What's the Deal With King of Prussia?

Like Darryl Hart, I have never been to the King of Prussia Mall--the "East Coast's Premier Shopping Destination." This despite the fact I have I spent about six or seven years living in the Philadelphia-area, I have a sister who lives about two miles from the mall, and I now live about 90 miles from it.

But until I read Hart's recent piece at the Front Porch Republic, I have never really thought about just how odd it was for Pennsylvania settlers to name a town after a Prussian monarch.  Here is a snippet:

Since the eighteenth century the area has not escaped its commercial or travel origins. Although King of Prussia is a place according to those who take the national census, it is not an incorporated town or borough. A U.S. Postal Office bears the name – now that makes it local. Its boundaries are two roads – U.S. Route 422 and Interstate 76 – and the Schuylkill. These are all the ingredients to make King of Prussia more than a mall, but also one of the earliest examples of the suburban phenomenon known as Edge Cities. Before the arrival of the mall in 1963, the area was known largely for George Washington’s stay at nearby Valley Forge – now part of the federal park system. With the mall came lots of development – and even more traffic.

As understandable as King of Prussia’s history is as a kind of place, it is still one of the oddest geographical names in the United States. Not even suburban planners have come up with names like Archduke Ferdinand Estates or King of England Place. But thanks to the power of commerce and travel, the virtuous commonwealth of Pennsylvania has a region and commercial center named after a ruler known for his enlightened despotism. Given the way that malls and highways constrain cultural life in the United States, that may make King of Prussia, despite its oddity, one of the more fitting names in the lexicon of American places.

Films of the Civil War Centennial

Leah Nahmias, one of the writers at the "Now and Then" blog of the American Social History Project, has tracked down some old educational footage from the 1960s created to celebrate 100th anniversary of the Civil War.  Here is a taste of her post:

I’ve done a little digging around in the Internet Archive to see if we could find any old educational films to conveniently frame outmoded ways of thinking about the Civil War.  Fortunately (for people like me), the United States Information Agency, the propaganda wing of the Cold War State Department, created an entire film series Scenes from American History that provides forehead-smacking depictions of the past.  There are enough hearty pioneers, noble be-wigged Founding Fathers, and efficient—and curiously worker-free–factories chugging along to populate any number of Tea Party fantasies of the good ol’ days.  “A House Divided”, the fifth part of the series produced in 1960, is almost a 30 minutes long and includes 10 whole seconds depicting slavery (2:07-2:17).

As painful as USIA’s narrative of progress is, it is actually not the biggest offender among 1960s government films on the Civil War that I found.  No, that honor has to belong to the Department of Defense’s 1963 film A Nation Sings: A Musical Remembrance of Civil War Tunes.  The film, which I assume was some sort of television special, actually opens with soldiers dressed in blue and gray holding the Stars and Stripes and the Stars and Bars.  Keep in mind, 1963 was not just the 150th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg; it was also the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the year that Alabama Governor George Wallace stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama to prevent black students from attending and riots broke out in Birmingham
after months of non-violent protest against segregation.  And yet the military holds a celebration that opens with the Confederate flag, features soldiers dressed in Confederate uniforms singing sentimental songs, and strikes up the band for a rousing rendition of “Dixie.”

Wanted: Editor of Pennsylvania History

The Pennsylvania Historical Association (PHA) invites creative individuals to apply for the position of editor of its quarterly journal, Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies.

The editor is responsible for supervising the entier editorial process: soliciting articles, editing, and shaping each individual issue. Assisted by an associate editor, book review editor, and editorial board, the editor is appointed by and works closely with the PHA's governing council. The editor receives an honorarium and office and travel support to advance the interests of the journal. Modest institutional support is necessary.

Qualifications: The editor should be a practicing historian with an established publication record and familiarity with the current state of the field. They should also be experienced in historical writing and editing and able to work cooperatively with and give direction to the editorial team.

Interested individuals should send a letter of intent that includes a statement of purpose and editorial vision, along with a current CV, to:

Dean Marion W. Roydhouse, School of Liberal Arts, Philadelphia University, School House Lane and Henry Avenue, Philadelphia, PA, 19144.

Review of applications will begin on March 1st, 2011. For questions, e-mail roydhousem@philau.edu

Menno Simons Day

In honor of all of my Anabaptist friends at Messiah College and elsewhere, I want to remind the readers of The Way of Improvement Leads Home that today is Menno Simons day. 

Who is Menno Simons?  Over at The Search for Piety and Obedience, Devin Manzullo-Thomas explains:

Menno Simons, the sixteenth-century Anabaptist leader whose followers eventually became known as Mennonites, died on this day in 1561.

According to church historians, Simons’ greatest achievement came when he “assumed the responsibilities of leadership at the crucial moment of the movement when it was in danger of losing its original identity under the influence of chiliastic and revolutionary leaders who succeeded in winning large followings. He maintained original peaceful Biblical Anabaptist concepts and won many who had been in danger of being swallowed up by the Münsterites.”

To learn more about Simons and the early Anabaptist movement, check out this video. (Gotta love the Masterpiece Theater music — so not Anabaptist.)

Pastor Grant's Shed Office

Check out Dr. George Grant's shed office. Grant is the pastor of East Parish Presbyterian Church.

On History Blogging

Over at Tenured Radical, Katrina Gulliver has a guest post reflecting on the nature of history blogging.  Gulliver writes:

I have been blogging in various venues for over ten years. Aside from some early experiments, it has been under my own name. In that time, the history blog world has changed plenty.

The chorus used to be: "Not if you're on the market!", "Be careful if you're untenured."Some departments are toxic, and people are right to be afraid of some things. But to fear having a life online is merely to perpetuate the paranoia. Academics seem more paranoid than others about being unveiled online, and yet seem compelled to create such forms, tempting fate that they are discovered. Perhaps the solo lifestyle of academic research (particularly in the humanities) lends itself to this outcome. The panel on blogging at the 2006 AHA meeting featured audience members who were willing to stand up and be counted as bloggers, but unwilling to name their sites. Since then, the prospect of being "outed" has over the years led some to shutter their blogs, and others to self-reveal (as Tenured Radical herself did.)

Now, in this post-Facebook age, attitudes to online privacy have changed rapidly. The idea that googling job candidates is unethical or nosy (yes, people thought this) is fading away. Among blog authors there is a greater willingness to own their online identity, and see blogging as a useful adjunct to their professional, public lives (rather than a private hobby or potentially embarrassing secret). As Jennifer Ho has suggested, the blog process may not be a distraction or detraction from academic work, but assist with the drafting process. By the same token, a blog is not a private space you have a right to feel invaded if it is found by your boss, a hiring committee, or anyone else.

I can relate to the risks involved when academics decide to blog. I have weighed the risks and concluded that the benefits of blogging outweigh the negatives. It helps that I work at an institution where the administration not only reads my blog, but encourages me in my blogging. (Though I am not sure they would count it toward tenure or promotion).

