Fifteen Eighty Four

Happy New Year!

As our blogging schedule begins to fill up with another year of great articles from our authors, we follow on from last year’s Top 10 Most Read blog post list, by compiling a list of those posts from 2014 that were viewed the most on our blog. This year we had a special theme to commemorate the First World War – but how might that have influenced the list? Read on…

 10: The Kaiser and the First World War

General Paul von Hindenburg, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and General Erich.

Back in February, John C. G. Röhl, author of a three volume biography of Wilhelm II, explored the role of the impulsive Kaiser Wilhelm II in the beginning of the First World War.

9: Hegel on the Master-Slave Relation

Hegel’s perspective on lordship and bondage were examined by Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (2014) author Ludwig Siep in this post from May.

8: Beginning the Great War

Continuing our First World War commemoration theme, our roundtable discussion from July with historians and Cambridge Authors Jack S. Levy, William Mulligan, Thomas Otte, and John C. G. Röhl, explored the reasons behind the outbreak of war.

7: The Western Front Revisited

Craig Gibson author of Behind The Front (2014) shed light on his research process in July, revealing an unexpected breakthrough, that led to his discovery of what it may really have been like for those caught in war.

6: Rise Like a Phoenix

Ioannis Ziogas, author of Ovid and Hesiod (2013), compared Vergil’s story of Dido to the Austrian singer Conchita Wurst‘s winning performance at the Eurovision Song Contest in a nuanced reading of classical myth and gender metamorphoses.

5: On Appreciating Hegel

Showing that readers couldn’t get enough of Hegel back in March, this second article by Ludwig Siep explains why he studies and loves Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel‘s classic philosophical work, The Phenomenology of Spirit.

4: Thomas Aquinas – Toward a Deeper Sense of Self

Posted back in January, this article by author Therese Scarpelli Cory explores the work of Thomas Aquinas in Human Self-Knowledge and asks that old question of ‘Who am I?’.

3: “Philosophy of Life” and “Philosophy of Death”

The first of three posts by editor Steven Luper, starting in February, is our third most viewed article of 2014. Steven tackles the philosophical questions of ‘What is life?’ and ‘What is death?’

2: Romeo and Juliet: Love and Death in the Digital Age

In April we re-imagined the love between the most famous teenagers – Romeo and Juliet, and wondered what it would be like if they’d had access to cell phones and Twitter. If only Juliet got signal in the Capulet crypt, and Romeo had thought to check his phone.

1. Wagner on Ice

Out, by an almost 6,000 views lead, is this post from February about how Disney’s Frozen movie harkens back to Wagner’s great operas, by editor Nicholas Vazsonyi. If you’ve somehow not seen Frozen yet, then beware of the spoilers!

2014 in numbers

The majority of our blog readers are based in North America (in particular New York, California, and Texas – hello!), but 2014 saw us welcoming a steady flow of visitors from other countries during 2014 – with readers in Samoa and Vanuatu amongst those joining us for the first time.

We’re thrilled to see that traffic to the blog is up 72% against 2013, and that is partly due to the expertise and enthusiasm of our editors and authors, and the curiosity and time taken by our loyal readers.

Thank you very much for reading fifteeneightyfour in 2014.

We hope you’ll enjoy what we have lined up in 2015.