Category Archives: Uncategorized

Audibly Speaking on Substack: History “Hack” for January 2

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The Representatives who Weren’t:

The little matter of the Oath

More than half of the Republicans in the so-called House of Representatives have just pledged to violate their oaths to uphold the Constitution. They have just declared that they would be the commanders, and not the representatives, of the people who just elected or re-elected them, as the case may be. They did this in announcing that they would vote to stop or reverse an election that has already been decided in the manner required by the Constitution. (Click on the player to listen to the audio narration of this episode.)

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A Sample of my audio narration of “A Tale of Two Cities,” by Charles Dickens

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This chapter of “A Tale of Two Cities,” is called “The Gorgon’s Head,” and is one of the more difficult chapters in the novel to narrate, at least in my opinion.  It has more than its share of the long, meandering and prolix sentences for which Dickens was famous. Even when read with the eyes, it takes time to make sense of them. On top of that it has extensive dialogue intertwined with lines from the omniscient narrator.  One saving grace is that the characters are typically “over the top” in their demeanor, either simon pure (Charles Darnay) or deeply evil (the Marquis de Evremonde), allowing for an “over the top” narrative style.  One does not need to be an Olivier or a Meryl Streep to read these lines correctly!

In about six months the entire novel will be available, free of course, on the open source audiobook site, Librivox. org.  I hope that you enjoy this sample.

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The Period

Tale of Two Cities, Uncategorized

The Breakaway Cafe is the name for a place to chill in this course. In this time of Covid sometimes we all need to take a break. Breakaway Cafe is such a place. Historians are people who tell (true) stories. But in Breakaway Cafe, I tell short stories that are often fiction, narrated by yours truly just because yours truly wants to tell them.

You DO NOT have to pay any attention to Breakaway Cafe posts, because they have nothing to do with the course and none of them “are on the exam.” Also, you don’t have to chill, and that’s what Breakaway Cafe is all about. Humans love stories, though, and I would just like to contribute to that because audio narration, as well as telling stories that are fiction is a hobby of mine, in another life of mine.


In this first episode I narrate the first chapter of Charles Dickens’s “A Tale of Two Cities,” a chapter called “The Period.” This novel about people caught up in the maelstrom of the French Revolution was not published as a complete novel originally but was serialized like a magazine, with chapters coming out, one at a time over many months. They were like episodes in a mini-series that could not be binged. So in listening to this episode, you are listening to the novel as Dickens originally intended and as its first readers received it.


Dickens was also an actor, and his first love was theater. So, when there is dialogue (not in the first chapter), I am going to be playing the parts as he intended, with many different voices. Eventually I will add more chapters (as I record them, because I am just beginning to do so, for a public domain web site called Librivox.org). By the way, this is a non-commercial site for which nobody makes any money. It is a site just to make the world a better place, gratis.

I am no Simon Callow, the dean of writers and narrators of the works of Dickens. But, then again I don’t charge for my performances. They are just designed to provide moments of respite and chill in this Breakaway Cafe.

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Unit 4, Discussion 3: Marx and Marxism

Uncategorized, Unit 4

The theory of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, presented in the Communist Manifesto (1848), was yet another theory of progress so popular in the nineteenth century, along with Darwinism, Positivism and nationalism. Marxism was popular with the proletarians created by the Industrial Revolution, because it predicted that they would one day win a successful proletarian revolution against the bourgeoisie all over the world, one whose success was the inevitable product of class conflict between the two classes. For the same reason, the middle class hated this theory and fought the rise of the proletariat. The theories of Marx and Engels would never be borne out or live up to their predictions. BUt it was a major fear factor that explains much about the politics of the middle class in the late nineteenth century and the birth of social welfare legislation, which Marx had never foreseen or predicted.

 

Karl Marx, the Principle author of “The Communist Manifesto” (1848)

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Unit 4, Discussion 2: Darwin and His Descendants

Uncategorized, Unit 4

Here is a link to a transcript of this Episode

Who was Charles Darwin, this Newton of the Nineteenth century? And what was his theory of the evolution of species by natural selection. How did it impact virtually every aspect of Western Civilization, from political ideologies to psychology and philosophy? In this special landmark podcast, Dr. Reiman explores his significance.

Darwin in 1870.

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Unit 4, DIscussion 1: The Unification of Germany and Italy, 1848-1871

Uncategorized, Unit 4

ationalism took a dark turn for the worse after 1848. Nations that came into existence after 1848–such as Germany and Italy–were unified by military monarchies adopting the strategies of statecraft and war. In this podcast, Dr. Reiman traces the ways in which these two nations buried liberalism in their countries and strengthened autocratic government between 1848 and 1871, lighting the long fuse to World War I.

A Young Bismarck

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