by Will Katerberg. If you’re interested in the history of the American West, you should get ahold of Earle Labor’s new biography, Jack London: An American Life, which I've been reading. I read novels and short stories by London (1876-1916) when I was a kid, but didn’t think much about them. They were adventure stories, …
Continue reading Book Note: Jack London’s Call of the Wild
by Will Katerberg. It’s basic to modern historiography to draw a line between “critical history” and other ways of relating to the past, such as heritage, tradition, and memory. Most people don’t make this distinction. History is history. When they encounter it, "critical history" sometimes violates what they hold dear, making them angry or shaking …
Continue reading Critical History and Sacred Tradition: Introduction
by Will Katerberg. “Big Data” is all the rage today. We have data sets so large that current database management software can’t handle it. Think, for example, of medical records and demographic statistics and the need to identify trends and patterns in them. The study of history is going big these days too. We teach …
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by Will Katerberg. Everything has a history, but it’s easy not to notice. Partly that’s because we associate “history” with humanity, not the rest of the natural world. Partly it’s because some things seem timeless and unchanging, such as climate. Weather changes; climate does not seem to. A new book by John L. Brooke, a …
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by Will Katerberg Former Calvin College history professor George Marsden has a new book out this month. He taught in the Calvin history department in the 1970s and 1980s, before moving on to Duke and then Notre Dame, and has returned to Grand Rapids in the past few years, teaching courses at the college and …
Continue reading Book Note: George Marsden’s Twilight of the American Enlightenment
by Will Katerberg Why Historical Horizons and why a blog from a History Department? My colleagues and I have lots to do. We teach classes and supervise students doing research papers and honors theses. We serve on committees and as administrators. We go to conferences, present papers, and meet publishers. We travel to do research, …
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Historical Horizons 