Welcome to Making History, a newsletter about how historians make history. And how do historians really make history these days? By wasting their time on the internet. Here’s a few glimpses from this week at where all those hours went. To subscribe, go here. It’s free! And you thought Tim Barker’s reviews were mean. The talk of the profession this week is a review by one untenured professor of another untenured professor’s book, published by Harvard University Press, on the hot topic of the Chinese state bureaucracy.

I.                     A Child of Hollywood Part I of this essay series, that I have determined to keep to three parts, had me talk as much of my formative interest in films, Hollywood history, and celebrity with the E! True Hollywood Story series being my gateway into geekery over many films and stars of yore along with more contemporary stars like Jennifer Jason Leigh.  The show was more than fluff or simple summations of various cultural phenomenon, it also dove into a lot of true crime and mysteries, tragedies that could have been prevented.

When a resident of a far-flung hamlet opts to journey towards more civilized quarters, he cannot help but notice the status of the land as he travels it. As I and my woman forged south — over the river and through the woods, to grandmother's house indeed — I found myself marvelling at the total absence of Upstate New York's normally-infamous lake effect snow. From Massena to Utica, the entire state is snowless.

A regular feature for paid Watch List subscribers: I suggest one reasonably under-the-radar movie from the recent or distant past, and you do what you want with that information. The Illusionist (2006, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐, for rent on Amazon, AppleTV, Microsoft, Vudu; streaming with ads elsewhere) Not to be confused with the Oscar-nominated French animated film from 2010 (a delightful ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐-star watch in itself and widely rentable), this is the equivalent of a beach read you can’t put down, or, more precisely, a s’more for a summer night – your fingers get sticky but the sugar buzz is worth it.

No, that’s not a typo in my headline. As I was taking down holiday decorations and driving home today, I kept ruminating on what I wanted to write for my 2024 look ahead piece that I haven’t already written a hundred times. Instead, my mind kept drifting towards 2025. The post-its I still have on the wall at the shore from this summer ask questions about what the world looks like if Trump wins, if Biden wins, if neither is the nominee, who wins elsewhere around the world, what the Supreme Court does, etc.