Of course, by putting my thoughts out there on a regular basis, especially my identity as a Christian, I realize that I am taking a risk.  Unfortunately, there are still many history departments who would not hire me because I try to think about the world and the discipline from a Christian understanding.  (Trust me--these places do exist--I have had interviews at them). So much for a liberal, pluralistic academy.  I think that a homosexual who comes "out of the closet" has a better chance of landing a job at a research university than a Christian who "comes out of the closet."  So I am sure I am limiting myself by blogging so openly about certain subjects.  But that is OK.  I like the kind of place where I am currently teaching and if I ever left it would probably be for a place that is similar.

But not all history bloggers have to be so open about things.  Historians, both at the pre-tenure and post-tenure stages of their careers, should be able to feel comfortable blogging about their research or current trends in the field.  A blog can be a place to try out new ideas or connect with other scholars doing similar research.  It can also enable scholars to develop a public profile that might actually help, rather than hurt their careers.

What is Happening to History in Our Schools?

I have read articles like this before.  Ronald Evans decries the Cold War decision to fold the teaching of history into what is now known as the "social studies."

Part of my work load at Messiah College is to train future history teachers.  At Messiah, the secondary school social studies program is housed in the History Department (not in the Education Department).  Our students are thus trained to be historians, to think like historians, and to teach history.  Now granted, they also take courses in government, sociology, politics, economics, etc... so that they can pass the Pennsylvania State praxis exam, but they are, without a doubt, best equipped to be history teachers.

When I teach my course on teaching history, I challenge the pre-service teachers to teach their high school students how to think historically because I believe that history offers a way of seeing the world that is different than any other discipline.   I want my students' students to be able to understand how to read primary sources critically, contextualize sources, learn that there might be multiple perspectives to any event, and develop empathy and humility.

Yet many of my students find that when they get their first job they are entering a world of history and social studies that is not defined by historical thinking skills, but rather by test scores, facts, and "coverage."

How does one balance the growing literature on teaching historical thinking with state requirements and a culture of testing that discourages this kind of teaching?

Merger of Assembly of God Schools

For those unfamiliar, the Assembly of God, a pentecostal denomination based out of Springfield, Missouri, is one of the fastest growing Christian denominations in the world. 

According to this report in Inside Higher Ed, the denomination's three flagship educational institutions--Assemblies of God Seminary, Central Bible College, and Evangel University--may be merging.

Catholics Wrestle With Religious Identity and Academic Freedom in Catholic Colleges

Today's Inside Higher Ed reports on a recent meeting of Catholic college presidents and Catholic bishops.  Like most church-related colleges, Catholic colleges live with the tension between religious identity and academic freedom.  Here is a taste of the article:

Earlier this month the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced plans to review the impact of Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the 1990 Vatican document that called on colleges to fulfill their religious role through "fidelity to the Christian message as it comes to us through the Church." As Bishop Kicanas noted, today's students are coming to grips with their religious identities while dealing with issues like abortion, immigration and global unrest. While college faculty and staff can and should engage in academic debate, they must also "place Catholic identity first" among their concerns, he said. "Catholic is not just an adjective accidental to who you are. Catholic is core to your identity, the center of what you are about."

In her formal response to Bishop Kicanas's remarks, Sister Andrea Lee, president of St. Catherine University, in Minnesota, concurred that college presidents and bishops should be among the most trusted collaborators. And while acknowledging the "amazing pluralism" of faculty members nationwide who are "enormously proud" to be Catholic, she also reminded the bishop that times have changed and the church must update its expectations of colleges to reflect 21st-century landscapes of technology, social issues and demographics. "In the end," Lee said, "it all boils down to trust."

Though I am not Catholic nor do I teach at a Catholic institution, I do teach at a college that grapples with many of these same questions.  I find myself in agreement with Kicanas and Lee.

Dispatches from Graduate School--Part 17

Cali Pitchel McCullough is a Ph.D student in American history at Arizona State University.  For earlier posts in this series click here. --JF

I read a lot of books last semester, but many of them were skinny. David Potter's Impending Crisis and Empires of the Atlantic World by J.H. Elliott were the outliers. This semester, all my books are fat. Yikes!

Sunday Night Odds and Ends

A few things online that caught my attention this week:

What books are in your 19th century U.S. history canon?

David Swartz on identity politics and the 1970s evangelical left.

Nathanael Greene's orders on Benedict Arnold's treason.

John Adams: Unitarian

Thomas Kidd reviews Robert J. Allison, The American Revolution: A Concise History.

Christian Heritage 103--West Ridge Academy 3

Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?  (Thanks Paul Harvey!)

R.I.P. Daniel Bell.  Obits here and here and here.

Coach Locke and coach Pete, soccer and football, the liberal arts and business school.

Don't listen to Strunk and White?

Jim Cullen reviews Louis Masur, The Civil War: A Concise History. 

Richard Gamble reviews James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World.

Are today's readers narcissists?

What does our love of professional football say about us?

Facebook is making us miserable.

Michael Kenny reviews Edward Lengel, Inventing George Washington: America's Founder, in Myth & Memory.

Jonathan Yardley reviews Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt.

Historian's Eye

My friend and fellow historian Amy Bass has called my attention to Matthew Frye Jacobson's website, Historian's Eye.  Here is Jacobson's description of the site:

Beginning as a modest effort in early 2009 to capture the historic moment of our first black president’s inauguration in photographs and interviews, the “Our Better History” project and the Historian’s Eye website have evolved into an expansive collection of some 1000+ photographs and an audio archive addressing Obama’s first term in office, the ’08 economic collapse and its fallout, two wars, the raucous politics of healthcare reform, the emergence of a new right-wing formation in opposition to Obama, the politics of immigration, Wall Street reform, street protests of every stripe, the BP oil spill, and the seeming escalation of anti-Muslim sentiment nationwide.  Interviewees narrate and reflect upon their own personal histories as well, a dimension of the archive that now spans many decades and touches five continents.

Adopting its title from a passage in Obama’s inaugural address, the project seeks to trace the fate of “our better history,” as the nation faces unprecedented challenges with a president at the helm who is fully inspirational to some, palpably unnerving to others.  In addition to catching this moment like a firefly in a mason jar, the project seeks to encourage a new relationship to history itself—a mental habit of apprehending the past in the present and history-in-the-making.

The geniuses whose inspiring ghosts hover most conspicuously over this project are Dorothea Lange and Studs Terkel.  The wonderful thing about a camera, Lange once said, is that it can teach you how to see without a camera.  One of the primary goals of this project is to learn to see anew and to enable clarity about our own historical moment.  As for Terkel, no one perhaps has ever assembled as significant an archive of American voices as he.  Though he is often thought of as preserving the experience of ordinary folks, in giving them a platform Terkel also provided access to a neglected realm of vernacular wisdom, analysis, theorizing, and understanding.  The present gallery of interviewees differs from Terkel’s, including federal judges and high-end hedge fund managers alongside the carpenters, union organizers, immigrants, and unemployed office workers with whom Terkel would have been more familiar.  But the aim is much the same:  to document the experience of sweeping historical forces at street level; to render the diversity of worldviews and outlooks; to give voice to a vernacular analysis and wisdom that outshines our “punditry” more often than we are ever encouraged to imagine.

