Quotulatiousness

January 8, 2022

Antique Antics: The Pantheon

Filed under: Architecture, Europe, History, Humour, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 7 Jan 2022

It’s a good dome, simple as that.

SOURCES & Further Reading: The Great Courses lectures: “The Most Celebrated Edifice – The Pantheon” from Understanding Greek and Roman Technology by Stephen Ressler, and “Roman Art and Architecture” from The Roman Empire: From Augustus to The Fall of Rome by Gregory Aldrete. “The Pantheon” by Chris Legare via ATouchOfRome https://www.atouchofrome.com/the_pant…. Additionally, I have a university degree in Classical Studies.

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The Board of Green Cloth — the original “we investigated ourselves and found us innocent” organization

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Government, History — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the latest Age of Invention newsletter, Anton Howes explains how England managed to avoid the first attempt by King James I to impose absolute monarchy — that is, putting the Stuart notions of the “divine right of kings” in place of royal powers limited by the Parliamentary control of the royal income:

King James I (of England) and VI (of Scotland)
Portrait by Daniel Myrtens, 1621 from the National Portrait Gallery via Wikimedia Commons.

The year 1610 might by the most under-rated year in British history. It was the year in which England almost became a more permanent absolutist monarchy. Had things gone only a little differently, King James I might have obtained a substantial annual income — enough to pay off his debts within just a few years, to run a substantial surplus, and perhaps even to never have to summon a Parliament ever again. Over the course of a few decades, so long as they didn’t require too many extraordinary taxes to pay for one-off wars, the Stuart kings could have ruled without challenge, issuing proclamations that would have gradually taken on the force of laws.

[…]

As we saw in the last instalment of this series, James I’s finances were desperate. His predecessor had left him substantial war debts, and he was running a large deficit, so the chances of repaying them anytime soon were slim. So in 1604 he had summoned a Parliament with the aim of making a financial deal. Parliaments were typically called in order for the monarch to raise one-off, extraordinary taxes, usually in times of rebellion or war. Rather confusingly from today’s perspective, these taxes were known as “subsidies”, because they were a subsidy to the Crown. Yet James and his ministers wanted Parliament to instead establish peacetime taxes that would be both ongoing and ordinary — what came to be known as “support”. The deal was that he would give up some of his least popular feudal prerogative rights in return.

The House of Commons did not go for the deal in 1604, as we saw. They may have hated feudal obligations like purveyance or wardship — the requisitioning of goods for the court, and the Crown’s control of noble heirs whose fathers had died before they came of age — but they also saw some major risks in trying to make a deal with the king.

When it came to the matter of purveyance, for example, many members of Parliament wanted to stamp out the abuses rather than see the institution abolished. They thought it perfectly legal for the Crown to compulsorily purchase goods, and even to requisition the carts to carry them. What they complained of was that many purveyors were failing to give compensation immediately, and that corrupt purveyors were sometimes taking more than was required, pocketing the difference for themselves. Many MPs also argued that there was no legal basis for purveyors to determine their own prices for the provisions that they seized — a privilege that the Crown adamantly insisted upon.

James’s predecessor Queen Elizabeth I had granted a concession over patent disputes — “patents” at that time were a rather different and much wider legal notion than our more product-oriented modern patents: the monarch granted patents to assign lands and titles, appoint officials, create cities or guilds, or to allow monopoly privileges over an economic resource among other purposes. The concession was that patent disputes would be litigated in common-law courts rather than by royally appointed judges.

Yet by extending the jurisdiction of the common-law courts to monopolies, Elizabeth opened the floodgates of complaints against all prerogative courts — especially against the court of royal household officials responsible for commissioning the purveyors, known as the Board of Green Cloth.

To Hyde and his followers, this court was especially corrupt. Whereas the trying of monopoly patents had at least been done in the more general prerogative courts, anyone hauled before the Green Cloth for denying the purveyors was effectively being tried, judged, fined, and even imprisoned, by the very organisation that was accusing them. Even if purveyors really were acting illegally by naming their own prices, as opponents maintained, there would be no justice so long as the purveyors effectively judged themselves. For Hyde and his allies then, they wished to do to purveyance what they had done to monopolies — to subject them to the common law.

