Acrobatic historians

Tim Adams interviews Simon Schama for the Observer. On self-doubt and big projects:

You are not thinking hard enough if you are sleeping well. And you would have to be unhinged to take on a subject like the French revolution, or Rembrandt, and not feel some trepidation. There is always the possibility that you will crash and burn and the whole thing will be a horrible, vulgar, self-indulgent mess.

"You can do your job better after recreation"

At Slate, Paul Collins on ten of the oddest travel guides ever published. Number one on the list:

The Truth About Hunting in Today's Africa, and How To Go on Safari for $690.00, by George Leonard Herter (1963)

Equal parts Hemingway and Cliff Clavin, mail-order hunting goods retailer George Herter was one of America's great oddball writers. His self-published guide—bound in tiger-print cloth—is a malarial fever of anecdotes, family safari photos, and horrifying advice: "Baboons are simply too small for leopard bait. ... A live dog is one of the best leopard baits." Hunting with a phonograph of distressed goat calls is encouraged; so is the importation of animals: "Leopard farming would be far more profitable than mink farming," he proposes. As the corpses of rhinos, lions, elephants—and one of their guides—pile up for more than 300 pages, Herter never misses a chance to sell his sporting goods with such photo captions as: "A Masai warrior admires a pair of Hudson Bay two point shoes."