Nearly finished ‘Death was our companion’ by Tony Le Tissier. Fascinating accounts / diary entries from ordinary soldiers in the final days of the Third Reich. Full of the trauma and horror as expected but also the concerns, gossip and minute detail that you only get in intimate accounts. Worth a read if WW2 is an interest and you want more than the macro view.

Looking into a person's eyes has always been considered intimate to a degree. They're critical to our body language and show where our attention is directed, as well as clearly showing you when you're being observed. Eyes of animals shining from just outside the firelight probably disturbed our ancestors for tens of thousands of years. No small wonder that eyes have been a widespread motif in art both ancient and modern - there's a reason they're called 'windows to the soul'.

Took me a while but I've finally finished Crucible: The Long End of the Great War and the Birth of a New World, 1917–1924 by Charles Emmerson. Review copied from my goodreads -

>4/5

>Rather good but unusual for a history book. The chapters go year by year and are divided by season (Autumn 1917, Summer 1919) etc. Each year gets 80-100 pages apart from 1924 which is a short (15 page in the paperback) epilogue giving the situation for each person the book focuses on in that year. The style of the book is almost present tense and chronological so like 'Moscow - Lenin arrives and starts preaching his belief in peace and bread' then 'The Western Front - The French army begins to mutiny over poor leadership and bad conditions'. The book is also heavily focused on famous individuals, some political (Lenin, Hitler, Woodrow Wilson etc), others cultural or scientific (Hemmingway, Einstein, Freud etc). This approach does the advantage of showing their story over the course of several years, such as how Hitler changed from army runner to failed putsch leader or Lenin going from political exile to Russian leader to being side lined by Stalin due to poor health. It also has the advantage of showing the political change over the course of several years and how much had changed. There is some stuff on American racial politics at the time, including famous lynchings or race riots, but it is more focused on disputes within the various American black movements (basically how much Marcus Garvey and Du Bois despised each other). Good amount of sources and select bibliography, a lot of endnotes as well but a bit hard to read (probably to save space since there is a lot of them).

>There are some downsides to the book. The style means there isn't much analysis like in a traditional history book. It is heavily focused on North America and Europe, plus Turkey (through the eyes of Mustpaha Kemal/Ataturk) and a little bit of Palestine (but the book is already 600 pages of main text plus 150 pages of notes and bibliography so fair enough). Depending on your interests some people or topics might not interest you and be very boring, I ended up basically skipping anything on Freud or the Dada artistic movement. Personally I vastly preferred the political side of things. I also found the book at times to be sort of vague on specific dates of events or names of people (For example the anti-treaty IRA assassinated a British general during the Irish nationalists peace negotiations with the UK government, but the book just refers to him as a British general instead of giving an actual name, it was Henry Wilson btw)

To clear out some space on my British history shelf and for a more casual read I am now reading Portillo's Hidden History of Britain by Michael Portillo. I am mostly done (3 chapters / 40 pages left) so this is basically my final thoughts (not copied and pasted) and I won't be mentioning it after this -

>3/5

>I either got it for free or very cheap. If you aren't British for context the author was a former prominent conservative politician in the 90s, lost his seat very suprisingly in the 1997 election, and nowadays does railway/travel/history documentaries for old people. The book was written alongside one of these documentaries which I haven't watched. The basic premise is that the author goes to somewhere attached to Britain's history, such as a prison, hospital, or military site, but is either no longer in use or is being turned into something else (like housing). He talks a bit about the history and interviews people who are either experts on the place or have a connection to it (such as a prisoner or a descendant of villagers forced out of an area as it was turned into military training site etc). Occasionally brings up his time in politics, especially in the defence themed bits, and what thoughts he brings from that.

>Overall the book is fine I guess. The writing is pretty entertaining and the areas chosen are interesting. There is nothing particularly bad about the book but it is not a must read and not worth specifically seeking out, and for create some more space I won't be keeping it.

I finished Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher. It was interesting and on a topic I didn't know much about. It's about Edward Curtis who was a photographer in Seattle who embarked on a huge project at the turn of the last century to photograph and document the remaining Indian cultures before they disappeared. He was an innovator in film, perfecting new methods for developing and preparing photos, in musicology, using an early recording device to capture Indian music, linguistics, writing alphabets and pronunciation guides as well as recording languages (Sometimes from the last living speaker), and film, making one of the first feature films.

The work was 20 volumes, but he had constant financial issues that limited the production of the work. Extant copies today sell at auction for $1.5+ million dollars.

The work has helped modern Indian communities rebuild their languages, Hopis use his work in their app that helps teach young children the language, and their culture, the Makah used his film to help understand their ceremonies around whaling and canoe building.

Curtis's photos are so universal that if you've ever seen an exhibit on a Native American group there was almost certainly a Curtis photo in the exhibit or on the program.

I think the most interesting thing he did was get at the truth of the Battle of Bighorn. He went to the site, interviewed Crow and Sioux participants and eye witnesses and reframed the whole event into the story we know today.

I highly recommend this if you're interested in the Pac NW, in photography, or in Native American culture.

Northwestern University has a full set online you can browse through: https://dc.library.northwestern.edu/items/2c3688e5-8d3b-4281-b20a-2bd99b436b89

On the Nature of Things is pretty freely available on the internet and a pretty quick read if anyone wants to read Lucretius's ideas.

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/785

Dana Steven's book, Camera Man, is a great place to start. It's about Buster Keaton so you get the transition from Vaudeville to film. She's a writer for Slate and does their podcast and b/c of that she was able to get on a crapton of podcasts, everyone from Marc Maron to the New Books Network. I like this interview with her: https://newbooksnetwork.com/dana-stevens-keaton-on-buster-keaton-jp-ef

The New Books Network has a good podcast on film from various academic viewpoints as well. https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/arts-letters/film

Also, I'm going to post more about this in my reading for the week, but Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher is about Edward Curtis and it discusses his important film, Land of the Head Hunters.

[removed]

the amount of conspiracy theorys about this ...

Definitely getting that for my wife, she is a huge horror movie buff.

Agreed. Everyone knows phrenology is where it's at.

One of my fav podcasts. Don’t sleep on wwi or mongols

I just finished Dan Carlin's book "The End Is Always Near". It was a pretty light read compared to some of the other history stuff I've been reading lately, but probably my favorite book of the year so far. He talks about how crazy it would be to have a modern pandemic or nuclear war, which was a little too perfect for the moment we're in right now.

It also got me to finally start listening to his podcast, which has been a real treat.

She got eaten by crabs in the pacific. Look it up. Lots of articles.

[removed]

Richard Nowell - Blood Money: A History of the First Teen Slasher Film Cycle is an interesting look at the origin of the slasher craze of the 80s.

[removed]

[removed]

[removed]

[removed]

[removed]

[removed]

[removed]

The Eyes of Horus, The Eyes of Sauron, The Eyes of Argus – eyes have always been potent symbols that have fascinated and frightened us.

I remember in my college level art history class how much emphasis that the artists put on eyes, making sure that they got them as expressive as possible. There is a correlation between people who became one of "the greats" and their attention to details on the eye.

[removed]