Today's selection -- from Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World by Donald G. Kyle. The history of gladiators: “Historically; the symbolic dynamics of the gladiatorial combat—what its actions and participants meant to the Romans—cannot be separated from the military and political contexts of the Middle (264-133) and Late Republic (133-31 BCB), which included recurring, brutal warfare, anxiety persisting from the disastrous defeat at Cannae, the use of military captives as performers, and the growing popularity of their impressive and entertaining militaristic performances. Combats were intr ..read more

Today's selection -- from Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic by Manisha Sinha. The late 1870s saw the end of post-Civil War Reconstruction: “The  fall  of  the  Second  American  Republic  was  a  historical  tragedy  of  global  proportions,  and  its  roots  lay  in  President  Ulysses  S.  Grant's  second  term.  Grant's  reelection  in  1872  should  have  signaled, as most African Americans and radicals hoped, that the feder ..read more

Today's selection -- from Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic by Manisha Sinha. The late 1870s saw the end of post-Civil War Reconstruction: “The  fall  of  the  Second  American  Republic  was  a  historical  tragedy  of  global  proportions,  and  its  roots  lay  in  President  Ulysses  S.  Grant's  second  term.  Grant's  reelection  in  1872  should  have  signaled, as most African Americans and radicals hoped, that the feder ..read more

Today's selection -- from Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions by Ed Zwick. “Little is learned from success”: “Movies aren't born. They fight their way to life. And the struggle can wear you down. I send the script to a movie star's manager, who says, ‘I love the script for him.’ It means her assistant read it. When the movie star's ‘covering agent’ says, ‘I love the script for him,’ it means the actor is technically available and needs an offer to read it. When the movie star's ‘responsible agent’ says, ‘My client loves the script,’ it means the actor has notes. When the movie star's lawyer says ..read more

Insights into the nature of memory: “In 1956, George Miller, one of the founders of the then-nascent field of cognitive psychology, wrote a rather peculiar paper. … Miller's paper became a classic because it established a fundamental point about memory that has been validated time and again: the human brain can only keep a limited amount of information in mind at any given time. “Miller used the humorous metaphor of persecution at the hands of an integer to draw attention to his conclusion that we can keep in mind only about seven items. More recent estimates suggest that Miller was too opti ..read more

Today's selection -- from A Short History of the World by H.G. Wells. The life of Guatama Buddha.  “But now we must go back three centuries in our story to tell of a great teacher who came near to revolutionizing the religious thought and feeling of all Asia. This was Gautama Buddha, who taught disciples at Benares in India about the same time that Isaiah was prophesying among the Jews in Babylon and Heraclitus was carrying on his speculative enquiries into the nature of things at Ephesus. All these men were in the world at the same time, in the sixth century B.C — unaware of one another ..read more

Today's selection -- from History of the American Frontier by Frederic L. Paxson. Jefferson's possible motivations behind the Lewis and Clark expedition.   “With the ratification of the Louisiana Purchase the frontier had little special concern. It wanted the territory and felt none of the constitutional qualms that had distressed Jefferson. The Federalists of New England were tin-own into the opposition and the minority, and now experienced fears of executive usurpation and constitutional violation that they would have scoffed at when in office. They fought in vain the ratification ..read more

Today's selection -- from 3 Shades of Blue by James Kaplan. The earliest performances of the soon-to-be-immortal Bill Evans: “I met an unknown piano player who looked and played like a country hick. He bore no resemblance whatsoever to any talented jazz pianist I had ever known. He looked like a college student majoring, perhaps, in archeology or advanced botany. Although it pains me to admit this, he was a classic nerd. His name was Bill Evans. He later became the Bill Evans. When we first met, however, he was far from being the path-breaking, transformational piano shaman whom everyone came ..read more

Today's selection -- from Mountains of Fire by Clive Oppenheimer. The smoldering volcanoes of Iceland made some in the past regard it as the authentic location of purgatory: “Iceland is nothing short of a volcanologist's paradise. You cannot find a stone in the country that wasn't expressed through a volcanic orifice. The country is a gigantic volcano. One or another of the island's innumerable craters erupts every few years: over 200 events are catalogued for the period since the Vikings (and a few Celts) settled there around the year 870 CE, and the true figure may be closer to 300. With so ..read more

Today's selection -- from Pirates by Peter Lehr. The modern-day pirates of Nigeria and Somalia: “The Nigerian pirates' penchant for lethal violence (including firefights with security guards and Nigerian navy vessels) in contrast with the Somali pirates' typical avoidance of such encounters points to the variety of tactics used by modern-day pirates. As in the previous periods, whether lethal and gratuitous violence is inflicted or not depends to a large, degree on what the pirates are after: mainly the ship's cargo and the crew and passengers' valuables, as for example were the Victual Broth ..read more