Battle of the River Plate 1939: Minute-by-Minute

Filed under: Americas, Britain, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Historigraph
Published 24 Jul 2018

The Battle of the River Plate took place in December 1939, and featured the Royal Navy cruisers Exeter, Achilles and Ajax, against the German Panzerschiffe, Graf Spee.

–

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Sources:
Richard Petrow, The Bitter Years: The invasion and Occupation of Denmark and Norway April 1940-May 1945 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1974). — The first chapter of the book includes a brief description of the hunt for the Graf Spee

Corelli Barnett, Engage The Enemy More Closely: The Royal Navy in the Second World War (London: Penguin, 1991)

Commodore Harwood’s own account of the battle, made available here: http://naval-history.net/WW2LGGrafSpe…

Graf Spee‘s voyage described here: https://www.deutschland-class.dk/admi…

Video clips from World of Warships gameplay and the Battle of the River Plate film, 1958

Music:

“Crypto” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

“Division” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

“Crossing the Chasm” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Sound Effects:
Gunshots and so on are recordings from World of Warships, where the gameplay footage of the ships hails from.

January 7, 2022

Desert War – Dysentery, Disease, and Dehydration – WW2 Special

Filed under: Africa, Britain, Environment, Germany, Health, History, Italy, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

World War Two
Published 6 Jan 2022

North Africa. The Axis and Allies are fighting each other but even more, they’re fighting the desert itself. The men of the desert burn during the day and freeze at night. They do most of their fighting on a litre of water and a packet of army biscuits. What is life in such a hostile environment?
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French Ragtag Army’s Desperate Winter Battles 1871

Filed under: France, Germany, History, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Real Time History
Published 6 Jan 2022

Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/realtimehistory

One of the last bastions of French resistance in the new year 1871 is Belfort. A ragtag army called “Army of the East” rushes to free the city near the Swiss border. Meanwhile the Germans prepare to announce their Empire in Versailles.

» THANK YOU TO OUR CO-PRODUCERS
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» OUR PODCAST
https://realtimehistory.net/podcast – interviews with historians and background info for the show.

» LITERATURE
Arand, Tobias: 1870/71. Der Deutsch-Französische Krieg erzählt in Einzelschicksalen. Hamburg 2018

Buk-Swienty, Tom: Schlachtbank Düppel. 18. April 1864. Die Geschichte einer Schlacht. Berlin 2011

» SOURCES
Klein, Karl: Fröschweiler Chronik. Arand, Tobias/Bunnenberg, Christian (Hrsg.). Hamburg 2021.

Allorant, Salomé u.a. (Hrsg.): La République au défi de la guerre. Lettres et carnet de l’Année terrible (1870-1871). Amiens 2015

Fontane, Theodor: Der Krieg gegen Frankreich. Bd. 4. Berlin 1876

Goncourt, Edmond de: Journal des Goncourts. II.1. 1870-1871. Paris 1890

Meisner, Heinrich Otto (Hrsg.): Kaiser Friedrich III. Das Kriegstagebuch von 1870/71. Berlin, Leipzig 1926

N. N. (Hrsg.): Bismarcks Briefe an seine Gattin aus dem Kriege 1870/71. Stuttgart, Berlin 1903

Pflugk-Harttung, Julius: Krieg und Sieg 1870-71. Berlin 1896

Sheridan, Philip H.: Von Gravelotte nach Paris. Erinnerungen aus dem deutsch-französischem Kriege. Leipzig 1889

Zeitz, Karl: Kriegserinnerungen eines Feldzugsfreiwilligen aus den Jahren 1870 und 1871. Altenburg 1905

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»CREDITS
Presented by: Jesse Alexander
Written by: Cathérine Pfauth, Prof. Dr. Tobias Arand, Jesse Alexander
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Sound: Above Zero
Editing: Toni Steller
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Maps: Battlefield Design
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Fact checking: Cathérine Pfauth, Prof. Dr. Tobias Arand

Channel Design: Battlefield Design

Contains licensed material by getty images
All rights reserved – Real Time History GmbH 2022

QotD: British intelligentsia and imperial decline

Filed under: Britain, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… the general weakening of imperialism, and to some extent of the whole British morale, that took place during the nineteen-thirties, was partly the work of the left-wing intelligentsia, itself a kind of growth that had sprouted from the stagnation of the Empire.

