Here are a few interesting articles and pieces we found around the web this week. If you come across something that other intellectual historians might enjoy, please let us know in the comments section!
Madeline:
Sarah Werner, “How to destroy special collections with social media” (Wynken de Worde), is a sharp take on how rare books & special collections should and shouldn’t navigate the brave new world of Twitter.
Tim Parks, “The Books We Talk About (and Those We Don’t)” (NYR Daily), on the conditions that make books worth talking about–or not.
Ian Frazier, “Amo, Amas” (New Yorker), describes a brilliant classics teacher in action.
Lauren Santangelo, “5,000 Lanterns: The Radicalism of Suffrage Parades” (N-YHS Blog), on Japanese lanterns, the women of 1912, and a sneak-peek at the N-YHS’s new Center for the Study of Women’s History.
Beth McMurtrie, “Secrets from Belfast” (Chronicle of Higher Education), tells about Boston College’s oral history project on the Troubles.
Tobie Meyer-Fong reviews Phyllis Burnbaum’s Manchu Princess, Japanese Spy : The Story of Kawashima Yoshiko, the Cross-Dressing Spy Who Commanded Her Own Army: “The Uncooperative facts of an elusive life” (LARB)
Finally, inspired in part by Emily’s posts on Oscar Browning, I wrote about “Annotations and Archives in Nineteenth-Century New York” for the NYSL Blog. If you’re in New York, the NYSL exhibit “Readers Make Their Mark” runs for another week.
John:
Grande traversée Fernand Braudel, l’historien monde (France Culture)
Clare Cavanaugh, “Mayakovsky: Model Poet” (TLS)
Jonathan Judaken and Justin Willingham, interview with Lisa Moses Leff (author of The Archive Thief: The Man Who Salvaged French Jewish History in the Wake of the Holocaust; New Books in History)
Daniel Luban, “Forward with Fukuyama” (The Point)
Avies Platt, “A Lazarus beside Me” (London Review of Books)
Mario Porro, “Catena” (Doppiozero)
Justin Quinn, “A. Alvarez, Miroslav Holub and Cold War Poetry” (TLS)
Roland Reichenbach, »Über Bildungsferne« (Merkur)
Amanda Swain, interview with Derek Sayers (author of Prague, Capital of Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History; New Books in History)
Enrique Vila-Matas (trans. J.S. Tennant), “Writers from the Old Days” (The White Review)