We all tend to see what we want to see — in ourselves, in our friends, in our culture, and in other cultures. In his dissertation, Jens-Uwe Guettel takes a penetrating look at how Germany viewed America over the course of the 19th century, the period of America’s great expansion westward.
In the following interview and excerpt, you will find hig…[Read more]

My students always get a kick out of writing like this – provocative, smart, funny, and taking with a big idea. In this case, the idea is really big: that radar was a precursor to GPS in giving us a way to conceive of our universe, and to map ourselves within that universe (and that is only part of the thesis). Here are two typical s…[Read more]

This post, written following the announcement of Plan S, reflects on the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and the call for responsible use of research metrics and recognition of open research practices in assessment.

In my final International Open Access Week 2018 blog post I reflected on other open research practices, namely open data and open researcher contributorID (ORCiD).

As part of International Open Access Week I reflected on the link between Open Access, Altmetrics and citation counts.

As part of International Open Access Week 2018 I blogged about how Altmetrics can help an author understand the readership and audience for their Open Access research. It can be surprising what breadth a single piece of work can have.

The success of most wars depends in part on several important non-combat factors, and crucial among them is public support.
In her fascinating and ambitious 2006 book, From Submarines to Suburbs, Cynthia Henthorn examines both the relationship of commerce to war and the relationship of the citizen to war. It is a timely topic, since America is…[Read more]

In their ambitious book Empires of Food, authors Evan D.G. Fraser and Andrew Rimas take on a huge topic: the cause-and-effect relationship between food systems, societies and governments or, as they phrase it in the book’s subtitle, “feast, famine and the rise and fall of civilizations.” This is historical context as well as advice for colle…[Read more]

When I searched dissertation titles to find topics that relate to empire, I ran across a thesis entitled A Partnership for Disorder: China, the United States and their policies for a postwar disposition of the Japanese Empire 1941-1945. When I contacted the author, Xiaoyuan Liu, I found that the thesis had been turned into a book.

On our…[Read more]

John Knight and Sons soap company, like other successful soap manufacturers in Greater London, grew during the nineteenth century by combining technological innovation and marketing to sell increasing quantities of a product the British public increasingly saw as a symbol of their advanced civilisation. They did not struggle with the ecological…[Read more]

It is easy to forget what a cultural sensation technology can produce – and perhaps no instance was greater than that of the Gatling gun.
In her outstanding 2006 book, Mr. Gatling’s Terrible Marvel, author Julia Keller gives a detailed and lucid account of Richard Gatling and his quest to create a true machine gun — and the unintended conse…[Read more]