It should be noted that there is now no intelligentsia that is not in some sense “Left”. Perhaps the last right-wing intellectual was T.E. Lawrence. Since about 1930 everyone describable as an “intellectual” has lived in a state of chronic discontent with the existing order. Necessarily so, because society as it was constituted had no room for him. In an Empire that was simply stagnant, neither being developed nor falling to pieces, and in an England ruled by people whose chief asset was their stupidity, to be “clever” was to be suspect. If you had the kind of brain that could understand the poems of T.S. Eliot or the theories of Karl Marx, the higher-ups would see to it that you were kept out of any important job. The intellectuals could find a function for themselves only in the literary reviews and the left-wing political parties.

The mentality of the English left-wing intelligentsia can be studied in half a dozen weekly and monthly papers. The immediately striking thing about all these papers is their generally negative, querulous attitude, their complete lack at all times of any constructive suggestion. There is little in them except the irresponsible carping of people who have never been and never expect to be in a position of power. Another marked characteristic is the emotional shallowness of people who live in a world of ideas and have little contact with physical reality. Many intellectuals of the Left were flabbily pacifist up to 1935, shrieked for war against Germany in the years 1935-9, and then promptly cooled off when the war started. It is broadly though not precisely true that the people who were most “anti-Fascist” during the Spanish civil war are most defeatist now. And underlying this is the really important fact about so many of the English intelligentsia – their severance from the common culture of the country.

George Orwell, “The Lion And The Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius”, 1941-02-19.

January 6, 2022

The war on “ultra-processed food”

Filed under: Britain, Business, Food, Health, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Our self-imagined “elites” have a new crusade to prosecute — the crusade against “ultra-processed food”:

In “public health”, the name of the game is to interfere with people’s lives without having your own choices meddled with. This is straightforward with smoking since the philosopher kings of the nanny state don’t smoke. Alcohol is more tricky since most of them drink, but minimum pricing — which was introduced in Ireland yesterday — offers the perfect way to penalise ordinary people while leaving fine wine and craft beer unaffected.

The war on food poses the trickiest problem since its pretext — obesity — is the result of over-consumption and physical inactivity rather than the consumption of any specific type of food. “Junk food” is too narrow since most people interpret it to mean “fast food” from a handful of restaurant chains. And so, in the absence of an obvious dietary culprit, the “public health” lobby is shifting towards a crusade against “ultra-processed food”.

Most people don’t know what this means, but it sounds bad if you have an instinctive objection to industry and modernity. Perhaps it evokes thoughts of “chemicals” and “E numbers”. Certainly, it sounds like the opposite of the “natural”, “organic” and “home made” food so beloved of those who think they are superior to other people. It is, however, a classic “public health” bait and switch. Just as people didn’t realise that a ban on “junk food” advertising would result in adverts for cheese and butter being banned, people won’t realise what a war on ultra-processed food means for them until it is too late.

In a deranged op-ed in BMJ Global Health, some of Mike Bloomberg’s minions from Vital Strategies call for tobacco-style regulation of “ultra-processed food”, starting with warning labels.

    Simply put, ultra-processed foods are foods that can’t be made in your home kitchen because they have been chemically or physically transformed using industrial processes. They are recognisable on the supermarket shelf as packaged foods that are ready-to-eat, contain more than five ingredients and have a long shelf-life. The industrial processing, as well as the cocktail of additives, flavours, emulsifiers and colours they contain to give flavour and texture, make the final product hyper-palatable or more appealing and potentially addictive, which in turn leads to poor dietary patterns.

    With more than half the total calories consumed in high-income countries coming from ultra-processed foods and rapid increases in low- and middle-income countries, these products are exposing billions of people to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, depression and death.

