If you’re looking for beginner’s books on American labor history/politics, I’d recommend Nelson Lichtenstein’s State of the Union, Phillip Dray’s There Is Power in a Union, my colleague Erik Loomis’ A History of America in Ten Strikes. Thomas Geoghegan’s What Side Are You On, and Kahlenberg and Marvit’s Why Labor Organizing Should Be A Civil Right. 

If you’re looking for beginner’s books on more global stuff, I’d recommend E.P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class, Sassoon’s Hundred Years of Socialism, Jefferson Cowie’s Capital Moves, Leon Fink’s Workers Across America, and my colleague Erik Loomis’ Out of Sight. 

I’m not a console player, and I’ve only watched a bit of Let’s Plays, so I don’t know much about the story. From what I’ve read and watched, the New York interactions look good, but the whole Spidercop thing is a bit problematic. 

Might come back to this one later once I finish watching Let’s Plays. 

Ditko/Lee, Romita/Lee, and Conway for the classics, Bendis’ Ultimate run is a great modern retelling and Miles Morales is one of the best things to happen to the Spiderverse, Dan Slott’s run if you’re looking for something experimental, and I really like Houser’s Renew Your Vows which explores Spiderman as the dad of a superpowered family. 

No, and yes. 

I discuss this here. 

It does come up, just not very often:

warsofasoiaf:

I think that there are periodic outbreaks of disease that flourish in the environs, same as any other medieval city. I just think that GRRM hasn’t devoted any wordspace to the idea, because unlike real life, GRRM has editors and a word count.

Thanks for the question, Leon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

“Dunk had heard that, too. “Were you there during the Great Spring Sickness?”
“Oh, indeed. A dreadful time, ser, dreadful. Strong men would wake healthy at the break of day and be dead by evenfall. So many died so quickly there was no time to bury them. They piled them in the Dragonpit instead, and when the corpses were ten feet deep, Lord Rivers commanded the pyromancers to burn them. The light of the fires shone through the windows, as it did of yore when living dragons still nested beneath the dome. By night you could see the glow all through the city, the dark green glow of wildfire. The color green still haunts me to this day. They say the spring was bad in Lannisport and worse in Oldtown, but in King’s Landing it cut down four of ten. Neither young nor old were spared, nor rich nor poor, nor great nor humble.” (Sworn Sword)

"Ser Jaime, I have seen terrible things in my time,” the old man said. “Wars, battles, murders most foul … I was a boy in Oldtown when the grey plague took half the city and three-quarters of the Citadel. Lord Hightower burned every ship in port, closed the gates, and commanded his guards to slay all those who tried to flee, be they men, women, or babes in arms. They killed him when the plague had run its course. On the very day he reopened the port, they dragged him from his horse and slit his throat, and his young son’s as well. To this day the ignorant in Oldtown will spit at the sound of his name, but Quenton Hightower did what was needed. Your father was that sort of man as well. A man who did what was needed.” (AFFC, Jaime I)

“We held the city today, my lord, but I make no promises for the morrow. The kettle is close to boiling. So many thieves and murderers are abroad that no man’s house is safe, the bloody flux is spreading in the stews along Pisswater Bend, there’s no food to be had for copper nor silver. Where before you heard only mutterings from the gutter, now there’s open talk of treason in guildhalls and markets.” (ACOK, Tyrion IX)

(17th Century Crisis contd.) and strife. However I heard from classmates who had taken a class in Medieval to Early Modern Russia who argued that given that a similar degree of disorder and revolution was taking place in Russia during roughly the same time period–which could not be attributed to the Protestant Reformation–meant that there was some kind of underlying zeitgeist of confusion and devastation going on. My problem is that the term “crisis” is innaccurate since that word usually

(17th Century Crisis, contd. 3) connotes some kind of flashpoint, and I think a hundred years is a little too long to be defined as that kind of zero hour event, except perhaps in the very longest of historical lens. I’m curious to know what your thoughts/opinions on this debate are.

What an interesting question! 

I don’t really have a problem with the idea of a crisis being a long-term process rather than a “flashpoint” or “zero hour event.” 

After all, historians of the Roman Empire talk about the “crisis of the third century” to describe a series of assassinations, coups, civil wars, plagues, economic depressions, etc. because even though a lot of these are separate events, there are a lot of commonalities between them – the over-concentration of political power in the armies, the breakdown of economic and political networks that allowed the empire to function, etc. 

Likewise, today we talk about climate change as a crisis, even though it too is the “culmination of many changes occurring in multiple areas.” 

So to me, the question of accuracy would come down to whether there are sufficient elements of commonality to tie the various events together. 

