#pop history

[ineffectualdemon]

No

I ranted about this in the tags of that last post but I'm heated now

I fucking hate the "history hates lovers" meme

First of all historians are not a monolith of a opinions anyway

Second most modern historians are not going to be denying that a historical figure who clearly had same sex relationships (or gender non conformity of some level) didn't

Partly because WE HAVE QUEER HISTORIANS

But also modern queer terms and concepts cannot be shoved onto historical figures. Concepts of sexuality and gender has varied WILDLY in the past. Even what we consider cishet concepts of gender and sexuality has not been consistent throughout history and culture

ALSO that meme is extremely binary in terms of both sexuality and gender

There is an assumption from a lot of people that if someone historical had a same gender relationship that means any heterosexual relationship is either for show or comphet. And that any seemingly same sex relationship = same gender relationship when it could be a lot more complicated

Which as a bisexual genderqueer person pisses me the fuck off

No, I'm not claiming that every historical person who was married and had relationships with people of the same gender is bisexual or that any person with gender non conformity was genderqueer because that would be anachronistic and inaccurate

But I'm also not going to assume to know their feelings towards their spouses or gender unless I have evidence

I can't point at any individual after a certain point and say "this person was queer" or "this person was trans" or anything like that

Because those terms aren't things they would have used

But I can say "this person is a part of queer history." And/or "this person is a part of trans history"

Calling a historical person queer is a lot like calling say Boudica was English because she lived in what is now England

She is a part of English history in the history of this landscape and what shaped this part of the world but she was not English

It's the same damn thing

Get a better fucking meme

Ok soap box put away

[bryqe]

ariana grande teased in boca raton as one of the featurings on the charli xcx brat remixes album. i’m going INSANE, wanted this but not expected……….. it’s insane, my world!

[jeannereames]

Would you say that reading popular history is a good entryway into academic history? Not necessarily as a scholar but also as an interested layperson who's interested in the subject

Reading Pop[ular] History

Sure, it is. As is historical fiction … as long as it’s well-done.

That’s the crux. Some pop history is quite good. Some…not so much. The problem for the average layperson is figuring out which is which. Who can I trust? (Near the end are some pragmatic tips to help you answer that question.)

Publishing houses want to sell books. This is different from academic presses. The latter also want to sell books but their (acceptable) profit margins are lower and they make their money via textbooks. Peer-reviewed academic works are published for status/reputation. They don’t expect those books to make money. In fact, academic monographs typically lose money—yes even at the exorbitant prices they charge. This is (one reason) your textbooks cost so much.*

By contrast, the reason (regular) publishers put out pop history IS to make money. Of course they want those books to be well-reviewed, but because it helps sales. So, they’re interested in signing authors they consider to be good writers—people who can spin an engaging (non-fiction) story. That may not be the top experts in the field.

In academia, the focus is on quality ideas, which (alas) may be conveyed in rather turgid, passive-voice prose. Sure, good scholars can also be good writers, but I fear it’s more often the exception than the rule. In Alexander studies, my mentor-advisor, Gene Borza, also happened to be a good writer. So is Beth Carney. So is Ed Anson. One of the best, however, was Peter Green. I may not always agree with his scholarship, but the man could write. He penned not only academic history, but also essays (I highly recommend both In the Shadow of the Parthenon and Classical Bearings), as well as historical fiction. His biography on Alexander is still widely read, and his MONSTER tome Alexander to Actium did what very, very few academic books do: it made money for University of Cal Press. Paul Cartledge (who also wrote a bio on ATG) is another such. I don’t think he’s as good as Peter, but he’s up there in his ability to turn a memorable phrase and get across his ideas to the average reader. It’s why he gets tapped to write books outside his field of specialization. There are a small passel of such academic pop history authors: Adrian Goldsworthy (who also wrote on ATG), James Romm (who wrote on ATG’s Successors), Robin Waterfield, Mary Beard, Michael Grant, etc. All of them are legit scholars who turn out books that aren’t necessarily in their specialization.

