I was determined to bring you back something from Mongolia, and despite the difficulties of travelling in a country without roads, I was lucky enough to encounter five Mongol villages where I found these really interesting nomads…. I was received in each village… by the chief who invited me into his tent. I had to [...]

“Throughout the conflict, Kahn’s cameras would return to hospitals all over France. Nurses figure prominently in a number of autochromes; in his pictures, as in the newspapers of the day, they were often represented as archetypal ‘invasion heroines,’ working selflessly, often in the danger zone, to save the lives of those who were so valiantly fighting the Boche. One picture, taken with characteristic panache by Stéphane Passet at a hospital near the Somme in July 1916, was composed with special care. In it, the nurse has a lambent patina – almost an aura – that reinforces the near-mythic lustre of her profession.”

Moreuil, France | 30 July 1916

Sunlight kisses the uniform of a nurse tending to casualties at a chateau that has been converted into a hospital at Moreuil, around 10 miles southeast of Amiens. In this autochrome, Passet’s chiaroscuro lighting gives his heroine an angelic radiance.

A7795 Stéphane Passet

Image and text from The Dawn of the Color Photograph: Albert Kahn’s Archives of the Planet by David Okuefuna.

Dora Costa and Matthew Kahn have written a new book called Heroes & Cowards: The Social Face of War, which uses the life histories of 40,000 Civil War soldiers to uncover the ways in which social bonds determined behavior. Costa and Kahn both teach at UCLA. In the essay below, Costa discusses some of their fascinating findings.

Lucky Severson at Religion and Ethics Newsweekly examines the phenomenon of interracial churches in the U.S. Among his interviewees is Michael Emerson, author of People of the Dream. There is also an extended transcript of their interview available on the Web site that answers among other questions:

Lucky Severson: Will the election of Barack Obama have an impact on interracial churches? Will we see more of them?

Michael Emerson: Oh, yeah. I think with President Obama there’s going to be a discussion, because he himself is multiracial, because we have for the first time a non-white president. There’s going to be talk about what does this mean? What is it? Are we in a new era? And I think it’s going to open up a wider place for a discussion about we ought to come together in our churches, in our neighborhoods, in our work places, in our clubs and our networks. I think it’ll be more acceptable to talk about it. We’ll see what happens. It’ll take some time. But I think it will.

University of Chicago’s Raghuram Rajan, coauthor of SAVING CAPITALISM FROM THE CAPITALISTS: Unleashing the Power of Financial Markets to Create Wealth and Spread Opportunity, gets a nod for his new work on “Capital Insurance.”

Princeton political scientist Larry M. Bartels earned a mention for findings from his book UNEQUAL DEMOCRACY: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age about the surprising relationship between policy decisions and income inequality in the entry on the “Federal Reserve Vote.”

New School economist Teresa Ghilarducci is lauded as the face of the “Guaranteed Retirement Account” discussed at length in WHEN I’M SIXTY-FOUR: The Plot against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them.

And, last but not least, Yale economist Robert J. Shiller is cited for his work on the “Rising-Tide Tax System” proposal also documented in his 2004 award-winning THE NEW FINANCIAL ORDER: Risk in the 21^st Century.

“Among the very first entries in the Musée Albert-Kahn’s registers is a plate numbered A6. Shot by the photographer Jules Gervais-Courtellemont (1863–1931) during his 1909 visit to Algeria, it is a simple image of a humdrum event: it shows nothing more thrilling than a young woman weaving a carpet. Although she is pictured from behind, we can see her fingers drawing threads between the cords stretched vertically over the loom. It is reasonable to assume that she is making it for the tourist market, because the word “souvenir” is woven into its design.

Superficially, at least, the scene is unremarkable: a straightforward depiction of a quotidian event in an unexceptional North African setting. Yet the interplay of color is an opera of visual delights. The rich crimson of the girl’s headscarf is a shrill counterpoint to the yellow vibrato in her carpet, the gold coloratura of her blouse and the blue baritones of the rug below.”

Photographed in color in 1909, the young weaver at this loom in Algiers was probably working from home. For many families, rug-making was a cottage industry.

A6 [detail] Jules Gervais-Courtellemont.

Image and text from The Dawn of the Color Photograph: Albert Kahn’s Archives of the Planet by David Okuefuna.

John Garrard is professor of Russian studies at the University of Arizona. Carol Garrard is an independent scholar. Together they are the authors of three books including Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent.

