Tag: Vietnam

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: A new history of Robert McNamara / 40 TV shows to watch / The wisdom of a human stain remover / Protest music survives Iran’s theocracy / More women choose to go makeup free / The Booker Prize shortlist unveiled

Most of these items come from my social media networks. Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here and about me here.

1. The War Hawk Who Wasn’t
By Philip Taubman and William Taubman | The Atlantic | September 2025
“Newly discovered documents reveal Robert McNamara’s private doubts about Vietnam.”

2. So You Want a Civil War? Let’s Pause to Remember What One Looks Like.
By David Blight | The New Republic | September 2025
“[Sept. 17] marks the 163rd anniversary of Antietam. Those who say they’re ready for civil war should stop and think about what happened there.”

3. 40 Shows to Watch This Fall
By Mike Hale | The New York Times | September 2025
“A Ken Burns documentary on the birth of the American Republic, the end of ‘Stranger Things,’ a new series from Sterlin Harjo and much more.”

4. After Martha
By Paul Laity | The London Review of Books | September 2025
“It​ was immediately clear when Martha, my 13-year-old daughter, died of septic shock that serious errors had been made.”

5. The human stain remover: what Britain’s greatest extreme cleaner learned from 25 years on the job
By Tom Lamont | The Guardian | September 2025
“From murder scenes to whale blubber, Ben Giles has seen it – and cleaned it – all. In their stickiest hours, people rely on him to restore order”

6. The Trump Administration Is Quietly Curbing the Flow of Disaster Dollars
By Jennifer DeCesaro and Sarah Labowitz | Emissary :: The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | September 2025
“The current administration is deploying three different strategies to slow-walk the flow of disaster dollars to state and local governments: stalling disbursements, delaying FEMA’s emergency response function, and suspending mitigation funding.”

7. Birding by ear: How to learn the songs of nature’s symphony with some simple techniques
By Chris Lituma | The Conversation | September 2025
“A simple way to start bird-watching is to buy a feeder, a pair of binoculars and a field guide, and begin watching birds from your window. However, one of the most rewarding ways to identify birds is to listen to them and learn to recognize their songs.”

8. The world needs peasants
By Maryam Aslany | Aeon | September 2025
“Far from being a relic of the past, peasants are vital to feeding the world. They need to be supported, not marginalized.”

9. Dr. Strangelove: The Darkest Room
By David Bromwich | The Criterion Collection | June 2016
“Human beings for Kubrick possess something of the quality of mobile dolls or mannequins. … Human actions, in his view, are governed by determinations beyond our grasp.”

10. Protest music thrives in Iran, three years after young woman’s death sparked grassroots uprising
By Joy Hackel | The World :: PRI | September 2025
“The death of Mahsa Amini — a young Kurdish Iranian woman who was arrested and beaten in police custody — sparked widespread protests across Iran in September 2022. Protest songs became a powerful unifying force for the movement.”

11. New evidence proves North Sea asteroid impact
BBC News | September 2025
“Scientists have found proof that an asteroid hit the North Sea more than 43 million years ago causing a huge tsunami and leaving a 1.9 mile (3km) wide crater under the seabed.”

12. RFK Jr’s war on vaccines is about shaming women, not helping kids
By Amanda Marcotte | Salon | September 2025
“The MAHA movement regards all childhood ailments as a sign that moms are failing.”

13. Pamela Anderson leads the way for women who choose to go makeup free
By Leanne Italie | Associated Press | September 2025
“It’s a look, especially for older women, that serves to plague and perplex. Do we chase youth (and relevancy) with a full face, or do we foster radiant skin and march on makeup free?”

14. From looms to laptops, Afghan women lose lifeline in Taliban internet ban
By Mohammad Yunus Yawar | Reuters | September 2025
“Local government officials confirmed a ban on fibre-optic services in five northern provinces — Balkh, Kunduz, Badakhshan, Takhar and Baghlan. Officials said the ban is to prevent ‘immoral activities.’ Residents in other provinces, including Kandahar, Herat and Parwan have reported disruptions, though these have not been formally acknowledged by authorities.”

15. Introducing the Booker Prize 2025 shortlist!
The Booker Prizes | September 2025
“Find out which six books are in the running for the world’s most significant award for a single work of fiction.”

16. A look inside the AI strategies at ‘The New York Times’ and ‘The Washington Post’
By Joshua Benton | Nieman Lab | September 2025
“Digiday held the most recent edition of its Digiday Publishing Summit in Miami last week, and it’s been rolling out highlights from many of the sessions.”

