About this Site
Historians begin with inquiry, and inquiry requires doubt. Like a good scientist a good historian maintains a degree of doubt and modesty, leaving himself open to newly perceived connections and differentiations.
This site draws from specifics in new works of history. It's a full-time mania that began more than twenty-five years ago when I was in my fifties -- a project that benefits from rewrites and from my younger partner and editor who sometimes gets a day or so behind in her corrections.
The purpose of the site is to tell the story of our ancestors, our parents and people today. The little money that it makes pays a few bills for a most frugal lifestyle..
I've read primary sources and the works of people who have devoted their professional lives to a narrow focus of study -- the real historians. As people who both study and question, they are often at odds with popular opinion. I too embrace the independence of thought necessary to pursue inquiry, and if you find that I don't conform to your idea of correctness or that I've made a factual error I would appreciate hearing from you with at least a little detail that supports your point of view.
I write about ideas, and in writing about religion I don't want to promote or to demote. My job is to describe -- your point of view and the point of view of others.
sections
Timelines from 4.3 million years ago to the present, year by year until 1931. After 1931 the entries are listed by day. Each entry is no more than one paragraph and sometimes several lines.
World News is the timeline entry for the current month. For repeated access to the most recent day's news, paste... http://www.smitha.com/time/worldnews.htm#skip.
Macrohistories are described in a list of selected works from Spengler to works as recent as 2010.
Commentary and More History consists of blatant opinion on subjects ranging from ancient history to developments today.
The purpose of my book summaries is largely to provide historical information.
"Inside a Few Heads" is largely about philosophers but also includes Stalin, Sadam Hussein, Timothy McVeigh, Kimveer Gill and Jared Loughner.
biography
My name: Frank Eugene Smitha.
Joined the Marine Corps in September 1951. Returned to civilian life in 1954 at the age of twenty. Worked as a laborer and began taking courses at Glendale Junior College, including remedial English. Traveled to Europe. Read a lot of books.
In 1963 I entered U.C.L.A. as a junior, majoring in sociology. Upper division work in sociology I found too abstract. I shifted to the greater specificity of history while remaining associated with the University of California at the U.C. Berkeley campus. There I worked part-time running copy machines. Rather than take courses for credit I often sat with roommates in auditorium-size history classes, attended guest lectures and studied independently, using the campus library and a borrowed library card from a graduate student friend. I was in my early thirties and wanted to write already for publication, believing that the chances of being hired for an academic position in Northern California was hardly a possibility. I received rejection notices with enough praise
With the little money that I had saved and an inheritance from the sale of a modest piece of property in Southern California I continued traveling, to Europe again, Eastern Europe, across the Soviet Union, to Japan and the South Seas. Always getting my job back when I returned to Berkeley.
I left Berkeley in 1973, and, to satisfy the insistence of my Ph.D. candidate wife, I graduated from California State University, East Bay -- at the age of forty-three -- with Dean's List honors and a B.A. in History. One of my professors tried to acquire a scholarship for me from his Alma Mater, Stanford, but without success, and I had to go back to earning a living.
Ten years later, in 1987, I began writing the historical narratives that first appeared as Antiquity Online. In 1998, at the age of 65, living off of social security and still running and working out with weights, I began working more than full-time extending the narratives to the Middle Ages and modern times.
I now live surrounded by friends and fellow scrabble players in central Ohio.
Click here for boring biographical details.
