Culture and Stuff hosts History Carnival CI on Monday 1 August. Use the form or the form to nominate the best in July's history blogging. The Earthly Paradise hosts August's Art History Carnival on Wednesday 3 August. Use the form to nominate the best in July's Art History blogging.

William Pannapacker, "Overeducated, Underemployed," Slate, 27 July, has six suggestions for "how to fix humanities grad school."

Peter Phillips, "The Invention of Our Music," The Book, 28 July, reviews Christopher Page's The Christian West and Its Singers: The First Thousand Years.

Amanda Vickery, "18th-century Paris: the capital of luxury," Guardian, 29 July, reviews "Paris: Life and Luxury in the Eighteenth Century," an exhibit at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles; and Charissa Bremer-David's Paris: Life & Luxury in the Eighteenth Century.

"Dissenter," Long Story Short, 28 July, is the first installment of Tablet's new podcast. In it, Vivian Gornick joins podcast host, Liel Leibovitz, to discuss the continuing appeal of Rosa Luxemburg.

Hester Vaizey reviews Mary Fulbrook's Dissonant Lives: Generations and Violence through the German Dictatorships for the THE, 28 July.

Ian Thompson reviews Stephen Gundle's Death and the Dolce Vita: The Dark Side of Rome in the 1950s for the Guardian, 22 July.

Janet Maslin, "The Catching of Two Joseph Hellers," NYT, 27 July, reviews Tracy Daugherty's Just One Catch: A Biography of Joseph Heller and Erica Heller's Yossarian Slept Here: When Joseph Heller Was Dad, the Apthorp Was Home, and Life Was a Catch-22.

Matthew Taylor reviews Matthew J Goodwin's New British Fascism: Rise of the British National Party for the Guardian, 27 July.

Alexander Nazaryan, "Waterworld," The Book, 27 July, reviews John Mack's The Sea: A Cultural History.

Adam Kirsch, "Ideas Are Viruses: How Tacitus' Germania became the bible of German nationalism," Slate, 25 July, reviews Christopher Krebs's A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus's Germania From the Roman Empire to the Third Reich.

Philip Kennicott, "Smithsonian's ‘Great American Hall of Wonders' is a missed opportunity," Washington Post, 22 July, and Edward Rothstein, "The World as America Dreamed It," NYT, 27 July, review "The Great American Hall of Wonders," an exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC.

Stanley Weintraub, "GBS and the despots," TLS, 27 July, tracks "George Bernard Shaw's descent from ‘textbook socialism' to blinkered admiration for Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini."

Ronald Fraser, "Oxford, Spain and the high life," TLS, 27 July, reviews María Jesús González's Raymond Carr: La curiosidad del zorro: Una biografía.

Robert Zaretsky, "Mind Games," Tablet, 27 July, sees the tradition of the French intellectual foundering on the discussion of the roles of Jews and Muslims in France.

Beside promoting the periodic history carnivals and sponsoring the annual Cliopatria Awards, Cliopatria recognizes excellence in history blogging in its Hall of Fame. Its first honorees are: IA's Invisible Adjunct (February 2003-August 2004), Caleb McDaniel's Mode for Caleb (July 2004-August 2006), Bill Turkel's Digital History Hacks (December 2005-December 2008), Mr. H's Giornale Nuovo (October 2002-October 2007), and The Edge of the American West (October 2007-December 2010). Today, Jonathan Dresner of Pittsburg State University, HNN, and Frog in a Well explains why we are adding Rob MacDougall's Old is the New New (November 2002-December 2010) to Cliopatria's Hall of Fame:

Old is the New New (November 2002-December 2010)
Rob MacDougall at Old Is the New New did almost everything wrong. He posted irregularly. He wrote about all sorts of topics that interested or irritated him instead of building an audience. And he mostly wrote about the intersection of fields that don't like each other very much: history and technology, history and game design. Also Canadian views of American history, culture and politics, which is always a crowd-pleaser. He was writing about zombies when zombies weren't cool. But MacDougall's blog became one of the unalloyed joys of the history blogosphere, and one of the reasons why the last ten years has been so much more interesting, and perhaps less surprising. How can a history blog explain the future? By ignoring the rules, the boundaries, the separations; or perhaps it's more correct to say that it was his wandering spotlight-like focus on those intersections, boundaries, and divisions which made Old Is the New New so much fun, so enlightening.