By specialization, I mean the field they publish in academically. We all teach classes on topics we wouldn’t dare to publish in for our peers. Pop history is closer to teaching classes, in that regard. For one thing, specializations in academic publishing get quite narrow, and pop history tends to be on broader topics. Take my own current academic book. Sure, a few of you may look forward to a work on Hephaistion (and Krateros), but the average fan of history perusing shelves for their next hit doesn’t even know who they ARE. They won’t pick up a pop history book about them (unless—maybe—the title is “sexy” enough to sell it).

When it comes to pop history, publishers fear that knowing too much about a field interferes with one’s ability to write for a non-specialist audience. That applies to textbooks too. Ergo, publishers sometimes solicit books from “specialist-adjacent” people. Carol Thomas’s Alexander the Great and His World is of that type. Carol is a specialist in Early Iron Age Greece, but she knows/is friends with a number of Macedoniasts as well as Greek archaeologists, so Blackwell invited her to write that book. She approached it with due care and humility. (I remember her preparing for it, asking Gene and others lots of questions.)

Paul Cartledge’s bio of Alexander runs along those lines. His real specialization is Sparta, but he’s written some general books on Greek history that sold well. I don’t know if he was asked to write the ATG book, but it’s made money for Random House. I don’t agree with swathes of it, but his take follows in the footsteps of Green and Bosworth, who are Macedoniasts. It’s far from a bad book, comparatively. Even so, I wouldn’t assign it as a textbook in my ATG class, precisely because I don’t agree with chunks. I’ve been using Lindsay Adams’ Alexander the Great: Legacy of a Conqueror or Brian Bosworth’s (now old) Conquest and Empire: the Reign of Alexander the Great, or Ed Anson’s Alexander the Great: Themes and Issues. Considering Hugh Bowden’s Alexander the Great: a Very Short Introduction too. Part of my choice lies with the fact those four are Macedoniasts and publish in the field, but I wouldn’t use Ian Worthington’s books on ATG, although he’s also a Macedoniast, nor Peter Green’s, nor NGL Hammond’s either. My views differ from theirs as either too negative or (Hammond) overly positive.

Back to my point. Cartledge may not be a Macedoniast but at least he’s a Greek historian and works in the right era. By contrast, Adrian Goldsworthy (Philip and Alexander) is further afield because not only is he not a Macedoniast, he’s a specialist on Rome. What of his book I’ve looked at, I found a bit dated compared to where most current scholarship stands. Yet he’s still a professional historian. Philip Freeman is similar to Goldsworthy. He’s a real scholar, if not a specialist on Alexander. He works in Classical Philology and Celtic Languages. Anthony Everitt isn’t even in Classics, but (European) visual and performing arts. Nonetheless, those authors have written books on significant ancient figures that sold well, so publishers trust they can write a selling nonfiction book.

All that helps to explain why pop history may not necessarily reflect the most recent work in the field.

Also, sometimes an author will go for the “sexy” idea because they think (not without cause) that it’ll sell better/appeal more. They’ll justify it with, “Well, some scholars did say that….” I ran into this excuse a lot when working with the Netflix people. If they wanted to go in a direction I disliked—such as Olympias’s putative involvement in Philip’s death—their reason/excuse was, “Well, the ancient sources say that and other scholars believe it.”

Five Tips to Check the Quality of Your Pop History Book

(all the below assume you don’t have a convenient specialist friend to ask…)

First, look at the publication date. History research can move quickly. If the book is more than 20 years old, it may be stale. Yet copyright date isn’t always the kiss of death; I still recommend Brian Bosworth’s 1988 Conquest and Empire on Alexander. Yes, a few things are out-of-date, but it’s generally an even-handed intro to his career, despite being 35+ years old. Nonetheless, if you know nothing about a field, older books might not be the best place to start.

Second, research the author. Who are they? Are they an academic at all? If their bio just says “historian,” they might have nothing higher than a BA/BS. Assuming they are a professional historian, do they publish academically in the subfield they’re writing about? If not, is it at least in the broader field? If not the broader field, is it adjacent? The further an author’s academic work from the subject matter, the more likely you’re getting either stale or limited research.

