by Unknown | 8/20/2008 08:57:00 PM
ProgressiveHistorians blogfriend G. Willow Wilson has published the first issue of Air, her new monthly comic-book series with artist MK Perker. I reviewed the duo's first book here. If you'd like a sample of Air, Willow and MK have graciously posted excerpts here. Not having read the issue, I can say that MK Perker's illustrations come off even better in color than they did in black and white (the format he used for Cairo). As for Willow's text, I have no doubt that it'll be well worth the purchase price, and then some.

Idiosynchronic sends along a link to a free e-book of Little Brother, the newest novel by Cory Doctorow (founder of BoingBoing). It's a sort of Handmaid's Tale for the surveillance age. While I don't share Doctorow's revulsion at the surveillance state (I'm the kind of Progressive who's also a big-government statist), he's a powerful writer and you'll be sucked into the plot and the writing style.

There's a new blog by somebody calling himself Ambrose H. Bierce III. Its purpose seems to be to ferret out academic "scandals," which means something like "history departments having trouble replacing distinguished professors emeriti." Bierce seems to know just a little bit more than I do about the history departments of America, which means he's probably a full-fledged academic of some sort. I find his blog highly entertaining, but I'm a bit worried he's going to get himself into trouble.

Chris Bowers warns us against the predictive value of historical analogies regarding presidential campaigns. It's a valid point in that arguing that Obama has some similarities with Woodrow Wilson (as I have) doesn't really have any bearing on how the election is going to turn out. On the other hand, I would argue that such a comparison does have a lot to do with how Obama is going to govern.

Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the big historian-related event going around the intertubes: Bill Moyers' interview with Andrew Bacevich. Paul Rosenberg calls it "one of most amazing programs Moyers has done, period, in all his years on television" (presumably, he's including Moyers' famous interviews with Joseph Campbell in that statement). Meanwhile, Claire Potter Chris Bray has a rather scathing commentary on the interview. Unlike Potter Bray, I had an opportunity to meet with Bacevich extensively earlier this year, and found him mildly underwhelming. However, I haven't yet had a chance to watch the interview, so I'll hold off on any comments for now. In the meantime, you can watch it for yourself:



What's on your mind?

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1 Comments:


Blogger Unknown on 8/22/2008 11:55 AM:

I dreamed last night that it was Sebelius. Wonder if that means anything.

Of course, the night before I dreamed that Ellen DeGeneres and Portia De Rossi split up, and that I ran into both of them at the dentist's office. So that's what I get as far as reliability goes.