Then there's the writing. The original essayists practiced a form of writing which blended fact and fiction, wandered through topics, reshaped the sense of what was possible in prose. MacDougall's posts regularly lived up to that legacy. Take the essay he wrote on the day after the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, American For A Day." It starts with a quote from The Simpsons; later he moves on to reference The Lord of the Rings and The Dukes of Hazzard in the same sentence, then uses Sarah Palin's discourses of authenticity to reflect on the nature of Canadian self-consciousness. He then riffs on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" (plus Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frederick Douglass) in a way that not only shines a light on Obama but, in retrospect, explains a lot about the rise of the Tea Party. Then, he finishes with Walt Whitman, just for fun.

Rob MacDougall's post Turk 182 won the inaugural Cliopatria Award for Best Post, after which he was (and, I hope, will be again) a regular fixture in the judging committees (2006, 2009). He's primarily blogging now at Play the Past, where his interest in history, gaming, and pedagogy continue to flourish in the company of kindred spirits, and microblogs at Robotnik. Old Is The New New is done, at least for now, but it was a great contribution to the early years of history blogging, and shockingly enduring work in an ephemeral medium.
– Jonathan Dresner

Contents

The Military History Digest is an idiosyncratic selection of military history from a variety of weblogs. Nominations for blogs to follow are always welcome at hwar@silbey.net

19th Century

1. The Pecking Order in the Old Army | to the Sound of the Guns by n/a

"While bouncing around Fort Monroe on Saturday, I paid a bit more attention to the fort’s architecture than normal."

2. Research Exercise: Did Grant Say This? (Part One) by Brooks D. Simpson

"Over the last week or so a quote often attributed to Ulysses S. Grant has made the rounds again, from the comment space at Civil War Memory to Bob Pollack’s Yesterday … and Today blog. Here’s the quote: “Sir,” said Grant, “I have no doubt in the world that the sole object is the restoration [...]..."

3. Research Exercise: Did Grant Say This? (Part Two) by Brooks D. Simpson

"(link to part one) Let’s look at the quote itself first. “Sir,” said Grant, “I have no doubt in the world that the sole object is the restoration of the Union. I will say further, though, that I am a Democrat—every man in my regiment is a Democrat—and whenever I shall be convinced that this [...]..."
4. Slaves as Confederate Cannon Fodder? by Donald R. Shaffer

"Desperate to escape bondage, slaves fled to Union forces any way they could when presented with the opportunity. The federal army, of course, became the main sanctuary for slaves during the Civil War. However, when given a chance to flee to the Union navy, slaves took it. The opportunities were few at the beginning of the war, but increased as the Union blockade of southern ports tightened and federal navy increased its activity along inland water ways An early example of slaves fleeing to the Union navy occurred in July 1861 with the USS Mount Vernon. This ship was a..."

5. The Slaveholders’ Rebellion Bill by Donald R. Shaffer

"The July 8 edition of Civil War Emancipation discussed the lead taken by Congress in Summer 1861 in nudging the United States in the direction of emancipation, at the same time Lincoln was attempting to placate Unionist slaveholders in the border states. It explored a resolution passed by the U.S. House Representatives on July 9, 1861, stating “That in the judgment of this House it is no part of the duty of the soldiers of the United States to capture and return fugitive slaves.” The resolution was the brainchild of abolitionist Congressman Owen Lovejoy of Illinois. Opponents of slavery in..."

6. "Drive on": the Genius of James Buchanan Eads by noreply@blogger.com (Caleb Greinke)

"Building a naval fleet is not the work of a military organization alone. In the Civil War as now, the Navy depended upon businesses and individuals of action to help conceive and produce the nation's ships of war. John Ericsson traditionally receives effusive praise and a surfeit of attention for his role in designing the Monitor and a host of other ingenious creations. But Ericsson has a forgotten counterpart in the American west: James B. Eads. Without Eads's shipbuilding and design collaboration, the western ironclad flotilla may never have come into being, or its birth might have been a great..."

7. Eyewitness to Bull Run by noreply@blogger.com (Ron Coddington)

"Lieutenant Edward Burgin Knox (pictured here, left, with a comrade) wrote this account soon after the First Battle of Bull Run, fought near Manassas, Va., on July 21, 1861. He relates the experience of his regiment, the Eleventh New York Infantry, popularly known as the First Fire Zouaves because of the large number of New York City firemen in its ranks and their distinctive uniforms, inspired by French-colonial soldiers.The regiment was organized by Knox's close friend E. Elmer Ellsworth, who commanded the nationally known U.S. Zouave Cadets before the war. Ellsworth was gunned down by an innkeeper at the..."

