Expanded Bibliography

As the year moves on and it gets closer and closer to the thesis writing D-Day, I have expanded the bibliography of sources I intend to use for the thesis, complied easily and efficiently with Zotero.  So far it’s primarily secondary source material, I am finding it difficult to source electronic information for primary source documents.  This of course is the one downside of Zotero, someone else has to compile the information before you can capture and if the source material is particularly obscure you just might not be able to find the necessary information electronically.  Nevertheless, I am happy with the bibliography and source material so far, which has been greatly expanded since I first posted a bibliography earlier in the year.

Below you can see the bibliography, captured by Zotero and automatically compiled in the correct format using the Zotero create bibliography feature.

Ali, Tariq. The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity. New edition. Verso Books, 2003.

Ansari, Ali M. “Review: [untitled].” The International History Review 27, no. 3 (September 2005): 681-683.

Axworthy, Michael. A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind. Basic Books, 2008.

Azimi, Fakhreddin. Iran: The Crisis of Democracy: From the Exile of Reza Shah to the Fall of Musaddiq: 1941-1953. First Paperback Edition. I B Tauris & Co Ltd, 2009.

———. The Quest for Democracy in Iran: A Century of Struggle against Authoritarian Rule. Harvard University Press, 2008.

Bamberg, J. H. The History of the British Petroleum Company 2 Volume Set: The History of the British Petroleum Company: Volume 2. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Bamberg, James. British Petroleum and Global Oil, 1950-1975 : The Challenge of Nationalism. Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Barrett, Roby C. The Greater Middle East and the Cold War: US Foreign Policy Under Eisenhower and Kennedy. I. B. Tauris, 2007.

Bayandor, Darioush. Iran and the CIA: The Fall of Mosaddeq Revisited. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Behrooz, Maziar. “Tudeh Factionalism and the 1953 Coup in Iran.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 33, no. 3 (August 2001): 363-382.

Bills, Scott L. “Review: [untitled].” The International History Review 12, no. 2 (May 1990): 425-427.

Brands, H. W. “The Cairo-Tehran Connection in Anglo-American Rivalry in the Middle East, 1951-1953.” The International History Review 11, no. 3 (August 1989): 434-456.

Brown, L. Carl. “Review: [untitled].” Foreign Affairs 83, no. 6 (December 2004): 158.

Chapman, Peter. Jungle Capitalists: A Story of Globalisation, Greed and Revolution. Canongate Books Ltd, 2007.

Chaqueri, Cosroe. “Review: [untitled].” Iranian Studies 22, no. 2/3 (1989): 142-143.

Charmley, John. Churchill’s Grand Alliance: The Anglo-American Special Relationship, 1940–1957. Faber and Faber, 2009.

Cuddy, Edward. “Vietnam: Mr. Johnson’s War. Or Mr. Eisenhower’s?.” The Review of Politics 65, no. 4 (Autumn 2003): 351-374.

Eden, Anthony, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eden-Eisenhower Correspondence, 1955-1957. The University of North Carolina Press, 2005.

Ervand Abrahamian. “Review: [untitled].” Middle East Journal 57, no. 3 (Summer 2003): 499-501.

Fisk, Robert. The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East. Vintage, 2007.

Gasiorowski, Mark J. “The CIA Looks Back at the 1953 Coup in Iran.” Middle East Report, no. 216 (Autumn 2000): 4-5.

Gasiorowski, Mark J., and Malcolm Byrne. Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran. 1st ed. Syracuse University Press, 2004.

Hahn, Peter L. “Securing the Middle East: The Eisenhower Doctrine of 1957.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 36, no. 1 (March 2006): 38-47.

Heiss, Mary Ann. “The United States, Great Britain, and the Creation of the Iranian Oil Consortium, 1953-1954.” The International History Review 16, no. 3 (August 1994): 511-535.

Hiatt, Steven. A Game As Old As Empire: The Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption. Berrett-Koehler, 2007.

Howard, Harry N. “The Regional Pacts and the Eisenhower Doctrine.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 401 (May 1972): 85-94.

