As a historian, seeing non-fiction books without endnotes (only a message suggesting readers check out a url which contains a brief essay on sources) gives me genuine heart palpitations.
For ease of use, here's a link to the essay: ta-nehisicoates.com/blog/notes-o...
I published “The Case for Reparations” 10 years ago, back in the lost age of blogging, when thinking publicly still felt possible. In the spirit of that era, I wrote a series of posts outlining the sc...
I wonder if he lost a fight over that with his editor/publisher.
As a technology a book can last hundreds of years. Something tells me that URL will not have the same lifespan. Books should allow conversations to happen across centuries. It also feels like the academic historians he no doubt consulted are being further relegated into the nether.
I just can't bring myself to buy a book that does that. I do not buy books to be online all the time checking on the footnotes.
in today's internet? noooooooooooooooooooo
Huh: annoying enough that Pearsall's The Worm in the Bud (1969) (which does at least have endnotes) Notes on Sources said 'Little advantage would accrue from a complete bibliography' (does not detail what he saw from the BL Private Case...) and merely mentions most useful libraries visited.
I think Tony Judy's Postwar was the first book that I noticed doing this.
Agreed (not that I'm a real historian), though I get that it's different for an essayist. What I really don't understand is why they didn't just publish the essay in the book?