Third, watch out for sensationalist language in blurbs—even if the author is a specialist. For instance, the blurb for Ian Worthington’s 2004 Alexander the Great: Man and God, says:

Alexander the Great conquered territories on a superhuman scale and established an empire that stretched from Greece to India. He spread Greek culture and education throughout his empire, and was worshipped as a living god by many of his subjects. But how great is a leader responsible for the deaths on tens of thousands of people? A ruler who prefers constant warring to administering the peace? A man who believed he was a god, who murdered his friends, and recklessly put his soldiers lives at risk? Ian Worthington delves into Alexander's successes and failures, his paranoia, the murders he engineered, his megalomania, and his constant drinking. It presents a king corrupted by power and who, for his own personal ends, sacrificed the empire his father had fought to establish.

Put that puppy down! While authors don’t usually write their own book blurbs, they approve them, and if the first paragraph asks some legit (if harsh) questions, the second paragraph suggests a book with an extreme view. Depending on the subject, it might be justified, but I’m typically suspect of sensationalist history. 😉

Fourth, if you can, flip to the bibliography. How extensive is it? How recent are the entries? Does it include not just monographs (books), but also articles/book chapters? Does it include articles that aren’t in English? Possibly the author was told to submit a limited bibliography, but a thin, mostly book (no/few articles)** biblio more likely suggests the writer lacks the background needed to cover the topic well. (Some pop history books don’t even have a bibliography, which I also consider a red flag.)

Last, read a few reviews, and not on Goodreads or Amazon (although some reviews on those sites are fine). How is the book received, particularly by reviewers who might know a thing or three about the topic? If no reviews are from academics or specialists, steer clear. I don’t care of Oprah likes it. Ha.

The best pop history (in terms of historical accuracy) is rarely the most popular, in terms of sales, for the simple reason that real history is messy and complicated. The casual reader usually wants something simpler. Yet if you’re serious about learning a topic, you do want something messy and complicated! E.g., with nuance.

So yes, pop history can be well-done and a perfectly valid place for the interested-but-discerning non-specialist to begin. If I believed it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be writing on Tumblr. 😉

And who knows, maybe I’ll sit down someday to write my own pop history take on Alexander.

——————

* Color illustrations and higher-quality paper are some others causes for high costs. Paper in general is expensive. But there’s still a mark-up to cover the production-cost losses incurred by purely academic books, most of which are sold to libraries.

** In many fields of history, especially ancient history, cutting edge research appears first in ARTICLE form and may never even make it to a book. Researchers who utilize only books (monographs) are therefore missing a lot.

[marzipanandminutiae]

Misinformation I burned to death several times as a teenager due to the long skirts I wore

sounds legit

just like how I've literally snapped in half while wearing a corset, every single time, and now my midsection is held together by a complex network of zipties

(in all seriousness, before anyone starts in with the Um Actuallys, yes your clothing can catch fire if it's too near an open flame. but I seldom see anyone talking about the 18th- or 19th-century fire risks of frock coats, tailcoats, capes, long sleeves, long scarves- I nearly caught a perfectly normal blouse sleeve on fire once while frantically trying to unplug a sparking extension cord at the museum -or indeed anything that's not a primarily feminine-coded garment)

(so...)

(also obviously Wool Smolders, You Tend To Be Better At Fire Safety If Fire Is An Unavoidable Part Of your Daily Life, Show Me The Reliable Primary Source Death Statistics; I'm Waiting, etc.)

[runawayfuture]

> i meet a pop history fan

> she tells me she has information about gay relationships in the ancient world

> i ask if it's homosexuality or pederasty

> she doesn't understand

> i pull out a diagram explaining what is homosexuality and what is pederasty

> she laughs and says "it's good historical gay rep sir"

> it's pederasty

[riddleonhermind]

Welcome to Riddle On Her Mind on Tumblr!

The inspiration for Riddle On Her Mind is a March 2020 Entertainment Tonight article that attempted to discuss the contributing factors of *NSYNC’s hiatus. The timeline in the article wasn’t very clear and some of the details didn’t seem accurate, so I took it upon myself to start doing some digging. This account is an archive for my research – news articles, gossip posts, web pages, and anything else that documents the hiatus from the early rumors of solo projects in 2001 to the breakup in 2004 and any relevant information after that. This blog is one of several backup locations to preserve the ROHM visual archive in multiple online spaces.