Immerman, Richard H. “Eisenhower and Dulles: Who Made the Decisions?.” Political Psychology 1, no. 2 (Autumn 1979): 21-38.

Jahanbakhsh, Forough. Islam, Democracy and Religious Modernism in Iran, 1953-2000: From Bazargan to Soroush. Brill Academic Publishers, 2001.

Jentleson, Bruce W. “Discrepant Responses to Falling Dictators: Presidential Belief Systems and the Mediating Effects of the Senior Advisory Process.” Political Psychology 11, no. 2 (June 1990): 353-384.

Kandiyoti, Rafael. Pipelines: Flowing Oil and Crude Politics. Illustrated edition. I B Tauris & Co Ltd, 2007.

Keddie, Nikki R. Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution, Updated Edition. Updated. Yale University Press, 2006.

Kingston, Paul W. T. Britain and the Politics of Modernization in the Middle East, 1945-1958. Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Kinzer, Stephen. All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. 2nd ed. Wiley, 2008.

Kuniholm, Bruce R. “Review: [untitled].” The American Historical Review 94, no. 3 (June 1989): 895-896.

Lenczowski, George. “United States’ Support for Iran’s Independence and Integrity, 1945-1959.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 401 (May 1972): 45-55.

Limbert, John W. Negotiating with Iran: Wrestling the Ghosts of History. United States Institute of Peace Press, 2009.

Marsh, Steve. “The Special Relationship and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Crisis, 1950-4.” Review of International Studies 24, no. 4 (October 1998): 529-544.

Petherick, Christopher J. The CIA in Iran: The 1953 Coup and the Origins of the US-Iran Trade. 1st ed. American Free Press, 2007.

Ramazani, R. K. “Review: [untitled].” Middle East Journal 42, no. 2 (Spring 1988): 311-313.

Roosevelt, Kermit. Countercoup, the struggle for the control of Iran. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979.

Sadr, Houshang Keshavarz, and Hamid Akbari. Mossadegh and the Future of Iran. Illustrated edition. IBEX Publishers,U.S., 2004.

Samii, Kuross A. Involvement by Invitation: American Strategies of Containment in Iran. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1987.

———. “Truman against Stalin in Iran: A Tale of Three Messages.” Middle Eastern Studies 23, no. 1 (January 1987): 95-107.

Ward, Steven R. Immortal: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces. Georgetown University Press, 2009.

Wilber, Donald N. Regime Change in Iran: Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, November 1952 – August 1953. Abm Komers, 2000.

Yapp, M. E. “Review: [untitled].” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 2 (1990): 396-397.

Organization, Bookmarking and RSS

One of the fascinating aspects of the internet and one of it’s most useful features when it comes to electronic learning is the sheer vast amount of information and analysis that one can find.  Everybody has an opinion and with the confidence that the anonymity of the internet brings everyone is willing to share.  Still, it takes a certain amount of experience to separate the gold from the dross.  Once, however, you have found worthwhile sites for information and analysis, it is well worth the time bookmarking these sites and setting up subscribing to RSS feeds where applicable.  I have made use of the bookmarking and RSS reader functions of my Firefox browser to set up bookmarks allowing me to find my favourite sites quickly and efficiently, with the mere movement of a mouse, eliminating my previous pattern of typing the web address , attempting to remember the name of the site, swearing at the laptop, trying to google it, failing, swearing again, trawling through search results, screaming in frustration and kicking the dog/ house mate.   By setting up book marks and RSS feeds, the organizational process becomes a lot quicker allowing me to quickly access and analyses new posts, articles or whatever.

I have split the various sites I am subscribed to in to four separate categories: Blogs, Forums, News and Websites.  Each category is contained within a separate folder on the browser, allowing me to easily find what I am looking for and in the case of those links subscribed to RSS feed to quickly scan the headlines in search of interesting material.

As you can see from the screen shot I am subscribed to a good few blogs, some concerned with Digital History, such as Dan Cohen’s excellent Digital History blog, some concerned with current affairs, in these exciting times we live, and some being little more then the deranged ranting of extremists, mostly for entertainment.

