I hate that thing where it makes more sense to read an essay from the inside out. Luhman's book on self-reference is like this: if you start at the beginning you're fucked, but if you start at the middle and leak outward then you have a chance.
Taxis is a canon of rhetoric! Get it right, people! I want Narratio, Partitio, Refutatio, Confirmatio, Peroratio!
Given the tendency of academic reviewers to become less reliable with more leniency (as during lockdown), and the tendency of academic presses to make cooler book designs with more time, and given the delays involved in academic publishing...
We are probably near or in the historical nadir for unhinged books that look really cool.
The emergence of a German nation-state is just output from Frederick the Great, who's basically following the response of Frederick the Soldier King after the Peace of Westphalia.
After the collapse of "universal monarchies," both France and Spain are out of the "continental superpower" business.
Between the Anglos' victory lap and the German consolidation, you basically have the table set for WWI. And so on and so on.
If you were the Onion writer who coined one of the classics, would it be more psychologically healthy to think that Apollo had cursed you with prophecy, or that your darkest moments of cynicism had actually ripped off the superfices of reality and exposed the cyclical and patterned qualities of human depravity?
Orange crate art was a place to start.
https://www.openculture.com/2019/10/a-collection-of-vintage-fruit-crate-labels.html
Humanist interested in the consequences of the machine on intellectual history.