As New Years eve is closing in there are still a few days of relaxing left. A perfect opportunity to do some reading.
I’m currently reading Barbara W. Tuchmans the First salut. A book on the American Revolutionary history; the 13 colonies vs. the Brits. This is a piece of history I know very little about so when I found this book in a sales basket I thought it would be good to read up on it. As I understand this book is written from a European perspective and one of the questions is how did England manage to lose the Revolutionary War?
It all starts with the `first salute’ by the Dutch owned West Indian port of St. Eustatius on November 16, 1776 in response to a salute given by the American brigantine Andrew Doria. This is perhaps the starting point of a formal recognition of American as an independent nation.
I’ll look forward to be better educated as I continue reading and will come back with one or a few posts on the subject.
As always I have a few other on-going reads and I’ve also started Lotta Mejsholms PhD thesis Gränsland: Konstruktion av tidig barndom och begravningsritual för kristnadet I Skandinavien (Borderland. Constructions of Early Childhood and Burial Rituals during the Christianisation in Scandinavia) from 2009.
Abstract:
The thesis explores the process of Christianisation in Viking and Medieval Scandinavia through the social constructions of infancy and the beginnings of human life, as expressed in the ideals and practices seen in written and archaeological evidence.‘Childhood’ is regarded as a social construction defined by, and therefore also reflecting, contemporary society…
The abstract and the thesis is available as a pdf here (In Swedish).
Magnus Reuterdahl
