Once in the British Museum...I overheard a conversation between two attendants in blue uniforms. One asked the other where so-and-so—obviously another attendant–was; and the first replied: 'Oh, he's in the Illuminated,' meaning, of course, the Illuminated Manuscripts Room. Thenceforth, we adopted the term the Illuminated being the world of the imagination, as Wordsworth's Sunless Land was [...]
As we celebrate the 236th anniversary of the passage of the Declaration of Independence (the signing would have to wait until August 2, 1776), it’s very much worth remembering what form of government the Founders hoped to establish in America. We were founded unquestionably as a Republic with the writing and passages of the Articles [...]
A couple of nerds, one of them a wannabe jock, have been making minor headlines in such classy publications as Slate, running the old “let’s ban college football” canard up the flagpole. Malcolm Gladwell and Buzz Bissinger, supposedly well-known writers (but, thankfully, ones I had never before heard of) “won” a debate against former NFL [...]
Eugene Genovese is one of the foremost American historians. A former Marxist, he is often branded a conservative—”a label applied to me frequently these days by people who understand nothing,” he wrote in 1994. Though he may eschew being labeled a conservative Genovese admits to having always admired much in conservative thought while being a [...]
What we think of Thomas Jefferson is likely to express precisely what we believe America is all about. For this most versatile and likeable of the Founding Fathers looms large in our history and in the symbol and imagery by which our imaginations have colored the past. For some, Jefferson is the preeminent voice of [...]
I’ve seen the gold standard blamed for a lot of things in my day—the busts of the 19th century, the travails of the farmer back when, the Great Depression—but I’d never thought I’d see the blame for the serial economic crises we’re enduring today, in 2012, hung on the gold standard. After all, isn’t the [...]