Quotes of the Day

"I can't get through the day without Bruce, he is absolutely genuine, like the rest of the people from Jersey."

"On the last verse of the song the guy next to me puts his arm around me...it didn't seem weird at all."

--Springsteen fans on the Springsteen & I trailer.

Most Highlighted Passages in the Kindle Edition of "Was American Founded as a Christian Nation?"

Yesterday we did a post on the most highlighted passages in Kindle e-books.  In the wake of that post I thought I would list the most highlighted passages from the Kindle edition of Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction:

1. "First, the past can inspire us. Second, the familiarity of the past helps us to see our common humanity with others who have lived before us. Third, the past gives us a better understanding of our civic identity."

2.  "The people of the Confederate States of America believed that they were citizens of a Christian nation precisely because they upheld the institution of slavery."

2.  "One of my goals in writing Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? is to get Christians to see the danger of cherry-picking from the past as a means of promoting a political or cultural agenda in the present."

3."The past is the past—a record of events that occurred in bygone eras. But history is a discipline—the art of reconstructing the past." 

4. "For Beecher, the United States was a Christian nation not because it followed the teaching of the Bible or church tradition, but because of the moral voice of God—the conscience—that could be found in every human being."

5. "The writings of these constitutional skeptics present an interesting dilemma for those today who want to argue that the Constitution was a Christian document. In the eighteenth century it was those who opposed the Constitution who made the strongest arguments in favor of the United States being a Christian nation."

6. "The idea that the United States was a “Christian nation” was central to American identity in the years between the Revolution and the Civil War."

7. "One of my goals in writing Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? is to get Christians to see the danger of cherry-picking from the past as a means of promoting a political or cultural agenda in the present."

8.  "When ministers, politicians, and writers during these years described the United States as a “Christian nation,” they were usually referring to the beliefs and character of the majority of its citizens."

9. "If there was one universal idea that all the founders believed about the relationship between religion and the new nation, it was that religion was necessary in order to sustain an ordered and virtuous republic."

10.  "Historians are concerned with contingency. This is the notion that “every historical outcome depends upon a number of prior conditions.”      

Read more highlighted passages from Was American Founded as a Christian Nation here.

Reckless Historian: "I am a Historian, Not a Jeopardy Contestant"

It is fun watching Phil Strunk and the Messiah College sophomore history majors who make up the"Reckless Historians" grow as historical thinkers.  In his latest post, Strunk talks about reading Sam Wineburg's Historical Thinking and Other Natural Acts and coming to grips with the idea that history is more than the memorization of facts.  Here is a taste:

As a historian, I’m just trying to make sense of the past with the facts I’m given.  I get to study the finer details of the past — and while knowing dates and people are necessary tools of history, they should not be the final product of history.  History is deeply involved in understanding our thought processes and the thought processes of people in the past, and just trying to understand the “who, what, where, when, why, and how” of a situation.

Phil's post reminds me of a line in my forthcoming, Why Study History: Reflecting on the Importance of the Past.  After discussing the economics teacher (played by Ben Stein) in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, I write: "This teacher, with his knowledge of certain facts about economic life in America, might be a successful candidate on Jeopardy, but he is not teaching history."

Most Popular Posts of the Last Week

Here are the most popular posts of the last  week at The Way of Improvement Leads Home:

1. The Today Show is Coming to Seaside Heights, NJ
2. Appleby Baptist Church and American Fundamentalism
3. What Do You Think About the End of the Print Edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica?
4. What Do Pastors Read?
5. Why Harvard Hates You
6. A Little History Humor
7. #Heartlandia
8. The American Revolution Reborn and Philly DH
9.  What Did Revolutionary Soldiers Eat?
10. Sunday Night Odds and Ends (May 19, 2013)

In Search of John Elder

My summer of research got underway this week with two afternoons at the Dauphin County Historical Society in Harrisburg, PA.  Along with my research assistants Megan and Brianna, I am spending the next few months exploring the relationship between Presbyterians and the American Revolution for my current research project.

This week we examined the papers of Rev. John Elder, a Presbyterian minister who was probably one of the ring-leaders of the so-called Paxton Boys, a group of Scots-Irish Presbyterians who, in December 1763, massacred twenty Conestoga Indians in Lancaster County, PA.

