Saturday, November 27, 2010

Heads-up for 27 November 2010

History According to Bob
American Civil War February 1864
This show is part 1 of 2 on the events of February 1864 in the American Civil War.
(review, feed)

Philosopher's Zone
Hegel and Hegel's God
This week, in another trek through the luxuriant and fascinating jungle that is the thought of one of the greatest philosophers of the nineteenth century, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, we turn to Hegel´s god and look at Hegel as a rational mystic. Our guest again is Robert M. Wallace, a philosopher best known for his book Hegel´s Philosophy of Reality, Freedom and God, and a man with a keen interest in philosophical mysticism. Liberal theologians during the last century and a half have wanted to articulate a conception of God that could satisfy people´s spiritual longings without conflicting with Darwinian evolution and other well-established scientific discoveries. Robert Wallace believes that Hegel had already done this.
(review, feed)

Veertien Achttien
John Jellicoe en de Slag om Armageddon (zondag 26 november 1916)
Loyaal, behoedzaam, plichtsgetrouw: het zijn niet per se de eigenschappen waaruit zeehelden worden opgetrokken. John Jellicoe was geen publiekslieveling. Terwijl hij toch de enige aan beide zijden was, volgens Churchill althans, die de oorlog op een enkele middag had kunnen verliezen.
(review, feed)

A Soviet Memoir - New Books in History

Here is yet another warm recommendation for New Books In History, Marsahll Poe's weekly podcast in which he interviews the author of a recently published book in history. (feed)

This week he spoke with Deborah Kaple about her book Gulag Boss, a Soviet Memoir. While Kaple was in Moscow for research on another project, she ran into Fyodor Vasilevich Mochulsky who had been a boss in a Gulag work camp and had written his experiences down. He had tried to find a publisher for it, but to no avail. Kaple translated and delivered some additional material to the work of Mochulsky.

The interview (and the book obviously) give a very fine insight in the workings of Soviet society, of the NKVD and the Gulag camps. Mochulsky is a faithful and dedicated communist yet also has to find his way between strict obedience and proper treatment of the prisoners. The prisoners, by the way, are not just men and not just political prisoners, making for a very challenging environment for Mochulsky to run the camp.

More NBIH:
This I accomplish,
Not your idea of World War II,
When Akkadian was Lingua Franca,
The 1910 Paris flood,
Stasi agents and informants.