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Front page of the San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 30, 1900 Source: Sudden Death: Boys Fell to Their Doom in S.F.’s Forgotten Disaster (SF Weekly News)I took the boys to a history class today where Tobin Gilman talked about his book 19th Century San Jose in a Bottle. During the talk Gilman touched on the “Thanksgiving […]
than this headline. I had read parts of Maier’s work over the last decade but when I listened to Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788 I really became enamored with her wit, style, and ability. I followed up by revisiting her other works, notably From Resistance to Revolution and American Scripture, and enjoyed them […]
Paine found himself carried forward by the immense wave of his book’s popularity into the heart of New World society. If Common Sense isolated the fears and the angers of the average colonist and focused them into a strategy for the future, its impact was tenfold for the men who would face charges of treason […]
At his print shop here, Robert Bell published the first edition of Thomas Paine’s revolutionary pamphlet in January 1776. Arguing for a republican form of government under a written constitution, it played a key role in rallying American support for independence. Picture source at The Historical Marker Database We have it in our power to […]
Picture source at Wikipedia For the Fourth of July I thought I would do something different. The obvious choice would be to look at the Declaration of Independence or its philosophical history and background, but I wanted to re-read Common Sense and look at on one of America’s most problematic founding fathers, Thomas Paine. I […]
I recently discovered The William and Mary Quarterly, a historical journal published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. The current edition (no longer available online: edition 69_2) has a critical forum on Pauline Maier’s Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788, a book I enjoyed quite a bit. This comment came from […]
The scenes on this field would have cured anybody of war. Mangled bodies, dead, dying, in every conceivable shape, without heads, legs, and horses! I think we have buried 2000 since the fight our own & the Enemy, and the wounded fill horses, tents, steamboats and Every conceivable place. . . . I still feel […]
In which I continue to use my blog as a personal notebook… A link to an outstanding article on and review of George F. Kennan: An American Life by John Lewis Gaddis. His fluency in German and Russian, as well as his knowledge of those countries’ histories and literary traditions, combined with a commanding, if […]
In the colonists’ use of classical literature, for example, “their detailed knowledge and engaged interest covered only one era and one small group of writers”: Plutarch, Livy, Cicero, Sallust, and Tacitus—those who “had hated and feared the trends of their own time, and in their writing had contrasted the present with a better past, which […]
“Jefferson’s Fiddle is a delightful collection of modern arrangements and readings of classical and traditional repertoire that showcase Thomas Jefferson’s extensive music library.” I expect the interest in the music on this recording to be limited but I also post this for the liner notes available. Here is the note for “Jefferson and Liberty: In […]