some history books (2)

This time about France:

• France, mediaeval and modern, a history [1918]
• Medieval France : a companion to French studies [1922]

Also, let's not forget John Merriman's course France Since 1871 at Open Yale.

some history books

A few history books from the Internet Archive which I have read or intend to read. Of course, the scolarship may be obsolete but, keeping that in mind, they may be good reads nonetheless.

• Jacob Burckhardt: The Civilization Of The Renaissance In Italy. Includes a good amount of pictures.
• James Bryce: The Holy Roman Empire (1902). I have found surprisingly few histories of the Holy Roman Empire as such, maybe I haven't searched well.
• John Bagnell Bury: History of the later Roman Empire (1923). And here's part II.
• Oscar Browning: Guelphs & Ghibellines: A Short History of Mediaeval Italy (1893).
• Ferdinand Schevill: Siena The History Of A Mediaeval Commune (1909).
• Edmund Garratt Gardner: Saint Catherine of Siena, a study in the religion, literature, and history of the fourteenth century in Italy (1907). A modern work of scolarship like The saintly politics of Catherine of Siena regards this book as "still useful", and indeed it is an interesting read. The chapters alternate between closely following the life of the saint and explaining the wider historical context. The book's only defect is that it skimps on the more scabrous and entertaining details of Catherine's life, like her claim of having a magical invisible ring made out of Christ's Holy Prepuce, or her pus-drinking episode.
• Duncan B. Macdonald: Development Of Muslim Theology Jurisprudence And Constitutional Theory (1903).

God's mathematics

Set theory can be viewed as a form of exact theology.

—Rudy Rucker.

[speaking about Set Theory] God's mathematics, which we should leave for God to do.

—Errett Bishop.

Some books on Set Theory: Thomas Jech's Set Theory and The Axiom of Choice, Akihiro Kanamori's The Higher Infinite, Michael Potter's Set Theory and Its Philosophy.

Currently trying to digest a book on Real Analysis, while painstakingly following the down-to-the-last-detail proofs available at Metamath.

take a walk then write a letter

Two interesting bibliographies:

• Travel and Landscape.
• Secondary Studies of Epistolary Literature.

Internet Archive find of the day

Vol II of Pascual de Gayangos' translation of Ahmed Mohammed al-Maqqari's History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain.

P.S. Also this online book: Christian Martyrs in Muslim Spain.

P.P.S. More in this earlier post.

Death at Yale

Initiatives like MIT's OpenCourseWare and Yale's Open Courses are truly wonderful. Yay for the Internet! Some of the courses I try to follow when I find a spare hour here and there:

• PHIL 176 - Death, Spring 2007 (Yale).
• ECON 159 - Game Theory, Fall 2007 (Yale).
• ECON 252 - Financial Markets, Spring 2008 (Yale).
• Differential Equations Spring 2006 (MIT).

I'm finding the last one a most welcome refresher, since my knowledge of calculus had become exceedingly rusty.

P.S. This blog seems to be a good resource for finding this kind of material.

Medieval Spain

• James F. Powers: A society organized for war. The Iberian Municipal Militias in the Central Middle Ages, 1000-1284.
• Bernard F. Reilly: The Kingdom of León-Castilla under Queen Urraca, 1109-1126 .

Both of these books are mentioned in José Luis Villacañas Berlanga's La Formación de los Reinos Hispánicos.

economic podcasts

Here. They have helped me understand a little better the subprime debacle. These ones look good too.

The following book from the Internet Archive also looks interesting:

• Money, Banking And Credit In Mediaeval Bruges [1948]

Edit. And the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.

A survivor of the Spanish Armada

I didn't know about Francisco de Cuellar's account until recently, when an article in a national newspaper brought it to my attention.

The account is available in English at the Internet Archive, and also here. See here for the untranslated Spanish text.

My mind is expanding

...thanks to this comprehensive bibliography of the Philosophy of the Mind, edited by David Chalmers.

Assorted links

• Nick Szabo's essay on the origins of money. See also this other one.
• A survey of player-NPC dialogue systems in games. See also Dialog System on Wikipedia.
• An interview with Lee Kuan Yew. See also Social Development Unit on Wikipedia.
• My favorite part of David Hume's "A Treatise of Human Nature".

