NUTSHELL REQUESTS

Well, I asked for it.  I'm the guy who chided the Chinese last week for ignoring the proverb about being careful what you wish for – then promptly proceeded to ask what you wanted the next TTP Nutshell History to be.

You folks gave me enough assignments to keep me busy until there's peace in the Middle East.

It's exciting, frankly, for it shows just how interested in the world TTPers are.  Yet where do I begin?  Here's a compendium of your requests, in no particular order:

The British Empire, the Spanish American Empire, colonialism in Africa, the history of slavery, the Crusades, the 19^th century unification of Italy, the Catholic Church, Korea, China, India, Turkey, Jordan, Persia, Moslem Medieval Spain, Latin America, Cuba, Mexico, Poland, Hungary (concluding with a contrast of two Hungarian immigrants, Nicolas Sarkozy and George Soros)…

With one exception, the most requests were for Turkey and some aspect of China.  I've written a fair amount on China, so what I'll first do there is compile it. 

This prompts me to initiate a new TTP feature that I'll put in the right side bar:  click on a country and up will come links to the TTP articles on or related to it.  We should have this at least started by next week.

Then I'll start thinking about how to compress 4,000 years of Chinese history into a nutshell – first by revisiting The Tyranny of China's History from December 2004.

Turkey, however, is of the moment.  "If Turkey blows up, who's got a big enough fire extinguisher?" asks TTPer Madcat.  So Turkey will be next.

And what about the exception, the one most requested of all?  That's us.  America.  Its founding.  The dark post WWII whole Cold War 1945-1991 hole raced through at the end of the semester in high school history.  And everything in between.

This would be the Big Kahuna of Nutshells.  But, yes, I'm going to give it a shot.  Several actually, to chunk it down in historical sections.  For it is time we all understood our country's amazing history better (me included – remember, you don't really learn something until you teach it!)

I want to thank you all so much for your requests.  I'll do my best to address them all.  Some of you commented that there's no request for Russia, since that's in A Short History of Russia.

And I'm happy to report I already complied with the one for the Crusades back in August 2005 with The Real Crusaders.

I better get to work.  Thanks again….