John Raimo

Thinking in Public – Penn Press Long before we began to speak of "public intellectuals," the ideas of "the public" and "the intellectual" raised consternation among many European philosophe...

Then there's also this lovely book that I love recommending to friends and colleagues .... 🙃 www.pennpress.org/978081229241...

Turning On the Mind In 1951, the eight o’clock nightly news reported on Jean-Paul Sartre for the first time. By the end of the twentieth century, more than 3,500 programs dealing with philosophy and its practitioners—inc...

This is also excellent if you don't know it: press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo.... Then there's the utterly extraordinary work of the brilliant Axel Schildt, e.g. www.wallstein-verlag.de/978383533774....

Dietz Bering: Die Epoche der Intellektuellen. 1891-2001 - Perlentaucher In Deutschland kam es erst nach 1945 zu einem positiven Verständnis von Intellektueller. In der Gruppe 47 und durch die Spiegel-Affäre zu Kräften gekommen, konnte...

Getting back to trying to keep a social media fast (sigh), but here you go—it's a legit excellent book, too: www.perlentaucher.de/buch/dietz-b...

YouTube video by Nick Drake - Topic ' Cello Song

Going to try and take a break from social media for the summer, so hoping you all can find a bit of rest and respite as well (if the news allows any of us to ...). Back in a bit then, ~ John

youtu.be/MhSVh75lKiE?...

The Sorrow And The Pity in Milestone Film & Video This is "The Sorrow And The Pity" by Milestone Channel on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

Essential viewing: Marcel Ophuls' 1969 documentary The Sorrow and the Pity (Le Chagrin et la Pitié), available to watch for free online here (h/t @lioneltrolling.bsky.social; #skystorians) vimeo.com/channels/828...

Essential reading from Nitzan Lebovic (@nitzanl1.bsky.social) at the Journal of the History of Ideas ( @jhideas.bsky.social), #skystorians: muse.jhu.edu/article/959035

Hal Foster · Pinstriped Tycoon: Siege Art To what extent is the meaning of an artwork – or a piece of architecture or any made thing – bound up with the...

Hal Foster on Joseph Leo Koerner for the @lrb.co.uk (for #skystorians and #arthistory scholars): www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Les récidivistes - AOC media Agiter le chiffon rouge de la montée du nazisme reste une vaine superstition si l’on persiste dans les erreurs historiques – faire porter la responsabilité sur les classes populaires et le suffrage un...

Johann Chapoutot, Les récidivistes (@aoc-media.bsky.social, #skystorians) : aoc.media/analyse/2025...

Diarmaid MacCulloch · With Fresh Eyes: Peter Brown’s Achievement All autobiography is inherently mendacious, if only by omission and with the intent of protecting the innocent. In his...

‘Brown has never written a dull or inelegant sentence, and his parade of publications over the last sixty years continues to astonish, instruct and beguile.’

Diarmaid MacCulloch on the life and work of historian of antiquity Peter Brown: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Roman Jakobson, Franz Boas, and the Paleo-Siberian and Aleutian material at the New York Public Library The support for refugee scholars to come to the United States of America in the 1930s and 1940s is well known. Varian Fry famously helped several hundred European artists and intellectuals to flee …

Roman Jakobson, Franz Boas, and the Paleo-Siberian and Aleutian material at the New York Public Library
progressivegeographies.com/2025/06/01/r...

This sounds utterly superb. Wish I could attend the talk in London yet also anxiously hoping there will be a recording of it published later by the @warburginstitute.bsky.social! #bookhistory #skystorians

The House and Studio of Victor Horta The story of how the Belgian Art Nouveau architect Victor Horta conceived his private residence/studio and how architect Barbara Van Der Wee restored it to i...