Megan and Brianna are reading and transcribing select Elder letters written in the years surrounding the massacre and I was trying to make sense of Elder's prayer and sermon books.  In addition to the Elder stuff, I found a few useful documents in the papers of Rev. John Roan, the minister of the Derry Presbyterian Church in what today is Hershey, PA.

We are off to a good start.  I will try to use the blog to keep you up to date on our progress.  Also stay tuned for the next edition of the Virtual Office Hours, which will be devoted to our research experience at the Dauphin County Historical Society and will feature me standing alongside Front Street in Harrisburg facing down rush-hour traffic and yelling into the camera.

Here are a few pics:

Megan trying to make sense of an Elder letter

Brianna intently reading one of Elder's letters from the 1760s

Manuscript Collection 070

Elder to Joseph Shippen, 1 Sept., 1763

Song of the Day

Stephen Brumwell Wins 2013 George Washington Book Prize

From the C.V. Starr Website:

MOUNT VERNON, VA—One of the nation’s largest literary awards, the annual George Washington Book Prize, has been awarded to Stephen Brumwell for George Washington: Gentleman Warrior (Quercus, 2012).  An independent historian and award-winning author who lives in Amsterdam, Brumwell received the $50,000 prize on Tuesday evening, May 21, at a black-tie dinner at George Washington’s Mount Vernon.

Most of us think of George Washington as the victorious commander-in-chief and wise statesman, but Brumwell breathes new life into a younger and edgier incarnation of our first president—the feisty frontier warrior who engaged the French and their Indian allies in brutal border skirmishes, the tough mid-career officer who turned the Continental Army into the weapon that defeated the British Empire.  Even while Washington fought the redcoats, Brumwell argues, he relied on British models of military organization and gentlemanly behavior in shaping his distinctive style of leadership. 

The Washington Prize, honoring the year’s best book about America’s founding era, is sponsored by a partnership of three institutions devoted to furthering historical scholarship: Washington College, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and George Washington’s Mount Vernon. It particularly recognizes well-written books that speak to general audiences and contribute to a broad public understanding of the American past.

“Stephen Brumwell’s book is a pleasure to read from the very first pages, when he puts you right there, literally looking down the sights of a rifle held by a British officer who’s about to decide whether to kill George Washington,” said Adam Goodheart, Hodson Trust-Griswold Director of Washington College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, which administers the prize. “He brings the frontier military experience to life—the vermin, the floggings, the constant fear of ambush and massacre. And readers get a vivid sense of Washington himself as a creation of eighteenth-century military culture.” 

“George Washington: Gentleman Warrior is a wonderful read and the scholarship is deeply impressive—Stephen Brumwell was way down in the scholarly weeds sorting out things most eighteenth-century specialists don’t know much about,” added James G. Basker, president of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, which funds the award. “I don’t know if we’ll get a Washington book this good ever again.” 

Born in Portsmouth on England’s South Coast, Brumwell worked for many years as a newspaper reporter before he went back to school to earn a Ph.D. in history. He is the author of Paths of Glory: The Life and Death of General James Wolfe (Hambledon Continuum, 2006), which won the 2008 Society of Colonial Wars Distinguished Book Award and the 2008 Charles P. Stacey Prize; White Devil: An Epic Story of Revenge from the Savage War that Inspired The Last of the Mohicans (Weidenfield & Nicholson, 2004); and Redcoats: The British Soldier and War in the Americas, 1755-1763 (Cambridge, 2002). He also co-authored (with W.A. Speck) Cassell’s Companion to Eighteenth Century Britain (Cassell, 2001) and has participated as an historian in numerous television and radio programs.   

The Washington Prize jury praised George Washington: Gentleman Warrior as “well-written and engaging,” and wrote: “In the hands of this fine biographer, Washington emerges as a flesh and blood man, more impressive than the mythical hero could ever be.”  

The Mount Vernon event also celebrated three other finalists for this year’s prize: Eliga H. Gould’s Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire (Harvard, 2012), Cynthia A. Kierner’s Martha Jefferson Randolph, Daughter of Monticello: Her Life and Times (UNC, 2012) and Brian Steele’s Thomas Jefferson and American Nationhood (Cambridge, 2012). 

