I think what Vance says clearly goes for most of us here. It’s for many and various reasons but things have slowed nearly to a stop, and they might as well go all the way. Maybe there’s no point in saying so; by custom there’s nothing to spur a poster to action like declaring a hiatus. But there it is. We associate the West with new beginnings, but also the end of the day, and maybe we have got there.
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45 comments
December 17, 2010 at 7:30 am
zunguzungu
That’s sad. EotaW has always been one of the best blogs around, so it’s sad to hear that. Perhaps a prelude to a grand metamorphosis? In any case, congratulations and thanks for a great run, if nothing else.
December 17, 2010 at 7:35 am
Levi Stahl
What’s the first thing we’re taught about history? That it repeats. I’ll keep hoping.
Until then, we’ll miss you all.
December 17, 2010 at 9:04 am
SEK
Ironic though it may be for me to say it, come back! (Or, alternatively, recur! Recur, history, recur!)
December 17, 2010 at 9:29 am
hcr
I’ll join the chorus hoping you will return once batteries are recharged. Until then, though, I want to thank you for your extraordinary work on EoTW.
This blog has taught me more than I ever learned in graduate school. It has changed my approach both to history and to technology. This is one of my two daily must-read blogs (although I’m a lurker, so you have rarely seen me).
I am in awe of the EoTW team, and will miss your posts. But I do understand the concept of burning out, and wish you all the very best. Here’s hoping, though, for a new incarnation sometime….
December 17, 2010 at 9:41 am
tedra
I feel you all.
December 17, 2010 at 9:56 am
mrearl
First Bitch, and now you guys? Jeez. I hereby move for reconsideration.
December 17, 2010 at 10:15 am
jacob
I want to join in the chorus of praise and thanks. Several years ago, I decided I’d basically had it with blogs, and I cut down to reading Crooked Timber and this one. It’s been the model of a commenter community and what a history blog can be. I too hope you all will come back one day.
December 17, 2010 at 11:23 am
rosmar
Thank you for being so fun and insightful for so long, and let us know if you ever come back.
(I’ll keep you in my RSS reader, just in case.)
December 17, 2010 at 11:46 am
student
great blog, sorry to see it go.
December 17, 2010 at 11:50 am
Josh
But but but… somewhere on the Internet, someone is *wrong* about FDR and the New Deal!
December 17, 2010 at 12:07 pm
Eric
I’m going to miss all of you. Argh.
December 17, 2010 at 12:09 pm
foeb
I think Eric should devote his newfound free time to engineering a liberal intellectual renaissance, in which he convinces all the misguided souls out there that government is not, in fact, the problem. And he should do this while wearing his Aquaman suit.
December 17, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Laura @ Texas in Africa
Booooooooo!
December 17, 2010 at 12:31 pm
docdave
Some blogs are kept running long past the point at which their authors’ batteries are exhausted. I don’t think that this is true in this case–but its amazing how much time can be consumed in putting together a blog post that’s worth the paper it ain’t written on. Almost as time-greedy as big online sections of US survey.
I’ll second Jacob’s comments: this has been a model of what a blog can be. I would gladly spend more time in your company, either virtually or holding up the bar at a conference (Oakland WHA next year, for instance). I’ll keep the address in my favorites links, though (along with BitchPhD)as a reminder of good discussions and of hopes for more to come.
Happy trails, y’all–
December 17, 2010 at 1:11 pm
Rob_in_Hawaii
First Larry King and now you folks….
December 17, 2010 at 1:20 pm
Colin Danby
Crap! EotAW has the highest signal/noise ratio of any blog I’ve read, and and collegial commenters genuinely interested in puzzling things out.
And yes, thank you to the bloggers, and I realize people have lives and things like that.
Any other history blogs like this? I’m hungry.
December 17, 2010 at 2:42 pm
Julian
I first came to this blog to read about that great Giles Coren snit. I’ve been reading ever since. This is an excellent blog, I hope you guys come back in some form.
December 17, 2010 at 3:02 pm
mario
Hey guys–
You should know that this makes me sad, but of course I support you in doing what’s important to yourselves (even if I’ve never met a single one of you!).
You guys have been fantastic in helping me navigate grad school (I’m old for a grad student, which definitely has its upsides). Thanks and good luck.
December 17, 2010 at 3:03 pm
David
Or, assign a blog post to a student and use the blog as a teaching tool for the student and the unwashed public–such as me.
December 17, 2010 at 3:04 pm
madamimadam
I stumbled upon EotAW sometime in 2007. I was a disgruntled cancer biology postdoc on the West Coast and had virtually no professional reason to read, but was sucked in by the concordance of all of your experiences with mine. I am now a disgruntled new professor in the Midwest and your absence will give me fewer reasons to procrastinate writing grants.
December 17, 2010 at 6:58 pm
zunguzungu
Wandering through the archives. It was a more innocent time:
As presented by EotAW, it may seem that the colonial period in North America was nothing but a string of massacres. Well, that’s not true. There were also plagues, whippings, and outright warfare. But then, after the Revolution, everything got better.
December 17, 2010 at 7:52 pm
lurch
Gahhhh.
December 17, 2010 at 8:42 pm
erubin
I’m shocked and saddened. Worse yet, I don’t feel I have the intellectual heft to convey what this blog meant to me. I’m a simpleton and I merely hope that I have picked up the merest residue of intelligence that this blog exudes.
