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 Bruce Berglund Former students regularly ask me for suggestions of good books. Surprisingly, once they leave college, students miss having a slate of required books to occupy their time and exercise their brains. But rather than recommending some compelling reading, let me offer instead some compelling listening. I am a regular podcast listener. My …
Continue reading History Podcasts and Other Recommended Listening
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 …
Continue reading Book Note: Was America Founded As a Christian Nation? by John Fea
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 …
Continue reading “New” Ancient Texts
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
