History/Academia/Religion/Culture/Politics/Jazz
Mode for Caleb Caleb McDaniel

I bring you the twelfth incarnation of the biweekly History Carnival. But first, a grateful tip of the hat to everyone who sent in nominations. In the interest of brevity, I could not include all of the nominations, but hopefully there is enough here for reading and reflection. Enjoy!

Cliopatria hosted a symposium on an article by Gary Nash summarizing his recently published book on the American Revolution. Marc at Spinning Clio joins the discussion.

Jason Kuznicki at Positive Liberty gives a draft of his first lecture to a future class on the Western intellectual tradition.

Sharon Howard at Early Modern Notes throws a costume party.

The Elfin Ethicist reviews the first episode of the "Made for TV" version of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel.

Jonathan Reynolds reports on a World History Association meeting in Morocco.

Nathanael at The Rhine River revisits the underappreciated "municipal revolutions" that helped make the national French Revolution possible and suggests that the bourgeoisie were actually the "avant garde of politics in Europe" until the middle of the nineteenth century.

The Carnival Blue Ribbon for most innovative use of the blog medium goes to Susan Kitchens, who is "liveblogging" the testing of the A-bomb in New Mexico.

Mark Grimsley at Blog Them Out of the Stone Age is in the middle of a fascinating series on the American Civil War as a "people's war." Start here.

Konrad Mitchell Lawson peruses a wartime Chinese dictionary. But others have gotten to it before him, and they brought their black markers.

A pseudonymous article in the Chronicle of Higher Education warned job seekers against blogging. The article was weighed and found wanting by several blogging historians, including Timothy Burke, Manan Ahmed, Alan Baumler, and numerous others.

The new issue of Common-Place includes essays on Tom Paine as an inventor, a Mormon performance of an Incan melodrama with Brigham Young in the starring role, and my own essay on blogging in the early republic.

Jim Davila at PaleoJudaica uses the contemporary "Jews for Jesus" movement as a prompt for thinking about the broad continuum of Jewish messianic movements in antiquity.

Brandon at Siris uses Alexander Hamilton to note the broad continuum of political beliefs among the Founding Fathers.

A speech by John Quincy Adams was brushed off for twenty-first-century use by Ralph Luker, Linus Kafka, and Brandon at Siris.

The Little Professor explores what it means to put the "historical" in historical fiction.

Alun has started to develop a promising site that scans RSS feeds from history and anthropology journals for the titles of recently published articles. It's called Damasus.

The Apocalyptic Historian reflects on scholarly celebrity and recalls a chance meeting with the late Civil War historian Shelby Foote.

Jonathan Dresner takes Paul Harvey to task for a tendentious reading of history and doesn't sugar-coat things.

A Supreme Court justice retired, leaving a wartime president to wonder where he would find a replacement that was suitably ... liberal? See Eric Muller for details.

Barista revisits a mystery on the voyage of Captain James Cook.

At Left2Right, James Oakes hears echoes of Lynne Cheney in Philadelphia's new high school standards for African and African American history.

Sheila at Relaxing on the Bayou discusses a recent survey of history museums on the web, and shares results from her own research on the subject.

At Thanks for Not Being a Zombie, GZombie looks at the problem of canon formation from the perspective of a book historian. At Acephalous, Scott Eric Kaufman responds from the perspective of a headless tennis player. GZombie also does a bit of sleuthing in a rare books reading room.

Richard Nokes uses the history of exploration to show why, when it comes to justifying space travel, imagination fails.

Geitner Simmons at Regions of Mind surveys the reactions to and the history behind a "blackface" Mexican comic book character that has appeared on an official postage stamp. See also Global Voices Online and Mark in Mexico.

At Savage Minds, Kerim Friedman notes a new biography of David Livingstone, who, despite being a famous missionary and explorer, had little success as either a missionary or a explorer.

The next History Carnival will be hosted on the First of August (the anniversary, I might add, of slave emancipation in the British West Indies) by Will Franklin at WILLisms. Send nominations to willisms[at]gmail[dot]com.

The next Carnivalesque, which will focus on ancient and medieval history, will also be held in early August at The Cranky Professor. Send nominations to professor[at]crankyprofessor[dot]com.