by Dan Miller. Was American founded as a Christian nation? That question is the title of a 2011 book by John Fea, an American historian who teaches at Messiah College in Pennsylvania. Like most questions about the past, the answer turns out to be complicated. Fea was inspired (incited?) to write the book by encounters …
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by Young Kim. Sometimes I am a bit envious of my colleagues who study more recent history (and by “recent” I mean of the last few hundred years or so). When they talk about visiting archives chock-full of documents to collate and explore, my borderline-obsessive self feels a tinge of jealousy at the prospect of …
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by Bob Schoone-Jongen. I just finished reading A Disposition to Be Rich: How a Small-Town Pastor’s Son Ruined an American President, Brought on a Wall Street Crash, and Made Himself the Best-Hated Man in the United States, a biography with lots of sin and no redemption, a tale sure to brighten a gloomy time of …
Continue reading Book Note: A Disposition to Be Rich by Geoffrey Ward
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 Karin Maag. Last year, I volunteered for a new assignment. My department was looking for someone to teach an online section of our core history survey, and I agreed to try it. From the outset, I admit, I was unsure about taking this step. After nearly seventeen years in the classroom, I have a …
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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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Historical Horizons 