I'm such an uncritical admirer of Horta's work that it's almost embarrassing .... Barbara Van der Wee, Francoise Aubry and Benjamin Zurstrassen, The House and Studio of Victor Horta: Twenty Years of Restoration (@yalepress.bsky.social, January 2026; #skystorians) yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

Thanks for the kind words! By the by: I'm always interested in the sorts of cultural capital that not-easily-translated-authors pick up, e.g. Manganelli, Kling, Guyotat, Holan, &c. (this apart from figures like Joyce, Céline, Döblin, Hrabal, &c. *trying* for precisely this). But that's not Mann. 🙂

The John E. Woods one isn't bad. Mann isn't terrible in terms of translating, in one sense; rather, finding an equivalent English style *or* committing to reproducing the original's rhythm and syntax to some degree however unusual in English is the real problem (my nobody opinion).

Taking the liberty of re-posting this essay about what Trump voters owe politically and morally:

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/de...

dispersed holdings

The wonderful poet Kyle Booten has a book coming out soon with Dispersed Holdings (@salrandolph.bsky.social) and Asterism Books (@asterismbooks.bsky.social). Of great interest to anyone interested in poetry, digital humanities, and more: www.dispersedholdings.net & asterismbooks.com/product/gyms...

I could criticize him endlessly as a hack Catholic traditionalist presenting hardcore heterodox weirdness as ho-hum mainstream religion in the NYT. He's also ... not that bright! Nor cultured. Just no real competencies, too. Yet he also acts as a stalking horse for other *real* intellectuals ....

Whenever I think the sad dude can't get sadder and more pathetic ....

Doctors at the CDC say children should receive Covid vaccines. A disgraced ex-environmental lawyer who spent 20 years abusing heroin says they shouldn't. For busy parents, it can be hard to know who to trust.

Return of the personal loyalty oath:

A lot of old and dear favorites from the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin but, really, the Radziwill painting blew my mind. Hoping #skyhstorians and #arthistory scholars, perhaps even @adamtooze.bsky.social, might weigh in on it here ....

Really enjoyed the exhibit "Modern Art and Politics in Germany, 1910-1945" at the Kimbell Art Museum (reproduction of Schad, Rudolf Belling, Klee, and Franz Radziwill here). I have to say that this Radziwill painting, "Flanders (Where to in This World" (1940-1950), was *the* grand shock though ....

Our NHS An engaging, inclusive history of the NHS, exploring its surprising survival—and the people who have kept it running   Shortlisted for the 2024 Wolfson Hi...

Dear #skystorian colleagues, I belated caught that the utterly superb historian Andrew Seaton (@andrewseaton.bsky.social) is on Bluesky now. Give him a follow and read his amazing book "Our NHS" if interested, too ( @yalepress.bsky.social / @yalebooks.bsky.social): yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

Really important argument that hasn't been in the discussion so far (it presumes that one cares about things like the First Amendment; obviously, can't take that for granted in the US in 2025):

Warner Brown, you mean. Great company softball short-stop c. 1947. Got a little racist when in the cups, if you know what I mean. Great 'Murican. Not from any "shithole" country. Definitely not a coastal media elite—the real enemy, you know, after The Marxists.

Fantastically interesting! Julia Kreizer, "Hugo Steiner-Prag: Mystical illustrations and worldly education" (Leo Baeck Institute, New York; #skystorians, #bookhistory) www.lbi.org/collections/...

Keith Jarrett, New Vienna: At the Musikverein, 2016 (ECM Records, 2025): ecmrecords.com/product/new-...

È una donna che vi parla, stasera - Alba de Céspedes, Cult edizione 2024 | Oscar Mondadori È una donna che vi parla, stasera è un libro di Alba de Céspedes pubblicato da Mondadori. Scopri la scheda del libro, i dettagli e le recensioni. Acquista subito online.

Alba de Céspedes, È una donna che vi parla, stasera. A cura di Valeria Paola Babini (Mondadori, 2024; #skystorians): www.oscarmondadori.it/libri/e-una-...

Bembo, Venezia, le Prose: 1525-2025 (19-20-21 giugno 2025; in parte trasmesso in streaming direttamente; #skystorians)