Tag Archives: Herodotus

Mining the Moon Redux

In Mining the Moon, I connected the Trump administration’s lunar-mining policy [1] to The Expanse and to Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis – the promise of new worlds opened by the Ring Gates. Would the writers treat these planets as another American frontier, a crucible for expansion and exploitation? The first three episodes of SeasonContinue reading “Mining the Moon Redux”

HOPLITES and PHYSICAL LIMITATIONS

I have just finished Victor Hanson’s The Western Way of War (1989). It provides a visceral depiction of what it was like to be a hoplite. It is a very unromantic portrayal that emphasizes the communal aspects of ancient warfare; the necessity of group action where doing your role in the phalanx was far moreContinue reading “HOPLITES and PHYSICAL LIMITATIONS”

Dracula as Historian

I admit to being a fan of the vampire genre: books and movies. Most recently, the BBC produced Dracula released in 2020 on Netflix.[1] It starts as a smart retelling of Bram Stoker’s novel with visual homages to classic movies along the way, but quickly takes new narrative turns. Unfortunately the series had a veryContinue reading “Dracula as Historian”