Homage to Catalonia – George Orwell
Though the POUM were socialists, he wrote “as far as my purely personal preferences went I would have liked to join the Anarchists."His vivid descriptions of classless anarchist Barcelona following…
Herman Melville: From obscurity to immortality
When he died at age 72, on September 28, 1891, Herman Melville was so obscure that those who even remembered his literary output presumed that he had passed away many…
The Medieval Tropics
In much of the tropics, insects, heat, and humidity meant that even if texts were written on palm leaves and animal skins, they had to be deliberately preserved or copied…
Criminal Podcast: The Gatekeeper
“I keep saying, ‘Where’s the body? Kill someone’,”
Hey! it’s the 150 anniversary of the publication of Capital by Karl Marx.
Here are all three volumes (in English) in PDF form.
The Voynich Manuscript and Truth on the Internet
It can be a little frightening for medievalists to see self-evidently wrongheaded interpretations spread like wood lice.
Why knights fought snails in medieval art
Medieval Memes Look in the margins of medieval books and you’ll find an unusual theme: knights vs. snails. Follow Phil Edwards and Vox Almanac on Facebook for more: https://www.facebook.com/philedwardsi… Lillian…
Technobabble
UK podcast star Helen Zaltzman of The Allusionist helps me figure out why one set of poorly understood pseudo-scientific terms can sink a scene, while another set can make a…
A Black Food Historian Explores His Bittersweet Connection To Robert E. Lee
Michael Twitty's enslaved ancestors witnessed the Confederate general's surrender, the significance of which weaves through his new memoir as he seeks 'culinary justice' for African Americans. {read}
What hunter-gatherer gut microbiomes have that we don’t, and breaking the emoji code
Sarah Crespi talks to Sam Smits about how our microbial passengers differ from one culture to the next—are we losing diversity and the ability to fight chronic disease? For our…