Review: "The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949" by S.C.M. Paine

The United States likes to think of itself and its actions as of singular importance to world history. Like its sometimes nemesis China, the United States saw itself as a veritable middle kingdom during the 20th century - winning wars, unilaterally arbitrating world affairs, and dispatching challengers to its hegemony be they friend (like Great Britain) or foe (like the Soviet Union). Nowhere is this exceptionalist narrative more in evidence than when examining American military involvement in Asia during World War II. American military success in the Pacific - at Midway, Guadalcanal, and Iwo Jima - are the building blocks for high school surveys of American history and much of the weight on the twentieth century history shelves at your local brick-and-mortar bookseller. Often forgotten are the many American failures in Asia during World War II in Burma and, on the diplomatic front, in China. Even less remembered are the Asian nations and people who fought not only in World War II, but in the preceding Second Sino-Japanese War and later in the Chinese Civil War.

In her important new book The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949, S.C.M. Paine reconceptualizes World War II in East Asia by putting the major Asian countries - Japan, China (Nationalist and Communist), and the Soviet Union - back in the center of the narrative and placing the war itself in a larger context of East Asian conflict dating back to the collapse of China's Qing Dynasty in 1912. Paine begins by looking at the internal dynamics of the three Asian powers. Japan is portrayed as an expanding power constrained by its limited national resources and galvanized by a powerful military emboldened by a series of victories over the Chinese in 1895 and the Russians in 1905. Unlike Japan, China after 1912 was in disarray. The collapse of the Qing Dynasty led to nearly a decade of civil war as different warlords attempted to expand their spheres of influence and, if possible, unite all of China behind them. Chiang Kai-shek, head of the Guomindang or Nationalist Party, was finally able to unite much of the country in 1926 after the Northern Expedition. But as Paine expertly shows, Chiang's hold on power was always tenuous and led him to prioritize domestic enemies like the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) over foreign threats because the Japanese were "a disease of the skin" while the CCP was a "disease of the heart". Russia like China went through many changes between 1911 and 1949, having a communist revolution of her own in 1917. Unlike China however, Russia was able to unify and centralize quickly in time to repulse Japanese threats to their sovereignty at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939.

The rest of Paine's book is devoted to examining how these three powers struggled to dominate East Asia. She does this by viewing the many internal rebellions and local wars as a series of interrelated, nested conflicts for ideological and geopolitical supremacy. In particular, she highlights the short term operational success - battles won - by the Japanese in contrast to the long-term strategy of the Nationalists to "trade space for time." The Nationalists, for Paine, were not inept as has been portrayed by Barbara Tuchman and others, but instead knew they could not win a direct engagement with the Japanese in the late 1930s because of their disunity and under-equipped military. Chiang, having studied in Japan and knowing Japanese manpower and resource limitations, planned to wait out Japanese offensives and hope for foreign aid to drag the Japanese into a long and costly occupation. In Paine's estimation, this strategy was successful and, in more abstract terms, demonstrates the importance of long term strategy compared to operational victories.

Paine's emphasis on traditional aspects of military history - operations and strategy in particular - is also a significant shortcoming of The Wars for Asia. She laments in her acknowledgements that, "history departments across the United States virtually without exception have marginalized the study of war" despite its significance in avoiding future "foreign policy blunders in wars fought by others" (xi-xii). Yet, Paine's isolation of military operations and strategy from the realms of Asian cultures, societies, and ideas could act as a case study of why military history has become marginalized in academe. Furthermore, her study focuses overwhelmingly on military elites at the expense of any systematic examination of common Japanese, Chinese, and Russian soldiers.

The result of Paine's narrow focus on military operations and strategy is that her narrative fails to flout convention in the ways she intends. Yes, it is significant that she largely cuts the United States out of the story and it is important the she looks at the period between 1911 and 1949 as a period of continuous warfare instead of artificially segmented into separate conflicts. The actual storytelling however, because it is so concerned with specific battles and the grand strategies of leading men, is not dissimilar from what is found in textbooks on modern Asian history or in the Cambridge History of China.