World War I

1. Don’t Forget Me, Cobber: the Battle of Fromelles by Emma Campbell

" It has become known as Australia’s blackest night. On 19 July 1916, the troops of the 5th Australian and 61st British Divisions attacked a strong German position, at the centre of which stood the Sugar Loaf salient, near the small French village of Fromelles. The overnight assault – the first major battle fought by [...] ..."

World War II

1. World War II: Conflict Spreads Around the Globe by n/a

"From the last few months of 1940 through the summer of 1941, the conflicts among nations grew into true World War. The East African campaign and Western Desert campaign both began, with largely Italian and British forces battling back and forth across the deserts of Egypt and Libya and from Ethiopia to Kenya. The Tripartite Pact -- a declaration of cooperation between Germany, Italy, and Japan -- was signed in Berlin. Japanese forces occupied Vietnam, established bases in French Indochina, and continued to attack China. Mussolini ordered his forces to attack Greece, launching the Greco-Italian War and the Balkans Campaign. The..."

2. Acquisitions by Brett Holman

" Rather more seaminded than airminded, the result of having visited two maritime museums today. Mike Dash. Batavia's Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History's Bloodiest Mutiny. London: Phoenix, 2003. See here. Richard Guilliatt and Peter Hohnen. The Wolf. North Sydney: William Heinemann, 2009. See here. M. McCarthy, ed. HMAS Sydney (II). Welshpool: Western Australian Museum, 2010. See here. ..."

3. War and Peace, Barbarism and Civilisation in Perth by Brett Holman

"Cross-posted at Cliopatria.] So the XXII Biennial Australasian Association for European History Conference is over, and I must say it's the best conference I've been to, for a number of reasons. It was well-organised, despite some added difficulties such as being jointly hosted by and held at two universities, the University of Western Australia and Murdoch University. That's easy to gloss over but some conferences don't manage to rise to the occasion. The locations were pretty, both the campuses and the city (though it was rainy on the first day, it would probably be unfair to blame the..."

4. German Light Cruiser Köln by Charles McCain

"I have written about the German light cruisers previously including the Köln. The Köln was the third of the three 'K' class light cruisers built. The K class light cruisers suffered from many design problems since they were designed and built in the late 1920's and had to adhere to the strict limit's imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. As the design problems became increasingly apparent, the duties of the ships were limited to compensate and they increasingly failed to serve in the role they were intended to. The Köln patrolled the coasts of Spain and Portugal..."

5. German Propaganda Posters - Labor by Charles McCain

"Tad found a great collection of Nazi Propaganda that has been collected by a college professor in Michigan, Randall Bytwerk. I've shown plenty of WW2 propaganda posters but the majority have been from the Allied side of the war and I'm using this opportunity to showcase the types of propaganda used by the Germans and will be highlighting some of these posters over the next few months. More than any other war, World War Two was a battle of production and relied upon goods almost as much as it relied upon men. The Germans, like the Americans, recognized this and..."

6. Death or Glory: Hms Clematis vs Admiral Hipper by Charles McCain

"+ HMS Clematis + German Heavy Cruiser Admiral Hipper Part 1 "Am engaging unknown enemy battleship," signaled Cdr. York McLeod Cleeves, RNR, captain of the Royal Navy corvette, HMS Clematis, to the British Admiralty on 25 December 1940. No doubt coded "Most Immediate," the highest priority, this became one of the most famous signals of the Royal Navy in World War Two. Why? It demonstrated the aggressiveness and sacrifice expected in the British navy. If you sighted an enemy warship, you attacked it - especially if your were escorting a troop convoy. Bravery of this kind wasn't thought to be heroic..."

7. Death or Glory: Hms Clematis vs Admiral Hipper by Charles McCain

"+ HMS ClematisPart 1 - Part 2 Like all Flower class corvettes, HMS Clematis was built on the heavily revised design of the whale catcher, Southern Pride. A thirty foot section was added to the front of the ship, the type of keel was changed, additional quarters and a larger bridge were added as well. After adding bits, taking some other things off, and moving compartments around, a barely acceptable convoy escort came to be. Because time was critical, these ships were produced in civilian yards in England. They barely had time to build the Flowers, much less build them to..."

