Author Archives: michaeljdouma
Time, where did you come from, where did you go?
Time flows up and down, or in a circle (a nautilus perhaps); it flows from left to right. Where time comes from, and where it goes, depends on the observer. Every time I present my work on spatial conceptions of time, I ask students to draw their own examples. Not everyone has an image that […]
The Weekly Pill Planner: Design and the Importance of Spatial Views of Time
I’ve been writing about all of the interesting ways in which people visualize time in spatial form: images of the day, the week, the month, the year, and story lines. I think that spatial visualizations of time help with memory, and that they help make us better at remembering the past and preparing for the […]
A Few More Space-Time Visualizations
Space-time synesthesia, a topic that I have explored in my new book Creative Historical Thinking (Routledge, 2018), is the idea that some people reflexively think of time in spatial form. How they do so, however, differs from person to person. Exploring this idea, I have been asking classrooms of college students to days their views […]
Book Review: Sam Wineburg, Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone)
If the modern history textbook was on trial for corrupting the youth, I’d appoint Sam Wineburg as the prosecuting attorney. His hatred for the standard 1,000-page neon-flashing over-produced textbook was first on display in his 2001 book Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts. Now, in this new work, Why Learn History (When It’s Already on […]
Aerial Photographs of my house
In my new book, Creative Historical Thinking, I have a chapter about the history of my house, and all of the different creative ways you can use to learn more about your property. I end the chapter by saying that I don’t know what I will discover next, nor how I will learn more about […]
Alumni Feature (Hope College)
I am featured on the website of my alma mater’s history department. Here.
Book Review: Augustus Schade, The Philosophy of History (1899)
In 1899, an obscure German American named Augustus Schade wrote what is, hands down, the most absurd book ever written on the philosophy of history. Schade self-published his “The Philosophy of History” in Cleveland, Ohio, of all places. The book claims to be based on the works of a German thinker, Rudolf Rocholl. Schade’s influences […]
Book Review: Rushdoony, The Biblical Philosophy of History (1969)
I picked up a copy of Rousas John Rushdoony’s The Biblical Philosophy of History, after learning about the man from my friend Ben House, who blogs at The Heavy Laden Bookshelf. Unfortunately, I was disappointed in this book. I have sympathy for Rushdoony’s general proposition that there is a God and that he acts in […]
The Generic History Methods Manual
Just when I think I have heard of ever history methods manual written in the past eighty years, I come across a new one. Today, I receive in the mail D.M. Sturley’s The Study of History (London: Longman, 1969). This volume probably qualifies as the most generic history methods manual ever written. Indeed, if I […]
Book Review: C.G. Crump, History and Historical Research (Routledge, 1928)
In my ongoing quest to read every history methods book ever printed, I’ve come across this fairly rare little book by C.G. Crump. Crump (1862-1935) sounds like a 19th century English writer even into the twentieth century. His writing is clear, precise, but not overly dense with ideas. In some ways, the book is typical […]
