For the past several years, Bruce Greenwald and I have been engaged in research on an alternative theory of the Depression—and an alternative analysis of what is ailing the economy today. This explanation sees the financial crisis of the 1930s as a consequence not so much of a financial implosion but of the economy’s underlying weakness. The breakdown of the banking system didn’t culminate until 1933, long after the Depression began and long after unemployment had started to soar. By 1931 unemployment was already around 16 percent, and it reached 23 percent in 1932. Shantytown “Hoovervilles” were springing up everywhere. The underlying cause was a structural change in the real economy: the widespread decline in agricultural prices and incomes, caused by what is ordinarily a “good thing”—greater productivity.

At the beginning of the Depression, more than a fifth of all Americans worked on farms. Between 1929 and 1932, these people saw their incomes cut by somewhere between one-third and two-thirds, compounding problems that farmers had faced for years. Agriculture had been a victim of its own success. In 1900, it took a large portion of the U.S. population to produce enough food for the country as a whole. Then came a revolution in agriculture that would gain pace throughout the century—better seeds, better fertilizer, better farming practices, along with widespread mechanization. Today, 2 percent of Americans produce more food than we can consume.

What this transition meant

Dog Food in Classical Greece

no rss feed, alas

not available at amazon.ca

Researchers say cooking was commonplace among Homo erectus and probably originated early in their era or earlier.

start at: For the lower classes, dreams represented not only

This article seeks to explore the elusive realm of sleep in early modern British society, with the aid of occasional illustrations from elsewhere in Europe and British North America. Although England forms the heart of my inquiry, I have focused on facets of slumber common to most Western societies, including, most significantly, the predominant pattern of sleep before the Industrial Revolution. Few characteristics of sleep in past ages, much less the "arcana" of "old country-folk," have received examination since Samuel Johnson complained that "so liberal and impartial a benefactor" should "meet with so few historians." Apart from fleeting references in scholarly monographs to the prolonged sleeping habits of pre-industrial communities, only the subject of dreams has drawn sustained scrutiny. Early modern scholars have neglected such topics as bedtime rituals, sleep deprivation, and variations in slumber between different social ranks.2 In the first portion of this article, I explore these and other features, not only to map sleep's principal contours but also to underscore its manifold importance in everyday life. More significantly, this section lays the foundation for a detailed investigation of segmented sleep and, ultimately, its relationship to early modern dreams. If the overall subject of slumber for historians has remained cloaked in obscurity, the age-old pattern of "first" and "second sleep" has been wholly ignored. Central to the entire article is the profound role pre-industrial sleep played in the lives of ordinary men and women, which by no means included the assurance of sound slumber.

Wheat consumption today is 26 lbs per year greater than in 1970 and now totals 133 lbs per person per year, or the equivalent of approximately 200 loaves of bread per year. Because infants and children are lumped together with adults, average adult consumption is likely much greater than 200 lbs per year, or the equivalent of approximately 300 loaves of bread per year. (Nobody, of course, eats 300 loaves of bread per year; tallying up the pretzels, pizza, bagels, focaccia, bruschetta, breading, rolls, etc., it all adds up to approximately 300 loaves-equivalent.)

Another twist: The mid- and late-1980s also marks the widespread adoption by U.S. farmers of the genetically-altered semi-dwarf variants of wheat to replace traditional wheat. While in 1980 the loaf of bread–or bagel, pretzel, pizza, bruschetta, ciabatta, or roll–likely came from 4 1/2-foot tall traditional wheat, in 1988 it was almost certainly a product made from high-yield semi-dwarf wheat. No questions were asked about its appropriateness for human consumption, no questions asked about animal safety testing. Just grown, processed, and sold.

...and so part of my book is about the invention of forensic toxicology. And we take this kind of CSI stuff for so for granted now that scientists are taken seriously that they know how to do these amazing chemical things, but before the 1920 s it was a terrific time to be a poisoner, and not so great a time to be a poisoner's intended victim.

“But what's interesting is that in some of the research that's come out, particularly Roger Ekirch's book, his history of the night, he talks about before the invention of electric light, people slept in segmented sleep. They would sleep for a few hours, they'd be up for several hours, and then they'd be - fall back asleep again. So in many respects that sleep pattern is fairly natural.”
- Patricia Morrisroe, NPR’s “Talk of the Nation,” May 4, 2010

Manuscripts written in Syriac, an ancient language of the Middle East, are peppered with mysterious dots. Among them is the vertical double dot or zagwa elaya. A Cambridge academic thinks that the zagwa elaya is the world’s earliest question mark.

"Welcome to the history cookbook. Do you know what the Vikings ate for dinner? What a typical meal of a wealthy family in Roman Britain consisted of, or what food was like in a Victorian Workhouse? Why not drop into history cookbook and find out? This project looks at the food of the past and how this influenced the health of the people living in each time period."

Kristian Williams analyses the founding of the American police force, and argues that instead of fighting crime, they were established as an instrument of social control over the working class.

Crochet books and magazine articles, mostly from the late 1800s. From google books, courtesy of tankerraid on reddit

An eclectic assortment of stuff: food, archaeology, fun, books, history, geekery, etc.