The momentum of our culture encourages very short memory and very quick judgment.  We take our public discourse mostly in sound bites, and hence things that predate the latest news cycle are most often crowded out of our consideration. Historian’s Eye asks you to slow down; to look and to listen; to pay close attention and to notice; to entertain a variety of perspectives; to ask varied questions; to think about the current moment as possessing a deep history, and also to think of it as itself historical—futurity’s history.  Above all, Historian’s Eye asks you to pitch in and to talk back.

I encourage all of my readers to check it out.  It includes videos, interview transcripts, lesson plans, and tons of great pictures.  I am still trying to process all of the information on the site and thinking about how it could be used in teaching.  There is so much there!

James Calvin Schaap: The Professor's Death Song

I read this in the recent issue of Books and Culture and now it is available online.  Schaap tells the story of the complex life of one of his former colleagues at Dordt College.  This is worth twenty minutes of your time.

Digital Campus on the Conference Season

Speaking of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, the 65th episode of Digital Campus focuses on the 2011 conference season.  Listen to this podcast to learn about digital humanities at the annual meetings of the AHA (American Historical Association) and MLA (Modern Languages Association).

According to Amanda French, digital humanities was the "big story" coming out of the MLA.  The coverage of the conference at sites like The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed seemed to focus on digital humanities panels because these sessions were tweeted and blogged about more than any other.

Dan Cohen suggests that the MLA was more active than the AHA in terms of tweeting and blogging.

The panelists had an interesting discussion about how difficult and expensive it is to get wifi coverage ("blanket wifi") at big conferences like the MLA and AHA.  Cohen thinks that this is essential if social media is going to enliven the conference experience.

Listen to the rest here.

Miller Wins Christianity Today Book Award

Congratulations to Eric Miller for winning the 2011 Christianity Today Book Award in history and biography for Hope in a Scattering Time: A Life of Christopher Lasch.

Click here for our various posts on Lasch and this book.

An Amazing Resource for Teaching Historical Thinking

Have you found Historical Thinking Matters yet?  I just introduced this website to some of my students.  It is the best thing I have seen for teaching pre-service history teachers how to teach historical thinking skills. 

The site is yet another digital resource produced by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.  Another brainchild behind the site is Sam Wineburg, author of Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts.

If you teach teachers, or if you are a teacher, you need to bookmark this site.

Most Popular Posts of the Week

Here are the most visited posts this past week at The Way of Improvement Leads Home.

1.  Gordon Wood's Review of Jill Lepore's New Book (January 2011)
2.  Jesus Will Return on May 22, 2011 (July 2010)
3.  R.R. Reno is New Editor of First Things (January 2011)
4.  Sarah Palin's Coming South to Hunt Some Skunk (January 2011)
5.  The Great Williamsburg Checkout Protest (January 2011)
6.  The Top Ten Most Religious Cities in America (November 2010)
7.  Does Sarah Palin Speak in Tongues? (August 2008)
8.  Garrison Keillor on Stephen Ambrose's Plagiarism (April 2010)
9.  David Sehat on Wood and Lepore (January 2011)
10. More on Wood's Review of Lepore (January 2011)

50% Off On Was America Founded as a Christian Nation

Westminster/John Knox is offering our new book Was America Founded as a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction for $15.00.  That is 50% off the cover price.

The book will ship on February 16, 2011.

Order here.

Billy Graham: I Wish I Would Have Steered Clear of Politics

Peter Wehner, writing in Commentary, uses Graham's regrets as a lesson in why Christians should be very careful when they enter the public sphere.  I agree.

Here is a taste:

In an interview with Christianity Today, Billy Graham, 92, said this:

I … would have steered clear of politics. I’m grateful for the opportunities God gave me to minister to people in high places; people in power have spiritual and personal needs like everyone else, and often they have no one to talk to. But looking back I know I sometimes crossed the line, and I wouldn’t do that now.

Graham, of course, was not a particularly powerful force in American politics. Rather, he was known as the “pastor to the president.” He was a friend to presidents of both parties — and he certainly wasn’t as political as, say, D. James Kennedy, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson (who is not a minister but is certainly a prominent Christian).

Still, we know that Graham’s close association with Richard Nixon is one he came to regret, especially in the aftermath of Watergate. Tapes released in 2002 revealed Graham as saying disparaging things about Jews, which Graham was embarrassed by and for which he apologized. And proximity to power can appeal to one’s ego and pride. Ministering to the powerful can be a heady experience.

It’s important to point out that the Reverend Graham was not offering a sweeping condemnation of Christians who involve themselves in politics. My guess is that he would agree that according to Christian doctrine, God has never detached Himself from the affairs of the world; that in the Hebrew Bible, certain kings win the outright approval of God; that civil government was itself established by God; and that because politics, in its deepest and best sense, is about justice, it would be foolish to exclude Christians from the realm of politics. Some are called to participate in that arena.

But what Graham was saying — and what Christians need to pay special attention to — is that politics is an arena in which the witness of believers can be easily harmed. Issue by issue, act by act, faith can become — or can be reasonably seen to become — subordinate to a political party or ideology. In addition, the passions and emotions politics can stir up can cause people to act in troubling ways. Grace can give way to bitterness and brittleness, to viewing political opponents as political enemies.

Where is the Job Market for College Teachers?

Robert Martin, an emeritus professor at Centre College, has a very interesting article on college teaching in today's Inside Higher Ed.  Here is a taste, but I would encourage you to read the entire piece.

Now, suppose we have two fully informed young people: one aspires to be a world-class scholar and the other aspires to be a world-class teacher. They are about to make their career choices. The fully informed potential scholar chooses an academic career and the fully informed potential teacher decides to apply her talents to some other career. The few talented potential teachers who choose college teaching careers are those who derive significant personal satisfaction from teaching (despite the lack of public acclaim or financial rewards) or are very risk-averse (they crave the economic security provided by a tenured position).

What does this mean for college prices and quality? Since there are few rewards for teaching, faculty members focus too much on scholarship. Rather aspiring to be well-balanced teacher/scholars, faculty members become slaves to scholarship. We have a similar result for institutions. “Mission creep” among colleges and universities is partially due to the imbalance in the rewards for teaching and research. Colleges and universities try to become research institutions, rather than world-class undergraduate teaching institutions. As great teachers are discouraged from becoming professors, and as professors are discouraged from focusing on teaching, undergraduate teaching quality declines steadily over time.

Some may argue that an active research agenda improves teaching quality, but the evidence proves otherwise. A meta-analysis of the studies looking at the relationship between research and teaching by John Hattie and H. W. Marsh finds that they are completely unrelated. Nor is it hard to imagine why -- more research means less time for teaching.

I am intrigued by this last point.  I have heard it made before and my initial reaction has always been skeptical. Stay tuned--when I get the time I am going to read Hattie and Marsh and perhaps write something about it here.

