Every time I step into a major bookstore I can find copies of Foote’s Civil War trilogy, the early work of David McCullough, an abridgement of Freeman’s biographies of Lee and Washington, and a book or two by Barbara Tuchman. All these books have been around for decades, and in terms of scholarship they’ve all [...]
Archive for December, 2008
Dusting off the Lincoln Bible
Posted in Abraham Lincoln, History and Memory on December 23, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Several history bloggers, including me, have mentioned the Lincoln-Obama parallels that have been floating around in the press. I think most of these comparisons are a load of horse-flop, not because they offend any political sensibilities I might have, but because of their banal superficiality.
Anyway, when Obama is sworn in, he’ll be using the same Bible Lincoln [...]
Following the evidence
Posted in American Revolution, Historiography, tagged Bernard Bailyn, Gordon Wood, republicanism, The Creation of the American Republic, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution on December 18, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Lately I’ve been digging back into a couple of classics on political thought during the American Revolution. The first is Bernard Bailyn’s The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, which originated as an introduction to a collection of pamphlets written during the imperial crisis. The second is Gordon Wood’s The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787.
It’s difficult [...]
Re-enacting at Slate.com
Posted in History on the Web on December 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
You might get a kick out of this item published on Slate, in which a writer takes a crack at living history interpretation. I’m not a big fan of subjective, first-person journalism, but it’s an interesting look at re-enacting from the outside.
Poetic justice for historic sites
Posted in Abraham Lincoln, Historic Preservation, Museums and Historic Sites, tagged Governor Rod Blagojevich on December 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Some time ago I posted an item on IL’s wildly unpopular Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who’s been slashing his state’s public history and preservation funds. It wasn’t so much the cuts that bothered me as it was the fact that Blagojevich has allegedly wasted thousands of dollars on needless expenses for his own benefit, while the dedicated [...]
Here’s a Lincoln tribute for you
Posted in Abraham Lincoln, History and Memory, tagged Abraham Lincoln on December 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Occasionally I’ll head over to eBay just to see what history-related items they have. Lincoln-related items are usually easy to come by; I got my set of the Collected Works by online bidding. Today I typed “Abraham Lincoln” into the search field and encountered this listing: “Abraham Lincoln RARE Heirloom Tomato 50 Seeds for 2009.”
And here [...]
