A neat little nugget of medieval coal history as we come to the end of a year where the UK has just finished it first 15 months freed from coal power, but the US has slid backward on so many energy fronts. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1... #Speculations #MedievalSky

Studying history and reading novels both get us out of our own heads, the first by helping us to imagine different worlds, and the second by prompting us to inhabit different subjectivities. Those who do neither are forever imprisoned in the here, the now, and the self.

Anyway, Christmas Eve. Enjoy stretching out time a little.

Celeste is out of the hospital (for now) so we're visiting her favourite neighbourhood haunt, the Beaches Public Library !

My chapter with Chris Ebert is finally online! We view the asiento from Salvador da Bahia—the South Atlantic's main commercial hub. Brazil was the largest destination for enslaved Africans, yet it's usually absent from asiento scholarship. We ask: why was Brazil never supplied by foreign slavers?

An Editor's Note from 60 Minutes

"A place of leisurely afternoons, exquisite paintings, and long conversations in shabby Baroque rooms...." From my essay on Henry James's Venice in @theatlantic.com

20 December 1582: It appears that the plague in London is receding. I had not realised that the city authorities compile weekly data on births and deaths and send them to the Privy Council; Burghley's papers contain a book summarising the data, thought to be the earliest such ... 1/ #earlymodern

Fascinating and very promising research on cancer treatment here!

I look forward to reading this William!

What if autism is not a single condition, but several? Research into the spectrum’s enormous diversity could help lead to better treatments and interventions

Good news at last. www.ctvnews.ca/health/artic...

These are our most impressive institutions and crucial for our survival as a people and a species.

We are all powerfully shaped by the films we have seen, especially, though not exclusively, at an impressionable age. I reviewed for @thetls.bsky.social a fascinating collection of personal responses to the impact of film.

📣 Annales English Edition 'The History and #Historiography of #Fisheries in the Age of the “Oceanic Turn”' by Romain Grancher (@cnrsshs.bsky.social) An important review essay 👇 dx.doi.org/10.1017/ahss...

It seems like Legrand's mantra is «If you don't have anything nice to say, then write a 200-page review article.»

Very jarring when you grab an old Italian book from the library to check something and that’s the first page.

Discussion from the Holberg Prize Symposium 2010, with Natalie Zemon Davis (the 2010 laureate), Bonnie Smith, David Abulafia and Joan Scott. #medievalsky #earlymodern youtu.be/LOjG98KNouE?...

Another holiday season and yet another multi-day hospital stay for my wonderful daughter Celeste. I remain in awe of her bravery and optimism in the face of chronic illness, and her courage continues to inspire me whenever I feel down. One day we will see the back of all this Celeste ❤️...

This study examines how Michelin managed its workforce, showing that paternalism did not vanish with the rise of the welfare state, new labor regulations, or modern HR. doi.org/10.1080/0007... Bruno Cohanier & Charles Richard Baker @routledaebuseco.bskv.social @adelphiu.bsky.social #bizhis #HR

Worth reading for lots of reasons, but particularly because it closes with something I see in my work and travels speaking on writing and AI. Many, maybe most students do not want AI-mediated schooling or lives. We can offer them something better. www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...

Everyone, yes including you, needs to read this excellent piece. It has the numbers, sources, and asks good questions. This is the journalism we need.

Great culture can save lives. Literally. Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

Today @artandinequality.bsky.social is diving into thousands of names of 14th c. men and women - a pure joy and a gold mine for #socialhistory #culturalhistory #materialculture #hospitalhistory #demography #Florentinehistory and so much more! #artandinequality #medievalsky

We're a little light on saints now that Advent has started, & I'm a little short on time, but here's my monthly reminder that all of the 10+ months of saints+manuscripts posts so far are linked at my site, with direct links to the digitized mss used in the posts. #medievalsky ruffnotes.org/saints/

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you’re dead.” 📸 Mark Gerson (June, 1969)

Maurice Aymard rappelle que c’est le hasard qui a fait que Lucien Febvre et Fernand Braudel ont passé une vingtaine de jours ensemble: en 1937, ils se retrouvent sur le même bateau, Braudel rentrant de São Paulo, Febvre de Buenos Aires @fondationmsh.bsky.social @gcalafat.bsky.social

