Brodie: it just dawned on me

[Archaea]

People like to read her, especially if you're cynical, because she was into English lit. That's all her masters was. Reading her bio, it shows she was an effective public speaker and wrote clearly.

What I don't like about her is her penchant for trying to be a historian, when she lacked any formal training and her penchant for psychobiography, which failed miserably in her Nixon effort, because she has no psychological nor psychiatric training. She doesn't exhibit any knowledge of any of the known schools of psychological training, be it Gestalt or cognitive behavorial.

Yet people like a good story, and she gave them a good story, irrespective of the facts, or critical reasoning.

Pyschobiographies should not be written by English lit people.

If Seattle writes a Roman history as a thriller, I'm dying to read it, due to his vast interest in it as a hobby. He demonstrates clear writing and thinking on matters for which he does not have an axe to grind. Nonetheless, I doubt he will try to give us psycho babble, because that's not his training, formally or informally. Nothing in Brodie demonstrates any training in an area where she pawns off her abilities. The psychobiography was just a genre that literary types accepted for a while.

I don't believe they are very acceptable in biographical or historical circles any longer.