Scary stuff, eh? Alas, they don’t give any examples of ultra-processed foods so let us instead turn to a recently published study about them …

    Baked goods, including cakes, pastries, industrial breads, and soft drinks ranked among the top contributors to sales of UPFDs [ultra-processed food and drinks]

According to the the British Heart Foundation, ultra-processed foods include …

    Ice cream, ham, sausages, crisps, mass-produced bread, breakfast cereals, biscuits, carbonated drinks, fruit-flavoured yogurts, instant soups, and some alcoholic drinks including whisky, gin, and rum.

I’m not sure how hard liquor made the cut, but I suppose if you’re going be a fun sponge you might as well go all the way.

Chinese Spymasters – The New Warlords? – WW2 – Spies & Ties 12

Filed under: Britain, China, History, Japan, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 5 Jan 2022

During World War Two, China was ripped up by many different warring parties, all of which were also playing spy games with crosses, double-crosses and triple-crosses.
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The 1874 Gras: France Enters the Brass Cartridge Era

Filed under: France, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 6 May 2019

After the disaster of the Franco-Prussian War, it was clear to the French military that the rationale for using paper cartridge in the Chassepot was no longer valid — a future rifle would need to use brass cartridges. A competition to design a conversion of the Chassepot to use modern ammunition resulted in the 1874 adoption of the rifle designed by French Artillery Captain Basile Gras. This maintained the use of the bolt handle as a single locking lug, but introduced a separate bolt head and extractor. The new cartridge was the 11mm Gras; very similar to the Chassepot loading but at a slightly higher velocity.

The Gras would be produced from 1874 until 1884, with more than 4 million made in total. Most were full length infantry rifles, but two patterns of carbine and a musketoon were also included for cavalry, gendarmerie, and artillery troops. These rifles saw significant use in colonial conflicts, but the much-anticipated war of revenge against Germany would not happen while the Gras was the standard French rifle. Instead, it would see a supporting role in the First World War, both in the original 11mm caliber and also converted to 8mm Lebel.

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January 5, 2022

History Summarized: The Ottoman Empire

Filed under: Europe, History, Humour, Middle East, Military, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 5 Oct 2018

Leave it to the furniture boys to pioneer a Comfort-First attitude towards Imperialism.

Join Blue in investigating the history of the Ottoman empire, and find out why “The Sick Man of Europe” is more than their nickname implies.

Further reading: Osman’s Dream by Caroline Finkel

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John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Filed under: Books, Britain — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In The Critic, David Engels outlines the early life and career of J.R.R. Tolkien:

The biography of the British writer and philologist John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) is quickly summarised and, despite a few unusual cornerstones such as his early childhood in South Africa, the tragic death of his parents and the highly romantic love for his later wife Edith, not very spectacular. An existence confined entirely to the British Isles except for a few forays into the continent; a military service in the Great War only moderately traumatic compared to other fates; an honourable but hardly groundbreaking academic career; a life as father of a family that knew the most varied but hardly extraordinary fortunes.

Not really the stuff of legends — except for the global success of The Lord of the Rings, which arrived too late to set Tolkien’s existence on a different course. The (deeply unsatisfying) 2019 film adaptation of Tolkien’s youth attempts to surround him with the aura of a scholarly genius and war hero, and to explain his literary work biographically — but this reductionist attempt rather hinders the understanding of his oeuvre. Tolkien’s works are not exceptional because his life was: on the contrary, their exceptionality only gains its full significance when they are understood against the background of an altogether quite normal existence.

Of course, with such an undramatic approach, it is tempting to associate Tolkien’s enormous mythopoeic activity with the catchword “escapism”, and to reduce it once again to his biography, albeit this time not as a correspondence but as a compensation. This, too, misses the point — all the more so because Tolkien’s earliest literary activity goes far back into his teenage years: his work is not a reaction to his life, but rather the two grew in union, not unlike the mythical trees Telperion and Laurelin. Indeed, one might even regard Tolkien’s rather ordinary academic and family life as a consequence of his consuming, lifelong work on myth rather than the other way around. But what was Tolkien’s intention — and what can we learn from him?

In the beginning, there was disappointment. The Anglo-Saxon world, unlike France or Germany, has scarcely left any traces of an indigenous myth tradition; even the saga of King Arthur belongs to the pre-Anglo-Saxon, Celtic tradition. The Norman Conquest destroyed the entire Anglo-Saxon legend tradition, apart from a few nursery rhymes and place names and a very brittle literary corpus.

