“If the Black Death caused the Renaissance, will COVID also create a golden age?” Versions of this question have been going around as people, trying to understand the present crisis, reach for history’s most famous pandemic. Using history to understand our present is a great impulse, but it means some of the false myths we […]
I am often asked for book recommendations by people who have enjoyed my essays here and are looking for some historical pleasure reading. Renaissance History Introductions & Overviews(plus some for earlier/later periods to show context/impact) Particularly Fun Renaissance Primary Sources Enjoyable Renaissance Secondary Source Books on Specific Topics More renaissance books on specific/narrow topics that […]
It’s spring 2019 and crises are coming thick and fast, but one of them which may have an extra deep, extra wide, extra lasting, and extra invisible impact is the new proposed EU Copyright Directive, whose Article 11 and Article 13 propose, among other things, to (A) radically and permanently change who owns news and […]
On 11th January 2018, Ada did a marathon “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit. This last post collects the questions and answers that are about the Terra Ignota world and don’t fit anywhere else. There may be minor spoilers, but I’m not reproducing the specific spoilers that were marked as such (partly because they’re impossible […]
Is progress inevitable? Is it natural? Is it fragile? Is it possible? Is it a problematic concept in the first place? Many people are reexamining these kinds of questions as 2016 draws to a close, so I thought this would be a good moment to share the sort-of “zoomed out” discussions the subject that historians like myself […]
Hello, friends & readers. This is a quick update to share links to a couple short essays I’ve written for other blogs. My first science fiction novel Too Like the Lightning comes out very soon now, May 10th! Initial reviews and reactions have been extremely enthusiastic, and these days Twitter sometimes feels like a surreal dream, with […]
(Best to begin with Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.) Socrates, Sartre, Descartes and our Youth have, among them, consumed twelve thousand, six hundred and forty two hypothetical eclairs in the fourteen months since we left them contemplating skepticism on the banks of a cheerily babbling imaginary brook. Much has changed in the interval, not in the land […]
Welcome to a new feature here on Ex Urbe — the promoted comment. From time to time, Ada makes a long substantive chewy comment, which could almost be its own post. Making it into an actual post would take valuable time. The comment is already written and fascinating — but hidden down in a comment […]
On the one hand, I have been looking forward for ages to reading and then writing something about “The Litany of Earth,” an amazing novelette by Ruthanna Emrys, acquired for Tor.com by editor Carl Engle-Laird. But on the other hand I personally usually dislike reading reviews, at least traditional reviews of things I have already decided to read. When a reviewer tells […]
I have news to share, though not yet a new post in my Skepticism series, so thank you for your patience on that. I will have a post up tomorrow, though, on a different topic. But for now, news: First, I’m leaving Texas and starting this fall in a new position as an Assistant Professor in […]
