In the bookmarks for awhile: James McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom and current head of the AHA, criticizes Dubya’s use of revisionist history and “revisionist history.”
Category: History
National Man of Mystery.
A recently discovered manuscript explains how Nathan Hale was captured. Turns out he was a better Patriot than he was a spy.
Moment of Decision.
Rick Perlstein, author of Before the Storm, profiles historian George Chauncey for U. Chicago Magazine, and underlines the central role he and other scholars played in the Lawrence v. Texas decision.
Werewolves of Baghdad.
Slate correspondent Daniel Benjamin pokes holes in Condi and Rummy’s recent spurious comparisons between postwar Iraq and Germany. Yep, it’s more revisionist history emanating from Team Dubya. In related news, Jack Beatty laments Dubya’s lack of postwar vision, which now seems ever more constrained to lining the coffers of Halliburton.
AuH20 + 1964.
“Let Scranton and Rockefeller make their token gestures at the ticket; let Romney and Rhodes snub it altogether. Nixon had been as nauseated by the [1964] convention — literally, he would claim in his memoirs — as any of them. Only he had swallowed his bile — and swallowed the rubber chicken, the back-room whiskey, and the church-basement juice, sitting in airports, sleeping in airplanes (or not sleeping, if it was a prop plane that rattled like the end of the world), gripping and grinning just as he had for his party every two years since 1946. Once more he would pack the bags, kiss the girls goodbye, and set out to collect the chits. It was a habit, strategy, a way of life.”
I did quite a bit of history reading over the vacation, and write-ups will follow in the orals prep subsection in short order. (In fact, expect that portion of the site to heat up over the next few months, since – other than TA’ing for Ken Jackson’s perennial “History of NYC” class – that’s all I’ll be doing for the rest of 2003.) But I’d be remiss if I didn’t hype Rick Perlstein’s Before the Storm here. Simply put, I was awed by this book – Covering the Goldwater movement of the early 1960’s (i.e. the birth of modern conservatism), it’s massively researched and amazingly well-written, and easily the best recent work of political history I’ve read in months. (I do have quibbles – I don’t think Perlstein is completely fair to Kennedy, for example. But they pale in comparison to the strengths of this tome.)
The book also made me realize that I – and most other progressives, liberals, and assorted other lefties – really need to be more of a joiner. As Perlstein’s book notes, much of the rise of Reagan in ’66 can be attributed to the organization of the Goldwater groupies through ’64. As such, I particularly recommend this book to folks out there who’ve already gone full-out for Team Dean, since Before the Storm seems a great primer on how to exploit the niches of the system in order to buck the party establishment. Very good stuff.
Forgotten Loot(ers).
Warriors, come out and play…With help from Columbia’s own KJ, David Greenberg attempts to explain the lack of NYC looters during the blackout, particularly as compared to the events of 1977. Also, in blackout news, the Dems (Edwards excepted) point the finger at Dubya’s lousy energy and infrastructure policies. Works for me.
American Scholars.
John Updike reviews the flood of new Emerson literature emerging in the wake of the Sage of Concord‘s bicentennial. Perhaps now would be a good time to revise my paper on Herbert Croly and Emersonian perfectionism while the getting’s good.
Memory CREEP.
In an interview for a PBS documentary airing next week, former presidential aide Jeb Stuart Magruder now says Nixon personally authorized the Watergate break-in. Historian Stanley Kutler for one doesn’t buy it, and Magruder’s reasoning for his silence does sound a bit bogus. But you never know…
The Conversations.
“On one of Lyndon Johnson’s tapes, one archivist said, he was heard to refer to a ‘pack of bastards,’ but he was really speaking of the ‘Pakistani ambassador.’ Another transcript stated that someone ‘lied. He gets his information from the Joint Chiefs,’ when the speaker actually said he
‘implied he gets his information from the Joint Chiefs.’” David Greenberg examines the trouble with White House recordings as a transparent window into History.
The Thick Red Line.
Only six years after The Thin Red Line, Terrence Malick readies his fourth film, Che, tentatively with Benicio Del Toro in the title role. (Expect voiceovers.) I just watched TTRL again the other night and was amazed once again how many people are in it. I remembered Jim Caviezel, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, John Travolta, George Clooney, John C. Reilly, Ben Chaplin, Nick Nolte, Adrien Brody, Sean Penn, and Elias Koteas from the first go-round in the theater. But seeing it again this week, I now also noticed Tim Blake Nelson, Nick Stahl, Jared Leto, Matt Doran (Mouse from The Matrix), and Thomas Jane — plus Miranda Otto as Chaplin’s wayward wife on the homefront. I’d love to see the unreleased six-hour version someday (which, according to the credits, apparently also includes Viggo Mortensen, Mickey Rourke, Lukas Haas, Billy Bob Thornton, Bill Pullman, Jason Patric, Martin Sheen, Donal Logue, Randall Duk Kim [The Keymaker from Reloaded], and a full-on performance by Brody), even if it ends up being too much for one sitting.