As an ardent lover of the Northwest of the Old World, the young Tolkien felt cut off from his own heritage and enthusiastically took up Indo-European linguistics as a technique for reconstructing the historical and mythical tradition of times long past. He set about, partly in play, partly in earnest, creatively deciphering and reconstructing the hitherto misunderstood evidence of England’s dark centuries. In the process, the boundary between etymology and mythopoetics quickly blurred, as Tolkien enriched the hypothetical material obtained by merging it with the archetypal content of the other legends of the ancient world. He created a mythical tradition that took on a character of its own.

But it would be wrong to interpret this legendarium, which was born out of linguistics but soon took on increasingly literary features, as a mere poetic game. Especially in the initial phase of his attempts, Tolkien endeavoured to introduce the increasingly coherent legends and sagas, which are known to the general public mainly through the posthumous Silmarillion and the publishing activities of his son Christopher, by use of a wide variety of framework plots, some of which have an old Anglo-Saxon character and some which are set in modern times. The leitmotif was the dream of the great wave that swallowed up a green island, which later became the seed of the “Fall of Númenor”; an image that haunted Tolkien himself often enough in his sleep and led him to state that those images, recorded partly in dreams and partly in a half-awake state, were not to be regarded as mere fiction, but rather as access to something true and permanent, which he fleshed out in various literary ways, but whose core consistently bore the character of a vision.

Spartan BLACK BROTH | Melas Zomos

Filed under: Europe, Food, Greece, History — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 6 Oct 2020

If you’ve ever wanted to be a Spartan warrior, then making a bowl of Melas Zomos is just a part of the process. Today, I cover each step in making both Melas Zomos and in making a Spartan warrior.

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The Deipnosophistai by Athenaeus: https://amzn.to/3my5v8D
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A Companion to Sparta by Anton Powell: https://amzn.to/3c94PSq
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MELAS ZOMOS
INGREDIENTS
– 2lb (1kg) Pig Leg (or other pork product)
– 2 Cups (1/2 liter) Pig Blood
– 1 Cup (235ml) White Wine Vinegar
– 2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
– 1 Tsp Salt
– 4 Cups (1 Litre) Water
– 3 Bay Leaf
– 1 Large Chopped Onion

METHOD
1. Set a large stock pot over medium heat, then add the olive oil and onions and cook until tender and lightly brown, about 10 minutes.
2. Add the chopped pork to the pot book for another 10 minutes.
3. Pour in the vinegar and 3-4 cups of water (4 if you have fresh pig’s blood, 3 if you have coagulated blood), the salt and the bay leaves. Once boiling, lower the heat to medium low and let the soup simmer, covered, for 45 minutes to and hour or until the pork is cooked through.
4. Add the pork blood* and simmer for 15 minutes more, then serve.
*If you are using coagulated pork blood, mix it with the final cup of water in a blender and blend until most of it is liquid. Strain out any large chunks and add the liquid to the soup.

PHOTO CREDITS
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Schwarzsauer: Overbergderivative work / https://bit.ly/2ZJxBUq
Dinuguan with puto: Lambanog / https://bit.ly/3mrLyAg
Odaker: https://bit.ly/2ZKFRUi
Plutarch Bust: Odyssey / https://bit.ly/2FAYO54
Roman mosaic from Dougga: Pascal Radigue / https://bit.ly/2E6Wu4Y
Greek Vase with Child: National Archaeological Museum of Athens / https://bit.ly/2H04tlo
Sarcophagus Marcus Cornelius Statius: Louvre Museum / https://bit.ly/2ZK3bla
Dionysus with Hermes on Jug: MatthiasKabel – https://bit.ly/2FECCqL
Mt Taygetus: Gepsimos – https://bit.ly/32A4SU8
Eurotas River: Gepsimos / https://bit.ly/2Fv4AVY
Xerxes: Darafsh / https://bit.ly/2H0lWds

January 4, 2022

J.K. Rowling’s subversive tale of a government “controlled by and for the benefit of the self-interested bureaucrat”

Filed under: Books, Britain, Bureaucracy, Government, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

No, it’s not a new work by Rowling … it’s a deeply embedded thread of her best-known books in the Harry Potter series (as related in a 2005 article by Benjamin H. Barton for the Michigan Law Review):

J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books include a very strong anti-authoritarian thread.

