A word of warning from today’s archival research (re: photocopying binge): “The trouble with the Democrats in California is, first, they have no organization, and secondly, they wish, just as apparently as the Democrats in the East wish in this campaign, to be with exactly the same people with whom the Republicans have been sleeping for many years in the past. Apparently they don’t realize that there is no place for them with those who have been directing our politics, but nevertheless they covet the unique and often disgraceful position we occupy.” — Hiram Johnson, in a letter to Harold Ickes, September 1, 1928.
Category: History
Creators, Kingfish, and consiglieres.
Some quality historicizing in today’s Washington Post Book World: Michael Kazin reviews Richard White’s new Huey Long biography, H.W. Brand’s looks at Godfrey Hodgson’s new bio of Edward House (right-hand-man to Woodrow Wilson), and novelist David Liss briefly surveys recent works on the Founders.
Swearingen to Progressivism in Two.
“Seth Bullock
Deadwood, S.D.
August 25, 1920 [Almost a year after Bullock’s death]
Dear Sir:
After careful consideration I have come to the conclusion that it is my duty as a believer in the progressive principles it was my privilege to fight for under the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt, as well as my duty as a citizen, to support the democratic national ticket in this campaign. I have prepared a statement giving some of my reasons for reaching this decision, a copy of which statement I enclose. If you are sufficiently interested to read this and write me, how you, personally, react in the present situation I will be obliged to you.
Harold Ickes“
Ah, the archives are great fun.
Hofstadter’s Political Tradition.
“Like the late John Kenneth Galbraith, Hofstadter has been faulted for leaving behind no coherent ‘school’ of history, no set of disciples. But for a man who once said to Foner, ‘I’m not a teacher, I’m a writer,’ to have tutored such a splendid variety of historians shows that he imbued his students with something more precious than the ability to write history his way. He taught them to write history their way.” On the eve of a new biography of the hallowed Columbia prof, Slate‘s David Greenberg ruminates on Richard Hofstadter.
Special Agent Bimmler?
“The CIA based its decisions about using former SS men or unreconstructed Nazis solely on operational considerations…Hiring these tainted individuals brought little other than operational problems and moral confusion to our government’s intelligence community.” New documents unearthed by UVa historian Timothy Naftali make clear the Cold War-era CIA had no qualms about using former Nazi assets, and even neglected to flush out infamous war criminal Adolf Eichmann from his hiding place in Argentina after being tipped off about his location. For shame.
The Flowering of Magnolia Conservatism.
“Lyndon Johnson was probably right to fret about the political consequences of civil rights. And even he, who knew more about the intricacies of Southern politics than any 20th-century president, could not have known how complicated the future would be.” By way of Cliopatria, Jefferson Decker, a former managing editor of Boston Review and one of my friends and colleagues here at Columbia, takes a look at two new books on the rise of the Republican Party in the South: Kevin Kruse’s White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism and Matthew Lassiter’s The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South.
Revisionist History.
“History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” A personal note: At the kind invitation of Ralph Luker at Cliopatria, I’ve joined up as one of the founding bloggers of Revise and Dissent, a recently launched group effort by younger historians and historians-to-be over at the History News Network. I haven’t gotten around to posting there yet (and I expect I’ll be cross-posting quite often with GitM), but it’s now up-and-running and my new blog-colleagues are already posting, so check it out!
Hard Times.
“‘Having been blacklisted from working in television during the McCarthy era, I know the harm of government using private corporations to intrude into the lives of innocent Americans. When government uses the telephone companies to create massive databases of all our phone calls it has gone too far.‘” Author, oral historian, and American institution Studs Terkel is one of six plaintiffs to file a lawsuit against AT&T for their complicity in the NSA master phone database.
ADA or SDS?
As seen on Medley’s Furl, Columbia PhD, Rutgers professor, and Slate “History Lesson” columnist David Greenberg reexamines the current divide between liberal internationalists and anti-imperialists among the Dems — and seems to think more of Peter Beinart’s recent “Cold War Liberal” argument and the protective camouflage DLC-types than I do — in the Boston Globe.
New Wave, L’Ancien Regime.
Quiddity points the way to some offbeat rumors concerning the soundtrack to Sofia Coppola’s forthcoming Marie Antoinette: “An unofficial soundtrack listing has been floating around the internet, claiming that in addition to the Bow Wow Wow songs [“I Want Candy,” “Fools Rush In”], the movie also features music from Gang of Four, Windsor for the Derby, Radio Dept., Aphex Twin, Air, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Cure, New Order (whose ‘Age of Consent’ appears in the trailer), Squarepusher, Adam and the Ants, the Strokes, and Phoenix.“