There wasn’t much light pollution when I was growing up in Ireland, but it was cloudy way too often. It wasn’t until I moved to Arizona and got out into the desert at night that I fully appreciated the Milky Way as a celestial object you could look up and see.
High Concept for a Horror movie: The Constitution really is a living document. Key scenes:
The linking scenes pretty much write themselves. Call me for a complete synopsis.
I’m trying to remember the source of a quote, and the quote itself—roughly, it says “Individualism is a transitional stage between two kinds of social structure.”
Simon Schama protests too much. He claims that academic history is obsessed with scientific data and obsessive footnotes rather than good storytelling and calls for a return to a “golden age” of historical writing—Gibbon, Macaulay, Carlyle. This mostly seems like promotional fluff for his new TV series. Yet Timothy Burke and Invisible Adjunct broadly concur with Schama, though as cogs in the “juggernaut of academic history” that he condemns they add the caveat that “a broadly communicative, publically engaged rhetoric of history is dependent upon the existence of a body of much more meticulous scholarship.” That’s true—but it’s more than a caveat!
Schama’s Great Historians fused authoritative judgment, great range and vivid prose and brought the result to large audiences, helping to define the practice of history as they went. What fun it must have been. He wants those things, too. Yet although he speaks to an audience bigger than any of his heroes, Schama must know he can’t occupy that niche, because it no longer exists. The vast differentiation of the academic division of labor over the past century and a half destroyed it. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t plenty of excellent, accessible narrative history written for a mass audience by respected historians. Schama’s complaints notwithstanding, you’ll find your local bookshop stocked full of the stuff—far more, alas, than you’ll find excellent and accessible sociology, political science or economics. But, unavoidably, these histories are written on the back of all those footnoted monographs, and they cannot command the field in the way that Carlyle or Macaulay might have.
Once asked what he specialized in, the sociologist Daniel Bell replied, “Generalizations.” It’s a line worth stealing for job interviews, but it tells an important truth. Being a generalist these days is itself a kind of specialization. Like any other role in an advanced division of labor, it depends on thousands of others, most notably all those monographic specialists dug into the archives. Timothy Burke would like to see historians be trained “to write well, to seek audiences outside the academy, to stretch their powers of persuasion.” Those are worthwhile goals, but whereas the mills of academic specialization can grind exceeding small, we can’t all have our own BBC miniseries. Besides, I don’t think Schama simply wants historians to write better prose. Rather, he himself yearns to play the same role today that Macaulay or Gibbon did in their time. He covets the way they could grasp their subject whole and bring it to almost the entire reading public. Which of us scribblers wouldn’t want to do the same? But his off-lead qualifications and dilutions suggest that, deep down, he knows that’s the sort of anachronistic wishfulness that historians teach us to avoid.
Tyler Cowen writes
Read Michael’s recent treatment of The Economics of Mozart. The bottom line? Mozart was a successful commercial entrepreneur. His economic problems stemmed from a war with Turkey, not the failures of the marketplace.
He should definitely have known better than to start a war with Turkey. The whole abduction from the seraglio business was a complete farce.
To my chagrin, it was Laurie and not I who received this letter yesterday:
Dear Mr [sic] Paul,2000 OUTSTANDING ACADEMICS OF THE 21st CENTURY The International Biographical Center of Cambridge, England, has published more than 1,000,000 biographies of people of note from all over the world in more than 200 editions of its reference works. Housed in libraries and research institutions in every country of the globe, these books provide vital information for academia, industry and private use. … It is my pleasure than to invited you to complete the enclosed form for this exciting new publication—2000 OUTSTANDING ACADEMICS OF THE 21st CENTURY. This, the inaugural edition, will be published in late 2004 and will be distributed throughout the world immediately … Demand promises to be great but I have reserved a limited number of copies for the use of biographees only. Each copy is offered at a substantially reduced pre-publication subscription price as a means of thanking yo for completing the enclosed questionnaire. There is no obligation to purchase whatsoever as selection is based on merit alone. We are also proud to offer a fine range of Commemorative Awards to celebrate your significant achievements…
Priority Biographee Reservation Form: … Please supply EITHER
- Copy/ies of the case bound Grand Edition at US$225 or £135 Sterling each.
- OUTSTANDING ACADEMICS OF THE 21st CENTURY DIPLOMA, printed in three colours, inscribed with my name and chosen citation at US$225 or £135 Sterling each.
- OUTSTANDING ACADEMICS OF THE 21st CENTURY MEDAL, silver finished, engraved with my name and supplied in a presentation case at US$225 or £135 Sterling each.
… On the OUTSTANDING ACADEMICS OF THE 21st CENTURY DIPLOMA please inscribe the citation as follows: “In Honor of an Outstanding Contribution in the field of (Max 40 letters): .
I’m thinking I need one of these Diplomas, for my Outstanding Contribution in the field of Excellence.
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