This Essay examines what the Harry Potter series (and particularly the most recent book, The Half-Blood Prince) tells us about government and bureaucracy. There are two short answers. The first is that Rowling presents a government (The Ministry of Magic) that is 100% bureaucracy. There is no discernable executive or legislative branch, and no elections. There is a modified judicial function, but it appears to be completely dominated by the bureaucracy, and certainly does not serve as an independent check on governmental excess.

Second, government is controlled by and for the benefit of the self-interested bureaucrat. The most cold-blooded public choice theorist could not present a bleaker portrait of a government captured by special interests and motivated solely by a desire to increase bureaucratic power and influence. Consider this partial list of government activities: a) torturing children for lying; b) utilizing a prison designed and staffed specifically to suck all life and hope out of the inmates; c) placing citizens in that prison without a hearing; d) allows the death penalty without a trial; e) allowing the powerful, rich or famous to control policy and practice; f) selective prosecution (the powerful go unpunished and the unpopular face trumped-up charges); g) conducting criminal trials without independent defense counsel; h) using truth serum to force confessions; i) maintaining constant surveillance over all citizens; j) allowing no elections whatsoever and no democratic lawmaking process; k) controlling the press.

This partial list of activities brings home just how bleak Rowling’s portrait of government is. The critique is even more devastating because the governmental actors and actions in the book look and feel so authentic and familiar. Cornelius Fudge, the original Minister of Magic, perfectly fits our notion of a bumbling politician just trying to hang onto his job. Delores Umbridge is the classic small-minded bureaucrat who only cares about rules, discipline, and her own power. Rufus Scrimgeour is a George Bush-like war leader, inspiring confidence through his steely resolve. The Ministry itself is made up of various sub-ministries with goofy names (e.g., The Goblin Liaison Office or the Ludicrous Patents Office) enforcing silly sounding regulations (e.g., The Decree for the Treatment of Non-Wizard Part-Humans or The Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery). These descriptions of government jibe with our own sarcastic views of bureaucracy and bureaucrats: bureaucrats tend to be amusing characters that propagate and enforce laws of limited utility with unwieldy names. When you combine the light-hearted satire with the above list of government activities, however, Rowling’s critique of government becomes substantially darker and more powerful. Furthermore, Rowling eliminates many of the progressive defenses of bureaucracy. The most obvious omission is the elimination of the democratic defense. The first line of attack against public choice theory is always that bureaucrats must answer to elected officials, who must in turn answer to the voters. Rowling eliminates this defense by presenting a wholly unelected government.

H/T to Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds for the link.

Peninsular War: Why were British infantry so successful?

Filed under: Britain, Europe, France, History, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Redcoat: British military history
Published 16 Dec 2021

Why were the British redcoats so successful in the Peninsular war? There were many reasons, but amongst them was the way regiments were organised and the tactics they employed.

If you are interested in the Zulu War, then please sign up for my mailing list to receive my free book on the subject: www.redcoathistory.com

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Ayn Rand: The Virtue of Selfishness

Filed under: Books, History, Liberty, Media, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Biographics
Published 21 Jan 2021

Pretty excited for our first weird comment section of 2021.

Simon’s Social Media:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SimonWhistler
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/simonwhistler/

Source/Further reading:

Britannica biography: https://www.britannica.com/biography/…

Biography: https://www.biography.com/writer/ayn-…

American National Biography: https://www.anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/…

Biography via the Ayn Rand Institute: http://aynrandlexicon.com/about-ayn-r…

Claremont Review of Books, two biographies of Ayn Rand: https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/wh…

NY Mag: https://nymag.com/arts/books/features…

Slate, the liberal view, but some good details on her childhood: https://slate.com/culture/2009/11/two…

Rand and religion: https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-you-…

Rand and social security: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ayn…

Sex in The Fountainhead: https://medium.com/curious/discussing…

February Revolution in Russia: https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-w…

October Revolution in Russia: https://www.history.com/topics/russia…

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