I Do Not Recommend This

From the L.A. Times:


A Cal State Northridge math professor has been charged with urinating on a colleague's office door during a dispute between the two men.

Tihomir Petrov, 43, is facing two misdemeanor counts of urinating in a public place, according to a copy of a complaint filed in Superior Court.

Petrov is expected to be arraigned Thursday in San Fernando, authorities said. The case stems from a dispute that Petrov allegedly had with another professor in the school's math department, authorities said.

Petrov was allegedly captured in early December on videotape urinating on the door of another professor's office in Santa Susana Hall, according to authorities. School officials had concealed a camera nearby after discovering puddles of what they thought was urine at the professor's door.

The Civil War Trust Defeats Walmart

From the National Parks Traveler:

In a development that apparently ends a long dispute over whether a key vestige of the Wilderness Battlefield near Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park would be paved over, Walmart officials have abandoned their plans for a supercenter on the parcel.

The corporate giant's decision was announced by the Civil War Trust, which long has fought Walmart's plans, and came as a trial was to begin in Virginia's Orange County Circuit Court into the legality of a special use permit given to Walmart for the project.

It was back in August 2009 that Orange County officials cleared the way for the 140,000-square-foot store on a 53-to-55-acre tract of land just north of the Wilderness Corner intersection in Orange, Virginia.

According to the National Park Service, the Battle of the Wilderness was fought on May 5-6, 1864, with troops under both Union General Ulysses S. Grant and Confederate General Robert E. Lee engaged. "It was the beginning of the Overland Campaign, the bloodiest campaign in American history and the turning point in the war in the Eastern Theatre," notes the agency.

“We are pleased with Walmart’s decision to abandon plans to build a supercenter on the Wilderness battlefield,” James Lighthizer, president of the Civil War Trust, said in a release this morning. “We have long believed that Walmart would ultimately recognize that it is in the best interests of all concerned to move their intended store away from the battlefield. We applaud Walmart officials for putting the interests of historic preservation first. Sam Walton would be proud of this decision.”

According to John Hennessy, chief historian at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania, during the Civil War the land in question likely saw much troop and support movements and possibly contained various headquarters and field hospitals.

"In terms of the battle, the rear areas of armies were incredibly busy places. While we can't say with certainty what went on upon this parcel, we can say there were headquarters and hospitals surrounding the intersection, and wagon trains and herds of cattle passing through constantly," Mr. Hennessy said. "By battle's end, the Union line passed just north of the site, and so the site stood between the Union right flank and army headquarters near the intersection. There's no questioning the site was an integral part of the Union rear area."

At the National Parks Conservation Association, President Tom Kiernan praised Walmart's announcement.

“After months of intense debate and a legal challenge led by the Wilderness Battlefield Coalition, we are pleased with Walmart’s decision this morning to abandon its plans to build a Superstore on a privately-owned portion of the Wilderness Battlefield," Mr. Kiernan said.

“Pulitzer-Prize winning historian James McPherson has said that this site was in the nerve center of the Union Army during the battle of the Wilderness, which was as significant as the battle of Gettysburg. The battle resulted in one of the most decisive moments of the U.S. Civil War, involved more than 150,000 soldiers, and resulted in 30,000 casualties," he added. “Today’s decision is a victory for protecting our priceless historic landscapes that tell our shared story. All involved now have the opportunity to work together to preserve this site so that it remains compatible with the national park's meaning and character. As we commemorate the 150th anniversary of the U.S. Civil War, I urge Americans to work together to protect these sacred places for our children and grandchildren to experience and enjoy in the future...”

Loewen Reflects on Going Viral

A couple of weeks ago James W. Loewen, the writer of books such as Lies My Teacher Told Me and Lies Across America, published an op-ed in the Washington Post arguing that it was slavery, not states rights, that caused the Civil War.  The article also compared low-income supporters of Bush tax cuts to poor southerners who backed slavery.

Apparently the op-ed is being read by millions of people around the world.  (To be honest, we missed it here at The Way of Improvement Leads Home.  Or perhaps we did look at it and realized that the argument was so basic that it was not worth writing about).  Now Loewen has written a piece for History News Network reflecting on what it was like to have so many readers.  Here is a taste:

By Monday, the piece had received more than half a million hits, more than any other Post story.  During the next week, almost four thousand other sites, from Forbes to The Times of India, linked to it or discussed it.  Still other sites simply reprinted the article, which now appears at, for example, the Black Pride Network and the South Carolina Agricultural Trade News. 

The reaction continues.  It has remained the most viewed article at the Post for two more weeks, now with more than 1,500,000 hits.  Economist Thomas DiLorenzo published Another Court Historian's False Tariff History at the rightwing LewRockwell website, attacking me.  I continue to get emails, now more than 750, including more than 200 from viewpoints that could be characterized as neo-Confederate.

The thesis of my article was that the key reason that Confederate states gave as they left the union was slavery.  Rather than seceding for states' rights—the reason that most people supply today — Southern states castigated Northern states for trying to exercise their states' rights, whenever those attempts threatened slavery.  The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader, recently published by the University Press of Mississippi, contains the most complete collection of secession documents in print.  Those documents declare slavery as the South's key interest, along with concern about the election of Abraham Lincoln.  In turn, Lincoln's victory disturbed Southern leaders solely because of his anti-slavery position.

Will My Article Ever Be Published?

If you have ever submitted an article to a scholarly journal, you know how long it takes before you hear back from the editor as to whether or not the essay has been accepted or rejected.

Well, there is now a wiki to discuss history journal response times. For example, one contributor submitted an essay to Contemporary British History and had to wait over a year before she heard anything.  Another author waited 19 months to hear back from the  English Historical Review, only to learn that his manuscript had been rejected.

On the positive side, a scholar submitted an essay to a journal called Endeavour and received news of an acceptance in five weeks.

You may want to take a look at this wiki before you submit your next article.  I should add that many of the important journals in American history seem to do pretty well in responding quickly.

Tradition and American Political Life

Here is my recent post at the Cato Unbound forum "Tradition in a Modern World."


First, let me thank my fellow contributors for this rich conversation. I am afraid that I am coming to this discussion a bit late and as a result I am not sure where to jump in. Part of the problem, I think, is that I am a historian and don’t spend a lot of time engaging in these kinds of contemporary debates. (As an early American historian I often tell my students that anything that happened after 1800 is not history, but current events!)

Eve Tushnet wonders why “marriage is the only area of contemporary politics in which tradition is used explicitly as a justification.” She wants something more “hot-blooded” than the local Chestertown tea party. Russell Arben Fox offers a similar local case, but ultimately concludes that if we “restrict ourselves to thinking about ‘hot blooded’ policy debates (as she put it), the paucity of references are striking.”

I am not sure I agree. It seems like tradition—whether historically accurate or not—is used quite often in public debates.