Goodbye to the master. ❤️

Introduce yourself with five concerts you've seen multiple times The Vandermark 5 Alejandro Escovedo Brad Mehldau Trio Wilco D.D. Jackson

Late medieval and early modern Latin words of the day. Again we have urban professions. In the first example, we have a "macharolius." This is a person who works as a cloth weaver. In this case, Lanzarotto de Recco attested on 17 August 1417. #medievalsky

Max Bill's covers of the Swiss anti-fascist journal Information: Wirtschaft, Wissenschaft, Erziehung, Technik, Kunst (1932-1933; Merrill C. Berman Collection; #skystorians): mcbcollection.com/campaigns/vi...

Still the best books of the year list in my humble opinion... no rankings, no ratings, just thoughtful readers talking about which books they liked and why #booksky

This is a fascinating article, well worth reading!

The adventures of a precocious 6-year-old and his stuffed tiger debuted on November 18, 1985. NPR's Renee Montagne spoke with the comic strip's editor, Lee Salem, in 2005.

The current campaign about the inadequacy of the Mercator map (correctthemap.org) brings to mind this map in Braudel's "Mediterranean" that eschews the Mercator projection and provides a striking reorientation in which "the great Sahara desert dominates the sea." #skystorians #earlymodern

This has been quite a long route from marginal text missing from a photograph to connections to the "slow pandemic" that was leprosy in the Middle Ages (constantinusafricanus.com/2025/01/26/l...). But that's how #histmed works in an interdisciplinary mode. Thanks to all who have contributed!

Some of my finds at the @victoriacollege.bsky.social book sale this year: a triptych of poems by AF Moritz, one of my favorite Canadian poets. And I always like to find ephemera in my books, in this case, an invitation to the "Eleventh Annual Archibald Lampman Poetry Reading" in 2010.

"The Book of Records" by Madeleine Thien is a remarkable achievement, a moving piece of speculative fiction and the best Canadian novel that I've read since Nino Ricci's "Origin of Species" in 2008. #booksky #CanLit

For the light of the eyes 👀 Look at this unsteady hand from mid 14th c just before Florence and all of Europe were about to be swept by the #BlackDeath (from the account books of the Florentine hospital of Santa Maria Nuova) #medievalsky @artandinequality.bsky.social

The kids did another great job decorating this year!

A translation of 2 rival accounts of an expedition that deteriorated into friction and feuding. The French Conquest of the Canary Islands translated by Craig Taylor and Jane H M Taylor is out now. buff.ly/Ko959Sj #medievalsky

Today at 5pm EST / 11pm CET! MAP FORUM PRESENTS: Trading at the Edge of Empires: Francesco Carletti, Florentine Family Networks, and Global Commerce by Brian Brege. MAP Forum talks are available exclusively online. To join, visit medici.org.

I've been working with Transkribus for fifteenth-century Latin notarial contracts, including testaments, so I'm looking forward to seeing this presentation!

Elated at Joel Mokyr's Nobel Prize! You can find numerous accounts -now multiplying by the minute- of his scholarly contributions. Today I want to celebrate the man and the mentor.

"Bob Fogel said to me once: For economics to work without economic history is like an evolutionary biologist without paleontology. You just miss 99.5% of all the species that ever walked on this earth." Joel Mokyr www.youtube.com/live/__0sGvj...

Fifteenth-century Latin place name of the day: "Antona" which refers to Southampton and not Ancona, a common mistake made by many scholars, including myself (especially since late medieval Italian notaries often alternated between using 'c' and 't' in words requiring either.

My review of @stefanbauer.bsky.social and Simon Ditchfield's edited collection A Renaissance Reclaimed: Jacob Burckhardt's Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy Reconsidered, in Marginalia Review of Books. www.marginaliareviewofbooks.com/post/moderni...

The latest open-access text from the Ptolemaeus Arabus et Latinus project has arrived, an edition of Giovanni Pontano's 15th-century commentary on the pseudo-Ptolemy astrological "Centiloquium" - scroll down to the final title on their pubs list: ptolemaeus.badw.de/publications #HistSci #medievalsky

In our tour of Toronto libraries, my daughter Celeste and I recently visited the S. Walter Stewart Library in East York. We loved the spacious architecture and overall atmosphere, as well as (of course) the selection of books!