“As Mount Vernon prepares to open a new national library for George Washington this fall, never has it been more important for the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association to honor and highlight the contributions of these important authors covering early American history,” said Curtis Viebranz, president of George Washington’s Mount Vernon.

Finalists were selected by a three-person jury of distinguished American historians: Carol Berkin, Presidential Professor of History Emerita at Baruch College and a member of the history faculty at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, who served as Chair; Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, Kathe Tappe Vernon Professor in Biography and professor of English at Dartmouth College; and Peter S. Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor Emeritus in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia and Senior Research Fellow at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello. Brumwell’s book was named the ultimate winner by a panel of representatives from each of the three institutions that sponsor the prize, plus historian Barbara Oberg of Princeton University.

The Soul of the American Reader

As some of you know, it is possible to highlight e-books on your Amazon Kindle.  What some of you may not know is that Amazon collects all of your highlights and ranks them. I learned about this today from reading Noreen Malone's piece at The New Republic on the soul of the American reader.

It looks like American readers are obsessed with The Hunger Games triology (19 out of the top 25 highlights), Jane Austen, the Bible (the most highlighted book), Steve Jobs, habits of highly effective people, and evangelical spirituality (especially David Platt and William P. Young).

Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography makes several appearances in the top 100 (debuting at #66) highlights.  3880 Kindle users highlighted his famous passage about moral improvement and the cultivation of virtue:

1. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation. 2. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. 3. ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time. 4. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. 5. FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing. 6. INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

I wonder if these are college students who have been assigned The Autobiography in class?

The highest ranked highlighted quote from a history book is Laura Hildebrand's Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption.  This quote comes in at #161:

Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man’s soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it. The loss of it can carry a man off as surely as thirst, hunger, exposure, and asphyxiation, and with greater cruelty. 

Other observations:

Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, first appears at #264.  1677 Kindle users highlighted this quote: "In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property."

1651 Kindle users highlighted this quote from G.K. Chesteron's Orthodoxy: "The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits."

The first quote from the Bible comes in at #376.  It is Philippians 4:6-7
  
do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

The second most highlighted Bible passage is--you guessed it--John 3:16:  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."  It comes in at #468.

Job Opening in Me Studies

The department of English invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professor in ME Studies, starting Fall 2014. Applicants should demonstrate a sustained scholarly engagement with ME.

Demonstrated expertise in one or more of the following areas is preferred: research I care about, topics I've been focusing on for years, theories I am familiar with, practices I approve of, and debates already settled by ME.

Successful applicants will be less successful than I am but not so unsuccessful that it reflects poorly on ME. The lucky chosen one will have the opportunity to work with ME. Candidates must have a Ph.D. from an institution I approve of and have recommendation letters from people I know and respect but am not threatened by. Please send just the names of people you know I know by October 15th.
My university is an Affirmative Action/Equal Employment Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate against any individual on the basis of age, color, disability, gender, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, veteran status or genetic information. However, applicants who cite ME are particularly encouraged to apply.

No, this is not a real job.

The New "Common-Place" is Here

Stay tuned for some possible posts and/or links on individual articles.

From the editors:

The Spring 2013 issue of Common-place takes readers from seventeenth-century Northampton, MA, to the borderlands of New Mexico in the 1870s. Marion Rust compares the stories of girls in the throes of religious enthusiasm in Great Awakening-era New England to a 2012 outbreak of inexplicable fits among high school girls in western New York.  Amanda Taylor-Montoya maps the shifting boundaries of interracial marriage in the southwestern borderlands in the nineteenth century. Common-place is also honored to be able to publish a piece by the late Jack Larkin, growing out of the work he was doing at the time of his death earlier this spring on the Boston illustrator David Claypoole Johnston.  These features, plus Megan Walsh on slave narratives, the introduction of “Just Teach One,” and two different looks at grave stones in early Newport, Rhode Island, can be found at http://www.common-place.org/

"Springsteen & I" Official Trailer is Here

Springsteen & I is an upcoming film documenting the life and career of Bruce Springsteen through the eyes of his fans.  The release date is July 22, but if you need your Bruce fix now I have posted the trailer below:
 


According to BruceSpringsteen.net, the movie will "be broadcast to movie theaters worldwide in an ambitious, simultaneous event."  Stay tuned.

