Hello!
It’s been a few months, but this is—promise—the first of a monthly Notanda, which will now appear on the first Tuesday of every month.
If you’re new here—and most of you are—Notanda began years ago as a fitful email of links: curious, provocative, sometimes downright odd corners of the web that I stumbled across while preparing conversations for Historically Thinking. That reading often takes me into unexpected byways, but now and then I find small things worth sharing—or larger things that make me stop and think. My hope is that they’ll do the same for you.
As the archive of podcast conversations has grown past four hundred episodes, I also find myself linking back to earlier discussions. You’ll see these callbacks gathered toward the end of each Notanda—though I can’t resist tucking one or two into the main body as well.
🗓️ The Historically Thinking Substack Schedule
Here’s what you can expect each week from Historically Thinking on Substack:
📘 Mondays – Second Thoughts
Shorter meditations or arguments sparked by a podcast conversation I can’t get out of my head. To be honest, that’s most of them. Podcast marketing gurus tell me I should reflect on the previous week’s conversation. It’s better for the integrated delivery of audio product to scale across audience participation. Or something like that. But it’s apt to be a little more irregular than that.
🎧 Wednesdays – New Podcast Episodes
Fresh conversations from Historically Thinking released each week.
✍️ Fridays – Friday Reflections
The pedagogue in me which will not die has long wanted to do this. Each Friday there will be a synopsis of Wednesday’s conversation, with questions for further reflection. This helps me think about it, but I also know that some of you have used the podcast in class, so I thought it might benefit you as well. And eventually I hope that there will be history book clubs—hard to see how else we can get people to read more history—that will use such questions as a departure point for their own conversations.
📰 First Tuesdays – Notanda
This monthly letter and anthology of what I’ve been running into on the web, and connecting to past conversations.
It’s good to be back on schedule. Thanks for reading—and for thinking historically with me.
Warmly,
Al Zambone
Curiosities & Essays
Dark Academia Decor—for when you want to make your department office look like a movie set. Or you want people to think that your next sabbatical is at Hogwarts. Or you’re just kind of…whatever. Though how a mid-century modern ladder bookcase and gold snake taper candles are both “dark” and “academic” is not clear to me. Though I hear Richard Hofstadter had both in his office.
Brian Potter, “How Common Is Multiple Invention?”, Construction Physics, June 5, 2025—”The frequency of multiple invention is a useful thing to know, because it can give us clues about the nature of technological progress. A very low rate of multiple invention suggests that progress might be driven by a small number of “genius” inventors... A high rate of multiple invention suggests that progress is more a function of broad historical forces… And if the rate of multiple invention is changing over time, perhaps the nature of technological progress is changing as well.” A very interesting essay with many graphs.
Bret Devereaux, in his judiciously named blog “A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry” explains (in the third of three posts!) why the opening battle in Gladiator is neither an accurate representation of the Imperial Roman army nor of barbarians, and why “Maximus comes off as a deeply incompetent Roman commander who ought never have been trusted with command.” Actually interesting. Also, Ridley Scott had a PA leave a flaming bag of poop on Devereaux’s porch after they had finished the list of Napoleonic historians.
The Last Typewriter Repair Shop in Washington State—I didn’t think I had much nostalgia for the manual typewriter. I am such an age that the year after I nearly failed “Typewriting” in high school it was rechristened “keyboarding”, and students moved from enormous blue IBM manuals to beige PCs. But this little essay makes me think that I have a little more nostalgia for those complicated hunks of machinery and that incessant banging than I thought…
Kaushik Patowary, “The Jumping Frenchmen of Maine”, Amusing Planet, June 16, 2025—“In the late 19th century, a rare and highly unusual neuropsychiatric condition was observed among a group of French-Canadian lumberjacks living in the Moosehead Lake region of northern Maine.”
The Uses of History ( con’t)
When Stalin Edited a History Textbook
“Picture a rather bizarre scene. It is the summer of 1937, and Stalin’s Great Terror is at its zenith. Yet in between signing list after list of names marked for execution, the Father of Nations removes to his dacha at Kuntsevo, west of Moscow, where, undisturbed, he sits down to edit a set of galleys for a new history textbook intended for schoolchildren across the Soviet Union. Under the circumstances, this excursion from mass murder may seem unexpected, extraordinary even. But in a land where power has forever rested on narrative, history has always been a vital instrument of governance and control.”
