Larry Gonick is a veteran American cartoonist best known for his delightful comic-book guides to science and history, many of which have previews online. Chief among them is his long-running
Cartoon History of the Universe (later
The Cartoon History of the Modern World), a sprawling multi-volume opus documenting everything from the Big Bang to the Bush administration. Published over the course of three decades, it takes a truly global view -- its time-traveling Professor thoroughly explores not only familiar topics like Rome and World War II but the oft-neglected stories of Asia and Africa, blending caricature and myth with careful scholarship (cited by
fun illustrated bibliographies) and tackling even the most obscure events
with intelligence and wit. This savvy satire carried over to Gonick's
Zinn-by-way-of-
Pogo chronicle
The Cartoon History of the United States, along with a bevy of
Cartoon Guides to other topics, including
Genetics, Computer Science, Chemistry, Physics, Statistics, The Environment, and (yes!)
Sex. Gonick has also maintained a few sideprojects, such as
a webcomic look at Chinese invention,
assorted math comics (
previously), the
Muse magazine mainstay
Kokopelli & Co. (featuring the shenanigans of his
"New Muses"), and
more. See also
these lengthy interview snippets, linked
previously. Want more? Amazon links to the complete oeuvre inside!
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Jun 6, 2011 -
29 comments
Res Obscura is a blog by Ben Breen, a graduate student of early modern history, which styles itself "a compendium of obscure things." Indeed, even the asides are full of wonder, such as the one about Boy, the famous Royalist war poodle of the English Civil War, which is but a short addendum to
a post about witches' familiars. Here are some of my favorite posts,
Pirate Surgeon in Panama (and a related
post about 18th Century Jamaica),
vanished civilizations,
asemic pseudo-Arabic and -Hebrew writing in Renaissance art, and a series of posts about the way the Chinese and Japanese understood the world outside Asia in the early modern period (
Europeans as 'Other',
Europeans as 'Other,' Redux and
Early Chinese World Maps).
posted by Kattullus
on Sep 30, 2010 -
16 comments
A Minute and 100 Metres Down the Road. The soldier outside the station had one hand on the barrel and the other on the butt of his shotgun. There were two military trucks by the bus stop and two soldiers in the back-right seats of every bus leaving Urumqi station... I arrived via long-haul train, 40 hours and just under 4000km in a hard-seat, from Beijing, where rumours were circulating about the extent of the military presence, needle attacks, Uighur and Han street gangs, and the validity of the reports coming out of Xinjiang. After four days I left with more doubts about why ethnic tensions in Urumqi arose and how they could be resolved. [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu
on Jun 27, 2010 -
2 comments
We've had
excerpts before, but this is the full performance.
Nixon in China, with music by John Adams, libretto by Alice Goodman and choreography by Mark Morris. Directed by Peter Sellars, conducted by John DeMain, and presented by Walter Chronkite. Houston Grand Opera, 1987. Parts
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
posted by Navelgazer
on Jun 7, 2010 -
17 comments
Man from the Margin: Cao Cao and the Three Kingdoms You'll perhaps have
read or
watched reports that archaeologists believe they have found the tomb of Cao Cao (曹操) (of course,
not everyone agrees with the identification). Warrior, strategist, statesman and
poe
t, Cao Cao lives on in the cultural memory of China, a
by-word for cunning and of course a central character in the great historical novel
Romance of the Three Kingdoms and hence also recent John Woo blockbuster
Red Cliff. To understand the man in his historical context, there's little better in English than the 1990 George Ernest Morrison Lecture in Ethnology given by now-retired Professor
Rafe de Crespigny, one of the foremost Western scholars of the Han Dynasty and Three Kingdoms periods of Chinese history. He makes several of his vastly erudite essays on Chinese history available at the
ANU's website.
posted by Abiezer
on Dec 30, 2009 -
21 comments
In 2010,
Obama will have a miserable year,
NATO may lose in Afghanistan,
the UK gets a regime change,
China needs to chill,
India's factories will overtake its farms,
Europe risks becoming an irrelevant museum,
the stimulus will need an exit strategy,
the G20 will see a challenge from the "G2",
African football will
unite Korea,
conflict over natural resources will grow,
Sarkozy will be unloved and unrivalled,
the kids will come together to solve the world's problems (because their elders are unable),
technology will grow ever more ubiquitous,
we'll all charge our phones via USB,
MBAs will be uncool,
the Space Shuttle will be put to rest, and
Somalia will be the worst country in the world. And so
the Tens begin.
