Every summer, I put together a reading list that is mostly aspirational. It’s a combination of books I want to read, books I should read, and books that I have to read for my research or just being a good well-rounded person or whatever. By mid-summer, the reading list has collapsed and I’m frantically skimming… Read More →
This past week involved a good bit of travel and this meant that I had some time to read in flights and in airports. I spent a good bit of that times with Caroline Cheung’s recent-ish book on Dolia: The Containers That Made Rome and Empire of Wine (2024). The book is good. It manages… Read More →
I’ve continued to think about AI over the last few months and especially the role of generative AI and large language models. Here are two slightly unhinged thoughts about it as a “Two Thing Tuesday”: Thing the First Historians are fascinated by archives and they often observe that historical discoveries (e.g. opportunities for knowledge making)… Read More →
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve read some Byung-Chul Han particularly his book The Scent of Time (2017). This was prompted by my reading of Arturo Ribeiro’s article in Shadow Archaeology which cites Han pretty extensively. Han’s arguments about fragmentation and time will be particularly useful for the revisions of my book, Archaeology, Photography,… Read More →
Over the past week or so, I’ve been enjoying Assaf Nativ and Gavin Lucas’s edited volume Shadow Archaeologies: In the Shadow of Antiquity or For Other Modes of Archaeological Worldmaking (2025). The book reflects the work of a fairly well-known group of shadow archaeologists whose approaches to archaeological “worldmaking,” methods, and problems are fair familiar… Read More →
Over the weekend, I finished Tricia Bertram Gallant and David A. Rettinger, The Opposite of Cheating: Teaching for Integrity in the Age of AI. (2025). It’s a fine little book that belongs to a very specific genre of literature focused on college level instruction. These books tend to offer very sound, if rather hackneyed advice:… Read More →
Over the weekend, I spent about 10 hours with John Bintliff, Emeri Farinetti, and Anthony Snodgrass’s latest publication from their work in Boeotia from 1978-2001: Boeotia Project, Volume III: Hyettos. The Origins, Florescence and Afterlife of a Small Boeotian City (2025). It is massive (700+ pages), dense (in two columns!), and it is also open… Read More →
I’ve been enjoying Kim Bowes’ latest book, Surviving Rome, and I’ve blogged a bit about it on my Thanksgiving live blog. The book contributed nicely my thinking about my Roman History class in the spring. I’ll likely include it as a highly recommended book for students to review in the class. The book examines the… Read More →
People say to me all the time: Bill, I just can’t be bothered to click download every time a new free book comes out from your press. This is an understandable concern. After all, clicking download five or six times a year might take as much as 20 seconds from your daily life. I’ve listened… Read More →
While in Bilbao, I found myself jotting in my little notebook a good bit. Sometimes these jottings with developed from papers or conversations during the conference. Sometimes they developed in my walks around town. You can read my larger reflections on the conference here. Three little jottings in particular stood out and seems sufficient for… Read More →
Just a quick post today since I’m on the road. I’ve been thinking a good bit about my Roman History course which I’ll offer this spring. There are three new Roman History books in the wind these days that are getting some buzz on my “socials.” I’ve not read any of these books, but they’re… Read More →
It is Open Access Week 2025! This is a week where many OA presses do a bit more to make known their work. You can read my semi-regular post on North Dakota Quarterly and Open Access here. It also seems like as good a time as any to make visible the work of The Digital… Read More →
This weekend, I read Mandarin Dubey’s short book in the Cambridge Elements series titled Esoteric Orientalism (2024). Being a Cambridge Elements title, this book offered a minimal commitment to helping my contextualize Blavatsky a bit more clearly in the 19th century context and offered an opportunity for a more sympathetic reading of her work which… Read More →