8. Review of in the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitlers Berlin by Charles McCain

"+In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family In Hitler's Berlin by Erik LarsonThe Fascinating Martha Dodd And the Men She Slept With would be a more accurate title to this book. While about the entire family of US Ambassador to Germany, William Dodd, who served from 1933 to 1937, Martha steals the show. She was twenty-four years old when she accompanied her father, mother, and older brother to Berlin in 1933. (The book is only about the family's first year in Berlin.) She had been secretly married and was now getting secretly divorced. She..."

9. German Propaganda Posters - Antisemitism by Charles McCain

"Tad found a great collection of Nazi Propaganda that has been collected by a college professor in Michigan, Randall Bytwerk. I've shown plenty of WW2 propaganda posters but the majority have been from the Allied side of the war and I'm using this opportunity to showcase the types of propaganda used by the Germans and will be highlighting some of these posters over the next few months. In an effort to promote the Nazi Party's campaign against other peoples and ideologies, the Reich's Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda created posters to attempt to sway the public opinion. Here are..."

10. Pearl Harbor Skull May Belong to Japanese Pilot by The Associated Press

"HONOLULU — Forensic scientists are conducting tests on a skull unearthed at the bottom of Pearl Harbor to determine if it is a Japanese pilot who died in the historic attack on Dec. 7, 1941...."

Cold War

1. Profile 52 - "754" as Flown by the Sdang by wily1@mac.com (JSM)

"Gawd what a miserable airplane!" he cried. "Those brakes were so bad, they had boards of nail strips to stop the things!"I'll leave his name out, but the quote above came from an FAA Controller buddy who, in the course of decades of experience, has an opinion on nearly every airplane that's taken to the sky since 1950. F-100s were based at a field he Controlled during the mid-60s. Clearly, he saw one-too-many F-100s roll off the runway and made his judgement.Airplanes do that to people - they give rise to such emotion and logic..."

2. Profile 53 - "236" as Flown by the Sdang by wily1@mac.com (JSM)

"Recently, an A-7 came up for sale in the civilian market. And I missed it.It's just as well as I don't think I could have flown it smoothly with only one arm and leg. But I would have tried. Yes, indeed, I would have tried.Though the airplane bore the name Corsair II in honor of her great uncle, the F4U Corsair, the nickname the A-7 took in practice was SLUF. Short for, Short Little Ugly...Feller. Yet, I distinctly remember seeing A-7s in service and to me, there was nothing ugly about them. The thick-set, high..."

3. Profile 54 - "105" as Flown by the Sdang by wily1@mac.com (JSM)

"There's a bitter-sweet tinge to this bird. At once, it's an F-16; arguably the definitive dogfighting jet. At the same time, it's...well...probably the definitive dogfighting jet. In other words, the F-16 may be the apex of the breed.A conversation I had last week will explain my opinion better. An aviation enthusiast asked me, So. In the future, are you going to start drawing Predator Drones and Control Trucks? We had a good laugh. But he may be right. Technology has advanced to the point where we don't need butts in cockpits any more. Instead, we..."

4. Profile 55 - "Little Horse as Flown by Ken Dahlberg (Sort Of) by wily1@mac.com (JSM)

"The nose! And a fine nose at that.Did you ever read that story, The Blind Men and the Elephant? In case you haven't, a number of blind men stumble across an elephant. One finds the trunk, another finds the tail, another a leg, another...and they all attempt to describe what they've found. One says, It's a snake! Another exclaims, It's a tree! It's a rock! You get it.Though they're experiencing the same thing, it's also clear they're not.History is like that, too. To understand what history is saying, you must step back, feel around in the dark for another..."

5. Profile 56 - "?????" as Flown by Ken Dahlberg by wily1@mac.com (JSM)

"Busy week, it's Friday and I've got a little time...and a pencil. Hence the Study of the P-47 above. It's a 'Bolt from the 353rd Fighter Squadron of the 354th Fighter Group.A few years ago, I was a guest to a demonstration of low-level flying, featuring a P-47. We were at a place called Bodney in East Anglia, England; our hosts were pilots, crew and staff of the 352nd Fighter Group. My vantage point was one that wouldn't have flown here in the States. The P-47 came down low and the action was not 'out..."