More Famous History Majors

Wolf Blitzer of CNN

Check out the Pinterest page of the American Historical Association.  You can also find our own list here.

Educators and Social Media

I just ran across Dana Allen-Greil's slides for her presentation, "Museum Studies + Social Media."  Whether you are a museum professional, public historian, graduate student, or teacher, this presentation is very helpful.  Allen-Greil discusses the ways educators can use Twitter, blogs, Skype, Pinterest, and Facebook to enhance student learning.

How do you use social media in your classes?

Does "Staying Put" Cultivate Community?

For the good folks at the Front Porch Republic the answer to this question seems to be an unqualified "yes."  And anyone who reads this blog carefully knows I am sympathetic to the Front Porcher's understanding of "place," especially as espoused by writers like Wendell Berry and Christopher Lasch.  (I actually wrote a few things for the Front Porch Republic website a few years ago).

But Ross Douthat's recent column at The New York Times complicates the relationship between "place" and "community."

Here is a taste of his argument in "Place is Not Enough."

It’s easy to assume that America’s current crisis of community — the fragmentation of family life, the retreat from civic and religious engagement — is related to people being too quick to pull up stakes and leave their existing communities behind. But the surprising reality is that the recent weakening of social ties has coincided with a decline in mobility. Here are the relevant Census figures:

The percentage of people who changed residences between 2010 and 2011 ─ 11.6 percent ─ was the lowest recorded rate since the Current Population Survey began collecting statistics on the movement of people in the United States in 1948, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. The rate, which was 20.2 percent in 1985, declined to a then-record low of 11.9 percent in 2008 before rising to 12.5 percent in 2009. The 2010 rate was not statistically different than the 2009 rate.

Now Americans are still a more mobile people than most. But if you’re looking for a straightforward link between staying in place and the health of America’s communities, this is not the trend you would expect. We are staying put more than we did in earlier eras, and yet outside of the upper class it isn’t translating into the kind of personal and familial stability that communitarians want to cultivate.

I am sure Patrick Deneen is on the case.

What Did Revolutionary War Soldiers Eat?

The blog of the Museum of American History answers this question with its latest post.  Here is a taste:

Even before a food supply system was organized, on June 10, 1775, the Massachusetts Provincial Council set the daily allowance or ration for its troops in Boston as:

1. One pound of bread
2. Half a pound of beef and half a pound of pork; and if pork cannot be had, one pound and a quarter of beef; and one day in seven they shall have one pound and one quarter of salt fish, instead of one day's allowance of meat
3. One pint of milk, or if milk cannot be had, one gill [half a cup] of rice
4. One quart of good spruce or malt beer
5. One gill of peas or beans, or other sauce equivalent
6. Six ounces of good butter per week
7. One pound of good common soap for six men per week
8. Half a pint of vinegar per week per man, if it can be had.

Teach!

Sharon Liao is a history major at Columbia University who is concerned that elite colleges and universities are discouraging graduates from pursuing careers as K-12 teachers.  Here is a taste of her article at The Washington Post:

Working at a campus calling center this year, I spoke on the phone with hundreds of Columbia alumni, many of whom work in finance, health care, law or media. My elite, expensive school tells me in subtle ways that the “best” students pursue those sorts of fields. No matter how noble it may be to educate tomorrow’s leaders, or how accomplished an individual teacher may be, that person will never earn the social prestige or compensation that professionals do in many other fields.

Alumni who had gone into teaching asked whether I really want to teach or had considered the likely disrespect, insufficient pay, long hours and lack of autonomy that go with the job.

In short, I’m being scared out of teaching by teachers. And it seems reasonable to ask: Who wants to pursue a career in which they won’t be appropriately respected or compensated? 

On one hand, it is shame that some of the best college students in the country are not considering careers in education. This does not surprise me.  Fewer and fewer undergraduates seem to be devoting themselves to selfless lives in service of the public good.  Why teach when you can make much more money doing something else?  I wonder how much this has to do with increasing narcissism among the millennial generation.

