There are a few (and growing!) number of authors whose work I read religiously. It may not be that I read it the moment that it comes out, but I try to remain aware of what they are writing. Gavin Lucas is on that list and this weekend I read his new-ish book, Writing the… Read More →
This weekend, the last weekend before the 2020 Spring Semester Party gets started, I spent a few hours finishing Brett M. Rodger’s and Benjamin Eldon Stevens’s Once and Future Antiquities in Science Fiction and Fantasy (2019). It’s not really what I should have been doing, but it’s what I did. So, whatever. To be honest, I… Read More →
The sound of snowblowers woke me this morning because despite everything in town being closed someone just had to remove the snow at 6 am. Since I’m up and at my laptop, here are a few quick things for over the new year holiday. First, I’ve finished the paper for the Archaeological Institute of America’s… Read More →
This weekend I read and really enjoyed Lynn Meskell’s recent-ish book, A Future in Ruins: UNESCO, World Heritage, and the Dream of Peace (2018). The book argues, in remarkable detail, that UNESCOs origins in a modern post-war view of the world instilled with an irrepressible faith in progress has created an organization that not only has failed to use… Read More →
I did some traveling this month and that always gives me time to sit still and read without being distracted by a million other things. On my last flight, I read David Staley’s Alternative Universities: Speculative Design for Higher Education (2019). It was a pretty fun read and despite the book’s ostensible audience of higher ed… Read More →
I’m heading out west today to the annual meeting of ASOR in San Diego. As per usual, I’m pulling together a gaggle of books to keep me company on the flights and during down times at the conference. For the flight, I’m going to read Joyce Carol Oates On Boxing as I prepare myself for… Read More →
The older I get, the more I dislike travel. The only really good thing about it (other than the destination) is a chance to get some quiet and relatively uninterrupted reading time. As I head east today to a conference in Washington, DC, I’m taking with me the most recent issue of Ploughshares, Juliet Lapidos’s… Read More →
This weekend, I read Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s new book, Generous Thinking: The University and the Public Good (Johns Hopkins 2019). The book calls for scholars to think more generously as individuals, as a community, with the public, and through our institutions. The first pages of the book spoke immediately to me (and some of my growing concerns about how… Read More →
This semester, I’m teaching a small graduate seminar that is a combination historical methods, theory, and historiography. The syllabus is uncomplicated and involves only 10 or 11 books, a couple of short paper, and a draft of a prospectus. The third book on the syllabus of Elizabeth Clark’s 2004 classic, History, Theory, Text: Historians and the… Read More →
When I first started teaching, I was convinced that I didn’t need no stinkin’ textbook. I dutifully created my own primary source reader and pulled together a motley gaggle of secondary reading to use in my survey level class and upper level classes. As the years have passed and I’ve acquired a dose of humility, I’ve… Read More →
In my effort to clear my plate before the semester gets under way next week, I finished my short review of Terpstra’s Trade in the Ancient Mediterranean for the Ancient History Bulletin. The book was pretty good and engaged ancient trade in a thoughtful and sophisticated way. Terpstra argued, in a nutshell, that the parallel… Read More →
One of the funny things about expertise is that if you don’t practice being an expert on something, you begin not to be. Over the past few years, my interests have changed and my level of expertise has declined in general. I tend to see this as a good thing. My interest in the world… Read More →
This summer, I read Taco Terpstra’s little book on the ancient economy for a short review. I’ve not had the most productive summer, but I did get a draft of this review done. Here it is: Taco Terpstra’s book, Trade in the Ancient Mediterranean: Private Order and Public Institutions, seeks to transform and complicate our… Read More →
Anyone who likes sports and baseball, in particular, should read (or re-read) Robert Coover’s The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. The book describes a fantasy baseball league designed by Henry Waugh and played with roles of dice and a series of charts that allowed Henry to simulate the complexities of the game. Henry… Read More →
A colleague once described a book that I wrote as “selling well, but in very small numbers.” If I had a goal as a publisher, that would essentially sum it up. I’d rather my books circulate to people who genuinely appreciated them than to ascend a best seller list. That being said, this last two… Read More →
It’s almost summer and my stack of books and stalled projects has grown to the point of being embarrassing. But each summer brings a bit of hope with, maybe, a bit more time and a bit more clarity of purpose, or at very least some long flights and hazy jet-lagged nights where reading can happen. To add a… Read More →
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks hanging out with Catherine Kearns’s and Sturt Manning’s new edited volume, New Directions in Cypriot Archaeology (2019). It’s a pretty interesting read and was a good way to start thinking in a more sustained way about the archaeology of Cyprus in the run up to a summer study season at… Read More →
Last week I worked my way through John Haldon, Hugh Elton, James Newhard, Archaeology and Urban Settlement in Late Roman and Byzantine Anatolia: Euchaïta-Avkat-Beyözü and its Environment (Cambridge 2018) in preparation for my annual trek to the Eastern Mediterranean for field work. As the major field seasons for the survey phase of the Western Argolid Regional Project have concluded, we have… Read More →
