or Powell's or me• • •
"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
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"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
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"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
October 23, 2004
Why We Must Stamp Out All Knowledge Of History
I'm a big admirer of Rahul Mahajan's website Empire Notes. Mahajan is particularly good at using history to illuminate current events, something I do more rarely and feebly.
Some excellent recent examples are this look back at various anti-colonial revolts, and this examination of the work of the recently-deceased uber-Crazy Paul Nitze. I especially enjoy this observation: "... even a nutty military fundamentalist [like Nitze] can appear quite sane next to Bush."
Posted at October 23, 2004 06:55 AM | TrackBackJonathan,
Although I'd read and appreciated Rahul Mahajan's book on terrorism for MR Press, somehow the fact that he had a blog hadn't penetrated my consciousness until I read your post about it today. Thanks for that--there's some smart and thoughtful material on Empire Notes, and I've given the readers of my own blog, DIRELAND, a heads-up today about Mahajan's blog, which you can read by clicking on
http://direland.typepad.com/
All the best, Doug Ireland