17. New Black Hole Measurements Show More Ways Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein Were Right
By Clara Moskowitz | Scientific American | September 2025
“Spacetime ripples from a black hole collision across the cosmos have confirmed weird aspects of black hole physics”

18. Scott Glenn on Gene Hackman, Saving Coppola’s Life and Still Having ‘Gas Left in the Tank’
By Scott Roxborough | The Hollywood Reporter | September 2025
“The character actor’s character actor plays a rare leading role in ‘Eugene the Machine,’ which is opening the 2025 Oldenburg Film Festival.”

19. Lincoln As Commander in Chief
By James M. McPherson | American Heritage | Summer 2025
“Even though he had no military training, Lincoln quickly rose to become one of America’s most talented commanders.”

20. Roman Slavery
By Melvyn Bragg | In Our Time :: BBC 4 | 2015-2018
Also see: Saturn | Josephus | Frederick the Great | Frida Kahlo

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: Pelosi’s war with the next generation / The evolution of the romance genre / Remembering the fall of Saigon / The T. Rex census / New histories of the UT Tower shooting

This week: Pelosi’s war with the next generation / The evolution of the romance genre / Remembering the fall of Saigon / The T. Rex census / New histories of the UT Tower shooting

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here.

1. Inside Nancy Pelosi’s War With AOC and the Squad
By Susan Page | Politico Magazine | April 2021
“How the House speaker put Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in her place.”

2. How the romance genre found its happily ever after
By Angela Haupt | The Washington Post | April 2021
“Here, a dozen people — authors, editors, agents, cover artists and one mononymous male model — recount how the modern romance industry came together and took off.”

3. The Rhymes And Reasons Behind Re-Recording Your Own Classics
By Annie Zaleski | NPR | April 2021
“In general, the reasons for these re-records are simple: financial control and creative ownership.”

4. The Wizard in the White City
By Kirstin Butler | American Experience :: PBS | April 2021
“L. Frank Baum’s long and winding road to Oz, and the Chicago World’s Fair that inspired his life’s work.”

5. How many Tyrannosaurus rex walked the Earth?
By Ashley Poust and Daniel Varajão de Latorre | The Conversation | April 2021
“To estimate population, our team of paleontologists and scientists had to combine the extraordinarily comprehensive existing research on T. rex with an ecological principle that connects population density to body size.”

6. Forty years on from the fall of Saigon: Witnessing the end of the Vietnam war
By Martin Woollacott | The Guardian | April 2015
“Much suffering and grief lay in the past, but there was a presentiment, even as things ended in Saigon, that the future held more of the same.”

7. How to Collect Firewood
By Malia Wollan | Tip :: The New York Times Magazine | March 2021
“To cut enough wood to keep a house warm for the winter, you’ll need to know your way around a chain saw.”

8. Behind the Tower: New Histories of the UT Tower Shooting
By Christopher Rose, Joan Neuberger and Henry Wiencek | 15 Minute History :: UT Department of History | 2014-2020
Also see: 1968 – The Year the Dream Died | Harvey Milk, Forty Years Later | Stokely Carmichael: A Life | The History of the Family

9. What’s next for Cuba and the United States after Raul Castro’s retirement
By Joseph J. Gonzalez | The Conversation | April 2021
“Cuban President Miguel Díaz Canel, who took office in 2018 after Raul Castro stepped down as president, has resisted calls for democratic reforms and has pressing economic issues to manage, as well as a pandemic. So does his American counterpart, President Joe Biden. The White House recently said Cuba policy is ‘not a top priority.’ ”

10. Frankenstein
By Melvyn Bragg | In Our Time :: BBC 4 | 2010-2019
Also see: Shinto | The Hippocratic Oath | Thomas Edison | Cleopatra

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: Caesar’s literature / A fashion show in 1968 / The genocide surprise / My Lai remembered / The history of natural disaster

This week: Caesar’s literature / A fashion show in 1968 / The genocide surprise / My Lai remembered / The history of natural disaster

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.

1. Trump’s Man in Moscow
By Amie Ferris-Rotman, Emily Tamkin and Robbie Gramer | Foreign Policy | March 2018
“Most of Washington is scared to meet with Russians. Jon Huntsman wants to meet as many as possible.”

2. Caesar Bloody Caesar
By Josephine Quinn | The New York Review of Books | March 2018
“When Julius Caesar was thirty-one years old in 69 BCE, so the story goes, and serving as a junior Roman magistrate in Spain, he once stood lamenting before a statue of Alexander the Great because he had achieved so little at an age by which Alexander had already conquered the world.”

3. The Conversation Favourites
By BBC World Service | March 2018
“Meet the women who have inspired us”

4. The 1968 Fashion Show, the History Lesson Melania Missed
By Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell | Politico Magazine | March 2018
“It was supposed to showcase America First fashion. But not long afterward, manufacturing moved to China, and eventually, the Trumps moved into the White House.”

