Wikipedia’s homepage article today is “The Liberty Bell” and anyone judiciously checking sources and citations will be unable to escape Gary Nash’s The Liberty Bell. Tonight, Nash will give a lecture at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, with books available for sale, co-sponsored by The Library Company of Philadelphia.
This summer, the International Center for Photography in New York is presenting the exhibition For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights, curated by Maurice Berger, a professor at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The show presents film and television clips, photography, newspapers, and
This past month, on July 16, in the middle of the night, Venezuelan President, Hugo Chávez, along with aides, soldiers, a television crew, and forensics experts gathered to exhume Simón Bolívar. Simón Bolívar helped free six countries from the Spanish Empire, rendering him the hero of most of Latin America.
This Sunday the New York Times Book Review featured an excellent review of Julie Flavell’s “When London Was Capital of America”, an historical appraisal of the cultural, political and economic significance of the city on the Thames in the early 18th century. As Flavell recounts, London in the decades before
This morning The Wall Street Journal ran a very positive review of Joel Mokyr’s “The Enlightened Economy”, a wedding of economics and intellectual history that examines the “Industrial Enlightenment” of 17th century Britain. Reviewer Trevor Butterworth applauds Mokyr’s book for its “densely packed but gratifyingly lucid prose” in explaining Britain’s
In 2013 a new edition of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) will be published, and the American Psychiatric Association has already begun to prepare it. A number of mental health professionals are warning that the expanded diagnoses are leading to a world in which almost no
Today, Tutankhamun is perhaps one of the most well known out of the many ancient Egyptian pharaohs – artifacts from his tomb have been displayed throughout the world. Before the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, though, archaeologists first came upon remains from his mummification and funeral. Tutankhamun’s Funeral includes early 20th
Books, often carriers of cultural history, also have a cultural history of their own. The book has played a different role in each culture and era. The Book in the Renaissance, by Andrew Pettegree, examines the first 150 years after the invention of print. As it were, books played more
On this day 140 years ago, Georgia became the final Confederate state to be readmitted to Congress during Reconstruction. In the years prior to their readmission in 1870, the state had improved both their agricultural and manufacturing efforts from the economic troubles caused by the Civil War. These and other
Today’s New York Times features an interview with Alice T. Friedman, author of American Glamour and the Evolution of Modern Architecture. Check out the piece and discover why glamour is “no mere aesthetic.”