Let’s take the idea, defended by many on the Right, that the United States is a “Christian nation.” In this case, the defenders of a Christian America appeal to tradition—a lost “golden age” when America was somehow Christian. Most professional and critical historians argue that such a “golden age” never existed, but this does not stop the Christian Right from utilizing this understanding of the American tradition to inform policy decisions. 

Or how about Christmas—a topic first introduced in Fox’s opening essay and picked up later, albeit briefly, in a response from James Poulos. Those defenders of a “traditional” Christmas, void of commercialism or secularism, believe that Americans need to get back to the true “reason for the season.” But in reality, as Stephen Nissenbaum and Leigh Eric Schmidt have argued, and as I have argued here, Christmas in America has always been connected to rampant consumerism and generally un-Christian merriment. Yet each December the so-called “battle for Christmas” rages as conservatives appeal to “tradition.”

What about the Tea Party? If you have been to a Tea Party rally, you know that this political movement draws heavily on its understanding of an American tradition tied to a libertarian rejection of big government. As historian Jill Lepore has recently shown, the Tea Party has run roughshod over American history, choosing to cling to what its members believe are the traditional values—freedom, resistance to taxation, rebellion against tyranny—that define America. In this sense, they are partially correct, but the history of the American Revolution is much more complex than this simple formula.

The traditions of a Christian America, a Jesus-centered Christmas, and a liberty-driven resistance to government intrusion, all play a vital role in American politics today.

College Freshmen are Stressed Out

A recent study of over 200,000 college freshman reveals that incoming college students face a high level of stress that has a negative impact on their emotional health.  Here is a snippet from an article in the New York Times:

In the survey, “The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2010,” involving more than 200,000 incoming full-time students at four-year colleges, the percentage of students rating themselves as “below average” in emotional health rose. Meanwhile, the percentage of students who said their emotional health was above average fell to 52 percent. It was 64 percent in 1985.

Every year, women had a less positive view of their emotional health than men, and that gap has widened.

Campus counselors say the survey results are the latest evidence of what they see every day in their offices — students who are depressed, under stress and using psychiatric medication, prescribed even before they came to college.

The Tea Party and Colonial Williamsburg

What role will the Tea Party play on historical interpretation at Colonial Williamsburg?  Larry Cebula reflects:

This is a fascinating story. So much of the modern Tea Party movement is animated by a willfully distorted vision of the founding era, as Jill Lepore has demonstrated in a recent book and articles (1, 2). Colonial Williamsburg on the other hand tries to faithfully represent the past to the present, though with a lot of compromises. And at the same time, Colonial Williamsburg lives or dies by the number of tourists it attracts to pay the $22.95 q day (winter rate) to explore the recreated Colonial town. It is a classic public history dilemma--what do you do when your visitors don't want historical accuracy?

Read the rest here and check out this video:

A Couple of Days at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

As I wrote in yesterday's Patheos column, I spent the last couple of days at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS) in Deerfield, IL.  I was there with my co-editors, Jay Green and Eric Miller, for a special symposium focused on our new collection, Confessing History: Christian Faith and the Historian's Vocation.  We had the privilege of presenting a copy of the book to our friend and mentor, Dr. John D. Woodbridge.

I was a student at TEDS from 1989-1992 and came away from it all with a Masters of Divinity and a Masters of Arts in Church History.  It was there that I met Eric and Jay and we have continued a close friendship through the years.  In 2004, we teamed up to organize the biennial meeting of the Conference on Faith and History at Hope College.  We took some of the presentations made at that conference, added a few more scholars to the mix, and produced a volume on the relationship between Christianity and the historical task.

Doug Sweeney, a professor of church history at TEDS, a leading scholar of Jonathan Edwards and his legacy, and a contributor to our volume, was a wonderful host.  It was also good to see another contributor to Confessing History, Trinity College historian Brad Gundlach.  We reconnected with some old friends and made some new ones during a great dinner together with the current students in the TEDS church history program. 

The last few days combined a trip down memory lane, an emotional reflection on John Woodbridge's influence on our careers, and much serious conversation about the historian's unique calling.

A Short Introduction to Virtue Ethics

Over at Big Questions Online, Mark Vernon introduces us to the concept of "virtue ethics," an understanding of the good life centered around community and friendship and espoused most forcefully by moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre.

Vernon writes:

The problem is that we’ve lost touch with the bigger picture: what is it that makes life good for us humans? The Enlightenment left us with few resources for thinking about that larger question, because it was so focused on winning individuals their freedom. The philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe described our dilemma this way. Our talk of having “moral duties,” or our description of actions as “morally right,” has become vacuous because we are now free of the law-giving God who fixes those duties and obligations. And Anscombe, as a Catholic, was a firm believer in God — only not a law-giving God but a loving one.

In any case, now that we are relatively free, we need to ask again what life is for. There is another ethical tradition that can help. It’s known as virtue ethics. Virtue ethics begins by asking what it is to be human, and proceeds by asking what virtues — or characteristics, habits and skills — we need in order to become all that we might be as humans. It’s much associated with the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who discussed the meaning of friendship as a way to illustrate his approach to ethics.

Science tells us we are social animals, Aristotle observed. But in order to live well as social animals, we also need a vision of what our sociality can be. He had a word for that vision: friendship. The good friend is someone who knows themselves, who is honest and courageous, who has time for others, who is engaged not only in their self-interest but has a concern for others. These are some of the virtues we should nurture in order to be fulfilled as friends.

However, there’s a further dimension to the good life, which virtue ethics also highlights — and which is problematic for us, given the hyper-individualism of contemporary societies.

The virtue ethics approach is not individualistic. It tells us that to become all we might be as humans we need others. And we need others in a number of ways. One is highlighted by Aristotle’s focus on friendship. Social animals, like ourselves, are fulfilled by being with others: we discover who we are by discovering who others are — those to whom we are connected by way of family, affection, community, and society. They shape us, and we shape them, and so we need to have a concern for them all. If we live in an unhappy family, or in an oppressive society, that is going to have a major impact upon our own lives, even compromising our full flourishing as human beings.

Read the rest here.

Hitting the Road: February and March

I have a few weeks off before I hit the road to promote my forthcoming book (due out next month) Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Primer.  If you are in the vicinity of any these venues I hope you might stop by and say hello.

February 19-21:  If you are a college student, you may want to consider attending Jubilee 2011 in downtown Pittsburgh.  I will be there on Saturday (and possibly Sunday) speaking about the book and conducting a seminar on Christianity and historical thinking.

March 4, 2011:  I will be doing a book talk and signing at the Doylestown Bookshop.

March 9, 2011:  I will be speaking about the book at Caldwell College in Caldwell, NJ.

March 10, 2011:  I head down to the Jersey Shore.  I will be presenting the Beebe Law Firm Lecture to the Colonel Richard Somers Chapter of the Sons of American Revolution.

March 15, 2011:  I will be doing a public lecture on the book at the Chadds Ford Historical Society in Chadds, Ford, PA.

March 17, 2011:  I will be doing a morning history class on religion and the founding at the Ephrata Cloister in Ephrata, PA.

