Author name: Brett Holman

Brett Holman is a historian who lives in Armidale, Australia.

1930s, After 1950, Cold War, Nuclear, biological, chemical

A world war in a day

Last month, I noted a parallel between certain pre- and post-Hiroshima nuclear warfare narratives. Here’s an even more common one, this time between the knock-out blow itself and nuclear warfare. Here’s the American astronomer Carl Sagan, from the final chapter (“Who speaks for Earth?”) of the 1980 companion book to his acclaimed television series, Cosmos: […]

Blogging, tweeting and podcasting

Investigations of a Dog

Strange name, good blog. Gavin Robinson is moving on from a PhD on horse supply in the English Civil War: This is mostly a history blog, but I’m aiming to be eclectic. I’m likely to be posting works in progress; reflections on things I’ve been reading; extracts from and criticism of my PhD thesis; and

Acquisitions, Books

Acquisitions

Vera Brittain. One Voice: Pacifist Writings from the Second World War. London and New York: Continuum, 2005. Consists two of her wartime works, Humiliation with Honour (1942) and Seed of Chaos (1944), a condemnation of RAF area bombing. Scholarly introduction by Aleksandra Bennett, foreword by Shirley Williams. Peter Cooksley. The Home Front: Civilian Life in

1930s, 1940s

Pick a date, any date

[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] In a comment to an earlier post, Jonathan Dresner quite legitimately took exception to my use of the term ‘interwar’ to refer to the period 1919-1939: From an Asian history perspective, the Japanese use of chemical weapons in China isn’t really “interwar,” as major combat operations began in late ’37

Australia, Other

Populate an Australian history department

[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] Mark Grimsley has an interesting post up at Blog Them Out of the Stone Age / Cliopatria asking people how they would fill out a history department of 15 full-time equivalent positions. I thought it would be fun to try this exercise for an Australian history department. Rather than trying

1930s, Books, Nuclear, biological, chemical

Judgement Day, 1936

Actually, as interwar visions of armageddon go, this is pretty mild. But it reminded me of the scene in Terminator 2: Judgement Day where Sarah Connor has a nightmare about the coming nuclear war, with a nuclear warhead exploding over a playground filled with children: He was lying on a hill-side. Below him there was

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