One of the highlights of the book is its incredible archival research. Paine spent years learning Japanese, Chinese, and Russian and searching through Japanese, Taiwanese, and Russian archives to craft The Wars for Asia. Her emphasis on using native sources should act as a model for other military historians who study wars in East Asia. Unfortunately, her research has one glaring flaw: the absence of any archival research conducted in the People's Republic of China (PRC). While her book is not blatantly pro-Nationalist, the lack of engagement with PRC sources may explain why they are a secondary player in her narrative. For Paine, the CCP won the Chinese Civil War because of the destruction of the Japanese Ichigo Offensive and growing popular disenchantment among Chinese youth with Nationalist rule after decades of warfare (223-224). The CCP didn't so much win the Chinese Civil War as the Nationalists lost it. Perhaps looking through PRC archives would have painted a different story of an active CCP who won a series of military victories in North China because of superior strategy and troop morale instead of the inevitability of Nationalist failure.

Despite my criticisms of The Wars for Asia, I think it is an important book and a vast improvement over the military histories that preceded it. Paine, rightly, brings the focus of these wars back to the Asian nations that fought them. She also marshals significant archival evidence to support her shift away from the United States and to China, Japan, and Russia. Unfortunately, her larger mission to revitalize military history will continue to remain elusive until military historians begin to engage with literature from other history subfields. While it is undoubtedly true that in early 20th century East Asian "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun," greater emphasis needs to be put on why military power was so important during this era and how (if?) a total focus on military strength was transcended in the second half of the 20th century. Doing so will involve closer collaboration between historians of Asian cultures, societies, and ideas and military historians like Paine.

Protest Music as a Teaching Tool or, All is Not Lost After "Accidental Racist"

It has been a rough week for historians who love music. The popularity of the Brad Paisley/LL Cool J collaboration "Accidental Racist" - aside from showing the continued significance of David Blight's work - illustrates the ways music can be manipulated to cover social ills. For those lucky few who have not heard "Accidental Racist", the song features Brad Paisley as a proud Southerner who wears a Confederate flag t-shirt as a "proud rebel son" and "a Skynard fan" singing to an African-American baristo (voiced by LL Cool J) about why his glorification of his white, southern roots should not be confused with support for slavery or racism. Surprisingly, the baristo does not respond by spitting in Paisley's coffee or splashing it in his face, but with an impassioned defense of African-American inner city culture ("Just because my pants are saggin' doesn't mean I'm up to no good") and solidarity that both sides are merely "misunderstood." The song ends with some unfortunate lyrics ("If you don't judge my gold chains/I'll forget the iron chains [of slavery]") and presumably a postracial South.

Having read Blight's brilliant Race and Reunion the lyric "Can't rewrite history baby" rapped by Cool J is especially troubling. In the context of the song, Cool J is insinuating that this generation's white Southerners cannot be held accountable for the indiscretions of their forefathers. Interestingly, it raises the question of how post-Reconstruction Southern history has been rewritten to minimize Southern responsibility for slavery. All the typical tropes of this revisionist Southern history appear in "Accidental Racist". Paisley claims he is the "son of the new south", a South untainted by the legacy of slavery. He also dumps on Reconstruction for not fully rebuilding the South ("They called it Reconstruction, fixed the buildings, dried a few tears/We're still sifting through the rubble after one-hundred and fifty years") and pays his respects to Robert E. Lee ("RIP Robert E. Lee"). "Accidental Racist" is the perfect case study for how - as Blight has demonstrated - Southern reunion could only come through forgetting race and the bloodshed of the Civil War, not coming to terms with the horrors of black slavery and postwar segregation.

On a cheerier note, "Accidental Racist" did make me think about how effective music can be as a teaching tool. Like poetry, lyrics often condense complicated political messages into a few, easily understandable lines. Also, using non-traditional teaching tools like music can shake up the routine of class and allow students to see the material in a new way. Here are a few under appreciated protest music gems that I think would be particularly useful in the classroom.

Barbara Dane and the Chambers Brothers ~ "It Isn't Nice"



Dane, who still makes music, joined with the Chambers Brothers to make this classic song attacking liberal complaints that protest - nonviolent resistance in particular - was upsetting or inconvenient. This song documents that it isn't always "nice" to protest systematic oppression, but, in the climate of racial injustice Dane was commenting upon, it is often necessary.