DISCLAIMER: The sources featured in the ROHM timeline will be a combination of news, rumors and speculation. Readers are encouraged to use their own judgment and draw their own conclusions as the owner of the ROHM page makes no claims that all content is valid, accurate, or true. The opinions expressed by the sources featured in the ROHM timeline are those of the authors/creators and do not necessarily represent the opinions of ROHM.

[erinflight]

Historical accuracy in pop history is tricky. I just finished a book (Destiny Disrupted) that mentioned the Taj Mahal.

You probably roughly know the story. An emperor’s wife died. Out of grief, he built her a mausoleum so beautiful that people struggle to put its beauty into words. 

According to the book, he spent the end of his life in a small prison cell with one window too high to see out of. After his death, the jailers find a mirror, perfectly placed to show the Taj Mahal’s reflection.

Poignant right? Looks like the library has a non-fiction book ABOUT the Taj Mahal available right now! I checked it out.

It’s fascinating! Mumtaz Mahal died giving birth to her FOURTEENTH child. The Mughal emperors used to have themself weighed against bags of gold and gems on their birthdays.  While traveling, the emperor employed men with ropes to measure the distance. They’d carry the rope forward until it ran out, call out the count, and then do it again.

(And a dozen more fascinating details. Taj Mahal by Diana & Michael Preston, great book)

You know what they never mention? The mirror. 

In fact, the Emperor was imprisoned by his own son and it seems likely (though history isn’t certain) that he remained in relative comfort.

The mirror thing isn’t even a big enough folktale that the Taj Mahal book felt the need to mention it and the book mentions a bunch of folktales. 

So what else did Destiny Disrupted, this well reviewed and seemingly comprehensive history of Islam, get wrong? Was it wrong about the group of assassins that terrorized the middle-east? Google thinks it was right! What about all of the other facts I don’t have time to double check?

Or was did the Taj Mahal book deliberately leave out the mirror anecdote for some reason? Who knows!

[naomiknight-17]

Watching a video of a history YouTuber who I'm not really familiar with, but I'm giving her a chance

But she just... felt it necessary to point out that Dr Robert Liston was a Scorpio? "Brace yourselves, we're talking about a Scorpio!"

What the fuck does that even mean

Just... tell me about medical history. Why would you bring astrology into this. What is happening

[inter-gal-actic]

A MOMENT IN HISTORY: Lana Del Rey and Marina (Marina And The Diamonds back then) in the BTS of Fear And Loathing Music Video

[courtingwonder]

The Police - Spirits In The Material World (1981)

[gyalliano]

[bryqe]

the sympathy is a knife remix ft ariana grande will change entirely my life trajectory forever

[marzipanandminutiae]

have you seen that annoying try guys video about corsets. why’re they tightlacing like it’s average wear?

Yeah, and it's just a lot of nonsense. Like all of those videos.

Why do they tightlace? Because that's what people want to see. Not everyone; a lot of people are genuinely interested in learning. But unfortunately, a loud minority wants to believe the easiest, least complicated, most sensational version of the past. And that loud minority votes with engagement. You CAN get clicks for saying the corsets were basically the bras of their day, and women's relationship with them was similarly complicated and individual, but they were not unilateral torture devices- look at the success of costube in recent years -but that takes effort. Why bother, when you can just play to the lowest denominator of historical clothing knowledge?

(On some level, I do understand where the impulse comes from- the eras where pairs of bodies/stays/corsets were commonplace were also times of intense systemic misogyny, so "women were forced into torturous undergarments" seems par for the course. And the pressure on women to look and dress a certain way is obviously wrapped up in misogyny, then and now, even though women were not suffocating themselves into 15" waists like pop history insists. It's a myth that makes sense given its context; that's how it's survived.)

(That and the fact that the women who wrote the most about corsets were the ones who hated them. Likely a minority compared to the vast numbers of women then alive in corset-intensive cultures, but their strong feelings compelled them to speak out in ways that the probable majority never did. Who sits down and writes "Dear diary, another uneventful day wearing an ultra-commonplace support garment that I'm fairly neutral about?")

(But if you absolutely loathe wearing something- due to sensory issues, perceived hassle of dressing, feeling like your needs aren't met or are impeded by the garment, etc. -and social pressure says You Must...yeah, you're going to have some Thoughts on that subject.)

[melomancy]

Kate Bush performing in Japan, 1978