2015 on Two Weeks Notice

Mike Allison's post made me think of figuring out what post got the most hits in 2015. It was a January post on rumors of a Venezuelan coup. Of course, it is also a reminder that rumors are just...rumors. From a blogging perspective, Venezuela is always a hot topic. I don't see that changing in 2016. I am not big on predictions, but I predict the biggest post of 2016 will also be Venezuela, and may well be something on executive-legislative relations.

What's also interesting is that reviews of academic books often get a lot of hits. I still get tons of hits for a 2008 review of Leo Chavez's The Latino Threat. Same goes for a 2010 review of Tim Henderson's book A Glorious Defeat (on the 1846-1848 war with Mexico). From the searches, I get the strong suspicion that the books are being assigned in classes and students are trying to find synopses and/or some ready-made analysis.

This is my fourth year as department chair, and not coincidentally my number of posts decreased for the fourth year in a row in 2015, down to about 5.5 posts per week. I don't have any particular goals in that regard--I just write when I get an idea and have time.

The big blogging news for 2016 is that in January I will have my 10th anniversary writing this blog. After an entire decade, it's still literally fun. In some ways, it's even more fun because I am so busy with administrative work--it feels good to carve out a little time during the week to do something creative and to focus on a topic of endless fascinating for me.

Happy New Year!