Alan
Well, it’s done. I enjoyed it all. And I am glad it is done. In fact, on reflection, I like how the World Cup becomes a process of a sparcer and sparcer schedule that end in a boring game. You are left without any wish for more. Time to go hang out in the garden and study for my second career as a...
Hels
A 2023 survey by Travel + Leisure invited readers to vote on the world’s most beautiful cities. Clearly the answer differed for everyone, but see their non-exhaustive list of the world’s 25 most beautiful cities. I chose Palermo.transport from Southern Italy to SicilyOn Sicily's Nth coast the...
Bret Devereaux
This is the third part (I, IIa, IIb, III) of our honestly-who-knows-how-many part series laying out some general guidelines for how pre-modern armies are recruited, raised, equipped and paid. In the last part, we looked at the various ways pre-modern armies might mobilize their armies, a process...
Bret Devereaux
This is the second half of the second part (I, IIa, IIb) of our honestly-who-knows-how-many part series laying out some general guidelines for how pre-modern armies are recruited, raised, equipped and paid. While I hope this will be of great interest to the history nerds out there, I’ve opted to...
Bret Devereaux
This is the second part (I, IIa) of our honestly-who-knows-how-many part series laying out some general guidelines for how pre-modern armies are recruited, raised, equipped and paid. While I hope this will be of great interest to the history nerds out there, I’ve opted to structure this...
Hels
ARTNEWS assembled a list of 11 must-haves books that cover art history, from classical antiquity to now. Art history is a flexible discipline, subject to revisions as things change. Below I have included the books I know and found excellent.GombrichThe Story of Art1. Penelope & Davies et...
Bret Devereaux
This week I want to try something a little different. Rather than taking apart a particular fantasy military system, I thought I might try to lay out a more general sense of how military systems tend to map on to societies, both because such general historical frameworks are handy for thinking...
Hels
Theophylactus of Tusculum (c1020–c1056) became the youngest pope ever as Pope Benedict IX. The date of his birth was uncertain but his first papacy DID start in 1032. Benedict was great-grandson of Marozia, a powerful Roman politician who ?was mistress of Pope Sergius III. Via Marozia,...