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Of Assassins and Aliens, or, The Mundane Present

Posted on by Bryan Caswell Leave a comment
History might be understood as a story of humans trying to survive, explain the world around them, and escape from the monotony of it all. From storytelling to athletics to art, we humans have been livening things up for thousands of years. Are the legions of teens tuning into their favorite YouTubers every week all that much different from the crowds filling the Athenian agora to listen to a traveling Homeric poet? Indeed, for some (including yours truly), history itself can serve as an escape, providing tales of times so much more interesting than the times one lives in. For me, this phenomenon has added a second, flipped, meaning to the old adage that “The past is like a foreign country.” Sure, they do things differently there, but I also couldn’t imagine those things happening here, either. Recently, however, I realized that this mindset forms the very foundation of one of the most popular video game series of the last two decades: Assassins’ Creed.... Read More
These Truths

Comprehensive Yet Digestible: Jill Lepore’s These Truths

Posted on by Jeffrey Lauck Leave a comment
Lepore, Jill. These Truths: A History of the United States. Audiobook. Recorded Books, 2018.  I must confess that I did not actually “read” These Truths, or at least not in the conventional sense. Instead, I opted to listen to the audiobook version, read by the distinguished Jill Lepore herself. And so it was that I […]... Read More
Borgia

No Country for Heroes: History and our Narrative Need for Protagonists

Posted on by Bryan Caswell Leave a comment
Last week, I reviewed Showtimes The Borgias  in tandem with Christopher Hibbert’s The Borgias and their Enemies. When I finished Hibbert’s work, I was struck by The Borgias’ choice to portray its titular family as the heroes of their own story. I am no Renaissance historian, but from the sources presented by Hibbert, it would seem that most contemporaries agreed that the Borgia family was a blight upon Italy, Christianity, and all humanity. Indeed, the tagline for the show is “History’s First Crime Family!” Sure, every member of the family is shown doing reprehensible things, but by virtue of the show’s narrative structure, they seem more excusable or, at least, less reprehensible than the actions of their enemies. Even the show’s numerous antagonists seemed mis-characterized; Cardinal della Rovere condemns the Borgias for corruption, yet historically, this future pope was no less corrupt, and possibly even more so! Why these character choices, some so at odds with history? As I pondered, I realized that I had already stumbled onto the answer to my questions: narrative structure and, specifically, our need for protagonists in our stories.... Read More
THE BORGIAS (Season3)

Bushels of Borgias: Christopher Hibbert’s The Borgias and their Enemies and Showtime’s The Borgias

Posted on by Bryan Caswell 2 Comments
As any history lover is wont to do, I recently combed through Netflix and added every period piece that I could find to my watch list. I decided to begin, well, at the beginning, or at least with the earliest on my new list. Thus I came to Showtime’s 2011 series The Borgias, starring Jeremy Irons as Rodrigo Borgia, the Renaissance Pope Alexander VI and patriarch of a famously corrupt Spanish noble family. The show itself was highly entertaining, full of intrigue, backbiting, and monologues that have become the hallmarks of prestige television. As always, Jeremy Irons is magnetic, and even though the Renaissance has never been my specialty, his performance sustained me through events that otherwise might not have kept my interest. As I prepared to review The Borgias, however, I realized that I lacked any foundation for such an historical review. I thus dutifully hunted down a history of the family, and so we come to this tandem review.... Read More
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Concerning Grad School: The View from the Middle

Posted on by Ryan Nadeau Leave a comment
This holiday season, I had more to celebrate than the dawn of a new decade– as of this December, I have passed the halfway point of my three-year graduate school process. Though we’ve discussed grad school here on Concerning History before, my experience at the University of Rhode Island differs from our previous looks in […]... Read More
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A Terrible Beauty: Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing

Posted on by Kevin Lavery Leave a comment
When I think of the Troubles, I remember the summer I spent abroad in Ireland. I think about visiting Belfast, where we went forth from the world-class Titanic Museum to explore streets filled with murals, flags, and “peace walls” still dividing Catholics and Protestants. I think of the walking tour we took in Derry, the […]... Read More
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Give Me More! Max Adams’ The Viking Wars

Posted on by Bryan Caswell Leave a comment
From first cracking open In the Land of Giants (hopefully coming soon to a Concerning History book club near you), I have been enthralled with what I’ve come to call Max Adams’ Dark Ages Trilogy. Now at last I’ve come to what, for many, is the main event: the cataclysmic clash of cultures—Roman Christian Anglo-Saxon, Irish Christian Celtic and Brythonic, and Pagan Scandinavian—that define the ninth and tenth centuries and the British Isles themselves to this day. Eagerly anticipating Adams’ historical treatment of such oft-tread ground, I dove right in. While I was mostly satisfied by the end, however, as with most endings, I was left wanting just a little bit more.... Read More
STAR WARS: EPISODE VII - THE FORCE AWAKENS, 2015. ©Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/Lucasfilm

An Empire Revised: Star Wars, Fascism, & History

Posted on by Bryan Caswell 1 Comment
One does not need to look very far for homages to history within George Lucas’s Star Wars franchise. A noble Republic transforms into a corrupt Empire in a reflection of ancient Rome, and, of course, that Empire employs stormtroopers and commits genocide in a dark mirror of Nazi Germany. This last comparison has been clear from the moment Star Wars premiered in 1977, and has served the franchise well in these intervening forty years. Indeed, when asked to tease the origins of the First Order, villains of the Disney sequel trilogy, Lucasfilm representatives likened them to Nazis who escaped to Argentina; this time, however, those escaped fascists regroup and strike back. It is precisely this appearance of the First Order, however, that has begun eroding Star Wars’ original fascist allegory for me, for as the First Order ascends in villainy, Star Wars seems intent on mitigating the evil of the original Empire.... Read More
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American Horror Story: AMC’s The Terror: Infamy

Posted on by Bryan Caswell Leave a comment
Last spring, Heather and I enjoyed AMC’s somewhat nontraditional historical horror/thriller The Terror (reviewed here on Concerning History). Its story of a British expedition trapped north of the Arctic Circle, struggling to survive the elements even while stalked by a malevolent spirit, was gripping and, well, weird. We were excited to hear that it had been renewed for a second season, though of course this new batch of episodes would need to cover a different story. On board for an anthology series of different period piece horror stories, Heather and I eagerly tuned in.... Read More