Listen to an author realize her forthcoming book contains a terrible mistake

Good for you, @bobtato.
Which reminds me…
Being not a native speaker, I vividly remember an English lesson decades back where I spoke in front of a class, defending an essay about I wrote about something we read in class. A part of an argument I made was referring to crisps. From the confused looks of my teacher I knew something was amiss. When they realised what it was, they couldn’t hold it together and had a good laugh. Then, they explained to me that “couch potato” in the source material wasn’t referring to crisps at all.

I put 50% of the blame on the head of whoever wrote that text I had read, the other 50% at the feet of the English speaking world for the chips / crisps confusion, and another 50 % in the hands of my teacher who had a laugh at my cost!

Now, where can I get some decent goat and chips around here to put my vinegar? I am so soured. All those false friends, and so on.

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Yeah, English is not really a language so much a pit all the other languages throw stuff into and then stir around and ferment for a while to see what dastardly bastardized schlock emerges. It does make for interesting conversation, if often completely unintelligible to an outsider. :wink:

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…or further horrors, mistaken identity! I’ll stop now.

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Especially when mainstream history holds that the last execution in England for sodomy was in 1835, and she was claiming to have discovered “dozens” more after that date. If you’re looking to overturn historical orthodoxy, you need to be double, triple and quadruple sure of your facts. And also maybe ask, “Hang on, how come no actual professional historians have noticed this?”

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will futility closet pick it up

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In the era of “alternative facts,” fact checking and actual knowledge of a subject has become pretty blase’ (Sorry, can’t figure out how to do the accented “e”. Technology not my thing!)

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Eh-- further evidence that the author has been educated way beyond her intelligence.

Not sure this has anything to do with intelligence. The human brain has many quirks, and even the most brilliant of us has blind spots. Decrying education isn’t gonna get you far around here, btw.

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It’s nice to hear a public figure do a “wait, why?” when told that they are wrong instead of flying into a fit of rage.

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It doesn’t sound like she has a grasp on the language used back in the day. If you are going to write about historical injustices in law, then be aware that terminology then and now can be vastly different.

Next up, books on vaccinations and climate change ??

Indeed. Real lack of common sense and humility, here.

At least she seems to be willing to admit and fix the problem, which is not customary in many parts of the country right now.

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Certainly not to historians. The book is about English law in the 19th century, and anyone active in the field will know. It looks like she got hoisted on twitter after AR copies went out, and the interview is just the culminating Media Moment.

It’s a reminder that we have a problem: pop sociology books written by journalists with little rigorous knowledge of the relevant academic field, touting high-concept explanations of complex matters in a way that implies mainstream scholarship (and especially activism) is gravely mistaken about them.

In this case, it’s even worse: she wasn’t just ignoring them, thought she was debunking them. Which is presumably why some reviewers, like Sweet, are suggesting that the book can’t really be saved.

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I won’t pretend to claim to be an expert on justice or capital punishment from that time but I’ve done a little research on an ancestor of mine who was convicted for stealing a sheep, sentenced to death, then after his sentence was commuted sent to Australia. There were a number of changes in the decades leading up to the period that Wolf is talking about - capital sentences for minor crimes, mass poverty, not enough infrastructure to hold or execute prisoners, the US no longer taking UK prisoners, and a new concern for prisoner welfare. She’d need to take all of these things into account more generally before she starts specifically looking at sentences handed out for homosexuality.

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That’s a copy editor. There are developmental editors.

Are you saying “look to Shelby Foote” if you’re looking for an author trying to prove a modern day agenda or are you holding him up as the person to turn to if you want to learn about the American Civil War?

I’m only asking because I’ve bounced twice off my audiobook of his first volume but it was because of how dry and factual it was (and my inability to keep track of all the names) and not because I detected any sort of weird agenda

How many centuries from now will someone get confused about current-day drug convictions? “Why were all these people caught with stimulants charged with possession of narcotics?”

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Depending on your hardware, hold down the letter involved and a pop-up should show, allowing you to cursor between the different accent marks available for that letter.

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Foote was a big proponent of the “The Lost Cause Fallacy” and referred to slavery as the greatest stain on our national heritage, and emancipation as the second greatest. He defended Confederate soldiers and generals accused of being involved in massacres, against evidence to the contrary, and defended the first iteration of the Ku Klux Klan. He also was a continuing proponent of the idea that slavery wasn’t really the cause of the civil war or secession, and that it was merely a propaganda tool of the North. There’s quite a bit of other points, as well.

His facts and numbers on battles may be right, but that doesn’t mean he’s not pushing agendas.

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It’s not correct to say that “Death Recorded” meant that the convict was pardoned and freed, rather that the sentence was commuted (the “mercy” recommended by the jury), usually to a long sentence in prison or transportation to Australia.

The Judgement of Death Act 1823 was passed because so many offences had acquired mandatory death sentences over the last century and a half (England’s so-called “Bloody Code”), that juries had become reluctant to convict except in the very worse cases. Murder and high treason remained mandatory capital crimes.

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