Back when I was a sophomore undergraduate, I took a class called “Media & Democracy”, in which our professor raved constantly about the “blog revolution”. I scoffed at the idea and to this day, I continue to scoff at neologisms like “blogosphere”, which I feel attempt to add legitimacy to a medium that strikes me as Twitter without the character limit*. This blog was the exception. It wasn’t just someone writing about their day or ranting on a soapbox– it was about real events that were relevant and important to today’s issues. Furthermore, when something important was said, it was backed by evidence, something sorely lacking not just among blogs or in America, but the world around. I may not have read or fully understood every post, but it was impossible to not appreciate the thoughtfulness that went into this blog.
While I cannot help but feel sorry to see you go, I pray that bigger and better things are ahead for Rauchway and company. God knows you guys deserve more than a blog…
*(If you were to move TEotAW to Twitter, I do not know whether I would instantly despise it or continue to read it religiously. Probably both.)
December 17, 2010 at 8:57 pm
erubin
Also, Mark Hamill gargling Gerswhin.
December 18, 2010 at 12:26 am
Megan
There were parts of it I liked.
December 18, 2010 at 1:50 am
Ben Alpers
You guys really have been a model of what a history blog can be.
I’m glad y’all are calling it a hiatus, rather than just shutting the place down.
It was a great run. Enjoy the break (if that’s what it turns out to be). I’ll look forward to EotAW’s return, should the spirit ever move you again. (Who says there are no second acts in American blogs?)
December 18, 2010 at 10:27 am
Malaclypse
You will be missed.
December 19, 2010 at 10:11 am
elizardbreath
Aw, drat. Reappear someplace, all of you, sometime?
December 19, 2010 at 5:23 pm
grackle
Thanks, let us know if the Lincoln/ Roosevelt matter is ever resolved.
December 19, 2010 at 6:11 pm
Michael H Schneider
We’ve lost our Edge? I’m seriously bummed. But many thanks for the usually unrewarding task of trying to educate me.
December 19, 2010 at 8:33 pm
Larry Cebula
I can understand needing to refocus ones energies. Hope to see you online in one for or another.
December 19, 2010 at 8:49 pm
Western Dave
And I was so looking forward to a death of DADT post.
December 20, 2010 at 10:57 am
Michael Elliott
I’ve been meaning for a week to comment to convey my sense of loss. But then, as a lit. scholar, I remembered that loss is unrepresentable, and so I have been waiting.
Thanks, guys, for a great run.
December 20, 2010 at 1:54 pm
Ben Alpers
I’ve put up some thoughts on EotAW’s passing/hiating over on the US Intellectual History blog.
December 20, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Ben Alpers
Also a shame that y’all won’t be truth squadding the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War (Neoconfederate Division).
That’ll be a rich vein to tap for the next several years!
December 20, 2010 at 2:34 pm
Charlieford
What’s this got to do with Ron Paul?!
Will miss you guys, there’s been some great times.
But, as Gretchin Fetchin the Slime Queen used to say, “Nothing lasts!”
Blogs, even group blogs, are exhausting things, and being academics, you already have full-time jobs.
It’s also the case that there’s often a life-span to communities: they’re born and they die. Why is sometimes mysterious.
I also think it’s hard to deny the general malaise that’s settled over most people … it’s hard to “know hope” these days. It’s exhausting just keeping up with the news.
But, I have a feeling you’ll be back, in some form, maybe about 2012?
Until then: DEATH TO THE FASCIST INSECT THAT PREYS UPON THE LIVES OF THE PEOPLE!
December 20, 2010 at 5:49 pm
Robin Marie
This blows.
December 21, 2010 at 11:55 am
rja
I second Robin Marie.
Also in case the Ron Paul reference above doesn’t do it, will typing the words “slavery caused the Civil War” bring enough naysayers that you’ll all have to stay just to beat them back?
December 21, 2010 at 4:49 pm
JPool
Per MHS above, we’re all losing our edge. Come back when you’re tired of being over-grown cool kids and are ready to become elder
hipstersstatesmenscholar bloggers.I will miss you all. This blog has meant a lot to me, but probably most when I was stuck on my dissertation, losing all sense of joy and needing a reminder that thinking and arguing about history can be fun.
December 22, 2010 at 3:17 pm
Emma
I’ll miss the blog too. I hope you all find other outlets soon.
December 22, 2010 at 6:53 pm
ari
I hope you all find other outlets soon.
Well, I quit a long time ago. And after waiting and waiting and waiting for the New York Review of Books to call, I finally gave up.
December 25, 2010 at 6:36 pm
Malaclypse
It will be a shame if this goes unanswered.
Seasonal Salutations to any who still lurk!
December 26, 2010 at 10:14 am
Urk
So this is where I go to say bye and thanks to you all? Well, bye and thanks and happy holidays!
December 28, 2010 at 4:38 am
David
I’d second JPool’s point about the value of the blog during dissertation writing. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as procrastination dressed up as self-improving scholarly engagement.
January 2, 2011 at 11:50 pm
Sarah
Looks like I’m a bit late to the party…I am sorry to see that this blog is winding down- seems that 2010 ended the run of several of my favorites (one of the many downsides of 2010). While most of you may have come here for the history, I was pretty much just in it for the Muppets.
Ari- you should bring the kids and the spouse to the farm again. Baby goats start arriving next month, and our BC seems to enjoy play dates with other dogs immensely.