# historiography (blogs) — RSS Amplifier Recent posts from the 3 feeds in the RSS Amplifier directory that cover historiography. Page: Feed: --- ## [The Tastemakers, 2026](https://varnelis.net/the-tastemakers-2026/) _2026-08-16 · Kazys Varnelis · varnelis.net_ In February 1949, Harper’s published the essay “Highbrow, Lowbrow, Middlebrow” by its managing editor, Russell Lynes. There, he observed a new structure determining prestige in the country: where once wealth and family were the markers of status, now taste and intelligence—what Pierre Bourdieu would later call cultural capital—were paramount. Two months later Life magazine had ... Read more The… ## [Hugh Sullivan’s escape: a soldier’s tale from Greece](https://rommelsriposte.com/2026/08/16/hugh-sullivans-escape-a-soldiers-tale-from-greece/) _2026-08-16 · Rommelsriposte · The Crusader Project_ In a recent blog I wrote about the problems faced by the New Zealand Broadcasting Unit in getting their reports cleared by military censors. But in … Hugh Sullivan’s escape: a soldier’s tale from Greece ## [Breaking Rommel – Errata and Materials](https://rommelsriposte.com/2026/08/15/breaking-rommel-errata-and-materials/) _2026-08-15 · Rommelsriposte · The Crusader Project_ Background In a project of this nature and scope there will be errors. Towards the end of the publishing process, the perfect is very much the arch enemy of the good, and we know there are mistakes. When we find them, or when they are pointed out to us, we will correct them here. Please \[…\] ## [Tanks in Unexpected Places – Author Blog](https://rommelsriposte.com/2026/08/14/tanks-in-unexpected-places-author-blog/) _2026-08-14 · Rommelsriposte · The Crusader Project_ By Jonny Briggs Tanks in Unexpected Places: The Fighting Effectiveness of 4th Independent Armoured Brigade 1943-45 is the first book I have written … Tanks in Unexpected Places – Author Blog ## [A note on AI](https://rommelsriposte.com/2026/08/14/a-note-on-ai/) _2026-08-14 · Rommelsriposte · The Crusader Project_ Background AI is becoming more prevalent every day. That is unfortunate, as it is a lying, thieving hallucination machine based on industrial-scale copyright theft, environmental and societal destruction, driven by lunatics. It perverts history, it deceives us, and it destroys every joy in this world and will wreck society if left unchecked. AI and this \[…\] ## [Homeric details and other influences in Nolan's The Odyssey (2026)](https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2026/08/nolan.html) _2026-08-14 · Peter Gainsford · Kiwi Hellenist_ There are already tons of reviews of The Odyssey (2026) out there, including many by classical scholars. I’m no movie expert, so this isn’t a review. But I can sometimes spot little details and recognise where they’ve come from. Nolan’s film diverges from Homer in major respects, but there are also points of detail that it treats more carefully than it needs to. And the film doesn’t just draw on ## [The cave of the Nymphs: Odyssey 13.96–112](https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2026/07/cave-of-nymphs.html) _2026-07-31 · Peter Gainsford · Kiwi Hellenist_ The Phaiakes deliver Odysseus to his home island, Ithake, leaving him asleep on the shore. When he wakes up, he hides their gifts to him in a nearby cave: At the head of the harbour is a long-leafed olive tree; and near it, a cave, lovely and shaded, sacred to Nymphs, who are called Naiads. In it there are jars and amphoras of stone; and bees store honey in them. And there are stone ## [Odysseus’ wanderings](https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2026/07/wanderings.html) _2026-07-27 · Peter Gainsford · Kiwi Hellenist_ Odysseus’ wanderings are the most famous sequence in Homer’s Odyssey. The Cyclops, the Lotus-eaters, and Circe are some of the epic’s most memorable parts, even though the wanderings as a whole occupy only one sixth of the poem. On one level, they’re pretty clearly envisaged as taking place in an Otherworld, like a portal fantasy or isekai. On another level, they have strong links to real ## [On Substack and AI](https://varnelis.net/on-substack-and-ai/) _2026-07-22 · Kazys Varnelis · varnelis.net_ This morning, Substack announced that it would be integrating Pangram scans to detect AI content in its posts. I wanted to spend my day revising a chapter of my next book, and later this week, I was thinking of writing a post on the “Memex” I have created using plugins for Zotero and Obsidian that I have coded using ... Read more The post On Substack and AI appeared first on varnelis.net . ## [The Odyssey on screen: a catalogue](https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2026/07/onscreen.html) _2026-07-16 · Peter Gainsford · Kiwi Hellenist_ A catalogue of onscreen