself is the claimed former site of Solomon’s Temple, which was destroyed twice – the last time in the years just after Jesus died. It’s a raised plaza – kind…”

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
December 31, 2017
Words
145

“Wonderfully written biography. Makes me want to read more Chernow. JDR was a flawed man, certainly. While an upstanding citizen in his personal life, he was a ruthless business, who destroyed his competitors with glee. Provoked some wonder at the line between the personal and professional. Can…”

Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis – and Themselves
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
August 22, 2022
Words
343

“This is the story of one week in 2008 – the week when Lehman Brothers was about to fail, and then almost everything went with it. It was the week that ended with TARP – the $700 billion Wall Street bailout package. And to be clear: this is 600 pages about that one week . It’s a nauseatingly…”

Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
November 28, 2014
Words
121

“This book traces the history of Christianity by defining 12 ‘turning points,’ which are pivotal moments in its development. These range from the Council of Niceo, to the Reformation (the Diet of Worms, actually), to the Edinburgh Mission conference in 1910. It was a good book, and certainly…”

Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
December 20, 2022
Words
858

“This is a novel from 1851 designed to reveal the horrors of slavery. And it worked – it caused outrage across the United States and pushed the country toward the Civil War. The author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was prompted to write the novel by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which…”

The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
May 10, 2019
Words
68

“Truly, one of the most perfect books I have ever read. I wanted a comprehensive history of the NBA, and that’s what got, with style and beauty to go along with it. The history is organized well, the writing is superb and goes beneath superficial observations, and the artwork is just amazing – like,…”

Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
April 24, 2022
Words
344

“Enormously entertaining history of the Vanderbilt family by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who was a Vanderbilt on his mother’s side. Cornelius ‘Commodore’ Vanderbilt was a self-made man. He started ferrying people on a small boat around New York Harbor and ended up becoming the richest man the world had…”

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
June 1, 2014
Words
70

“This book is good if you want a long, detailed history of the ARPANET, the direct predecessor to the Internet. For that, it’s fascinating. That said, it’s not a casual reader. I’m neck-deep in the Internet every day and am a fan of Internet history, and even I got bored in places. Still, if you…”

Whiz Kids
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
July 6, 2023
Words
308

“This has two common meanings, one depending on the other. Just after World War 2, ten veterans and their commander went to work at Ford. They had all served in the Army during the war in a unit called Statistical Control, which broke new ground in information management for logistics. After the…”

The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
March 25, 2025
Words
163

“I feel guilty saying that I ‘read’ this book, because I abandoned it after about 100 pages. I just didn’t understand what the author was getting at. This bothers me, because I enjoyed Guns, Germs, and Steel , which is Diamond’s more famous work. The first chapter was a long discussion of his…”