This list of recently published books whose full texts are available online has been among my open tabs for so long that I no longer remember exactly how I found it, but it's a pretty cool resource nonetheless.  Only about 350 or so of the 1,400 works in this collection are available to the general public (a small number compared to, say, the 20, ( Read more... )

The fairly shocking conclusion of last night's episode of Rome had me scrambling over to Wikipedia to see if the producers had just made that up.  Indeed, they had not.  Reading the history section of the Roman Republic article made me feel like I was reading spoilers for the entire season.  But maybe that's okay.  In ancient Greece, Sophocles' ( Read more... )

Best blog comment I've seen in a while: "in my language it's "apciha!... i wish i could tell you what my language is called. we used to call it serbo-croatian, then it became either serbian, croatian, bosnian, or montenegrin and i can't bring myself to call it any of those."  It's so poignant, so absurd, yet stated so matter-of-factly.  The tragic ( Read more... )

Via homunculus at MeFi: a great piece by Rashid Khalidi that highlights the recent history of the Middle East, of Iraq, and even Fallujah itself.  Basically, for anyone over the age of 50 or so, the anti-colonialist independence struggles of the Middle East are within living memory and very much a part of their outlook.  In light of the British ( Read more... )