Recommended Reading
A Monday edition:
Top Billing! SWJ Blog – Book Review – Silent Accomplice: The Untold Story of France’s Role in the Rwandan Genocide
The story of France’s despicable role in the Rwandan genocide is too little known. The reviewer, LTC Tom Odom has extensive on the ground experience in Central Africa in this time period.
Steve DeAngelis – Participatory Innovation
The “Medici Effect” in action.
“The art of diplomacy excels with shared context that wikis can support. And while fundamentally State may gain productivity, particularly if they allow it to work across agencies, evolving from manufacturing era cable systems could evolve culture itself”
We can hope.
Thoughts Illustrated – ManyOne Survives – The New ManyOne Portal Network
Valdis Krebs – Twitter and Twitter Maps
The microblogging concept is different from blogging.
HNN – Why Historians Should Write Books Ordinary People Want to Read by Jeremy Young
With not a few historians the question is ” Can they do it?” 🙂
Congratulations to my friend Shane Deichman in his new gig with the Missile Defense Agency !
George Orwell diaries to be published as blog (Hat tip SmartMobs)
That’s it!
Lexington Green:
August 5th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
The piece on academic historians was good, but probably futile. The incentives they face are completely at odds with producing readable books that smart, normal people would want to read. History writing will, I hope, move even more out of the academic world and be much more open source and responsive to public and professional interests. The academic monographs will just be fodder for this larger process. We shall see.
The review about Rwanda was good, though short. It is not an area I have paid a lot of attention to. It is funny that the moral superiority of France is so widely presumed among our intelligentsia. The French are the most cynical and self-interested major players around.
The Orwell blog is a good idea. He is one of the all-time greats. I have read all but two of his books. His collected essays is a top ten, desert island book.
zen:
August 5th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Hi Lex,
.
Welcome back! As with many professions, incentives have evolved that run counter to some of the core reasons for having historians in the first place.