On the other hand, young people may be discouraged from teaching by an educational system that has replaced classroom creativity and intellectual inquiry with standardized tests and state requirements.

Album of the Day

The Summer is Under Way

Elizabeth Presbyterian Church

With the Spring 2013 academic semester just about behind me, I am gearing up for my summer work.  As some of you know, I will be working as a consultant for Old First Historic Trust, a non-profit organization that promotes the history of the First Presbyterian Church of Elizabeth, NJ.  Read all about it here.

I also hope to make some progress on my current book project: "Land of Light and Liberty: Presbyterians in a Revolutionary Age."  Tomorrow I will be doing some research, along with my summer research assistants/interns Megan and Brianna, at the Dauphin County Historical Society in Pennsylvania.  We will be spending most of our time in the John Elder Papers.  Elder was the minister of the Paxton Presbyterian Church and one of the ringleaders of the so-called Paxton Boys.

Throughout the summer we hope to bring you reports from the road and a brand new series of virtual office hours.  Stay tuned.

Beeman on the Continental Congress

Listen to Richard Beeman discuss his new book, Our Lives, Our Fortunes, & Our Sacred Honor: The Forging of American Independence at Radio Times.

Why Harvard Hates You

Jonathan Rees is on fire.

Using Springsteen's version of "John Henry" as a lead in, he explains how Harvard University is using MOOCs to kill off as many academic jobs as possible.  Here is a taste:

Exhibit A: After the speech I gave in Connecticut last Friday, a Harvard Ph.D. in the audience slipped me an article. It’s from their Arts and Sciences graduate college alumni magazine. The new issue isn’t available online yet so you’re just going to have to trust me here:

“Thanks to technologies like HarvardX, [Grad Students Wen Yu] and [Ian] Miller suspect, there may be fewer professors in the academy in the future, but they will be much better teachers.”

That last sentiment is so perverse, I’m going to have to take it up in a post all its own, but for now just let the total lack of compassion there sink in for a moment. Sure, we’re going to screw over a lot of other grad students, but we’ll be fine! We’re from Harvard! With respect to there being fewer professors in the future, you just know they’re getting that from somewhere.
Exhibit B comes from former Harvard dean Harry Lewis (who talked to that New Yorker reporter, but was not quoted extensively). In this blog post, he absolves his employer for all blame for MOOC-induced professorial unemployment:

In the case of MOOCs (or other ways of chunking online instruction), Harvard could impose burdensome licensing rules in an effort to protect the scholarly professionals elsewhere. (Just as the Wall Street Journal is now Online but hardly Open.) But of course UC would then utilize someone else’s product, resulting in lower quality instruction at UC, perhaps at a higher price. Would we at Harvard then sleep better, knowing that if any philosophers had been laid off in California, it was not because of OUR MOOC?

Someone else is going to destroy your jobs, he’s arguing, so why shouldn’t it be Harvard? “You’re going to die someday anyway, so why don’t I just shoot you now?”

In other words, my fellow faculty members who teach at universities with precarious balance sheets (which therefore makes them ripe for “disruption”), Harvard hates you. Not content to be the richest of the rich, they want to get even richer by making your jobs no longer economically viable.

Read the entire post here.

Album of Day

I used to listen this album (on cassette) over and over again driving from Deerfield, IL to Winnetka, IL to catch the train to Loyola-Chicago where I took some graduate courses in the early 1990s.  I was driving a four-door 1981 Buick Skylark.

My Skylark was sky blue

A Warning Against Nostalgia

Like Stephanie Coontz, I've spent a good part of my career warning students and readers about the "dangers of nostalgia."  I wrote about the topic at length in The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in America. 

Yet I am a very nostalgic person--whether it be my New Jersey working-class upbringing, 1970s music, the American Basketball Association, the New York Mets, or the destruction of local communities at the hands of global capitalism.

Over at The New York Times, Coontz reflects on the disease of nostalgia.  Here is a taste:

In personal life, the warm glow of nostalgia amplifies good memories and minimizes bad ones about experiences and relationships, encouraging us to revisit and renew our ties with friends and family. It always involves a little harmless self-deception, like forgetting the pain of childbirth.

