My last post addressed the New York Times’ 1619 Project. Published in August 2019—400 years after the arrival of African slaves in Virginia—the project‘s essays took up almost the entire New York Times Magazine plus a ‘broadsheet” of African-American history prepared with the Smithsonian Institution. It was a show-stopper. It argued that modern America, from capitalism to health care, was shaped almost entirely by slavery.[1]
Many praised this tour-de-force and it received the Pulitzer Prize in 2020. But criticism also emerged very quickly, and that is the subject of this post. Continue reading “The Furor over the 1619 Project”
In a previous post I critiqued an author for wasting enormous talent trying to write something “new.” In this column I will discuss three books that ushered in new ways of thinking, but did it better. These books aren’t easy reading, but their density is proportional to their content. (I can cover three books because praise takes less space than criticism.) Two were readings assigned in class; the other was recommended.
The Strippingof the Altars
The Stripping of the Altars by Eamon Duffy[1] overturned decades, perhaps centuries, of stultifying complacency about the Protestant Reformation in England (including my own). Duffy challenged the widespread presumption that the Reformation brought a true and purified religion to a country gripped by ritual, magic and saint worship—in other words, the Catholic Church.
While the title refers to the destruction of the traditional church under Protestant kings Henry VIII and Edward VI, more than half the book is devoted to describing Christianity before the Reformation. Duffy shows how the Catholic Church was woven into the texture of people’s lives through holy days, celebrations, pageants, processions, veneration of saints, deathbed donations, prayers, and, above all, the miraculous Eucharist. Overseeing that world and everyone in it were the saints, from the Virgin Mary to little-known local martyrs, all of whom could help people in various kinds of trouble. Continue reading “Three Good Books That Revised History”
We are all haunted by George Santayana’s famous statement: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” We say it often, but is it true?
I welcome others’ opinions, but I have my doubts. Let me offer three reasons:
First, do we ever really understand the past? Could the Civil War—the most deadly war in American history—have been prevented? Possibly. But if so, how would slavery have ended? Avoiding one tragedy might have perpetuated another. So what have we learned about the Civil War that could possibly guide us in the future?
Second, let’s suppose we understand the past. Can we know where to apply that understanding and where not? Nearly everyone agrees that World War I was a pointless war and a horrific tragedy; in contrast, historians generally agree that World War II “had to” be fought, and it was the Allies’ finest hour.
My class in historiography introduced me to a relatively new historiographical concept, “memory.” A group of people, usually a country, shapes a memory of its past that reorders the facts of history into a narrative. Historians explore such memories and how they came about. It’s fascinating, but it makes me uneasy.
David W. Blight is a leading historian of memory. His brilliant book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory epitomizes the best use of the concept. [1] In brief, he explains that after the most devastating war in American history the reunified nation had to come to grips with what had happened. Americans created a memory of the war—its goals and its results.