Kinky Friedman ~ "We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to You"



Friedman is a country music icon and staple of the vibrant Austin music scene. Blending country with lyrics from his Jewish background, he created protests songs that made him sometimes sound like a Southern Dylan. "We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to You" is Friedman at his best. Friedman tells two stories of how he is refused service at a restaurant (because of his race, ethnicity, or political beliefs) and then at a local synagogue because of his politics. Taking the logic of denial of service a step farther, Friedman argues that if he can be refused service at a restaurant or religious establishment, he can deny the government military service as well. Friedman's defense of the refusal to go to Vietnam ("Let Saigons be bygones") puts in sharp relief the hypocrisy faced by minorities who were denied rights in the US, but were expected to embrace the obligation of military service.

Dave van Ronk ~ "Luang Prabang"



"Luang Prabang" is a terrifying song. With the same sarcasm and nihilism brilliantly depicted on screen by movies like "The Deer Hunter" and "Apocalypse Now", van Ronk tells America to "mourn your dead land of the free" and that "every corpse is a patriot" when telling the story of a "ballless wonder" castrated in Vietnam. Though it may be too violent for some students, van Ronk pulls no punches when explaining the horrors and violence of the Vietnam War.

Daniel, Fred, and Julie ~ "Halleluja I'm a Bum"



This is a contemporary cover of an IWW protest song. It satirizes the relationship between management and workers as well as the Presbyterian hymn "Revive Us" which is an exhortation of the restorative powers of work. Furthermore, it shows that bumming was preferable to many able bodied workers because of the horrible conditions suffered by American labor during the early 20th century.

Kris Kristofferson ~ "The Law is for the Protection of the People"



Kristofferson is an underrated political commentator. Perhaps it is because of his relationship with the flag-waving Johnny Cash or his movie star status, but "The Law is for the Protection of the People" sees Kristofferson mustering his considerable lyrical might in criticizing police violence against "hairy-headed hippies". Like other protest singers including Phil Ochs, Kristofferson reminds his audience that these same police justifications were used "when they nailed the Savior to the cross". In a class environment - where many students may only be familiar with the Jerry Falwell factions of evangelism - Kristofferson's music can be used to illustrate how religious language was frequently employed in political dissent in the 1970s and 1980s.

If anyone uses these songs in class I would be interested to hear about their reception. Please post any suggestions for further listening in the comments section. Also, I hope these songs do a small part to offset the popularity of "Accidental Racist" and show the ways music affirms that important of examining injustice historically instead of seeing history as something to transcend.

The Arc-Hive Mind?

I have spent this past week conducting preliminary research for my dissertation prospectus at the National Archives II in College Park, Maryland. While there I had an epiphany (of sorts) about the problems academic historians have reaching a broader public. Unlike, other critics that point to the difficulties presented by academic writing or stress that the nuance of academic histories are too much for the “average” reader (whoever that is), I think the problem is the archive or rather, the relationship between academic standards of evidence and narrative.

Two interrelated events led to my epiphany. Working at a massive research facility like Archives II, I was confronted by a dizzying array of brilliant historians and archivists. Everyone had a thoughtful research project. The reading room resembled a historian hive with researchers buzzing between carts, computers, and copy machines. The collection of source material divided into its binders, folders, boxes, and carts was overwhelming. But one thing was missing: narratives. There was no box labeled “Narratives” and you couldn’t find it searching through the online database (believe me, I tried).

After a long day at the archive, I was killing time in Dupont Circle before meeting friends for drinks. I wondered into Kramerbooks and Afterwords - a charming independent bookstore – and began browsing their history new releases section. Being a poor graduate student and an AmazonPrime Member, I rarely peruse the new history releases and was shocked by how few names I recognized despite being a professional (in training) historian. Flipping through books by Mark Kurlansky and other popular historians, I – again – noticed something was missing: the archive. Most of the evidence in the popular histories was from primary and secondary sources; unsurprisingly many journalists were partial to newspapers. These histories were overwhelmingly story-driven. The few histories I had read were from old or deceased academics like Hofstadter, Lasch, Schlesinger Jr., Zinn, and Woodward. It seemed as though the history academy had lost the popular support it once had during the 1960s and 1970s. But was their work really so different? Feeling confused, I walked out empty-handed.

I thought about all the hustle and bustle in the archives earlier in the day and wondered: where is the output from all this research going? Who is reading all the brilliant work produced by researchers at Archives II? How did popular historians come to fill the void left by academic historians of earlier eras?

