Papal Resignation: What the News Media Left Out
When Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation, effective February 28, 2013, he caught almost everyone by surprise. No sooner was the announcement made than the media began casting about for how long it had been since a pope had resigned rather than die in office. The morning after the announcement, one TV show host stated confidently that it had been 719 years, a number that takes us back to the reign of Celestine V who resigned in 1294. Later, however, a consensus emerged among the various news shows that the most recent resignation of a pope had actually come just under six centuries ago (1415) and involved Pope Gregory XII.
Why is Anne Hathaway So Sad? The History Behind “Les Misérables” (2012)
As a French historian, I was bombarded with questions from friends, family members, and even strangers about whether I was excited to see “Les Miz,” the film version of the wildly popular stage musical, which was released in December. For some reason, knowing that someone who studies French history is excited to see Les Misérables makes people want to see the film more.
“You have died of dysentery” – History According to Video Games
The video game is a relatively new medium, but it has a long record of using history to tell stories like the one found in Assassin’s Creed. Given the mass popularity of video games and gaming culture, it seems appropriate that we begin to analyze the history portrayed in this medium in the same way we consider a historical novel or period film. Why and how is history used in video games?
Pussy Riot
Ancestral Leaves: A Family Journey through Chinese History by Joseph W. Esherick (2011)
This book reconstructs the history of the Ye family beginning in the fifteenth century, when its first ancestor was recorded, all the way to the present. The focus of the book is on Ye Kunhou and his son in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and on the Ye brothers (Kunhou’s great great grandsons), who experienced the turbulence of war and revolution under the Republic, and took different paths after the Communist Revolution in 1949.
Wavell: the Viceroy’s Journal by Archibald Percival Wavell, ed. Penderel Moon (1973)
Archibald Percival Wavell served as the penultimate viceroy of India from 1943 to 1947, meticulously chronicling his experience through the twilight of the British Raj.
African American History Online
If Digital History is “using new technologies to enhance research and teaching,” as the excellent website from the University of Houston puts it, then African American history is being well-served digitally. In honor of African American History month, I survey here one enormous and useful website that gives us all access to a very wide variety of materials.
Rethinking Borders: Salman Rushdie & Sebastião Salgado on the US-Mexico Border
Oil and Weapons in Gaddafi’s Libya
In a recent Wikileaks revelation, a secret U.S. cable revealed that Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman promised to provide Muammar Gaddafi with military hardware in 2009. McCain and Lieberman were among the last high-level teams to have made such a promise, but they certainly weren’t the first.