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20060306

cle-guy:

racefortheironthrone:

cle-guy:

racefortheironthrone:

Looked at the text yet again, and I think there’s a broader problem about the way that WOIAF describes Nymeria’s Conquest which makes the sequence of events really confusing:

racefortheironthrone:

Here’s my logic:

1. We know that during Nymeria’s first marriage, the Daynes were allies of Mors Martell during his nine-year campaign against the Yronwoods. Sending Vorian Dayne to the Wall in this early phase wouldn’t make much sense.
2. After Mors Martell’s death, which came before Nymeria’s eventual victory against the Yronwoods, Nymeria married twice, first to the Ullers and second to Ser Davos Dayne, who was the Sword of the Morning but not Lord of Starfall. 
3. Davos Dayne’s son with Nymeria was passed over as Nymeria’s heir – which would break the First Men and Andal rules of succession that the Daynes would have followed – in favor of her oldest daughter with Mors Martell, following the new Rhoynar customs. In dynastic politics terms, this is a huge blow to House Dayne, rendering the marriage alliance useless.
4. Vorian Dayne, who was Lord of Starfall but not Sword of the Morning, was sent to the Wall at some point by Nymeria – why would the two come to conflict when their Houses had been allies in the war against the Yronwoods? Well, Nymeria’s decision to name her oldest daughter over her oldest son would be a clear casus belli. 

My belief is that King Vorian Dayne was the older brother of Ser Davos, in one of those periods in which Dawn had been given to a non-ruler of Starfall (as was the case with Ser Arthur Dayne), that he allied with Nymeria against the Yronwoods, confirmed that alliance by marrying his highly symbolic younger brother to Nymeria, rebelled when his nephew was disinherited, was defeated, and was sent to the Wall as a King in part to smooth over ongoing tensions within the court at Starfall, as I can’t imagine it would have been easy for Ser Davos or his son during the rebellion. 

The problem with your scenario is that, if Davos had succeeded Vorian, he would have been Lord Davos Dayne rather than Ser Davos Dayne when he married Nymeria. 

“Years of war followed, as the Martells and their Rhoynar partners met and subdued one petty king after another. No fewer than six conquered kings were sent to the Wall in golden fetters by Nymeria and her prince, until only the greatest of their foes remained: Yorick Yronwood, the Bloodroyal, Fifth of His Name, Lord of Yronwood, Warden of the Stone Way, Knight of the Wells, King of Redmarch, King of the Greenbelt, and King of the Dornish.

For nine years Mors Martell and his allies (amongst them House Fowler of Skyreach, House Toland of Ghost Hill, House Dayne of Starfall, and House Uller of the Hellholt) struggled against Yronwood and his bannermen (the Jordaynes of the Tor, the Wyls of the Stone Way, together with the Blackmonts, the Qorgyles, and many more), in battles too numerous to mention. When Mors Martell fell to Yorick Yronwood’s sword in the Third Battle of the Boneway, Princess Nymeria assumed sole command of his armies. Two more years of battle were required, but in the end it was Nymeria that Yorick Yronwood bent the knee to, and Nymeria who ruled thereafter from Sunspear.”

The first paragraph strongly suggests that Nymeria sent the six kings to the Wall before Yorick Yronwood was defeated. This is a bit of a problem, because the Dorne chapter lists Yorick Yronwood as one of the six kings sent to the Wall, and he could hardly have fought Mors Martell for nine years and killed him in the Third Battle of the Boneway if he was up at the Wall.  

Moreover, the second paragraph’s list of the various sides conflicts with the idea that the kings were all sent before Nymeria’s 11-year war against the Yronwoods. House Blackmont is described as bannermen of Yorick Yronwood, yet Benedict Blackmont was one of the six kings sent to the Wall by Nymeria; if Nymeria had already conquered the Blackmonts prior to the war, they wouldn’t have been counted as Yronwood bannermen. Likewise, Vorian Dayne and Garrison Fowler are listed as two of the six kings sent to the Wall. If they were defeated by Nymeria prior to the war against the Yronwoods, why would they be listed as mere “allies” of Mors Martell, rather than subjects and vassals?

Could some of the defeated kings have sworn fealty to the Yronwoods as revenge against the Martells?

Not if they were sent to the Wall before the war against the Yronwoods. 

Pardon me. Couldn’t the Houses of the defeated kings have defected and sworn fealty to the Yronwoods as revenge against the Martells?

It’s possible, but it seems unlikely to me. Because it would require Nymeria to conquer them so thoroughly that their kings were captured, but then to have not taken any precautions (hostages, etc.) against them rising up again, repeatedly.