Then I began to think of the archive. Hofstadter was notoriously archive-resistant. Lasch seems to have drifted from archival work as he became more of a public intellectual after the publication of The Culture of Narcissism in 1979. Schlesinger’s The Vital Center is almost entirely supported by secondary sources. I thought of all the little archive boxes filled to the brim with folders and wondered: are archives limiting our horizons as historians? This problem seems particularly acute with young historians who are trying to evince academic rigor to their senior colleagues. I remember writing my master’s thesis and building chapters around novel archival evidence instead of published material because I thought it would showcase my research ability. Narrative was often the last of my concerns or something I simply hoped would happen if I added enough biographical anecdotes.

Beyond limiting research, it also seems to exacerbate a bifurcation between academic historical research and politics. It seems to me that the archive creates another separate community – along with the academy and scholarly associations – that isolate academic historians from the public. Academic isolation has intensified the professorial argot, but more importantly it has led to group-think about what is important and how to communicate themes that academics believe are significant to a broader audience. I was shocked how few histories of race, sexuality, and gender were carried at a well-stocked independence bookstore (the ones that were carried being published by non-academic historians like Isabel Wilkerson). Military histories still predominate in bookstores and on television, despite its declining significance in the academy. As the Supreme Court debate over DOMA continues, the value of historical context to politics is readily apparent. Histories of gender and sexuality composed by articulate academics, if widely read, could help Americans understand why gay marriage is an important issue in the same way C. Vann Woodward’s The Strange Career of Jim Crow made legible the origins of the Civil Rights Movement.

Obviously, I think academic historians need to look beyond the archive and focus on storytelling to broaden our audience. Outgoing American Historical Association president William Cronon has already made this point in his annual address, so there is no point to belabor it here, but the question remains: how can professional historians be encouraged to publish books for public consumption while retaining high research standards? Though it will undoubtedly be a long and difficult process, I am confident an accommodation can be reached. It will mean, however, that historians will have to enter the scrum of politics where the rules of reasoned debate rarely hold. But getting a little dirty is a small price to pay for the transformative potential of academic historians acting as popular social critics.

Researchers at Archives II and other reading rooms across the globe have a tremendous wealth of information to share. It is time we began to focus on communicating that information to the widest popular audience. To accomplish this, researchers will need to leave the arc-hive and venture out with their knowledge to pollinate the world.

Finding My Vital Center Or, a Liberal Fever Dream

Riding eastbound on a train from Raleigh, North Carolina I was emotionally devastated by a surprising book: Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom. While I was moved differently from when I read a great work of fiction, I found myself vigorously underlining and exclamatory commenting my way through entire chapters of The Vital Center. I was particularly moved by his criticism of “Doughface” progressivism. Schlesinger’s attacks on the flabbiness and lethargy of progressive sensibility echoed with my own growing dissatisfaction with the naïve optimism in the far left I held in my teens and early twenties. Bouncing by the postindustrial wastelands of Wilson and Rocky Mount I couldn’t help, but wonder if America needed to revitalize its vital center politically and geographically.

Upon finishing the book, I tried to come to terms with why it hit me so hard. I didn’t even have to look past the title to get my answer. Now in my mid-twenties, I have never lived in a time when liberalism has had a center. I am a child of the age of fracture, an orphan of the culture wars. There is a part of me that longs for the perceived harmony of liberal consensus, a return to the simpler times of an imagined past.

As a privileged white male it is easy for me to long for the vital center. Robert O. Self has convincingly demonstrated how the vital center was founded on a white, male breadwinner ethos. Schlesinger admits to his 1997 introduction to The Vital Center that he neither paid sufficient attention to the burgeoning black freedom struggle or the contributions of women to liberalism (xiii-xiv). Still, there seems to be nothing in The Vital Center excluding non-whites or women from its political vision. In fact, a wholehearted embrace of its values – and in particular equal opportunity – could improve the domestic social situation of both groups.

Ultimately, The Vital Center is a relic of a bygone era. America cannot return to the centrist, liberal consensus of mid-20th century. The economic conditions do not exist to support such an optimistic vision nor does America’s declining importance on the global stage. Furthermore, much of the liberal consensus was founded upon injustice; on the sweaty backs of cheap labor abroad and the unpaid work of women at home.

