Category

Historical

• 09.13.09
  The Sack of Baltimore
  Historical (0)

  Joshua Claybourn at In The Agory has posted an article titled "Why Your Children Won't Remeber 9/11". It immediately brought to mind the book I'm now reading, "The Stolen Village : Baltimore and the Barbary Pirates" by Des Ekin (2008). My daughter gave it to me on 9/11, for my birthday. The sack of Baltimore in 1631 was in some respects like the attack on New York. The author describes it as “the most devastating invasion ever carried out by the forces of the Islamist jihad on Britain or Ireland” and says it “was recognized ...
  
  
• 07.31.07
  1930s repression
  Historical, Welfare-police state (0)

  There is a review of Amity Shlaes new book, "The Forgotten Man : a new history of the Great Depression" in the July 30 issue of The Weekly Standard. You have to be a paid subscriber to read the whole article, but here's the link anyway. The reviewer, Stephen Schwartz, says in one place: "While the outcome of the New Deal was perceived as beneficial, and was unaccompanied by repression, it has long been observed that the emergence of the American social welfare state had elements in common with Mussolini's fascism, Hitler's state-directed economic revival, and Stalinist ...
  
  
• 06.08.07
  Lincoln’s spelling mistakes
  Historical (0)

  In a Reuters news item, David Alexander makes much of the misspellings in a newly found manuscript by Abraham Lincoln, written after the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. "...A misspelling showed the rudimentary education of the 16th U.S. president, who was largely self-taught...." and "...Plante said in other writing Lincoln sometimes misspelled the word "literal" and sometimes spelled it correctly...." Or maybe it's Trevor Plante, the archivist who found the manuscript, who made much of it. I wonder, though. Were these misspellings really the mark of a person with little formal education? Or were they pretty much typical of almost ...