From Five Books: The Best Books on Everything
They say of themselves: “We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview. This site has an archive of more than one thousand seven hundred interviews, or eight thousand book recommendations. We publish at least two new interviews per week.”
I say: a delightful browsing experience, and encouragement to buy and read more.
The Best Historical Biography: The 2025 Elizabeth Longford Prize,
The best books on Modern Greek History, recommended by Yanni Kotsonis, who talked about his book The Greek Revolution and the Violent Birth of Nationalism in a conversation that dropped on February 3, 2025.
The University
Clara Collier, “The Origin of the Research University”, Asterisk Mag (April 2025)—“Universities have existed for more than a thousand years — and for almost all of that time, they weren’t centers of research. What changed in 19th century Germany?”
Colleen Flaherty, “How AI Is Changing—Not ‘Killing’—College”, Inside Higher Ed (August 29, 2025): “Key findings from Inside Higher Ed’s student survey on generative AI show that using the evolving technology hasn’t diminished the value of college in their view, but it could affect their critical thinking skills.” Hmmmm. My initial reaction is to see this as IHE’s typical propensity to say “nothing to see here! Return to your offices and your cubicles!”
Big Thoughts
Stuart Buck, “The Case for Crazy Philanthropy”, Palladium (August 22, 2025)
Buck argues that philanthropy has long since become staid, conservative, and indeed reactionary. Foundations give money to safe bets, viz., places they’ve always given money to, or to whom other foundations have already given money. They write enormous checks to enormous universities with enormous endowments, and feel well-satisfied.
He connects this to the theory of “institutional isomorphism”, coined by Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell, which in the early 1980s sought to answer the seemingly perplexing question of why all universities were beginning to look the same. (Something we’ve talked about on Historically Thinking.) Their answer was that their were coercive forces that enforced similarity, but there was also a “mimetic isomorphism” in which institutions copied one another based on what we might call the first-mover’s fame—perhaps there is always a hope that if they act quickly enough, they can be the second or third in the door.
Instead, Buck urges for philanthropists to follow the lead of the first generation of American philanthropy. “Given the challenges of our times,” he writes, “we need to revitalize crazy philanthropy—that is, donations to unusual issues, to individuals outside the traditional university system, and to genuinely outside-the-box ideas that could lead to the creation of entirely new fields. Philanthropy can have much higher impact if it doesn’t just piggyback on existing institutions and ideas.”
Essay-Episode Callbacks
Daniel Willingham, “Pay Attention, Kid!: Has the use of digital technology impaired students’ ability to focus?” Education Next (Summer 2025, vol. 25, no. 3)
“Comprehending What We Read”, with Daniel Willingham
David Chaffetz, “The birth of Eastern Europe”, Engelsberg Ideas (October 2025)—how the work of a 16th-century Polish geographer transformed the understanding of eastern Europe
Cf. “Edges are Interesting: A History of Eastern Europe”, with John Connelly
Philip Lorish, “Living with Stacks of Half-Read Books,” Commerce Street Books (June 2025)—the proprietor of a new neighborhood bookstore in Charlottesville boldly declares “I believe in living amidst stacks of half-read books.” Amen.
Meagan Francis, “How Parents Hijacked the College Dorm”, The Atlantic (August 26, 2025)— “The spaces were once furnished by scrappy kids. Then the adults entered the room.”
Kathryn Palmer, “Brandeis Pours $25M Into Careers-Focused Liberal Arts”, Inside Higher Ed (September 17, 2025)—“The university recently unveiled a revamped curriculum and a plan to give students job-ready skills through a liberal arts education.”
Alizah Holstein, “The Via Appia: Elegy For A Queen”, 3 Quarks Daily (July 1, 2025)
If something here sparks your interest, reply and let me know—and please share it with someone who also thinks historically, or probably ought to.
Warmly,
Al Zambone
Historian, host of Historically Thinking