My fever dream of The Vital Center expresses a longing not for the world of the 1950s, but for the values postmodern society is in the process of losing or has already lost: community, respect, trust, empathy, and solidarity. I have seen little of these values in my twenty-five years. I am hopeful I will see more of them in the next twenty-five.

Struggling to Get the Facts: Decoding the Supreme Court's Affordable Care Act Decision

I was browsing the internet yesterday when the Supreme Court delivered its decision on Obamacare. I have long supported a more universal state-sponsored healthcare program, so I was concerned that the Supreme Court would overturn the measure along purely partisan lines. Like many Americans, the first place I turned was to cnn.com because of their politically moderate reputation. Browsing to the page I was dismayed to see my worst fears had come true: the Supreme Court had declared Obamacare unconstitutional. I shut my computer and went downstairs, the dream of universal heath insurance was over.

Only it wasn't because the Court had not declared the measure unconstitutional. CNN had dropped the ball and misreported the story. As I tried to find more information about the decision I was struck by a troubling pattern: every news network was having difficulty reporting on the decision because of the legal language the decision was rendered in. This got me thinking: if legal experts at the major news networks were having trouble parsing the Court's decision, what hope did American's not trained in law have for understanding why the court rendered Obamacare constitutional? There has been such a push to make government more transparent, but there has been little focus on the Supreme Court. Popular participation is one of the founding pillars of American democracy and in the digital age, it seems like there should be a way of putting Supreme Court decisions out there in plain English so that the average American citizen can understand both the decision and the rationale of the court.

In a world where the news has become increasingly partisan - a reflection on the overall political climate - the government owes it to its citizens to explain legislation and legal rulings to them in language they can understand. Tea Party activists and other political radicals have often keyed on popular misunderstanding to propagate conspiracy theories, undermining federal authority and draining confidence in government. American voters are frequently criticized for being uninformed and often rightly so. However, if Americans cannot gain easy access to the information they need to make an informed voting decision it is difficult to solely blame them for the failures of American democracy and it sows the seeds for future anti-government political radicalism.

Here is a link to the official transcript of the Supreme Court's decision yesterday.

Nietzsche's American Noontide: A Review of "American Nietzsche" by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

Friedrich Nietzsche never traveled to the United States. He also rarely wrote about it and did not read most of the giants of the American literary canon (with the notable exception of Ralph Waldo Emerson). He scorned democracy and the quest for wealth as impediments to cultivating a strong self. Yet, somehow, Nietzsche has for over a century found a large, enthusiastic audience in America. Why have the writings of Nietzsche resonated with so many Americans from diverse backgrounds at disparate times in history? Why has his biography - unsuccessful writer turned madman - resonated so deeply with American intellectuals? In the most expansive study of American Nietzsche reception published, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen demonstrates why Nietzsche and his philosophy have gained traction in the United States despite being at odds with many of its 'fundamental' values: democracy, Christianity, and capitalism.

American Nietzsche has both a broad temporal and thematic scope. Like other Nietzsche reception studies, most famously Steven Aschheim's magisterial The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890-1990, Ratner-Rosenhagen's scope spans the entire twentieth century. She begins with how Nietzsche was imported to America by a few radical, Germanophilic intellectuals at the turn of the twentieth century and rapidly gained a following with the publication of English translations of his major works as well as landmark studies of Nietzsche by some of his more famous early converts like H.L. Mencken. This reception accelerated and broadened as the century progressed. As elsewhere, Nietzsche's philosophy and personality were appropriated across the political, religious (Protestants, Catholics, and Jews), cultural (radicals and conservatives), and social (rich and poor, immigrant and native, intellectual and non-intellectual) spectrums for divergent purposes.

The broad penetration of Nietzsche's ideas in America is brilliantly demonstrated by Ratner-Rosenhagen in her chapter, "Devotions: The Letters". In it, she quotes from Nietzsche fan mail sent to Elisabeth Foerster-Nietzsche gathered at the Nietzsche Achiv in Weimar during the interwar period. The breadth of the letters is illuminating. Some, written by German immigrants and native Americans fluent in German, complain of the poor English translations of Nietzsche and request German language copies of his works. Others tell Elisabeth of how her brother's philosophy liberated them from American-Protestant slave morality or taught them the importance of self-strengthening (204). The most shocking letters come from one John I. Bush of Duluth, Minnesota who claimed to be "One who is evil enough" and a Nietzschean ubermenschen (206-207). By using fan mail, Ratner-Rosenhagen successfully demonstrates both that Nietzsche's readership was diverse and that readers used Nietzsche to better understand themselves and America.

