Politics, ice cream, Churchill and anti-Semitism

I suspect many people have a friend like Simon Schama as he comes across in this book: an expert in a specific field but also knowledgeable and entertaining about an astonishing variety of other topics, generous to those he likes but capable and appreciative of a good sarcastic putdown when the right opportunity presents itself . On the downside, the high energy levels of such friends can be exhausting and sometimes you think: "I wish he'd go home already."

Fortunately, this latter issue is not a problem when the energy is contained in a book. "Scribble, Scribble, Scribble" is a collection of diverse essays, each approximately the length of a book review - which many of them are - and while some of these articles are indeed page-turners, it is easy enough to put the book down and close it firmly for a breather. You set the pace.

To begin with the title and the epigraph: "Another damned, thick square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh, Mr. Gibbon?" This remark, attributed to Prince William Henry, the Duke of Gloucester upon receipt in 1781 of one or more volumes of "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", encapsulates a trait running through the book: Schama's disarming ability to step back now and then and share with the reader his own awareness that he is indeed going on a bit too much. "After my first book appeared in 1977, to mostly positive reviews," he writes in the introduction, "editors on both sides of the Atlantic began commissioning pieces, which I turned in always on time and always overwritten, both lengthwise and adjective-wise." Since then, Schama, a professor of history at Columbia University, has published more than a dozen books on topics ranging from Rothschilds to Rembrandt, among them "A History of Britain," in three volumes, and has been responsible for a number of television documentaries, most recently "Obama's America" (2009 ).

My test of the first section of the book, "Traveling," is the essay on Washington, D.C., where I grew up. Schama starts by getting it wrong. He begins with a question: "Are there any city avenues more inhumanly broad than those of Washington, D.C.?" For him, the answer is no, but I say yes: There is Berlin, for example, where even the outermost residential suburbs are designed to make the individual feel small and lost in some imperial grandeur. You are a subject. In Washington, by way of contrast, you are a human being, even in its most official parts. It is a city on a much gentler scale with trees everywhere, and streets arranged in a fairly consistent grid pattern; if you know the alphabet and are able to count up to about 40 you can't really get lost. He complains about "the massively monumental sculpture" in front of the East Wing of the National Gallery, which "sucks all human life out of the space" - but in what other world capital does everyone have free access to such a variety of artistic and cultural treasures? And I mean "free" literally: There is no entry fee to any of the many and mostly excellent Smithsonian museums and federal memorials and sites.

VIRTUAL CHAN: Responsible Government Photo Essay

Canada's Quest for Responsible Government and Confederation: a Photo Essay

Essay question: Explain the steps that Canada took in the process of trying to gain a responsible government in the era between 1812-1867.

Eg: if Confederation was a good step in gaining responsible government for Canada, you can find images that are brighter and depict John A MacDonald in a good way.

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