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17156. (David Leav­itt) The Lost Lan­guage of Cranes
17157. (Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da: Dept. of Finance) Notice of Ways and Means Motion to Imple­ment
. . . . . Cer­tain Pro­vi­sions of the Bud­get Tabled in Par­lia­ment on Jan­u­ary 27, 2009 and
. . . . . Relat­ed Fis­cal Mea­sures / Avis de motion de voies et moyens por­tant exé­cu­tion
. . . . . de cer­taines dis­po­si­tions du bud­get déposé au Par­lement le 27 jan­vi­er 2009
. . . . . et met­tant en oeu­vre des mesures fis­cales con­nex­es [report]
17158. (Jack­ie Grom) Tur­tles Island-Hopped Their Way Across a Warm Arc­tic [arti­cle]
17159. (Sara Coel­ho) A Rich His­to­ry of Choco­late in North Amer­i­ca [arti­cle]
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This a very good study of the use of elec­tive pro­ce­dures in the Church from Late Antiq­ui­ty to the end of the Mid­dle Ages. The book min­i­mizes inter­pre­ta­tion and analy­sis in favour of pro­vid­ing hun­dreds of texts with ref­er­ences to elec­tion, and let­ting them speak for them­selves. The author chimes in when it is nec­es­sary to explain how a par­tic­u­lar word or con­cept might have a dif­fer­ent mean­ing in a medieval con­text, or a reli­gious con­text. Over­all inter­pre­ta­tion, and that very cau­tious, is saved for the end of the book. Two basic groups of doc­u­ments are cov­ered: those relat­ing to elec­tion with­in the Cler­gy, and those relat­ing to elec­tion with­in the monas­tic sys­tem. The monas­tic doc­u­ments are of greater inter­est to a his­to­ri­an of democ­ra­cy. Read more »

For a long time, the most read­er-friend­ly intro­duc­tion to the his­to­ry of ancient India (i.e. any­thing before the Gup­ta peri­od) has been the first vol­ume of Romi­la Tha­par’s His­to­ry of India. But that book was pub­lished back in 1966, and advances in archae­ol­o­gy and schol­ar­ship have out­dat­ed it. I would now rec­om­mend this book as a con­tem­po­rary sub­sti­tute. It’s a good place for some­one to start their read­ing on the sub­ject, though I sug­gest that they read it in con­junc­tion with Wikipedia entries on most of its main topics.

I have some prob­lems with Shar­ma’s work. He embraces some dubi­ous notions of “social evo­lu­tion”, he sees noth­ing of inter­est in the “trib­al” and non-Vedic or non-Dra­vid­i­an peo­ples of India except their inevitable con­ver­sion to “civ­i­liza­tion”, and he writes absolute­ly noth­ing about Indi­a’s inter­ac­tion with South­east Asia. This last stands in con­trast to his lengthy dis­cus­sions of Indi­an trade, polit­i­cal, and cul­tur­al inter­ac­tions with Cen­tral Asia, and even the Roman Empire. But impor­tant as these were, India nev­er export­ed much of its cul­ture to these areas, where­as in South­east Asia, Indi­an cul­ture was export­ed on a gigan­tic scale. Hin­du and Indo-Bud­dhist king­doms were set up in places as far as Viet­nam. Indi­a’s east­ward trade links were every bit, and per­haps more, impor­tant than its west­ward ones. Shar­ma hard­ly men­tions them. But despite these weak­ness­es, the book remains a good intro­duc­tion to a sub­ject with which every edu­cat­ed per­son in the world should have some basic familiarity.

17078. (David Liss) A Con­spir­a­cy of Paper
17079. (Dar­rell Marke­witz) [in blogHam­mered Out Bits] Black­smithing Skills in the Viking Age
. . . . . [arti­cle]
17080. (Lithi­um Cola) [in blog Dai­ly Kos] Hits and Miss­es 2008 [arti­cle]
17081. (Lithi­um Cola) [in blog Dai­ly Kos] Of ICBMs, Sesame Street, and Arro­gance [arti­cle]
17082. (Lebanon Dai­ly Star) Beirut Seems to Have Upper Hand Against Extrem­ists [arti­cle]
17083. (Juan Cole) [in blog Informed Com­ment] Top Ten Good News Sto­ries in the Mus­lim
. . . . . World, 2008 {That Nobody Noticed} [arti­cle]
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