March 18, 2011: I will be participating on a panel about religion and the founding at the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville.

March 19, 2011:  Book talk and signing at Borders Bookstore in Warrington, PA.

March 24, 2011:  Book talk and signing at Aaron's Books in Lititz, PA.

March 28, 2011:  I will be doing a public lecture entitled "The Moral Responsibility of the Historian and the Case for Christian America" at the Wheaton College Center for Applied Ethics.

March 31, 2011:  I will be doing a series of lectures on Christian America at the University of Minnesota and among local congregations in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.  The lectures are sponsored by the MacLaurin Institute.

For my complete speaking schedule click here.

American Aristocrats: Indians and Southerners

Peter Lawler has a very thoughtful and provocative piece about Alexis de Tocqueville's argument that the true aristocrats in antebellum America were southern slaveholders and Indians. Here is a taste:

The last chapter of volume 1 of Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville is about the then-present and probable future of the three races that inhabited our country at the time. Tocqueville identifies them by color—the reds, the whites, and the blacks. That is, the Indians or Native Americans, the Europeans and the descendents of Europeans who emigrated to America, and the descendents of the Africans who were brought to America as slaves (and who, of course, mostly remained slaves themselves).

It turns out that each race—each color—represents the three ways of life that existed in America, and, from a certain view, the three ways of life possible for human beings. Americans, it turns out, are both more and less than middle-class democrats.

The blacks—the African Americans—are slaves. They aren’t free and are compelled to work. That is, work for others.

The whites—the dominant class in America—are members of the middle class. They’re free, and that’s the good news. The bad news is that they have to work. They have to work for themselves in order to survive and prosper. They’re middle class because they’re free like aristocrats to work like slaves. They think of themselves as beings with interests; nobody is above or below being self-interested or responsible for one’s own material needs.

The reds—the Indians or indigenous Americans—Tocqueville describes as aristocrats. For us, it’s not so obvious why Indians belong in the same category as the hereditary aristocrats of Europe. But Tocqueville explains that the Indians—really, the Indian men—pride themselves in not devoting themselves slavishly to manual labor, to say, agriculture. They, like the European aristocrats, think of themselves as free from work so that they might pursue nobler activities—hunting, fighting, and giving speeches about hunting and fighting. And so they regard the way of life of the middle-class as unendurable drudgery. They often pride themselves in believing that they would rather die then surrender their way of life. And they really did display plenty of evidence that their lives were defined more by courage and honor than by fear. Because they knew how to die well, they thought they also knew how to live well.

At a certain point in this chapter, Tocqueville’s analysis takes an unexpected turn. He says that the southern slave owners—the ruling class in the South—are also aristocrats. That is, they are far more like the Indians than like their fellow Europeans in the North. They, like the Indians, prided themselves as being free from the drudgery of manual labor so that they’re free for nobler activities, activities in which they could display their distinctively human virtues—courage above all. Like the Indians, they were all about hunting and fighting and giving speeches about hunting and fighting—which they called politics. They thought, like the Indian, that merely being concerned with one’s interests is slavish.

Read rest here.

A Call for Blogosphere Civility

Elizabeth Lewis Pardoe is exactly right:

A taste:

Those who lambaste, slander, and otherwise scream into their screens seem to think the more outrageous their outbursts the more attentive their audience.  Sadly, they may be right.  Such commentators are the background noise of cyber-discourse. 

Loud yet irrelevant distractions to the ideas under discussion.
Bluster and bombast were not born with the internet, but their ability to co-opt the conversation magnifies in proportion to the speed and ease of the technology.  Broadsides took time to write, illustrate, print, and distribute.  Letters to the editor waited for approval to appear in print.  Those without the patience to wait and contemplate before they spread their vitriol, can throw out their ill-conceived notions as soon as they take root in their embittered brains.

We each have a choice.  We can follow the golden rule; do unto others as we would have done unto us; and pause before we pontificate.  Others will choose to spew without review. We can ignore them.

Did the Founders Favor Government-Run Heatlh Care?

Rick Ungar, a writer for Forbes, thinks that they did.  So do some historians.

Check out this article about Ungar's thesis in last week's Washington Post.  Here is a snippet of that article:

Forbes writer Rick Ungar is getting some attention for a piece arguing that history shows that John Adams supported a strong Federal role in health care. Ungar argues that Adams even championed an early measure utilizing the concept behind the individual mandate, which Tea Partyers say is unconsittutional.

I just ran this theory past a professor of history who specializes in the early republic, and he said there's actually something to it. Short version: There's no proof from the historical record that Adams would have backed the idea behind the individual mandate in particular. But it is fair to conclude, the professor says, that the founding generation supported the basic idea of government run health care, and the use of mandatory taxation to pay for it...

Read the rest here.

Cornel West Gives a Nice Plug to Eric Miller's Biography of Christopher Lasch

As some of my readers know, my friend and co-editor Eric Miller has written a wonderful biography of social critic Christopher Lasch entitled Hope in a Scattering Time.  When the book appeared last year we devoted several posts to it.  You can read them here and here and here and here.

I am not the only one promoting this great book.  In a recent bloggingheadstv segment, West sings the praises of Miller's book.

After Princeton's Robert George explains the Catholic idea of subsidiarity, West weighs in:

This sounds very much like the radical localism of the late Christopher Lasch, and I do want to mention Eric Miller's wonderful biography of Christopher Lasch.  I think his work ought to receive much more attention...

Forward the video to the 18 minute mark.

Amateur Historian Doctors a Lincoln Document

In 1999, Thomas Lowry published a book suggesting that hours before Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, he gave a presidential pardon to a mentally handicapped Army private.  Lowry found the pardon in the National Archives and his book revealed the compassionate side of the 16th president.

On Monday it was revealed that Lowry snuck a pen into the archives and doctored the document, changing the date from April 14, 1864 to April 14, 1865.  He did this because he wanted to gain notoriety as a prominent Lincoln expert.

Read the coverage of this scandal in The New York Times.  Here is a taste:

David S. Ferriero, the national archivist, said Dr. Lowry confessed this month to the alteration. Because the statute of limitations has lapsed, he will not be criminally prosecuted, but will be barred from National Archives facilities.

“He indicated that he snuck a pen in — a Pelikan pen — and he marked the document and changed the date for the simple reason of getting some notoriety,” said Mitchell Yockelson, an investigator for the National Archives.

Dr. Lowry insisted in an interview Monday that the alteration was not his doing.

 “It’s against my code of ethics,” he said. “I got leaned on for two hours with a mixture of pressure and false promises. While they weren’t driving splinters under my fingernails, they said I wouldn’t hear from them again.”

But Paul Brachfeld, the inspector general of the National Archives and Records Administration, said Dr. Lowry had “confessed to having erased the ‘4’ and changing it to a ‘5’ ”and said he had “even defined the kind of pen he used.”

The State of the Union is Strong

Joe Carter reports...

Historians TV at the AHA

Once again, Historians TV covered the annual meeting of the American Historical Association.  Check out AHA Today for links to some of the featured sessions and interviews.

