The Duck of Minerva

Antidotes for the monotony of reading to toddlers

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by Dan Nexon

24 November 2005, 1738 EST

My 18-month old daughter is in a binge-reading phase. She hunts for a book, carries it over to any adult who happens to be in the vicinity, and presents it while exclaiming “Enh! Ehn! Booshk! Enh! Enh!” Sometimes she will jab one finger while insisting “Sit! Sit! Sit!” In either case, her appetite for being read to is boundless. Which means my wife and I read the same books. Over and over and over and over. Between the three of us, we make a lot of animal sounds over the course of the day.

All of this goes along way towards explaining why Terry Pratchett’s Where’s My Cow? is the funniest thing I’ve read in quite some time. There’s a sort of pathos in admitting this, of course, but protagonist Sam Vimes’ frustration with reading about “moo-cows” and “baa-lambs” hits far too close to home these days.

UPDATE: maybe this will make more sense to our non-parent readers if I explain that my daughter’s new favorite read is a 1970s book called “Where’s the fish?” The prose varies between, I kid you not, “where’s the fish?” and “there’s the fish.” For pages and pages. The finale is a bit of a twist, though: the book ends with “home at last.”

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Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.

Website |  + posts

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.

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