Word: accountably
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...points to a problem that has hounded the discipline in recent years - its tendency toward clubby academic isolation. A fine antidote to this trend is John Burrow's A History of Histories: Epics, Chronicles, Romances and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century, an ambitious and accessible account of the historian's craft over the last 2,500 years. In the tradition of Ford Madox Ford's The March of Literature and Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy, Burrow's book is at once idiosyncratic and encyclopedic. A former professor of European thought at Oxford University...
...pervasive" impact of the Bible on history - for example, in the writings of the 6th century French Bishop Gregory of Tours, whom he dubs "Trollope with blood." Equally intriguing is Burrow's discussion of the secular historian Geoffrey of Monmouth, a fabricator who claimed that his 12th century account of King Arthur was in fact a translation of an early work in Welsh - one that nobody else has ever been able to unearth. Geoffrey's "pseudo history," writes Burrow, dressed up myth as fact, thereby launching Arthur and his knights as potent symbols of Britain's "emerging ethos of chivalry...
Inevitably, the immensity of Burrow's task requires as much omission as inclusion, and from the get-go he states his intention to bypass memoirs. Fortunately, at first, he seems to forget his own criterion. For instance, several pages are devoted to Xenophon's The Persian Expedition, a masterful account of a small Greek army trapped behind enemy lines, deep in the heart of the Persian Empire. Yet one of the stars of the show was Xenophon himself, his book a subtle piece of self-promotion. Likewise, Burrow makes a welcome exception for a memoir by Bernal...
...Battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartans under King Leonidas stood up to several thousand invading Persian troops, refusing to retreat and meeting certain death. But now their source is Frank Miller's graphic novel 300, the movie it inspired, or the video-game tie-in, not the original account by Herodotus. On one level this is lamentable, but at least this tale of extraordinary heroism lives on, and children continue to be moved by the self-sacrifice of the Spartans...
...Harvard undergraduate has been caught producing fake state driver’s licenses and Harvard IDs, including some that would have allowed access to campus buildings and Crimson Cash accounts, University officials said Monday. Theodore R. Pak '09 is currently under investigation in connection with the false documents, his roommate said Monday night. The Middlesex district attorney's office is investigating the matter with the help of the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD). Harvard officials notified all Crimson Cash account holders on Monday of the breach and suggested that they review their accounts for suspicious activity. Crimson Cash allows Harvard...