Category The History Discipline

Is there a Conservative Philosophy of History?

Conservative historians have long battled the left over the proper interpretation of the facts of history, but in arguments about the philosophy of history, conservatives have ceded the field almost entirely. At first glance, it appears that conservative historians have no philosophy of history, or that they even reject theoretical and philosophical discussions about the […]

Book Review: Marshall T. Poe, How to Read a History Book: The Hidden History of History (Zero Books, 2018)

There have been a rash of history books recently with incorrect titles. Sam Weinburg’s Why Study History when its Already on Your Phone has very little to do with justifying learning of history in the age of the smart phone, and Alex Rosenburg’s  How History Gets it Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addictions to Stories […]

The Vanishing Conservative Academic Historian

Let’s say you are a young conservative undergraduate, and you would like to go to grad school in history. Where would you look for a friendly advisor? If you are considering an Ivy League school, you might want to think again. According to research by Langbert, Quain, and Klein, available data indicates a ratio of […]

Brief, Briefer, and Briefest History

or A Brief History of Brief Histories. Once upon a time, history was long, boring, and cumbersome. It was full of facts, and it went on and on. Nobody could read more than a page of it without falling asleep at their desk. Something needed to be done. What if we could condense a history […]

The American Historical Review’s Nonsense

Today, I received the latest American Historical Review in the mail. Just try to make sense of the abstract of one of it’s featured articles: In “History in the Dungeon: Atlantic Slavery and the Spirit of Capitalism in Cape Coast Castle, Ghana,” Andrew Apter focuses on a West African spirit, Nan Tabir, a coastal diety […]

Reviewer #2 is a Jerk.

Let’s face it. Reviewer #2 is a always jerk. There is no list of peer-reviewers who might serve as the second reviewer, there is only one “Reviewer #2” and he is called on to read every article you write. Reviewer #1 is basically Julie Andrews dancing on a mountainside somewhere, singing praises about your article. […]