The forums folder contains all those forums I have found that concern themselves with history and politics.  Forums can be a great resource for discussion and analysis, as well as offering a platform for historians, amateur and otherwise, to provide links to new discoveries and sources of information.  Still, it is important when using forums, and the internet in general, to check, recheck and double check the sources used by the poster.  If I find a poster making a claim on a forum that I haven’t heard before, I immediately approach the claim with some suspicion.  I check the replies to the post, to see if another poster has identified any problems with the posters statement.  I check Wikipedia.  Then I check the source Wikipedia has used by feeding the title of the source into a search engine along with the word ‘review’ to see if I can get a review of the source.  Then I google the reviewer.  Seems like a long procedure, but once you’ve done it a couple of times it becomes second nature.  The point is that you have to be sure of the authenticity of the sources used.  Don’t believe everything you read, particularly on the internet.

The news folder draws RSS feed from some of the major news outlets worldwide, the BBC, al Jazeera, CNN and such forth.  I include others like FOX to attempt to see all sides of an issue, or rather to see what kind of a spin each side is putting on an issue.  Mind you, this is as true for CNN and the BBC as it is for FOX.

Finally the websites folder contains all the other sites that are useful but don’t quite fit into the other categories.  The miscellaneous, if you will, which includes the Irish Times since they decided that they were going to charge to view the paper on-line and cancelled my RSS feed in the process.  As punishment they will remain in the websites folder with the universal translator, the currency converter and several on-line archives. Bookmarking has proved an extremely effective way of bringing some order to my surfing of the web.  It has allowed me to turn what exists as a chaotic mass of digital information into an easy to use communication, discussion and information gathering tool.  Yet in schools and universities up and down the land, many students are ignorant of the potential benefits that maximising their browser use and organisation can bring them.  Unfortunately there are dangers there for the inexperienced web user.  You have to develop your critical facilities so that you are in a position to judge the worth of whatever information that you find.  In using the web as a learning tool, you must be aware of the dangers as you are of the advantages.  Currently however,  the amount of training given to students at both secondary and undergraduate level concerning the use of the internet is quite frankly dismal.  Academia needs to embrace the internet and make it their own, so that it is easier for the sole traveller to detect the light of learning and safe haven rather then plunge into the morass of conspiracy theory and conjecture.

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Bibliography

Here is a short bibliography of the sources I hope to use for my International Relations thesis. I’ll be adding more to this list and editing and updating as necessary.

Axworthy, Michael. A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind. Basic Books, 2008.

Fisk, Robert. The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East. Vintage, 2007.

Keddie, Nikki R. Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution, Updated Edition. Updated. Yale University Press, 2006.

Kinzer, Stephen. All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. 2nd ed. Wiley, 2008.

Ward, Steven R. Immortal: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces. Georgetown University Press, 2009.

A note on Claudio Fogu article

As an ardent video game enthusiast, (don’t worry, I’m seeking treatment) I was interested to read an article by Claudio Fugo of the University of California Santa Barbara entitle Digitizing Historical Consciousness. Claudio basically concludes that video games are not an ideal way to teach history, no more then Hollywood, and I find myself agreeing with him, to some extent. If you want to learn dates and facts, video games are certainly not the way to go. However, in reading the article, I made what I hope is an interesting observation. Fugo dedicates the majority of the article to dissecting Sid Meyer’s Civilization, a strategy based game where one adopts the persona of a historical political leader and attempts to build a powerful civilization. In doing so, all pretence at historical reality goes out the window as Fugo observes, making the point that in the game a classical infantry phalanx can come into combat with WWII era tanks and in exceptional circumstances the phalanx can even win, which is of course, absolute nonsense.

