As 2020 is coming to an end, you can either read a dozen Quilette articles or letters in The Times - or even throw in a PragerU video for good measure - insisting the British Empire was 'Overwhelmingly a force for good' and that 'wokery' is erasing history...

Or you can avail yourself of the critical and deeply researched work of actual scholars. Here are my recommendations for Christmas gifts this year - for anyone seriously interested in the history of the British Empire and its legacies:

@PriyaSatia 'Time's Monster'
-@profdanhicks 'The Brutish Museum'
-@PriyamvadaGopal 'Insurgent Empire'
-@DalrympleWill 'The Anarchy'
-Stuart Ward and @astrid_rasch 'Embers of Empire in Brexit Britain'
-@RobertGildea 'Empires of the Mind'
-@aaprocter
And some forthcoming ones:

@Sathnam 'Empireland'
and of course @pdkmitchell 'Imperial Nostalgia'
Apologies if I have forgotten any others - there is obviously a vast literature out there, so these are just some initial recommendations and a good starting-point if you are interested - genuinely interested - in the British Empire...
So I did forget a few:

@mbarcia24 'The Yellow Demon of Fever'
-@lottelydia 'The Free Speech Wars'
And, as some people have kindly pointed out, I should perhaps include some of my own books, if nothing else than to please my publishers...
Honourable mentions:

@jonewilson 'India Conquered'
And I'm going beyond the Anglo-centric focus of the list to include this brilliant historical comic which cannot be recommended enough:

@MichaelGVann 'The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt'
And taking us into global comparative imperialism:

@olaferr

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दोन वर्षांपूर्वी जेव्हा मी ‘लीन इन’ हे पुस्तक वाचले होते तेव्हा मला कधीच वाटले नव्हते की ह्या पुस्तकाचा माझ्यावर कायमचा परिणाम होईल.
“खरोखर समान जग असे आहे की जेथे महिलांनी आपले अर्धे देश आणि कंपन्या आणि पुरुषांनी अर्धी घरं चालवतील. “
- शेरिल सँडबर्ग.


अध्याय वाचताना मला जाणवलं की प्रत्येक महिला जिला तिच्या आवडीनिवडींशी कोणतीही तडजोड न करता स्वत: चे करियर बनवायचे आहे, तिच्यासाठी हा manifesto आहे. या वास्तववादी पुस्तकाची लेखिका शेरिल सँडबर्ग आहे. प्रामाणिक बोलं तर मी त्यावेळी तिचं नाव कधीच ऐकले नव्हते.


काही खुलासे करणारे तथ्य शोधल्यानंतर मी तिच्या संदर्भात अधिक माहितीसाठी थोडा इंटरनेट सर्फ केलं. हार्वर्डमधून इकॉनॉमिक्सची पदवी घेतली व पदवी पूर्ण झाल्यावर तिला कॉलेजमध्ये वुमन इन इकॉनॉमिक्स नावाची एक संस्था स्थापित केली. एका वर्षासाठी वर्ल्ड बँकेत काम केले आणि कुष्ठरोगास आळा


घालण्याच्या एका कार्यक्रमाअंतर्गत त्यांनी भारतातही प्रवास केला. नंतर हार्वर्ड येथे एमबीए केले आणि वर्षभर मॅककिन्से आणि कंपनीबरोबर काम केले. माझ्यासारख्या भारतीय महिलेसाठी, तिने आपल्या पुस्तकात लिहून दिलेल्या कामाच्या ठिकाणी महिलांच्या वागणुकीच्या साध्या साध्या निरीक्षणाद्वारे

निश्चितच एक आदर्श म्हणून काम केले. मला वैयक्तिकरित्या कळले की पुस्तकात नोंदवलेल्या बर्‍याच अज्ञात, नकळत वर्तन तथ्य सत्य आहेत. त्यापैकी काहींचा समावेश आहे की महिला ज्या प्रकल्पात काम करतात त्या कोणत्याही प्रकल्पात पुढाकार अर्थात initiative घेत नाहीत,
We had a conversation on the podcast about the racialization of dog breeds, where we talked to @BronwenDickey, the author of Pitbull: The Battle Over an American Icon.


In the 1930s, Pitbulls — which, as Bronwen pointed out to me over and over, don’t constitute a dog breed but a shape — used to be seen as the trusty sidekick of the proletariat, the Honda Civic of canines. (Think of “the Little Rascals” dog.)
.

That began changing in the postwar years and the rise of the suburbs. A pedigreed dog became a status symbol for the burgeoning white middle class. And pitbulls got left behind in the cities.

Aside: USians have flitted between different “dangerous” breeds and media-fueled panics around specific dogs. (anti-German xenophobia in the late 1800s fueled extermination programs of the spitz, a little German dog that newspapers said was vicious and spread disease.)

Some previously “dangerous” dogs get rebranded over the years — German shepherds, Dobermans, Rottweilers. But the thing their respective periods of contempt and concern had to do is that they were associated with some contemporarily undesirable group.

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I hate when I learn something new (to me) & stunning about the Jeff Epstein network (h/t MoodyKnowsNada.)

Where to begin?

So our new Secretary of State Anthony Blinken's stepfather, Samuel Pisar, was "longtime lawyer and confidant of...Robert Maxwell," Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad.


"Pisar was one of the last people to speak to Maxwell, by phone, probably an hour before the chairman of Mirror Group Newspapers fell off his luxury yacht the Lady Ghislaine on 5 November, 1991."
https://t.co/DAEgchNyTP


OK, so that's just a coincidence. Moving on, Anthony Blinken "attended the prestigious Dalton School in New York City"...wait, what? https://t.co/DnE6AvHmJg

Dalton School...Dalton School...rings a

Oh that's right.

The dad of the U.S. Attorney General under both George W. Bush & Donald Trump, William Barr, was headmaster of the Dalton School.

Donald Barr was also quite a


I'm not going to even mention that Blinken's stepdad Sam Pisar's name was in Epstein's "black book."

Lots of names in that book. I mean, for example, Cuomo, Trump, Clinton, Prince Andrew, Bill Cosby, Woody Allen - all in that book, and their reputations are spotless.