"Team Herodotus" vs. "Team Thucydides"

"We are, Mr. Cohen writes, in a 'golden age' of history writing. For most of human existence, the recording of the past has been 'sacred history,' propaganda put forth by a priestly caste or authorities who claimed to rule by divine right—or, sometimes, simply to be divine. History as we know it—honest and free inquiry across the disciplines—has, he argues, only been possible in two epochs. The first was the founding era of the Greeks and the Romans. The second is ours, the era initiated in 1520, when Pope Leo X commissioned Niccolò Machiavelli to write a 'History of Florence.' Homer uses histor to mean a 'good judge.' A historian's judgment is impaired when a theological thumb is on the scales—but is the judgment of secular historians any better?"

Dominic Green at The Wall Street Journal reviews Richard Cohen's Making History: The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past.

"History Is a Methodology and Nothing More"

"Think of the internet as a vast ocean of written statements. That ocean is not governed by any traditional knowledge structures; users are instead navigated by for-profit companies that seek to maximize engagement, no matter the cost. The social norms of this world are also chaotic, since users can be anonymous and their social contact therefore undaunted by ordinary interpersonal consequences. Interpretations of the ocean's infinite knowledge float like algae blooms on the surface of the internet, totally unrestrained in their growth by law or shame or 'truth,' which we previously relied upon to negotiate on behalf of the greater good. In this universe, 'the Crusades' are a hunk of narrative flotsam, floating toward whichever whirlpool in the culture is moving fastest, thickening and speeding up discursive maelstroms wherever it finds them."

Josephine Livingstone at The New Republic reviews Christopher Tyerman's The World of the Crusades.

"New Poll Finds Millennials Far More Likely To Politically Identify As Feudalists Than Previous Generations"

"Mayberry also noted that the trend extended to Gen Z, which has advocated for doing away with political systems entirely and returning to a state of nature."

From The Onion.

Put the X in Xmas

"Xmas is, though, a much more venerable abbreviation than many suppose. The X signifies the Greek letter chi, which was traditionally combined with P, or rho, to signify the name of Christ. Constantine instructed his soldiers to scrawl the letters on their shields before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, his victory in which led to the unlikely establishment of a Christian empire. Far from a symbol of secularization, then, Xmas carries echoes of the clash of battle that inaugurated political Christendom.
"The abbreviation’s use in English dates back to 1021, when an Anglo-Saxon scribe saved himself space by writing XPmas. The P was dropped but the term soldiered on: Coleridge used Xmas in his letter writing. The wags at Punch pressed it into service as a verb, Xmassing (one imagines the verb would get more use if the WASPs who currently spend their time summering, wintering, and weekending were somewhat more observant)."

Matthew Schmitz at First Things explains Xmas.

The Winter of His Disinterment

"The injury appears to confirm contemporary accounts that he died in close combat in the thick of the battle and unhorsed – as in the great despairing cry Shakespeare gives him: 'A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!'"

Maev Kennedy in The Guardian reports the confirmation of the discovery of Richard III's remains in Leicester, England.

"America’s Serrata"

"The impulse of the powerful to make themselves even more so should come as no surprise. Competition and a level playing field are good for us collectively, but they are a hardship for individual businesses. Warren E. Buffett knows this. 'A truly great business must have an enduring "moat" that protects excellent returns on invested capital,' he explained in his 2007 annual letter to investors. 'Though capitalism’s "creative destruction" is highly beneficial for society, it precludes investment certainty.' Microsoft attempted to dig its own moat by simply shutting out its competitors, until it was stopped by the courts. Even Apple, a huge beneficiary of the open-platform economy, couldn’t resist trying to impose its own inferior map app on buyers of the iPhone 5.

"Businessmen like to style themselves as the defenders of the free market economy, but as Luigi Zingales, an economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, argued, 'Most lobbying is pro-business, in the sense that it promotes the interests of existing businesses, not pro-market in the sense of fostering truly free and open competition.'"

Chrystia Freeland in The New York Times compares the present-day United States to fourteenth-century Venice.

I ♥ ♥

"The story of how the ♥, the heart, and love came together is a romantic tale. Progress towards union was tortuous and was influenced by, amongst other matters, herbalism, heraldry, phallus, breast, and buttock worship, the philosophers of antiquity, the devotions of the Roman Catholic church, the introduction of the penny post, and fashions in playing cards and confectionary."

Iain Gately at Lapham's Quarterly offers a "A Heart-Shaped History."

"Swiper, No Swiping!"

"But before they can get there, they encounter Swiper the Fox, who they need to dispense with before they can continue their journey. The adventurers run into Swiper in Fall Forest after they pick some apples for the trip. Then some interesting Biblical themes spring out, but with an interesting twist. Here the creature of the forest wants to take the apples from the main characters."

In a 2008 PopMatters article, Dennis P. Quinn explores the "demonology of Dora the Explorer."

He Chose... Poorly

"The parchment, also known as the Chinon Chart, was 'misplaced' in the Vatican archives until 2001, when Frale stumbled across it.
"'The parchment was catalogued incorrectly at some point in history. At first I couldn't believe my eyes. I was incredulous,' she said.
"'This was the document that a lot of historians were looking for,' the 37-year-old scholar said."

Philip Pullella of Reuters reports the publication by the Vatican of documents from the 1300s exonerating the Knights Templar of heresy.

Back in Metropolis

"But in the end, maintenance became too labor-intensive, Evans said. As trees were removed from the landscape, sediment began accumulating in the canals at a rate more rapid than it could be removed. Many dike walls collapsed, although it is not yet known when that occurred."

In the Los Angeles Times, Thomas H. Maugh II reports the latest information about medieval Angkor, described by archaeologists as the largest preindustrial city in history.