Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

 Moments worth keeping in mind in coming to grips with the Renaissance: 1453: Fall of Constantinople 1455: The War of the Roses breaks out in England 1485: War concludes as the Tudors take over, under King Henry VII 1492. The first of Columbus' voyages. 1494: Savonarola takes over in Florence 1498: Savonarola executed.  1504. Michelangelo completes work on his DAVID. 1510.  Hieronymous Bosch paints THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS 1513. Niccolo Machiavelli puts out THE PRINCE, a study of the means that one must use to control a city-state, expressing a devout hope for the unity of Italy against its foreign oppressors. 1530. The earliest known pictures of instruments recognizable as violins date to this time, in northern Italy.   1598. The earliest known work that could be modern standards be considered an opera is performed in this year, DAFNE, in Florence.  1605. The publication of Cervantes' masterpiece, Don Quixote. 

President Biden's pick to be the new administrator of the US Agency for International Development (AID) has received Senate confirmation,  by a 68 - 26 vote. I'm assuming this means 6 (Republicans) did not vote so she received the votes of all Democrats plus 18 Republicans, with 6 Republicans NV and the others No. I can assume that without looking it up because this is my blog, dammit.  At any rate, if she did receive a supportive vote of 18 Republicans, roughly 1/3d of the caucus, that is a remarkable show of bipartisan support as such things go in 2021.  One neat fact about the now confirmed nominee, Samantha Power: she was a reporter for US News and World Report before she was either an academic or a civil servant.  She was a war correspondent covering the Yugoslavian helter-skelter in the years '93 to '96.   I went to the US AID website, in search of a simple explanation for what the AID does, and accordingly for what Power will now be responsible. I ca...

Meyer, the author of this book, now lives in England and seems to have no academic post, though he used to teach in the US -- apparently at three different colleges -- and has his MA from the University of Minnesota. The Borgias  is aimed at a broad audience and is not particularly academic in form. It has a thin set of endnotes and (given the subject) a very thin bibliography. I say that as a matter of transparency, not that I would hold that against him. My last book had neither of those. One enthusiastic reviewer has called Meyer's book "an incredibly interesting and quite frankly brilliant read, and one I would wholeheartedly recommend to anyone interested in learning about the history of this fascinating family." I won't review the book, I'll just quote the following passage, which concerns the relation between the Borgia family (especially Cesare) and the philosopher Machiavelli. "Like everyone associated with Florence's post-Medici repu...