History
The World As It Is
A raw, combative, and unflinching insider’s look at the Obama administration and its foreign policy. I finished “The World As It Is” this afternoon, listening to hours and hours of rainfall on the back lanai, enjoying the book more so…
Presidential Road Trip
This week, I took a 728-mile New England road trip through presidential history. Five birthplaces. Four graves. Three libraries. Two churches. And one amateur historian driving alone. Adams. Quincy. Pierce. Coolidge. Kennedy. I won’t bore you with a thousand other…
The Author’s Ridge
Been spending a lot of time with the dead this week. Tonight, I found myself in the ghost land of Sleepy Hollow and the Author’s Ridge. Hawthorne. Thoreau. Alcott. Emerson. And, well, one little chipmunk running around the graveyard.
RIP, Franklin Pierce
After visiting Pierce’s grave last night, this morning, I awoke to a rainy, chilly day in New Hampshire, but had in mind this single, obscure destination, seen below, from a letter, written by Franklin Pierce, describing his last few hours…
When They Were Teenagers
True story. James Monroe was only 18 when he fought for the American Revolution; quitting college to serve at the aid of General Washington who had also left school, at the age of 15, to survey the American landscape. True…
Calendar of Presidents
What does an amateur historian and instructional web design teacher with more than 100 books written by and about the American Presidency do with extra time off on Presidents’ Day Weekend? He starts building an online annotated Calendar of Presidential…
Provenance, in Posterity
For someone raised in the church, someone who learned to read on parables and psalms and proverbs, I find myself narrowly conscious of a time before I knew why. Before I knew about God. Or sin. Or mercy. Before I…
With Malice Toward None
As a student of history and a political independent, I have long maintained my neutrality over the divided causes of the Civil War, arguing with ease that while slavery was a dominant and undeniable issue, the South was more stubbornly…
The Retelling of Tragedy
This afternoon, I encountered a group of children born several months after the events we try so hard to Never Forget. They listened. We shared. But I could see in their eyes that it wasn’t a part of their story…