5. The Genocide the U.S. Didn’t See Coming
By Nahal Toosi | Politico Magazine | March/April 2018
“The Rohingya have lived in Myanmar for generations, primarily in the country’s Rakhine state, and have long faced severe discrimination from the Buddhist majority, which views them as illegal migrants. But this latest wave of violence is the worst in modern memory.”

6. 50 years ago, the My Lai massacre shamed the US military
By Tran Van Minh and Grant Peck | Associated Press | March 2018
“The American soldiers of Charlie Company, sent on what they were told was a mission to confront a crack outfit of their Vietcong enemies, met no resistance, but over three to four hours killed 504 unarmed civilians, mostly women, children and elderly men, in My Lai and a neighboring community.”
Also see, from American Experience: “My Lai,” a documentary film

7. Disasters Have Histories
By Chad H. Parker, Andy Horowitz and Liz Skilton | Process :: The Journal of American History/The American Historian | March 2018
“To many observers, disasters can seem like they erupt out of nowhere, in a catastrophic instant, but as historians, it’s our job to place them in time and space. So when I approach events like the recent storms, I start by asking: who was in danger? When did they arrive there? Why? Almost by definition, seeing disasters as products of history makes them seem less random and less inevitable.”

8. Today’s Eerie Echoes of the Civil War
By Manisha Sinha | The New York Review of Books | March 2018
“Even before what historians call the political crisis of the 1850s, the rise of an interracial abolition movement had encountered mob violence in the streets and gag rules in Congress. From then on, abolitionism in the United States was tied to civil liberties and the fate of American democracy itself. By the eve of the war, in 1861, most people in the northern free states felt that the democratic institutions of the country were being subverted.”

9. The Daring Diplomat Who Proved One Person Can Thwart an Empire
By Emily Ludolph | Narratively | March 2018
“A whistleblower puts his life on the line to defy Soviet aggression. Sixty years later, this forgotten story of subterfuge, smears and suspicious death has never felt more timely.”

10. Does anyone have the right to sex?
By Amia Srinivasan | London Review of Books | March 2018
“Desire can take us by surprise, leading us somewhere we hadn’t imagined we would ever go, or towards someone we never thought we would lust after, or love. In the very best cases, the cases that perhaps ground our best hope, desire can cut against what politics has chosen for us, and choose for itself.”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Hayes v. Tilden: Real dirty politics / E.O. Wilson on life / The best documentary on the Vietnam War / A review of the Democratic convention

Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism.

1. Why do we procrastinate so much?
By Rowan Pelling | BBC News Magazine | Aug. 27
“As autumn approaches people finish off vital DIY, get ready to start a new job or prepare for school. At least, they would do if they weren’t in the grip of procrastination. …”

2. Is it a bird, a plane? No, it’s Putin, human crane
By Gabriela Baczynska | Reuters | Sept. 5
“Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has tracked a Siberian tiger and posed with a polar bear, on Wednesday took his love of wildlife to new heights by flying with cranes — to lead them on a migration route.”

3. Have Americans turned inward?
By Bruce Stokes | Global Public Square :: CNN | Sept. 7
“Foreign policy is the forgotten stepchild of the 2012 U.S. presidential election.”

4. Reviewing the political theater of the party’s convention
By Peter Marks | The Washington Post | Sept. 6
“Despite its agonizing interminability and waning relevance, a national convention still can be a star-maker. …”

5. Living in the Era of Megaterror
By Graham Allison | The New York Times | Sept. 7
“Today, how many people can a small group of terrorists kill in a single blow?”

6. Vietnam: A Television History
American Experience :: PBS
“From the first hour through the last, the series provides a detailed visual and oral account of the war that changed a generation and continues to color American thinking on many military and foreign policy issues.”

7. E.O. Wilson on saving life on Earth
TED | April 2007
“As E.O. Wilson accepts his 2007 TED Prize, he makes a plea on behalf of all creatures that we learn more about our biosphere — and build a networked encyclopedia of all the world’s knowledge about life.”

8. Hayes vs. Tilden: The Ugliest, Most Contentious Presidential Election Ever
Past Imperfect :: Smithsonian.com | Sept. 7
“For Rutherford B. Hayes, election evening of November 7, 1876, was shaping up to be any presidential candidate’s nightmare. Even though the first returns were just coming in by telegraph, newspapers were announcing that his opponent, the Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, had won.”

9. General Hancock’s Hour
By Glenn David Brasher | Disunion :: The New York Times | May 8
“Thanks to the information gleaned from runaway slaves, Winfield Scott Hancock’s chance to prove his merit came on May 5, with the Battle of Williamsburg.”

10. Trouble on the Triple Frontier
By Christine Folch | Foreign Affairs | Sept. 6
“The Lawless Border Where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay Meet”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

The ‘napalm girl’ photo / Exercise and get smarter / A looming galactic collision / Texas traffic / Living to 100

Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism.

