How Newt Gingrich is like the History Channel
This is an excellent little essay: The Republican candidate Newt Gingrich and the cable channel History have both followed the same formula for success, by elevating fantasy over
The power of the social sciences
The scholar in me finds this article title hilarious, in a good way-- Can You Dig It? Some Reflections on the Sociological Problems Associated with Being Uncool --I
Thoughts on “No More Plan B: A Very Modest Proposal for Graduate Programs in History”
Today I stole my wife's copy of AHA Perspectives and Anthony Grafton and Jim Grossman's essay "No More Plan B," on the need to reform history graduate programs
AHA: Non-academic careers shouldn’t be a “plan B”
Inside Higher Ed reports that the American Historical Association has just released a position paper, co-authored by AHA president Anthony Grafton and AGA executive director James Grossman, arguing
Reflections on writing for the trades
After a couple months working on it, I've been thinking about the experience of writing a serious non-fiction book. It's been a stretch for me, in quite a
Susan Blackmore on leaving academia
This echoes feelings I've had, and I've heard plenty of other people express: I have given up my secure academic job as Reader at the University of the
Scholarly publishing really is just a form of vanity publishing
Okay, all publishing involves at least a little bit of vanity, but... I recently published an article in an Elsevier journal, and today they sent me a message
Ideas have consequences…
...even when they're published "in a little-read journal," as Ezra Klein points out. He's talking about Elizabeth Warren's 2007 article proposing a Financial Products Safety Commission-- which she
Giving away books
I have a bunch of books-- probably a couple hundred-- from my professional/scholarly collection that I want to give away. Most are history (with an emphasis on European
Life of the mind, Google Scholar edition
I noticed a traffic spike on the blog, thanks to Lexi Lord's essay on post-academic life in the recent Chronicle of Higher Education (thanks, Lexi!). She talks about