Recently, historians have sought to understand how and why Americans continue to remember their civil war. Memory of the bloodiest conflict on U.S. soil remains fresh in popular imagination, kept alive by legions of Civil War buffs...
Why the Southern Renaissance ever occurred is still something of a mystery. All that is attempted here is an analysis of some explanations that have been offered by others and a few additional speculations. Before turning to the critical wh...
I first came to know Effie Ruskin some decades before the play brought her to public attention and made her a heroine of sorts. In the mid-1960’s my husband and I, and our children, spent the summer at Venice’s Lido, the locale of his youth...
His first name, Wilbury, had a slightly frivolous sound, like that of a furry character from Beatrix Potter or A.A. Milne, but no student would have thought of using it, even behind his back, for Mr. Crockett was the antithesis of frivolity...
On October 19, 1865, Sam Clemens—nearly 30 years old, in debt, haphazardly employed—wrote a letter to his brother Orion. Encouraged by the completion of his first significant creation, “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,” Clemens overflowed...
In support of the revised version of childhood, Nicholas Orme, who holds a senior academic position at the University of Exeter, and who is the author of several books on medieval schools and education, has collected an impressive amount of...
Since liberalism is shot through with compromise at the level of political action, it is constantly in need of moral grounding. Reclaiming Liberalism’s examination of the principles set forth in the classic texts, as illuminated by the...
Andrew Burstein’s lively and perceptive book not only provides an engaging portrait of a long-forgotten age, delightfully populated with characters worthy of a novel, but it offers an extended reflection on the role of memory and history in...