In society at large, however, nostalgia can distort our understanding of the world in dangerous ways, making us needlessly negative about our current situation.

Nineteenth-century Americans were extremely worried, the historian Susan Matt points out, about the incidence of nostalgia, which was the term used to describe homesickness in those days. According to physicians of the era, acute nostalgia led to “mental dejection,” “cerebral derangement” and sometimes even death. The only known cure was for the afflicted individual to go home, and if that wasn’t possible, the sufferer was seriously out of luck.

Thankful for My Research Assistants

Megan Sullivan (l) and Katie Garland (r)

Over the last four years I have been blessed with two wonderful research assistants.  Katie Garland worked as my assistant for three years before heading off to pursue a M.A. in public history at UMASS.  I could not have been as productive as I have been during these years without Katie's hard work and support.  Her fingerprints are on nearly everything I have written and published over the past three years and they will continue be present in several future projects. Katie even wrote and managed the book proposal for Why Study History?: Reflections on the Importance of the Past.

This year Megan Sullivan stepped into the research assistant role without missing a beat.  Not only did Megan proofread the galleys for Why Study History, but she virtually lived in the Early American Imprints collection this year, gathering data on Presbyterians during the American Revolution.  Megan graduated from Messiah College on Saturday and will be heading to James Madison University in the fall to pursue an M.A. in American history with an emphasis in public history. 

Katie and Megan reunited Saturday and we could not resist this picture!  This summer Katie will be working as a Buchanan/Burnham intern at The Newport Historical Society and Megan will be working for the third straight summer as a living history interpreter at Harper's Ferry National Historical Park.

I am so very proud of both of these young ladies and I know they have bright futures ahead of them.

Sunday Night Odds and Ends

A few things online that caught my attention this week:

James Banner Jr. reviews J.H. Elliott's History in the Making.

How to use LinkedIn

Is Chris Christie the Republican Bill Clinton?

Douglas Brinkley Rolling Stone interview with Joe Biden

Is Jill Lepore the next Richard Hofstadter?

History conferences and tourism 

Another History Day testimonial 

Writing out the King James Bible by hand

Have the NBA playoffs been "dreadful" this year?

Nixonian 

How to be a freelance writer 

Joe Fraizer's gym:  a historic landmark

John Turner reviews David Holland, Sacred Borders: Continuing Revelation and Canonical Restraint in Early America

Christian Century and mainline Protestantism

50 digital preservation activities you can do

The Charlotte "Hornets" may be back

The largest ports in the world

Looking for a Father's Day gift? Nicholas Mancusi reviews Lucas Mann, Class A: Baseball in the Middle of Everywhere

#Heartlandia

I have spent about seven years of my life in the Midwest, although I am not sure that my five years living on Chicago's North Shore really count. (Although I am positive my two years in Valparaiso, IN are legit).

Nevertheless, I am enjoying reading the tweets at #heartlandia.  Chris Cantwell, Barton Price, and Kristin Emery have their pulse on Midwestern life.  Very funny.

What Do Pastors Read?

Here is the synopsis of a recent Barna Group survey of Protestant pastors:

• There are approximately 315,000 Protestant churches in America.  (As compared to 13,000 McDonalds and 4000 Walmarts).
• Pastors buy 3.8 books per month per person
• 92% of pastors by at least one book per month
• Pastors buy 8-13 million books per year. 
• Pastors buy more books than the general population.
• Younger pastors buy more books than older pastors.
• Pastors buy books on topics that interest them or that are recommended to them.
• Half of pastors are reading biographies.
• One-third of pastors are reading business books.
•  Pastors buy most of their books at Christian bookstores and online.
• Half of pastors read books on an e-reader of an iPad.
• 90% of pastors recommend books to their congregations from the pulpit.

The American Revolution Reborn and Philly DH

I just registered for two free conferences at the University of Pennsylvania.