Whoever will occupy the “throne” that Aleksy II’s death has vacated will set his personal stamp upon the Patriarchate, but there is little doubt that the union of Russian Orthodoxy and Russian patriotism which Aleksy initiated will continue.  This relationship has been successful beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.  Consider but one small example of Aleksy’s remarkable achievements vís a vís the Russian military and its need to staff isolated listening posts in the Far North.

Russia still has universal conscription for young men, all of whom are eligible—including those who wish to become monks.  The Russian military also had a problem staffing the isolated and forbidding radar listening posts in the Far North.  These posts are located within what used to be monasteries, but had over time been outfitted with the infrastructure of the Soviet military.  No one in the Russian military has spoken on the record about the problem of morale at these posts, but it is easy to imagine that young men, without anything else to do but listen for up to ten hours a day in the frozen north would turn to making home made vodka on their off hours.

Robert F. Bauer, general consul to the Obama campaign, cited Heather Gerken’s forthcoming book THE DEMOCRACY INDEX: Why Our Election System is Failing and How to Fix It (May 2009) as the primer for on how to improve the election process. You can read more about this here. 

You may also want to check out Heather’s piece in the most recent issue of The American Prospect, which delves a bit more into THE DEMOCRACY INDEX and election reform in general.

What to get for that special economist in your life this holiday season? Gene Epstein at Barron’s Magazine has a few suggestions and happily, three of them are Princeton University Press titles: The Myth of the Rational Voter by Bryan Caplan (which is now available in a reasonably–if not downright stocking-stuffer worthy–priced paperback), The Venturesome Economy by Amar Bhidé (which was also listed to The Economist‘s Pick of the Pile for 2008), and The Price of Everything by Russell Roberts.

The Dawn of the Color Photograph by David Okuefuna gives us a rare opportunity to see the world anew–even if it is the world of close to 100 years ago. While most of the photographs taken at the turn of the 20th century were black-and-white, here the reader finds a collection of colorful autochromes.

We are now witness to the blood-red aftermath of a murder scene in Rhineland, the garish pink and orange dresses worn by human chess pieces in Indochina, and the vivid red.green.yellow stripes of skittles against the backdrop of World War I’s destruction in Reims. Whether documenting momentous occasions or the mundane details of everyday life–these photographs invite us to see history in a completely new way.

How did this collection come to be? French banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn dispatched photographers to the far corners of the world and supplied them with new autochrome cameras. Kahn’s goal was to create a complete photographic record of life on earth as an attempt to bring peace and understanding to the world. His monumental project was brought to an inauspicious end by his financial ruin in the Great Depression but not before he amassed close to 14,000 images from Europe, Asia, the Americas.

In a series of postings, we’ll share photographs from the  book–Enjoy!

The English are savages, and the first impression I had in Bombay has now been confirmed here. I was thought to be a spy or a criminal – I provoked nothing but suspicion. Anyone else who comes here is allowed to visit the Khyber Pass, but I wasn’t allowed anywhere near. I was kept some 15 kilometres [10 miles] away. I asked the authorities why this was, having presented them with my papers, emphasising the fact that I wanted to go to Afghanistan to see certain villages. All my requests were immediately declined. I had taken two railway trips in 24 hours with all my equipment, only to be sent back empty-handed.

Vendors selling horses or renting cars refused to sell or rent to me, so that I could leave this English town, and the Governor let me know that if I tried, I would be expelled and escorted back to the military base. This is charming…. These people haven’t even gone to the trouble of properly reading the letters that I have given them; they remain as frosty and stiff as their starched collars. They are imbeciles, ridiculous and uncultured. I apologise for the tone of my letter, but this expresses only a fraction of my thoughts.

An excerpt from a letter to Jean Brunhes from Stéphane Passet, dated 19 January 1914.

In spite of this reception, Passet managed to take a series of remarkable photographs of India including the autochrome below which may be to be the earliest color photograph of the Taj Mahal.

Agra, India | 25-27 December 1913

Constructed between 1632 and 1648, the Taj Mahal was Shah Jahan’s mausoleum for his beloved wife Mumtaz, who had died in childbirth in 1631. Over the years it fell into disrepair, but in 1908 builders completed the restoration project ordered by the Viceroy, Lord Curzon. Stéphane Passet’s autochrome is among the earliest-known color photographs of India’s most famous monument.

Text and image taken from The Dawn of the Color Photograph: Albert Kahn’s Archives of the Planet by David Okuefuna.