Henry Crabb Robinson

Henry Crabb Robinson residió en A Coruña como corresponsal de The Times durante la Guerra de la Independencia.

El periodista Elías Durán de Porras ha escrito un libro sobre su estancia: "The Times y La Guerra de la Independencia. Henry Crabb Robinson y la corresponsalía de The Times en A Coruña (1808-1809)". Ver los artículos en La Voz de Galicia y La Opinión Coruña.

Tres volúmenes de sus diarios y correspondencia están disponibles en el Internet Archive:

• Diary, reminiscences, and correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson. (Volume 1. Volume 2. Volume 3.)

(Hablando de ingleses en Galicia, aquí hay un blog escrito por uno.)

Hoarding ebooks

We have books whose papers are matted of plants from which spring curious alkaloids, so that the reader, in turning their pages, is taken unaware by bizarre fantasies and chimeric dreams. Books whose pages are not paper at all, but delicate wafers of white jade, ivory, and shell; books too whose pages are the desiccated leaves of unknown plants. Books we have also that are not books at all to the eye: scrolls and tablets and recordings of a hundred different substances. There is a cube of crystal here -though I can no longer tell you where- no larger than the ball of your thumb that contains more books that the library itself does. Though a harlot might dangle it from one ear as an ornament, there are not volumes enough in the world to counterweight the other.

(Gene Wolfe: Shadow of the Torturer)

Inconspicuously lodged among my books, there is a CD box which is slowly being filled with content downloaded from places like the Internet Archive and Google Books. I'm pretty sure the box holds more books than my "real" library, if that's not the case already, it will soon be.

I know that having permanent local copies of all that content is stupid. Why don't just create some bookmarks, and download each text just before reading? But some primitive part of my brain with an atavistic penchant for hoarding wants it that way.

Reading a book from the screen is always a painful experience, but I've found that reading DJVU files is slightly better that reading HTML or plain text. These latter formats seem strangely unsubstantial and fragile, the letters ready to scatter like fallen leaves and the merest stirring in the electronic ether. Raster formats like DJVU feel more weighty, less impermanent. Some books from the Internet Archive even have scribbled marginalia, which goes a long way to give the feeling of a real book. (Supposedly, this digitized copy of Amiel's journal has notes and marginalia by none other than Herny Miller.) Some recent finds:

• Sir Henry Layard: Early adventures in Persia, Susiana, and Babylonia. part 1. part 2.
• Baron de Tott: Memoirs.
• Rafael Cansinos-Asséns: Salomé en la literatura.
• Trollope: Domestic Manners of the Americans. part 1. part 2.
• Oliver Wendell Holmes: The autocrat of the breakfast-table.

Eerie!

As one commenter to this BLDGBLOG post notes, the long-exposure photographs by Alexey Titarenko for City of Shadows are reminiscent of some paintings by Zdzisław Beksiński featuring massed corpses marching.

Like this one.

Happy nightmares!

Atlantropa

The blog Strange Maps is consistently interesting. Check out this post about a crazy project to dam the Mediterranean.

A perfect day

Today happened to be a perfect day.

Maybe too perfect. I'm wary about so much happiness; maybe Destiny is trying to lull me into a false sense of security before unleashing some terrible catastrophe.

Anyway, here's what Lou Reed has to say about the matter.

Timur, Babur, oh my!

Narrative of the Embassy of Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo to the Court of Timour

The Mulfuzat Timury; or, Autobiographical memoirs of the Moghul Emperor Timur

The Babur-nama in English (Memoirs of Babur) (Volume 1)

The Babur-nama in English (Memoirs of Babur) (Volume 2)

Edit: And also A History Of Afghanistan Vol. I

La Epístola del Perdón

Una traducción al castellano de la obra de Abu al-'Ala' al-Ma'arri Epístola del Perdón se puede descargar de esta página. La traducción se realizó como parte de una tesis.

Internet Archive find of the day

An audiobook version of the Pilgrimage of Egeria.

Travel Narratives

Divers and Sundry has posted an extensive list of travel narratives, with links.