Halloween is this week, and as the days grow shorter and the evening shadows lengthen, it’s time for a good ghost story. I’ve been a fan of them all my life. One of my earliest and scariest memories of Halloween is listening to the Disney album, “Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House.” We also …Continue Reading »
Jefferson and Hamilton: The Rivalry That Forged a Nation. By John Ferling. Bloomsbury, 2013, 436 pp., $30. There’s an old saying that the only new thing in the world is the history you don’t know. To the casual observer, the Tea Party that rose up in opposition to President Barack Obama’s policies in 2009 might …Continue Reading »
“Hey! Aren’t you the guy that does that history commercial every night on TV?” I was walking back to my office one afternoon after lunch in Chatham Square here in Savannah, and that question was shouted at me from a guy unloading a truck on Gaston Street. That history commercial? He was referring to Today …Continue Reading »
The Letters of C. Vann Woodward. Edited by Michael O’Brien. Yale University Press, 480 pp., $40. C. Vann Woodward has cast a long shadow over the American historical profession for the last 75 years. His path breaking biography Tom Watson, Agrarian Rebel, first appeared in 1938, the first of Woodward’s 15 books and numerous essays …Continue Reading »