I especially enjoyed this session on how to be an effective lecturer and this session on what publishers are looking for.  The latter includes interviews with editors at University of New Mexico Press, Harvard University Press, and University of Kansas Press.

This Week's Patheos Column: The Faithful Scholar

In this week's Patheos column, I pay tribute to one of my teachers, Dr. John D. Woodbridge.  Here is a taste:

I arrived in Deerfield, Illinois in January 1989 to start a Masters of Divinity degree at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. When I left the Chicago area five years later I was on my way toward becoming an American historian. Very few professional historians find their calling in an evangelical divinity school. I did. God leads people to all kinds of vocations, and he certainly led me to an academic life. But he also uses people. In my case, he used a Trinity church history professor named John D. Woodbridge.

I am writing my column this week from Deerfield. I am back in my old stomping grounds for a special symposium honoring my beloved mentor. For the last several years I worked closely with two other Trinity graduates—Jay Green and Eric Miller—to produce an edited volume of essays that examines the unique calling of the historian and how that calling intersects with Christian faith. The book was published last November with the title Confessing History: Explorations in Christian Faith and the Historian's Vocation. We dedicated the book to John Woodbridge.

Read the rest here.

Interview with David Sehat

Over at Religion in American History, Paul Harvey has posted an informative interview with David Sehat, author of the new book The Myth of American Religious Freedom.  Here is a taste:

Paul Harvey (PH): David, the central phrase in your book is "moral establishment," and you argue that for much of American history we have had a "moral establishment that connected religion and the state." Can you briefly define what you mean by this term for our readers, and why you have chosen to make it central to your book?

David Sehat (DS): Paul, thanks for reading the book and for interviewing me.

When I began researching this book, I was reading the letters and writings of a nineteenth-century agnostic named Robert Ingersoll. My intention was to write a book about American freethought or American agnosticism as a way of showing the informal power of Protestant Christianity. But as I read Ingersoll’s papers, I came across a case (he was a lawyer) that puzzled me. In 1886, he unsuccessfully defended a man named Charles B. Reynolds, who was being tried on two counts of blasphemy. I was stumped: How could a man be convicted of blasphemy nearly one hundred years after the passage of the First Amendment? As I went deeper into the case, my confusion grew. I discovered that blasphemy law existed for much of the nineteenth century, even if its enforcement was erratic. According to its proponents, criticizing Christianity or any elements of Christianity undermined the public foundation for morals. I also discovered that blasphemy was similar to many other kinds of law in that Protestant Christian ideas received the formal protection of law, which was a surprise to me. In other words, the judgments in this case, and many others, only made sense if Christianity was something like an official religion that relied upon the protection of the law.

To make sense of what was going on, I borrowed the idea of a “moral establishment” from the legal scholar John Witte Jr. Taking Witte’s concept further than he might have intended (and probably not in a way that he would agree with), I claim that the moral establishment involves the use of law to perpetuate Christian morals in society. The more I researched, the more I saw that this moral establishment was one of the chief mechanisms throughout American history by which Protestant Christian partisans maintained religious power over society in often illiberal ways.

Part two of this interview will appear tomorrow.

Dispatches from Graduate School--Part 16

Cali Pitchel McCullough is a Ph.D student in American history at Arizona State University. For earlier posts in this series click here. --JF

I’m still a good eighteen months outside of the Qualifying Exams, which means I’m even further away from writing my dissertation. I’ve been given mixed advice on the dissertation process. One professor suggested that I put it out of mind until further in the program. I still need to build a more comprehensive historical foundation. Yet others advocate a more aggressive approach, saying it’s never too early to think about the dissertation. Because the dissertation is the culmination of the PhD program, I can't help but focus my energy and attention on choosing a topic, even at this early point in my career.

I first considered extending my MA thesis. I used the sociology of nostalgia to explain the success of Rachael Ray’s Food Network program, 30 Minute Meals (her set design, menu selection, and vocabulary are reminiscent of the 1950s—an appealing era to many living in the postmodern world). The American Studies degree allowed me the flexibility to use an interdisciplinary approach to study media, food, sociology, and psychology. I very much enjoyed the hours of Food Network programming, the exploration of physiology and social sciences, and the investigation of the effects of media culture on a wide demographic of Rachael Ray viewers. But now I’m in a history program at a research university where the North American faculty is less interdisciplinary and more staunchly committed to historical theories and methods. Although an extension of my thesis might make for a head start on research and writing, it would also go against the strength of the people and resources at my institution.

What does the ASU faculty do well? Many faculty concentrate on the North American West. They approach this region from a variety of perspectives, including environmental,  urban, American Indian,  women and gender, and political. I don’t want to stray too far from my interests, but I also see my time here as an opportunity to work with the strengths of the program. So I’ve abandoned Rachael Ray (I think she’ll be OK) and have decided to look at the role of the air and sky in the sense of self and sense of place in the Southwest. I suppose then that I will one day become an urban and environmental historian of the 19th and 20th century American West. That seems startlingly specific, but I also know that the reality of academic life is specificity.

This semester I’m taking a writing course. The goal of the course is to produce either an essay that is worthy of publication or a dissertation chapter. I see it as a perfect opportunity to explore my topic more fully, and potentially write with my future dissertation in mind. The course, Global Environmental History, also serves as a springboard for my future field. The monographs we read during the semester will help me to assess the field, its sources, methods, narrative strategies, and analytical frameworks.

I respect the advice of the professor who advised me to use my coursework to create a foundation of historical knowledge, but I also believe that committing to a topic gives me the opportunity to choose a more cohesive compilation of courses without sacrificing the foundational knowledge I need to be a successful historian.

Sunday Night Odds and Ends

A few things online that caught my attention this week:

50th anniversary of JFK's inauguration

The Library of Congress has a new home page.

New York Times forum on assassins and American history.

Laurie Fendrich on the humanities.

So you want to be a history professor.

Protests at funerals have been around for a long time.

Where do you begin when teaching the American religious history survey? 

The Philadelphia soap mummy.

Call for Papers: 2011 U.S. Intellectual History Conference

Albert Raboteau on Martin Luther King and the poor.

Robert E. May: It was not just about slavery.

Historians against slavery 

Patrick Allitt reviews Damon Linker, The Religious Test: Why We Must Question the Beliefs of Our Leaders.

Ted Widmer guides us through historic utopian communities in Massachusetts.


Nancy Cott on the history of marriage.

Learning to write with Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography

Louis Menand on The Feminine Mystique.

The Myth of the Tiny House Movement

As some of my regularly readers know, I am a bit obsessed with the idea of building a writing shed in my backyard.  Having said that, I have never had the desire to move into such a shed or tiny house permanently. 

Many advocates of tiny houses believe that a person who moves into a 65 square foot house is resisting the materialism and consumerism that defines our society.  In other words, living in a tiny house is a counter-cultural act.

Not so fast, says Greg Beato.  There is not much difference between a person who lives in a tiny house and a person who lives in a McMansion.