The first conference, The American Revolution Reborn: New Perspectives for the Twenty-First Century, is sponsored by American Philosophical Society, the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, and the Museum of the American Revolution.  It will be held throughout Philadelphia from May 30 to June 1.  Here is the overview:

The conference aims to identify new directions and new trends in scholarship on the American Revolution.  The conference organizers expect that it will be the first in a series of conferences exploring important themes on the era of the American Revolution.  The four themes that will guide the first conference are Global Perspectives, Power, Violence, and Civil War.

The format of the conference will differ from most academic conferences.  Instead of privileging papers, the conference organizers have created a program that aims to foster conversation between panelists and the audience with the hope that this dialogue will point toward the new directions in scholarship that the conference hopes to catalyze.  For that reason, we encourage all scholars interested in the era of the American Revolution to attend.  We expect the audience to be as much a part of the conference as the panelists..

Instead of reading papers, panelists will pre-circulate short papers (10 pages).  In the papers sessions, panelists will have just eight minutes to present their work, leaving the larger part of each papers session for discussion with the audience.  After each papers session, a commentary session will follow.  A group of eminent scholars will continue the conversation, reflecting on the papers and on what was said.  In addition, the conference has ample time for participants to talk casually with one another between sessions and at lunch and dinner each day.  The conference will “happen” outside the sessions as much as in them. 

The lineup of speakers is star-studded.  It includes:  Edward Gray, Jane Kamensky, Aaron Fogleman, Ned Landsman, Linda Colley, Ed Countryman, Christine Heyrman, Marjoleine Kars, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Marcus Rediker, Peter Thompson, Annette Gordon-Reed, David Shields, Thomas Slaughter, and Alan Taylor.

This is probably one of the best conferences on the American Revolution ever assembled.  You really need to be there.

The second conference, Philly DH@Penn, is a one day introduction to the digital humanities.  It includes workshops on creating video, encoding for beginners, open access images, WordPress, Omeka.net 101, and social media tech tools.  This sounds like an ideal conference for folks who want to learn something about the digital humanities but are not yet ready for a THATCamp

See you in Philly.  I will probably be tweeting and blogging from both events.

Album of the Day

Why the Decline in College Enrollment May Be Good News

For those of us in academia, especially those of us who teach at small private schools that are tuition-driven, the recent decline in college enrollment hurts.  Programs are cut.  Hiring freezes continue.  Staff members are let go.  Some colleges may need to close their doors.

But according to Jordan Weissman, the 2.3 percent drop in enrollment from 2012 to 2013 is actually a good thing.  First, it is a sign that the economy if getting stronger.  Second, it may force colleges to improve their dropout rates.  Third, many academics do want some colleges to shrink, especially for-profit institutions.

Read Weissman post at The Atlantic here.  What do you think?

Forthcoming Books

Here are a few forthcoming books I am looking forward to reading:

Thomas Buckley, Establishing Religious Freedom: Jefferson's Statute in Virginia

Dominick Mazzagetti, Charles Lee: Self Before Country 

Billy Smith, Ship of Death: A Voyage that Changed the Atlantic World 

Jill Lepore, Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin 

Peter Hoffer, Prelude to Revolution: The Salem Gunpowder Raid of 1775 

Alan Taylor, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832

Aaron Fogleman, Two Troubled Souls: An Eighteenth-Century Couple's Spiritual Journey in the Atlantic World 

James B. Bell, Empire, Religion and Revolution in Early Virginia, 1607-1786

Owen Stanwood, The Empire Reformed: English America in the Age of the Glorious Revolution 

Timothy Shannon and David Gellman, American Odysseys: A History of Colonial North America 

Robert Whan, The Presbyterians of Ulster, 1680-1730 

Thomas Little, The Origins of Southern Evangelicalism: Religious Revivalism in the South Carolina Low Country 

Larry Eskridge, God's Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America 

Joseph Bottum, The Anxious Age: How America Ceased to Be Protestant and Failed to Become Catholic

George Marsden, The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief  

Stephen Longenecker, Gettysburg Religion: Refinement, Diversitty, and Race in the Antebellum and Civil War Border North 

Bradley Gundlach, Process and Providence: The Evolution Question at Princeton, 1845-1929 

Margaret Bendroth, The Spiritual Practice of Remembering 

Jonathan Yeager, Early Evangelicalism: A Reader 

Robert Tracy McKenzie, The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us About Loving God and Learning from History