This is the third piece of the fourth part of our series (I, II, IIIa, IIIb, IVa, IVb) looking at the lives of pre-modern peasant farmers – a majority of all of the humans who have ever lived. Last time, we started looking at the subsistence of peasant agriculture by considering the productivity of our … Continue reading Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part IVc: Rent and Extraction →

Babar's Moon Trip was a pop-up book I had never come across before. It seems influenced a little by the space race and the American efforts to get to the Moon.  They face problems like: not achieving escape velocity for the Moon, failure of stage separation, failure to adjust quickly to reduced gravity on the Moon, and a very short exploration time to obtain samples before their launch window :) It is not really a "pure" pop-up book but rather has some pop-ups and various flaps and tabs you can pull (for action.)  de Brunhoff, Laurent. Babar's Moon Trip. New York: Random House. (18 p.) 1968.

Today I attended in New York, at Columbia University (which still looks a bit like a fortress because of the students protests that took place there about 1.5 years ago) a conference at the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Institute for Policy Dialogue.

A Conversation with The Cultural Tutor

In 53 BCE, one of the most powerful Romans of the time led his army eastward, hoping to achieve the kind of glory and legacy that Julius Caesar had earned on the battlefield. Instead, Marcus Licinius Crassus walked straight into a trap and became remembered for one of the greatest military defeats in Roman […]