Post-Cold-War

1. Book Review: Voices From Iraq: a People’s History, 2003-2009 by n/a

"Book Review: Voices From Iraq: A People’s History, 2003-2009 by Mark Kukis Published by Columbia University Press (May 4, 2011), 240 pages, ISBN-10: 0231156928 Reviewed by Michael Few Download the Full Article: Book Review: Voices From Iraq: A People’s History, 2003-2009 Ultimately, the American intervention in Iraq is one small trajectory along the arc of nation and state development in the land that claims the birthplace of civilization. As with every human endeavor, this arc is fraught with tragedy, triumph, violence, resistance, and hope. The current history of the intervention remains American-centric examining what United States..."

Misc/Thematic

1. How Do You Say ‘Bollocks’ in Aztec? War Is Political and It Should Be, Too. So Deal With It. | Kings of War by n/a

"I just finished reading the latest offering from the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, entitled The New Aztecs: Ritual and Restraint in Contemporary Western Military Operations. I must say that I profoundly disagree with its author. He misunderstands several of his key premises, including Clausewitz’s fundamental dictum. What is more, I think that the piece is a thinly veiled polemic which unhelpfully encourages an essentially militaristic perspective on the conduct of contemporary war. "

2. USS Scorpion Project 2011 Day by Day: Week Two by Underwater Archaeology

" Monday, 11 July - Today was a very exciting day for the project as archaeologists from UAB, MHT and MSHA began active excavation of the wreck believed to be War of 1812 block sloop Scorpion, captained by the US Navy hero Joshua Barney. While the river bottom in this stretch of the Patuxent is only [...] ..."

Steve Donoghue reviews Robert Harvey's Romantic Revolutionary: Simon Bolivar and the Struggle for Independence in Latin America for The National, 22 July.

Jonathan Liu for the Barnes & Noble Review, 10 May, Adam Langer for the San Francisco Chronicle, 15 May, William T. Vollmann, "Empire of the Senseless," bookforum, Summer, Tom Leclair, "A Novel as Big as America," NYT, 10 June, Rodney Welch for the Washington Post, 14 July, and Luke Kennard, "A Moment in the Sun: contender for the Great American Novel," The National, 22 July, review John Sayles's A Moment in the Sun: A Novel.

David Hajdu, "La Vie en Punk," The Book, 21 July, reviews Carolyn Burke's No Regrets: The Life of Edith Piaf.

Evan Thomas reviews Gregory A. Freeman's The Last Mission of the Wham Bam Boys: Courage, Tragedy, and Justice in World War II for the Washington Post, 21 July.

In "Presidents and Their Debts, F.D.R. to Bush," NYT, 21 July, H. W. Brands, Robert Dallek, Joan Hoff, Alonzo Hamby, David Kennedy, Jon Meacham, and Richard Reeves discuss the modern presidents and their deficits.

Jonathan Haslam reviews Michael Bentley's The Life and Thought of Herbert Butterfield for the Guardian, 15 July.

Andrew Anthony, "One Big Yawn: boredom is not just a state of mind," Guardian, 17 July, reviews Peter Toohey's Boredom: A Lively History.

Courtney Humphries, "A Whiff of History," Boston Globe, 17 July, visits the historians' discussions of histories of the senses.

Adam Goodheart, "The Strange Career of Uncle Tom," Slate, 18 July, reviews David S. Reynolds' Mightier Than the Sword: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Battle for America.

Stefan Beck, "At Grandpa Twain's knee," New Criterion, June, reviews Harriet Elinor Smith, et al., eds., The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume I.

Laura Miller for Salon, 17 July, Dwight Garner, "The Lure of Cocaine, Once Hailed as Cure-All," NYT, 19 July, and Tess Taylor for bookforum, 19 July, review Howard Markel's Anatomy of an Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine.

Eve Gerber interviews "Eric Foner on the Evolution of Liberalism," The Browser, 17 July, for his choice of five crucial books on modern American liberalism.

Jed Perl, "Bullshit Heaven," The Book, 14 July, reviews Alexis L. Boylan, ed., Thomas Kinkade: The Artist in the Mall. You have to ask why Duke University Press would waste its resources on a subject like Kinkade.

Recent events in the UK academic sphere, which I wrote about here, have had me wondering once again how we go about mounting any kind of counter-attack to the erosion of the humanities' importance in public policy. Pressure groups exist, opposition is voiced by many (though not, as said, by some of the bodies that ought to represent us) but we lack a concerted voice with which to speak back. This post muses a bit (and the ideas here are still forming and I'd welcome critique) on how far we really need to have a strategy and a fully-formed ideology in order to start the fight back.