Still though, I was struck by Fugo’s description of the goals of SMC, and specifically by the goals one must achieve to complete the game. You must either dominate or subjugate rival civilizations, culturally, technologically or militarily, or simply last 6000 years without yourself being dominated or subjugated. Now if this isn’t a fine presentation of realist international relations theory, then I don’t know what is. And when I noticed this, I realised that strategy games in particular, while maybe not the best at facts and dates, can actually work as a method of teaching theory. Take, for example, the Total War series of strategy games, specifically Rome: Total War, where one takes command of the Roman Legions, and attempts to build an empire. While not perfect in terms of dates, it does teach how governments need to levy taxes, keep the populace of provinces happy to prevent revolt, and raise legions to protect and conquer new territory. The game is played on a large map, where units armies move in turns. However, when one army comes into contact with another, the view zooms in on that piece of terrain and the player must command the composite units of the army in real time to defeat the opponent. To defeat the opponent there are two options, overwhelming force, or superior tactics. Overwhelming force is more expensive, and quite frankly, more liable to some disaster. You also learn about the capabilities of certain units and how best to maximise them. Your cavalry, for example, is going to be slaughtered if they engage in a head on charge against a phalanx of heavily armoured infantry equipped with pole arms. If said phalanx however is engaged by an infantry unit in it’s vanguard, it will be suitably distracted not to notice your heavy cavalry slipping around to the rear until they suddenly crest a hill at full gallop and plough into the rear of the phalanx. Result: slaughtered phalanx, and mass panic of supporting enemy units. And suddenly you’ve learned an important theory of warfare, which can then be applied to the facts and dates so that you can speculate not only when Ceaser won this or that battle, but also why. And is this not indeed the core reason behind historical teaching, to teach when and how, and hope to inspire in students the ability to ask why?

There is one last thing. A friend of mine in secondary school was no great shakes at history. The renaissance bored him, he could care less about the industrial revolution. The best marks he got in a Junior Certificate history class exam was on the topics of the medieval period, specifically knights and sieges. Why? Because at the time, he was trying to complete Age of Empires 2. A year below me in secondary school, he was not only the only person in the class who knew before the lesson what a trebuchet was, but also how it worked. The game had inspired the interest.

The nature of blogs

A thought occurred to me the other day concerning the nature of academic blogs. Funnily enough I was thinking about my blog at the time. I must update my blog, I thought to myself, after all it’s the method by which I will be evaluated on the Digital History course. If only I could think of something good to post. Herein lies what I believe may be the problem with the way some (myself included) approach blogging. We think of it as an activity essentially for others. When I think the I must come up with a good post to add to my blog, I am in effect relinquishing ownership of the blog. The focus of the blog becomes less about me and more about others image of myself, reflected through my blog. That’s the difference you see. It is the incorrect attitude to have. A blog is not an advertisement of your intellectual skill. It’s not there to impress people. A blog is a personal journal. That is where the word blog comes from (web)(log)=(blog). When Charles Darwin sat down to write the Origin of the Species, the source material he used was from the many journals he kept during his travels aboard the Beagle. In the same way, my blog should act as my academic journal. It should be updated with discoveries, notes, questions, theories and whatever else relates to the subject of the MA program, and in doing so will allow me to record and access my ideas and questions in the future when it comes to pulling all the strings together and forming a thesis. So now for a new departure. Instead of sitting down and trying to manufacture something for the blog, I’m going to start digitizing my class notes. I might even start doing out my essay plans on the blog. I’m going to change the orientation and become a little selfish. This blog isn’t for the reader any more, it’s for the writer, and the reader can look and comment, but be aware that the purpose of the blog is not to inform or entertain the reader, but rather to allow the writer to see the development of his own thoughts and ideas.

More Delicious Zotero

I have experimented more with both Delicious and Zotero and have grown increasingly impressed with both applications.

The bookmarking aspects of Delicious are proving most convenient for compiling a database of interesting articles, web pages, and news reports. The tagging system allows my bookmarked pages to be arranged in an easily navigable format allowing me to select and separate articles based on the subject matter. This is a great way to build up a reservoir of knowledge on any particular subject that I wish to study.

Zotero as well has proven itself to be a useful tool, particularly as a labour saving application. It is considerably easier to have Zotero extract the pertinent bibliographical details from a book or journal article then to find and type them up oneself. The create bibliography function also allows me to construct said information into a proper bibliographical format which can then be copy and pasted into an essay or into my thesis.

I feel that both these applications would have benefit to undergrads and post grads, and I personally feel that it is a shame that knowledge of these applications is not more widespread amongst undergraduates.