Status Updates From Three Rivers: The Hidden Hi...

So, apparently, there was very good reason for making a shittier argument by not using the Wacht am Rhein, which was that Winder was keeping it for the next chapter to milk for content, gets its composition wrong, and also quote the one additional seventh verse which notably diverges from the generally readable-as-defensive-and-Romantic-pangermanic tone, which is not on the Niederwsld monument. Jesus Christ.

In which: R. Winder is so buisy making presentist-santimentalist, grand, sloppy, if not alright wrong, (no one banned the Deutschlandlied after 1945) statements in roping musical anthems in his narrative of French-German rivalry over the Rhine, he somehow completely misses the existence of "Die Wacht am Rhein", which was way more historically popular and a thousand times better for making his point.

Entertaining, but won’t finish. Numerous errors in first 1/3. Heidelberg isn’t on Rhine River. -tal in Neandertal means valley. Nestlé was born in 1814.

Also, “For a time, it was deemed old-fashioned to see unglamorous physical geography as being the force behind historical events…” ‘For a time’ physical geography was misused to justify the subjugation of certain peoples (Environmental Determinism!).

Sure thing, man, Harvey stopped blood-letting. And Galileo stopped people from thinking a grand piano drops faster than a pebble. And no one overdosed ever again after Paracelsus.

... According to legend [[St.] Gallus] was more than an energetic teacher [...] This made him a natural chose as Bishop of Konstanz when the position became free.

The solitary life seemed to suit him ...

(Ch. 13)

Ah, yes teaching in solitude (but who, the trees?) The solitary life of senior post in the church bureaucracy at the interface of secular and religious life.

I am going to be bitching so hard about the flippant ways in which Winder will take a historical event, uproot it from context and causes, pretend there is simple continuity between things that (more or less) have the same name (in English), and do whatever he wants with it to make a dubiously witty point.