versions of the Odyssey. This list includes metatheatrical versions, parodies, and adaptations of parodies (including James Joyce’s novel Ulysses). Dan Renalds as Telemachus, Kelly B. Jones as Penelope, and Dylan Vox as Odysseus (Troy: the Odyssey, 2017) Year Title Director / medium Country Actors: ‘Odysseus’, ‘Penelope’, ‘ ## [Unlimited Mobile Internet, One V-SIM (Sponsored)](https://crawlproof.com/a/H2jr3OytQWSe) _2026-07-16 · **Sponsored**_ Automatically switches across T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon; no throttling, no contract. ## [OUT NOW: Breaking Rommel](https://rommelsriposte.com/2026/07/06/out-now-breaking-rommel/) _2026-07-06 · Rommelsriposte · The Crusader Project_ Book Announcement – Breaking Rommel Available for Purchase Breaking Rommel: The Struggle for Air Supremacy over El Alamein is now available to purchase from IBN publishers in Rome, in time for the 84th anniversary of the 1st Battle of El Alamein. This is the end of a project that took several years of detailed research \[…\] ## [History and the Odyssey](https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2026/07/odyssey.html) _2026-07-03 · Peter Gainsford · Kiwi Hellenist_ The Odyssey is coming out soon, a feature film starring Matt Damon, and directed and written by Christopher Nolan. Various online pundits have already criticised it, focusing on historical authenticity — faithfulness to some preconceived idea of how the world in the film ought to look. Why isn’t Odysseus’ armour consistent with Bronze Age armour? Why does his ship look like a viking longship? ## [So when DID the siege of Tobruk end?](https://rommelsriposte.com/2026/06/26/so-when-did-the-siege-of-tobruk-end/) _2026-06-26 · Rommelsriposte · The Crusader Project_ Background On WW2Talk it was noted that the Australian Descendants Association of the Rats of Tobruk (soldiers who had been present for at least a day of the siege) took 10 December as the end date of the siege, as they considered this was when Rommel gave the order to retreat to the Gazala position. \[…\] ## [Kriegsmarine Operations out of Le Havre on D-Day, 6 June 1944](https://rommelsriposte.com/2026/06/06/kriegsmarine-operations-out-of-le-havre-on-d-day-6-june-1944/) _2026-06-06 · Rommelsriposte · The Crusader Project_ Background The general story of the German defence against D-Day tends to focus on the land defences. While this is where the primary focus of combat action took places, it overlooks what was considered an important element of the integrated defence of the Normandy coast, the naval units based at Le Havre, and Cherbourg, and \[…\] ## [How the war was won – on killing](https://rommelsriposte.com/2026/05/30/how-the-war-was-won-on-killing/) _2026-05-30 · Rommelsriposte · The Crusader Project_ Background A recurring discussion on ‘who won the war’, which started by ignoring the contribution of the Red Army in the beginning Cold War, then went towards over-emphasising it sometime from the 1980s, and in the last twenty years again went back to ‘actually, it was the Western Allies’ has a few years ago culminated \[…\] ## [Swansong of the Malta Blenheims](https://rommelsriposte.com/2026/05/23/swansong-of-the-malta-blenheims/) _2026-05-23 · Rommelsriposte · The Crusader Project_ Background I have previously written about the story of the Malta Blenheims (see e.g. here, here, here and here) and more generally about the Bristol Blenheim here. A while ago I came across a war diary entry in Axis files that German merchant Brook, escorted by Italian gunboat Zuri, was attacked by enemy planes on \[…\] ## [No. 94 Squadron’s very bad day – 15 February 1942](https://rommelsriposte.com/2026/05/22/no-94-squadrons-very-bad-day-15-february-1942/) _2026-05-22 · Rommelsriposte · The Crusader Project_ Background (from IWM) Ernest “Imshi”\[1\] Mason (29 July 1913 – 15 February 1942) was a British World War II flying ace, credited with one Luftwaffe and 14 Regia Aeronautica aircraft destroyed, two shared destroyed, three damaged and another three shared damaged in the air. In this photo he is serving with No. 274 Squadron RAF \[…\] ## [Forty-Four PDFs, 2019-2026](https://varnelis.net/forty-four-pdfs-2019-2026/) _2026-05-04 · Kazys Varnelis · varnelis.net_ I have forty-four long-form posts since 2019 for your reading pleasure below, but perhaps you’d like to read a few words on how they came to be first? I am happier writing for myself than I ever was writing for anyone else (although I will do that again, too, in case you have an interesting ... Read more The post Forty-Four PDFs, 2019-2026 appeared first on varnelis.net . ## [Problems with Cline on The Trojan War. Ch. 4 ‘The Hittite texts’](https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2026/04/cline-2.html) _2026-04-19 · Peter Gainsford · Kiwi Hellenist_ Eric Cline’s book The Trojan War: a very short introduction (Oxford, 2013) argues that the classical Greek myth of the Trojan War is based on a historical conflict. Previously we looked at chapter 3, where Cline argues that the Homeric Iliad portrays Bronze Age events in a Bronze Age setting. As we saw, all the claims cited as evidence turned out to be unrepresentative, baseless, or simply untrue ## [Problems with Cline on The Trojan War. Ch. 3 ‘Homeric questions’](https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2026/04/cline-1.html) _2026-04-10 · Peter Gainsford · Kiwi Hellenist_ Eric Cline’s The Trojan War: a very short introduction (Oxford, 2013) is an appealing book, charmingly written, but inaccurate and misleading in many essential respects. It is designed to be influential, part of a well promoted series. But because it is a short popular book, it was not reviewed in academic journals. Its influence warrants much greater scrutiny than its format suggests. Contrary ## [Zero-Persistence E2EE (Sponsored)](https://crawlproof.com/a/BAtPsy0VM1lN) _2026-04-10 · **Sponsored**_ End-to-end encryption with client-side WebCrypto and volatile memory. ## [2025-in-review](https://varnelis.net/2025-in-review/) _2026-02-02 · Kazys Varnelis · varnelis.net_ It’s strange to measure every year against a concept developed by a science fiction writer, but William Gibson’s line “The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed”1. has been my north star for my recent year-in-review essays. Gibson meant that the future was unevenly distributed by class: the wealthy receive high-tech healthcare while the ... Read more The post 2025-in-review… ## [On Robert A. M. Stern (1939-2025)](https://varnelis.net/on-robert-a-m-stern-1939-2025/) _2025-11-28 · Kazys Varnelis · varnelis.net_ I was saddened to hear that Robert A. M. Stern passed away on Thanksgiving. I had the privilege of working with Bob on The Philip Johnson Tapes. Those aren’t idle words: it truly was a privilege.Robert Stern and myself, with martinis. I first met Bob at the Philip Johnson symposium at Yale. I was rather ... Read more The post On Robert A. M. Stern (1939-2025) appeared first on varnelis.net . ## [Gospel citations of scripture](https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2025/05/citations.html) _2025-10-11 · Peter Gainsford · Kiwi Hellenist_ A catalogue of citations of scripture in the canonical Christian gospels, by way of a note to myself. Some caveats, terms, and conditions: The gospels don’t quote the Hebrew Bible. They quote Greek texts. They don’t exactly quote the Septuagint either, because there were multiple ‘Septuagint’ recensions, but we can call it ‘Septuagint’ so long as we’re clear that it’s a Septuagint and not the ## [On the State of Things at varnelis.net](https://varnelis.net/on-the-state-of-things-at-varnelis-net/) _2025-03-30 · Kazys Varnelis · varnelis.net_ This year I am writing much more. I did not set out with another broken promise about writing more. I just started to. It’s curious—when I aimed to write just one essay per month, as I did last year, the task felt daunting. Yet now, averaging one essay a week, I have established a rhythm. ... Read more The post On the State of Things at varnelis.net appeared first on varnelis.net . ## [The City and the Fog](https://varnelis.net/the-city-and-the-fog/) _2025-03-10 · Kazys Varnelis · varnelis.net_ I’ve been reading Joan Didion again. She was one of the sharpest chroniclers of the recent past and a master of minimalist style. Legend has it that Bret Easton Ellis, still in high school, copied Slouching Towards Bethlehem by hand (or maybe on a typewriter) to absorb the rhythm of her sentences. Unlike Didion, I ... Read more The post The City and the Fog appeared first on varnelis.net . ## [2024 in review](https://varnelis.net/2024-in-review/) _2025-02-27 · Kazys Varnelis · varnelis.net_ I have been writing “Years in Review” for some time. I often wonder if it’s worth it. I don’t get as much feedback as on my other posts and they take time away from other work. Still, these are useful for me to look at over the years, so for this year at least, I ... Read more The post 2024 in review appeared first on varnelis.net . ## [On the potential of Passaic](https://varnelis.net/on-the-potential-of-passaic/) _2024-09-20 · Kazys Varnelis · varnelis.net_ It happens that it’s my birthday today and if you look at the Collected Writings of Robert Smithson, you will see that his Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey took place on that date, in fact on my birthdate, September 20, 1967. That date is in error. The real date was September 30, ... Read more The post On the potential of Passaic appeared first on varnelis.net .