It's painful of course to have to justify the study of the humanities, and specifically history, at all. It's the reverse of the grand Louis Armstrong answer to the question, "what is jazz?" He, of course, replied, "If you have to ask the question, you'll never know the answer". Similarly with Our Stuff, writ large: if you have to ask why it's worthwhile, I may not be able to convince you. Only actually meeting the stuff and finding something fantastic will do this. There are plentiful figures that show that plenty of people get this. Books on historical topics, despite their often ridiculous prices, show no signs of dropping off booksellers' stocklists and show a widespread interest in the results of academic research, even if more at second-hand; at first-hand, we see this interest continuing in the recruitment to degree programs, which is still large even if dropping (in the UK at least). But, two things: some people obviously don't see the point, and someone still has to pay for it (which is our Achilles's Heel).

So, if we have to make a case for history, what is it? Well, what are we actually doing? Are we providing a gateway to the fantastic range of human possibilities? Yes, I would say, we are. Are we selling skills and techniques of thought, marketing history as a brain upgrade? Here I am less sure: we speak in these terms but don't really sell it and perhaps we should, not least because then the Otherer the material the better for challenging and opening up the brain. Early-interest types like myself could occupy that space very thoroughly. Or, are we even engaged in a wider, pan-humanities endeavour to better understand how interconnected we are and somehow thus create a more universally caring society where everyone is that bit more excellent to each other? Well, some of us are, but this may be a bit too ambitious for the immediate agenda, which is more one of survival, and in any case this one requires the politicians currently vested in their interests to roll over and acquiesce in their removal, so may be unrealistic.

Okay, then, what are the problems in our way? Poverty, obviously: to do this well needs resources, and they must be invested even though their returns are hard to quantify (not least because, even if there are returns that could be measured in terms other than simply salaries—terms of self-perceived quality of life, mental health problems, later acuity or sociability, for example—these would all need to be measured by researchers from other fields and would operate on a timescale too long to induce politicians to act on them anyway). The great vulnerability in any case we make for our importance is the zero-sum one, that the people can only be asked to pay so much tax and that we must compete within that limit. It's easy to say that Britain should pay for historians not war, and hard to disagree that society would probably benefit more from what we do, however arcane, than from the war in Afghanistan—but it's a lot harder to argue that Britain should maintain historians at the cost of a certain war-readiness that costs an awful lot even before we start campaigning. The case is even harder to make against hospitals, and so on. There may be better places to attack, but to step into the zero-sum trap is death since it lets someone else tell us what budget is reasonable in the first place. Furthermore, we can see by now that we can't make this case by simple argument alone, that has arguably failed.

The other problem is anti-intellectualism. In an environment where knowing stuff out of books (or even off the web) can be thought not just unnecessary but effete, we are in trouble. The current ruling class can actually get by on saying they don't have time to read books, and we must then reply, well what do you know then? And we're letting you run things? We need to call out ignorance where there should be informedness, and not confuse that with calling out stupidity.

John R. Fleming is Louis W. Fairchild Professor of English and Comparative Literature emeritus at Princeton University and writes a blog called Gladly Lerne, Gladly Teche, which hits this nail right on the spot with a post about some recent trouble that French President Nicholas Sarkozy has had. (I know, I know, be more specific.) It's very much worth a read in itself but the key element goes:

Some time ago President Sarkozy came upon a copy of the civil service exam devised for aspirants to the qualification of attaché d’administration. He was amazed to find therein a question about this seventeenth-century novel – a question placed there, in his opinion, by "a sadist or an imbecile". How often, he wondered aloud, are you likely to discuss the Princesse de Clèves with the lady at the Post Office counter?

Any literature professor can be indignant at the philistinism of a remark that indicates so thorough an ignorance of or disdain for the ideal of a liberal education. But an American professor may not make it that far, having already succumbed to stupefaction at the evidence of a popularly elected politician who has read the Princesse de Clèves, even if he didn’t like it. The implication that the local postal clerk might have read it is too radical even to entertain.

The reaction to Nicolas Sarkozy’s off-the-cuff literary criticism was not limited to academic departments of literature. There was a national reaction. La Princesse de Clèves is a fine novel, but it’s really subtle. Most of the action is mental. It lacks the in-your-face sex of Les liaisons dangereuses. It was perhaps fading a bit in the French national consciousness. President Sarkozy changed all this. There was an immediate spike in sales. At least two publishers fast-tracked new editions. Round tables of television pundits discussed Madame de la Fayette’s masterpiece. At various places in the land there were public marathon readings. Le Monde opined that among the President’s most conspicuous achievements to date was the "salvation" of La Princesse de Clèves.

