The End of An Era

 It is now almost impossible to buy incandescent light bulbs. We have a dwindling stock in the basement, which we know we cannot replenish. On the whole, I'm happy that LEDs have superseded them. The great advantage of LEDs, of course, is the huge savings in electricity. And though the light can be a bit blue, I prefer it to the dead light of fluorescents. Some we have bought recently have a warm color nearer that of incandescents.

 On the other hand, what about 25-watt bulbs for sconces or chandeliers? What if these are on a rheostat? I gather from a recent visit to the store that the manufacturers have largely taken care of that. Yet I hear that some LEDs behave better than others.

My parents didn't know a time before incandescent light bulbs. I grew up with them. But the toddlers in my neighborhood may be the last generation to know them, if their parents haven't already switched to LEDs.

Authors' Names

 I have been looking at the websites of a couple of local bookstores, for there are still a few presents to buy. At least three of the authors I looked for were pushed well down the list by more prolific or more popular authors.

The historian of late antiquity Peter Brown shares a name with an illustrator. The latter Peter Brown is wholly or partly responsible for a couple of series, "A Creepy Pair of Underwear" and "Killer Robots" that apparently became very popular with the young. It is not impossible to find the historian's memoirs, or his biography of St. Augustine, but depending on the bookstore it can take some clicking. The first time I tried this, I had reached a Spanish translation of one of the killer robot series before I found a history.

Gordon Craig, who wrote excellent books on aspects of German history, suffers from the popularity of Edward Gordon Craig, an English actor and director. There is also a novel, Gordon Craig, Soldier of Fortune that you might encounter before you find any histories of Germany. It is fair to say that the search would have gone better had I supplied Craig's middle initial and searched for Gordon A. Craig.

If you are looking for a novel or work of criticism by W.M. Spackman, you will discover quite a few books, I suppose novels, by one Anne Spackman. At the store I last checked, I never found the Spackman I had in mind, the search trailing off to books with multiple authors, one having a given name starting with W, the other surnamed Spackman.

 One store efficiently offered several titles by the author I had in mind when I searched for Stuart Hampshire. The eight by the philosopher were unfortunately "not in stock at your store". The ninth title offered was lagniappe, thrown in to remind me of the chances of search, Filthy Hampshire Limericks; the Hampshire here was a county, not a surname. As I recall that also was not in stock at my store.

Thinking About the Roman Empire

 A piece in the business section of Sunday's New York Times mentioned in passing that social media had shown this year that men spend a lot of time thinking about the Roman Empire. I had no idea what this meant. Our son, home for Christmas, explained that there was a Tik-Tok meme or fad in which women would ask men how often they thought about the Roman Empire. I must have looked puzzled, for he then asked me how often I do.

Quite a bit, it seems. He is in part to blame, for he gave me a copy of Adrian Goldsworthy's Rome and Persia for my birthday this fall: the Rome of the title is almost entirely the empire, for the republic had only a few years left when Rome and the Parthians first confronted each other. And then I did pick up a volume of Tacitus to look something up the other week. Also I have been reading Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, which intermittently involves emperors pagan and Christian, Gothic invasions, and so on.

 I wonder whether this is simply an unusual stretch of preoccupation. But I can't observe myself not thinking of the Roman Empire, can I? And I wonder how many men, who hadn't thought about the Roman Empire since high school history class, found it impossible to avoid such thoughts after they were asked.

Usually Ships in 1 to 5 Days

 The website of at least one bookstore I know lists some books with the status "usually ships in 1 to 5 days". I long ago lost confidence in the assertion, and have recently been reminded why: it has been about three weeks since I ordered a book said to be in that status, and I have heard nothing back. My suggested emendation:

It is not impossible that we shall be able to find you this book before you forget its name, or why you wished to buy it.

J.G.A. Pocock, RIP

 Today's New York Times carries an obituary of the historian J.G.A. Pocock. The writer considers the most notable among Pocock's work to be the six-volume Barbarism and Religion, a study of the life and times of Edward Gibbon. The last volume of this work came out in 2015, when Pocock was ninety or ninety-one.

Of Pocock's works, I have read only The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. This was recommended by a friend who I think took a class from Pocock at Washington University. The Machiavellian Moment made interesting reading in the 2008 election season, when questions of virtù and prudence, ottimati and popolo came to one's attention. (That may be why I remember the Italian chapters better than the Atlantic chapters.)

I don't think that I will be reading the six volumes of Barbarism and History. For one thing, this would require sitting down and reading all of Gibbon with close attention before I started. But perhaps I will track down a copy of Political Thought and History.