One of Ratner-Rosenhagen's signal successes is cataloging the diverse reactions to Nietzsche without passing judgment on the interpretations. Because Nietzsche was such an outspoken critic, there is a tendency to appropriate his critical voice when assessing his reception. Ratner-Rosenhagen deftly avoids facile discriminations positioning certain interpretations of Nietzsche as superior to others. She respects the views of all the characters in her book, no matter how far-fetched their requisition of Nietzsche's philosophy might have been. This is especially impressive when discussing the impact of Walter Kaufmann on postwar Nietzsche scholarship. Kaufmann's palatable version of Nietzsche as "salonfaehig existentialist" has been hotly debated over the last few decades. Though all believe his Nietzsche is flawed, the question of whether or not his interpretation of Nietzsche has value in a post-Cold War world remains up for debate. Ratner-Rosenhagen ably avoids the Kaufmann morass by cleaving closely to his historical significance as savior and redeemer of Nietzsche's philosophy after World War II instead of his impact on current Nietzsche scholarship.

American Nietzsche is a beautifully written and thoughtful examination of Nietzsche reception in the United States, but it is not without its difficulties. First and foremost, is a problem of audience. American Nietzsche assumes a great deal of familiarity with Nietzsche's writings. Ratner-Rosenhagen never gives an overview of Nietzsche's philosophy or any of his major concepts aside from the uebermensch. This restricts the possible audience for the book to intellectual historians and Nietzsche enthusiasts who are already familiar with his philosophy.

Second, Ratner-Rosenhagen strives, unsuccessfully, the problematize American Nietzsche in order to make it more than a reception study. For Ratner-Rosenhagen, Nietzsche's popularity in the United States demonstrates both "how American encounters with Nietzsche ignited and revealed larger anxieties about the source and authority of truth and values in a modern pluralist society" and "incited and exposed long-standing concerns about the conditions of American culture for intellectual life" (23-24). In both these respects Nietzsche was far from unique and American intellectual insecurity has been explored ad nauseum at least since Richard Hofstadter published Anti-intellectualism in American Life in 1963. Ratner-Rosenhagen's attempts to problematize Nietzsche's American reception distracts from her attention on the actual reception. For instance, her most successful chapter on American letters to the Nietzsche Archiv is dwarfed by lengthier, though less substantial, chapters on the penetration of Nietzsche into the discourse of American church officials and on the New Radicalism. These chapters tell us little about Nietzsche's American reception, but do support her dual problematics.

American Nietzsche is an essential read for American intellectual historians and Nietzsche enthusiasts. It provides a concise, yet thorough, examination of how Nietzsche's philosophy challenged and was accepted by many prominent American intellectuals. It fills a gaping hole in the American intellectual historiography and in Nietzsche studies. At times, Ratner-Rosenhagen unnecessarily problematizes her argument to inflate Nietzsche's significance in exposing American anxieties and their
intellectual inferiority complex vis-a-vis Europe. Even with these small difficulties, American Nietzsche brilliantly delineates how one of Europe's most controversial and misunderstood philosophers achieved fame in a United States seemingly at odds with many of his fundamental concepts.

Introductions Are In Order

My name is Matthew Linton (as you should be able to see in the side panel) and I am a graduate student in American history at Brandeis University. My specific interest is in the creation of Chinese Area studies during World War II and the Cold War, but I am broadly interested in Western intellectual history and Sino-American relations. You can also find me on academia.edu and follow me on Twitter (@MellowOwl) if you're so inclined. I envision this blog as a place to express opinions and ideas that may not be ready for more mainstream academic forums (conferences, journal articles and reviews, etc.). Some of these posts will tackle problems that may be too short to express in an article or book, but that I think are important and worth mentioning. This includes ideas that incorporate elements of popular culture like music, sports, and movies that the history mainstream is sometimes uncomfortable with. I also hope to use Ibid. to improve my writing and formatting of book reviews and longform articles. I will also post videos and other desiderata related to American intellectual history and politics that I hope others will find interesting. To begin, here is a fascinating video of Marxist intellectual and historian Perry Anderson describing his life and work: See you all soon!