This week Stan remembers the birth and death of two iconic musicians from the 20th century, and the recent deaths of five historians whose work over the past 60 years helped redefine several eras of American history.
Stan talks about This Week in History (including King George III, AIDS, RFK, Mount Everest, & Charles Dickens), remembers a record-breaking baseball player, highlights new additions to the Off the Deaton Path bookshelf, and spotlights an incredible and historic collection of golden-age comic books about to hit the auction block–and the influence of comics in his own life.
Do we study and teach history to celebrate the past? To condemn it? Or to gain a greater understanding of the people and events that created the world in which we live? In this Dispatch Dr. Deaton discusses the challenges of teaching the complexity of our shared past, and the role of history in creating a better future.
In this Dispatch, Dr. Deaton takes a look at another hotly contested election in America’s history that included charges of voter fraud and threats of recounts and legal challenges: the presidential election of 1960 between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy.
We all remember the contested presidential election of 2000, but the greatest Constitutional crisis we ever faced was the disputed election of 1876, decided four months after the election and just two days before the inauguration.