The Economist: The World in 2010.
[more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Nov 14, 2009 -
60 comments
Preserved in the cave excavations of
Mogao and listing 1,339 stars the
Dunhuang Star Chart is the
oldest graphical star atlas known to exist. Dated to between 649 and 684 AD, it features two sections. The first consists of 26 diagrams of asterisms (including a recognizable Big Dipper and Orion) and the second contains 12 star maps each showing a 30 degree east-west section of sky in cylindrical projection plus an azimuthal projection circumpolar map. Star positions are accurate to within 1.5 degrees and it includes some stars in the southern sky.
[more inside]
posted by Mitheral
on Jun 28, 2009 -
10 comments
Although I Am Dead (
YouTube) (Parts
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10) Compelling documentary by
Hu Jie (胡杰) on the death during the Cultural Revolution of Bian Zhongyun (卞仲耘), recalled by her now octogenarian husband. He photographed her corpse after she was beaten to death by Red Guards, students at the middle school of which she was deputy principal. The film's inclusion in the documentary section of
YunFest has apparently led to the
authorities shutting down the event.
(Via)
posted by Abiezer
on Apr 5, 2007 -
19 comments
Is
Gavin Menzies the Stephen Wolfram of history? That's the question
today's New York Times (login:
dr_mabuse, pw:
mabuse) suggests in a Menzies profile. Menzies has a new book out,
1421, which claims that the Chinese discovered America seven decades before Columbus did.
Some people have made similarly precise claims about this planet's developments.
Others have seen their amateur claims initially mocked and later proven to be correct. Is Menzies onto something or is he a crank? And how do we place the passionate amateur within the realm of scholarly pursuits?
posted by ed
on Jan 5, 2003 -
17 comments
Am I the only one who doesn't think
this is news? This story also showed up
here a few days ago. (more inside)
posted by kate_fairfax
on Nov 4, 2002 -
54 comments
The Long March - A Walking Visual Display. "Its aim is to take both contemporary Chinese and international art to a sector of the Chinese public that is rarely, perhaps never, exposed to such work. Specifically, we will bring art to those people who live in communities along the route of Mao Zedong's historic Long March. Mao's 'March' symbolized the deliverance of the Communist ideal to the Chinese proletariat. It is with this symbolism in mind that we now choose to march contemporary art out to China's peripheral population."
via ArtKrush
posted by Stan Chin
on Oct 21, 2002 -
5 comments
Japanese Devils is a documentary featuring 14 veterans of the Imperial Army testifying to their brutal participation in Japan's 15-year war against China. Director Matsui Minoru presents a powerful historical record of these soldiers' individual crimes, helping to break Japan's long silence about its wartime atrocities in China.
Please also see
Iris Chang's "The Rape of Nanking'' and be aware that the Japanese government is
still whitewashing their brutal WWII history via
school textbooks. We must understand the truth of history so that we are not doomed to repeat it.
posted by gen
on Apr 4, 2002 -
5 comments
Did China circumnavigate the globe before Magellan?
"When explorer Christopher Columbus landed in America in 1492, he was 72 years behind a Chinese expeditionary force, which had already made its way to the area.
And although Captain James Cook was credited with discovering Australia for the British Empire in 1770, the Chinese had mapped the island continent 337 years earlier."
All this was accomplished by a castrated eunuch named Zheng He.
What do you think?
posted by AsiaInsider
on Mar 4, 2002 -
33 comments
Los Angeles' Curious Role in the Chinese Revolution "The oddest among the group was a sickly, 88-pound hunchback Angeleno who had bad eyesight, an obsession with military glory and more than a touch of genius."
I can't describe this one. More interesting than anything Hollywood ever dreams up, that's for sure.
posted by drunkkeith
on Sep 2, 2001 -
2 comments