This has stuck with me since I read it, because it seems to me that this is what we want. Not, admittedly, the situation in which a politician's opinion of a novel can lose him or her standing, but that where he can be shamed for being insufficiently thoughtful, well-read or generally educated. Running a country, after all, is presumably a complex job: that people can get to do it by professing their ignorance and lack of intellectual preparation should really horrify the electorate. Would we be happy with an airline pilot who told us that he had no pilot's license because the differences between airliners and paper planes were really a conspiracy by flying instructors to keep themselves in work? And so on. But we are ruled by people who reject expert advice when it doesn't suit their policy and who can't handle complex data, so ignore it. There are people employed to do this stuff for them, but it's not getting through. So maybe what we need is to make the ill-educated ruling class ashamed of their lack of smarts. Is what we need is an environment in which people are sorry, even ashamed, they don't know more, and I mean specifically people in power? I argue yes, and a lot is at stake if we can't recreate it. Whatever we're trying to achieve, in fact. And this is maybe the important bit: I don't think we need to agree on that to agree on the counter-attack. Let's go to it: name and shame.

In a previous post, I wrote that the brief filed by the Department of Justice in response to Boston College's motion to quash a subpoena for confidential oral history materials was "unmistakably aggressive in tone and in scope." Most remarkable was the DOJ's claim that treaty obligations to the British government, the source of the request for the subpoena, obligated the court to defer to the determinations of the executive branch: "Notably, the US-UK MLAT reserves the authority [to] decline a MLAT request, or to limit its scope, to the Attorney General, not the courts."

Somehow, a treaty with another country has given away the constitutional role of an entire branch of government, which is now simply obligated to wield a rubber stamp for the executive branch. Whatever the British government wants its intermediaries to search or seize -- in Boston! -- no court can hope to say no. (Personal to Todd Braunstein: that hammering sound at your front door is the ghost of James Otis, who would like a word with you. Don't let him in.)

The brief filed on Friday by BC's lawyer similarly suggests that the DOJ is inventing its own Alice in Wonderland construction of American government and the role of its branches. See for yourself -- start reading on pg. 3, at bullet point 2. But here's the critical part, from the next page:

"No treaty can require this Court to act merely as an obedient servant to carry out demands made by a foreign government ...This fundamental principle, rooted in the watershed decision of Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803), that established the independence of the Judiciary in the United States, belies the Government’s argument that this Court lacks authority to hear and determine the issues Boston College presents in its Motion to Quash."

And so a lawyer feels compelled to explicitly remind the federal judiciary about the existence of Marbury v. Madison. Hey, did you know that you're not actually subordinate to the executive branch? We now routinely debate questions that render obscure the long-settled premises of American government: can the executive branch negotiate away the independence of another branch of government? (If the military is bombing another country, does that count as war?) Enough hope: there has been no change. The radicalism of the executive branch heads on down the road, gas pedal stuck to the floor. If you know David Addington, buy him a drink -- he won.

Elsewhere, BC's lawyer argues that the DOJ has, let's be polite about this, substantially mischaracterized significant facts about the matter before the court. More about that tomorrow.

Lucy Wooding reviews Elizabeth Evenden's and Thomas S. Freeman's Religion and the Book in Early Modern England: The Making of John Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs' for the THE, 14 July.

Eve M. Kahn, "Condemning Slavery With a Paintbrush," NYT, 14 July, previews "Robert S. Duncanson: The Spiritual Striving of the Freedmen's Sons," an exhibit of the work of a 19th century African American painter at Cedar Grove, a museum in Catskill, NY.

Charlotte Mitchell, "Thackeray's inheritance, 200 years on," TLS, 13 July, reviews John Aplin, ed., The Correspondence and Journals of the Thackeray Family, 5 vols., and Aplin, A Thackeray Family Biography, Vol. I: The Inheritance of Genius, 1798–1875 and Vol. II: Memory and Legacy, 1876–1919.

Keith Grieves reviews Jeremy Black's The Great War and the Making of the Modern World for the THE, 14 July.

In Garry Wills, "Edmund Burke Against Grover Norquist," NYRBlog, 14 July, the 18th century conservative teaches 21st century Republicans about binding oaths.