When I talk to people about Helen C. Rountree’s book (which I mentioned earlier this week) telling the story of Jamestown from the Indian perspective, I’ve noticed an almost instinctive skepticism. Nobody has come right out and said that sounds like PC b.s., but they haven’t needed to. The whole idea—which includes referring to the [...]

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Larry Gonick is one of my cartooning heroes, and after posting Kyle Baker’s version of the Nat Turner Revolt the other day, I decided to look for Gonick’s take on Jamestown. (Also, I’ve been reading about Jamestown.) For those of you not yet initiated, Gonick is a Harvard-educated mathematician and self-declared Overeducated Cartoonist. Since 1972, [...]

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Speaking of perspective, imagine you’re a Jamestown settler confronting the Powhatan people for the first time. Who are these dudes? Why do they do what they do? Your writing about what you see is going to both benefit and suffer from this lack of perspective. On the one hand, your observations will be fresh and [...]

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Ta-Nehisi Coates on reading American history as a black man: Dave Chapelle has that great bit where he goes back in time with a white guy and sees Thomas Jefferson writing the Declaration of Independence, and when he finishes he looks at Chappelle and says, “Get me a sandwich, nigger!” I remember watching George Will [...]

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Artist Rob Matthews binds Wikipedia’s featured articles in “dysfunctional physical form” as a way “to question its use as an internet resource.” The picture speaks for itself, I guess, but let me play devil’s advocate. For one, how does this “question” Wikipedia’s use as an Internet resource? Presuming one finds such a book intimidating and [...]

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So much of the business of history is simply being alive to the possibilities and pitfalls of perspective. For instance, my view of an event is bound to be different from yours. Or, when the subject of Jamestown comes up, an interview with Powhatan might sound slightly more jaded than one with that great self-promoter [...]

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New York City plans to celebrate Loving Day this weekend, commemorating (a little early) the June 12, 1967, U.S. Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia. And yes, there are T-shirts. This particular post is interested in associating Loving Day festivities with the politics of same-sex marriage and notes: And with NY State soon to [...]

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In a post the other day, I mentioned that a blogger for the Atlantic had compared Scott Roeder, who allegedly murdered a doctor because he performed late-term abortions, to John Brown. Another Atlantic blogger, Ta-Nehisi Coates, has now brought Nat Turner into the discussion. Coates’s point, actually, is that if we’re going to engage in [...]

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Virginia’s fifth district congressman, Tom Perriello, has introduced a bill in Congress aimed at saving the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford. An earlier post linked to news that the memorial was in financial trouble.

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From the London Review of Books: The best one-volume encyclopedia in the world used to be the Columbia Encyclopedia, first published by Columbia University Press in 1935. In our house we have the fifth edition, from 1993, and we still get it out occasionally to look up kings and queens and old-fashioned stuff like that. [...]

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The Associated Press reports: On the eve of the 65th anniversary of D-Day, the foundation that runs the National D-Day Memorial is on the brink of financial ruin. Donations are down in the poor economy. The primary base of support—World War II veterans—is dying off. And the privately funded memorial is struggling to draw visitors [...]

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This year being the sesquicentennial of John Brown‘s raid on Harpers Ferry, we’ve been especially alert to references to the “Old Puritan” in today’s culture and politics. And perhaps it’s not surprising that his name should come up in reference to the murder, on Sunday, of Dr. George R. Tiller at his Wichita, Kansas, church. [...]

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I grew up in a neighborhood of Davenport, Iowa, called McClellan Heights. I delivered papers along McClellan Boulevard. George B. McClellan, in his day, was the man, and I’m sure that neighborhoods and streets across the country still bear his name. (Just as there is a Pershing Street in Davenport and an Eisenhower Elementary School.) [...]

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