zenpundit.com

I am trying to catch up on my email tonight and tomorrow morning. If you sent me something this week and did not hear back from me….well….it’s coming. :o)

A QUICK INTRO FOR LATECOMERS

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An anonymous but quite gracious commenter from Britain wrote in, asking:

“….what I would find really helpful is if you did a sort of re-introduction – something on what your influences are, what you’re trying to achieve, what books you think are most important in your area – it would be a good way of educating us latecomers…”

Fair enough. The durability of my regular commenters tends to make me forget the dynamic nature of blogospheric audiences. A brief history of Zenpundit:

My background is in diplomatic and economic history, where my mentors were from ” the Open Door School” and ” the Maryland Mafia” circle of historians, respectively. As a result, I received a thorough schooling in economic forces as a major driver of historical causation ( though I disagreed with many of their normative conclusions). A secondary influence were the late historians, Jordan Schwarz (American political history) and W. Bruce Lincoln (Russian history). My primary area of research interest was Soviet-American relations during the Nixon administration and American foreign policy during the Cold War but I spent almost as much time on what is loosely called “Soviet Studies”.

Authors who had an impact on shaping my worldview, earlier on, include Friedrich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Eric Hoffer, Ayn Rand, Alvin Toffler, George Kennan, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Galbraith, Adam Ulam, Machiavelli, George Orwell, Thorstein Veblen and a few others. Generally, it was systemic thinkers and iconoclasts who caught my eye. My library shelf (part of it, anyway) is visible for your perusal at Shelfari

Blogging became attractive for me when the H-Net listserv, H-Diplo became somewhat overmoderated some years back. Evidently, others felt the same way because other posters on H-Diplo who have also joined the blogosphere include Juan Cole, Austin Bay, Rick Shenkman, Judith Klinghoffer, Bruce Kesler and David Kaiser. I’m sure by now there are many other H-Diplo veterans busy blogging. Another well known H-Diplo member, though he seemed to be more active on C-NET, was David Horowitz, the conservative author and publisher of Frontpagemag.com. It was a vibrant listserv back then, with many brilliant and accomplished scholars participating ( or getting unceremoniously kicked off for intemperate posts) but blogging ultimately offered a better platform for debate and intellectual dialogue.

After connecting with Tom Barnett shortly after his first book was published, I’ve increasingly become more interested in strategy, intelligence, military theory, technology, futurism and social networks with less time for diplomatic history and “pure” foreign policy postings. However, as the blog tends to reflect what I’m reading at any given time, the subjects can wander fairly far afield.

Hope this helped fill in any blanks for new readers. Thanks again to anon for his suggestion!

THE LITERARY WINDFALL OF THE BLOG

This will amuse certain parties.

A few weeks ago, I had a post on William Gibson and in the course of the post, solicited reader opinions on Gibson. This sparked a lively discussion and many recommendations for further sci-fi reading in the comments section.

The other night, Mrs. Zenpundit had a surprise gathering for me, to honor the annual increase in my age, at one of the better local restaurants. One of the frequent lurkers here, “Dona Julia” and her husband “The Brown Guitar“, had read the post and comments and, as a result, presented me with copies of:

All Tomorrow’s Parties
Idoru
Virtual Light
Ender’s Game
Speaker For the Dead

A rare instance of life imitating the blogosphere. Much thanks to Dona Julia, her Guitar and Mrs. Z. for yesterday evening and to the readers for their helpful suggestions.

EXTENDING THE CONVERSATION

One of the most pleasant aspects of blogging for me is receiving high quality feedback from readers or other bloggers. Oddly, it’s impossible to predict which post is going to produce a high volume of comments or links so it is even nicer when a post that I feel is important strikes some readers in the same way. Even moreso as the feedback came from across the political spectrum

I’d like to highlight the responses to the recent “Applied History” post:

From Art Hutchinson at Mapping Strategy:

Art is a premier strategic thinking consultant with Cartegic Group who specializes in scenario planning. He doesn’t post all that frequently, so I was very pleased to find that he had delved deeply into the topic of “Cognitive Maps of Future History“:

“What’s needed to turn the seeming surprise of today’s urgent corporate decision into an historically rooted, deeply contextualized choice?

As the saying goes: “there’s nothing new under the sun”.

From Nonpartisan, the guiding spirit of the up and coming, left of center, group blog ProgressiveHistorians in the “Friday Open Thread ” Nonpartisan welcomed Stewart Brand’s historical call to arms:

“At ProgressiveHistorians, we’ve been advocating this sort of direct policy action on the part of historians since our founding, but it’s nice to see the liberal icon who founded the Whole Earth Network taking up our cause. If there’s one thing that unites everyone at this site, I think, it’s their agreement with some portion of Brand’s thesis. It’s encouraging how many of us see the meaning in this logical extension of our profession.”

In the comments section of ” Applied History” I am indebted to Shane Deichman, Managing Director of The Institute for Technologies in Global Resilience and Federal Historian Dr. Maarja Krusten, formerly of The National Archives, for their thoughtful observations, such as:

Deichman:

“Policymaking, on the other hand, is not about asserting truths — it is about influencing action. Therefore it is an inherently social and, dare I say, “complex” phenomenon that defies linear, reductionist logic. So it is perfectly understandable (even acceptable) for the policymaker to “cherry pick” conclusions that support their objectives (e.g., yellow cake from Nigeria; hostile naval action in the Gulf of Tonkin; the fictitious “Tenth Army” in WW II). This is why I believe so few historians are apt to get involved with policymaking.”

Krusten:

“Many thanks for posting this interesting essay on a subject that deserves more attention than it usually receives among academic historians.

Since your posting centers on applied history and policy, you might find interesting this article by Victoria Harden, “What Do Federal Historians Do?”

( Note to aspiring history PhD’s – make friends with a professional archivist or academic librarian *before* you begin your dissertation. The cites they can pull off the top of their heads on the most obscure topics imaginable are stunning. They are to historians what historians are to the general public)

Thanks again for the excellent feedback!