1. Cheever’s Art of the Devastating Phrase
By Brad Leithauser | Page-Turner :: The New Yorker | May 31
“The more you read Cheever, the more you feel his best work is often less about plot than about language — about poetry in the broadest sense.”

2. AP ‘napalm girl’ photo from Vietnam War turns 40
By Margie Mason | Associated Press | May 31
“‘I really wanted to escape from that little girl,’ says Kim Phuc, now 49. ‘But it seems to me that the picture didn’t let me go.’ ”

3. Exercise Makes You Smarter, Thanks To A Common Gene
The Huffington Post | May 31
“It turns out that exercise does a lot more than get the blood pumping: in about 60 percent of the population, it may be responsible for the expression of a gene that floods your cells with … a protein that is thought to help with mental acuity, learning and memory.”

4. Mexico’s Drug Corruption Arrests: Why Soldiers Make Bad Narco Agents
By Tim Padgett | Global Spin :: Time | May 31
“While putting soldiers on the streets might have provided some short-term relief, the fact remains that in the long run soldiers make lousy anti-drug agents … and the longer they’re kept in that role, the more problems you’re going to have.”

5. NASA Predicts Our Galaxy Will Collide With Another In 4 Billion Years
By Carl Franzen | Talking Points Memo | May 31
“Andromeda, which is located 2.5 million light-years away, is moving rapidly towards the Milky Way at a rate of 250,000 milers-per-hour, a clip that will only increase as the galaxies approach.”

6. Are you feeling sleepy? Here’s why …
By William Leith | The Daily Telegraph | May 31
“The pace of modern life forces us to ignore one of the most powerful parts of our brain — the body clock. But at what cost?”

7. Yes, Texas Traffic Really is That Bad
By Jason Cohen | Texas Monthly | May 31
“INRIX, which released its numbers last week, also found that Austin was the eighth most congested city in America.”

8. Is the vice presidency worth having?
By Chris Cillizza | The Fix :: The Washington Post | May 31
“[Here] are our most up-to-date rankings of the vice presidential field … . This month we decided to cut to the chase and give a single line about the good and the bad of each potential pick.”

9. The secret to living over 100 is optimism, genetic background
GlobalPost | May 30
“A new study on aging studied participants over 95 of Ashkenazi Jewish descent.”

10. The 1 Percent’s Problem
By Joseph E. Stiglitz | Vanity Fair | May 31
“Why won’t America’s 1 percent — such as the six Walmart heirs, whose wealth equals that of the entire bottom 30 percent — be a bit more … selfish? As the widening financial divide cripples the U.S. economy, even those at the top will pay a steep price.”

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TUNES

Tonight I’m spending some time with the blues, specifically with the Texas Blues Café. Check out the line-up and then listen here.

1. Blake Havard — Love
2. Mark Guitar Miller — Tired
3. Rob Mcmahan — Trouble
4. Summer and the Sinners — Breakin’ Up
5. Kid Rock — Country Boy Can Survive
6. The Midnight Flyers — Down Low
7. Tommy Z — Can’t Hide My Feelings
8. Los Lonely Boys — Man to Beat
9. Bleu Edmondson — Dallas
10. Dana Fuchs — Lonely for a Life Time
11. Chris Aaron Band — Grain Of Salt
12. Voodoo Blu — Blues is my Business

Rebecca Aguilar

#CallingAllJournalists Initiative | Reporter | Media Watchdog | Mentor | Latinas in Journalism

Anna Fonte's Paper Planes

Words, images & collages tossed from a window.

Postcards from Barton Springs

Gayle Brennan Spencer - sending random thoughts to and from South Austin

The Flask Half Full

Irreverent travelogues, good drinks, and the cultural stories they tell.

Government Book Talk

Talking about some of the best publications from the Federal Government, past and present.

Fighting Irish Wire

Cadillac Society

Cadillac News, Forums, Rumors, Reviews

Ob360media

Real News That Matters

Talking Pictures Audio Description

Pintar Discover

Space Navy

Mealtime Joy

bringing joy to family meals

Øl, Mad og Folk

Bloggen Øl, Mad og Folk

a joyous kitchen

fun, delicious food for everyone

A Perfect Feast

Modern Comfort Food

donnablackwrites

Art is a gift we give ourselves

Fridgelore

low waste living drawn from food lore through the ages

BeckiesKitchen.com

MUSINGS : CRITICISM : HISTORY : NEWS

North River Notes

Observations on the Hudson River as it passes through New York City. The section of the Hudson which passes through New York is historically known as the North River, called this by the Dutch to distinguish it from the Delaware River, which they knew as the South River. This stretch of the Hudson is still often referred to as the North River by local mariners today. All photos copyright Daniel Katzive unless otherwise attributed. For more frequent updates, please follow northriverblog on Facebook or Instagram.

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Where your favorite flavors come together