Beato explains:

Build an XS-House yourself and it will cost you around $16,000 for the plans and necessary materials. Buy one ready-made, and the cost escalates to $38,997. That puts it at a luxury-priced $599 per square foot, or more than four times the cost of your average Vegas McMansion! Better yet, it’s an instant house, a house to go, and what’s more American than that? Like a 100-calorie snack pack, a tiny house encourages you to splurge. Take two or three, they’re small — a fun, fashionable way to affirm your commitment to living gently on this Earth wherever you happen to have rural acreage.

Even as your sole residence, a smaller home can help you attain a new level of consumerist obsession. After all, who pays more attention to food — a really fat person or an anorexic?

In 1998, architect Sarah Susanka wrote The Not So Big House, a manifesto that champions quality over quantity, smaller but more emotionally rewarding domiciles, houses designed for maximum livability rather than maximum curb appeal. In the 12 years since, she’s published eight additional books, including Not So Big Solutions for Your Home, The Not So Big Life: Making Room for What Really Matters, and More Not So Big Solutions for Your Home. Clearly, making your house smaller and your life simpler is no easy process. It involves thinking and re-thinking, a strong curatorial eye, and the capacity for iterative remodeling — which is to say, endurance shopping.

In a McMansion, you can easily lose sight of the stuff that gives your life meaning — it gets packed away in all those closets, spare bedrooms, and three-car garages. But in a tiny house, everything you own is on display and within reach. If you’re looking at your kitchen appliances all day, you have a legitimate need for the most gorgeous kitchen appliances known to man, and a legitimate rationale for purchasing new ones often. If space is at a premium, you can be forgiven for constantly upgrading to the flattest flat-screen TVs, the most compact washer/dryer combos.

A McMansion can almost surreptitiously seduce you into a spartan, almost miserly lifestyle. A big garage means you have space for a big car, so you don’t have to travel to the grocery store as often. A restaurant-grade kitchen means you’ll eat at home more often. Your media room and exercise room will similarly reduce entertainment expenditures, transportation costs, and your desire to leave the house. Is it any wonder that as our houses grew bigger and bigger over the course of the past decade, our economy eventually took a nosedive?

Smaller houses reacquaint us with our more profligate and productive selves. Spend a few hours in MEKA’s upscale shipping containers or the futuristic jewel-box known as the Micro Compact Home, and you’ll be itching to stretch out in your favorite restaurant or the metroplex, and maybe even spend longer hours at work in the relatively spacious accommodations of your cubicle.

But never mistake the small house for a totem of sacrifice or self-denial. A small house allows you to cultivate luxury and connoisseurship at an attainable price point and never settle for the second-rate. Like Apple over PC clones, like Chez Panisse over Olive Garden and Whole Foods over Safeway, the small house proposes less for more as the true path to consumer satisfaction.

How to be a Public Intellectual

Are you a scholar who wants to write for the public?  Then check out William Tyson's recent essay at Inside Higher Ed. 

But isn't writing for public audiences just another form of self-promotion?  Tyson writes:

Others feel modest and are hesitant to be seen as self-promoters. To them, I say -- as a friend occasionally reminds me -- “get over yourself.” If your work has a broader public importance or you can help interpret local, national or world events, or offer expert opinion on matters of professional and public importance or interest, share your thoughts. Instill knowledge. It does not need to be about you, but rather the importance of your insight and information.

Here are Tyson's tips for writing and speaking to a public audience:

• Communicate complicated and nuanced ideas through example. You don’t need to dumb things down; you simply need to communicate ideas clearly.
• The biggest difficulty for academics dealing with the media is to avoid all the hedges that would be necessary when talking with peers. Most of us have a tendency to hedge every statement, because we are used to thinking about the boundary conditions of a particular phenomenon. Those boundary conditions often aren’t at all relevant to a media story.
• Only agree to speak as an “authority” on topics about which you actually have an authoritative grasp of facts/issues. Otherwise take a pass.
• Be aware that there is, practically speaking, no such things as “off the record”; anything you say is liable to come back to haunt you.
• Ditch the jargon. Connect when possible with “human interest” stories. Don’t spin. Reporters really value talking with someone who isn’t always trying to sell them a PR angle. Be willing to invest time in a relationship. Conversations are more productive than news releases.
• Don’t underestimate the savvy of either the press or the public.

I Didn't Know Brazil Was This Big

Forgive my ignorance, but Brazil is huge!  HT

The Continuing Saga of Susan Wise Bauer and the Williamsburg Regional Library

Some of my readers know that I have been following this ongoing story at Susan Wise Bauer's blog.  We wrote about it here and here.

Here is a snippet from Susan's latest update.

While I appreciate the sentiments some of you have sent this way, along the lines of, “They’re going to wish they hadn’t messed with you!”, the truth is that a public institution which decides to stonewall the public has most of the power on its side.

I sincerely hope that residents of Williamsburg, York County, and James City will hold this board to account.

In the meantime, the kids and I went over to the Yorktown Library, which offers free cards to all Virginia residents, and applied for library cards. We were welcomed warmly, told what a shame it was that WRL was kicking us out, given full access to all library services, and allowed to check out thirty items each.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m incredibly grateful. The Yorktown Library is more than twice as far away, but if I have to (which apparently I do), I can deal with that. My daughter, who cried when I told her we couldn’t go back to Her Library any more, found many of her old favorites and quite a few new ones and was comforted. I checked out three weeks’ worth of reading. My sons stocked up. I intend to join the Friends of the Library.

But in what universe does this make sense?

A $1,000.000 Appraisal

Check out this clip from Antiques Roadshow.  HT: Brainiac

Evangelicals Are Thriving

Bryon Johnson argues two things about evangelicalism:

1).  Evangelicals are not declining in number or losing their faith.

2).  Young evangelicals are not becoming more liberal.

On the first point, Johnson writes:

...evangelicals are not as powerful a cultural force as previously thought, and in the future they will be even less so. Neither of these claims is true.

The evangelical movement is undergoing a sea change, to be sure, but it is not the sort most observers imagine. For starters, evangelicals have not lost members. This was confirmed by the Baylor Religion Survey, an in-depth study of American religious beliefs and practices using data collected by the Gallup Organization. Instead of relying on questions about religious preference alone, as previous studies have done, the survey identified respondents by religious family, denomination, and local congregation.

This last identification is significant because of the declining importance of denomination in America. Nondenominational churches, almost exclusively evangelical, now represent the second-largest group of Protestant churches in America, and the fastest growing section of the American religious market. Many denominational churches, especially newer ones, avoid advertising or communication strategies that feature their denominational affiliation. Consider Saddleback Church. All of its members know that their pastor is Rick Warren, but not all know that their congregation is Southern Baptist. Typical is Christ Community Church, near Nashville, Tennessee—a member of the Presbyterian Church of America that does not highlight this fact in Sunday services or sermons.

This trend has affected popular statistics and has also served to exaggerate the loss of religious faith and evangelical influence in America. Most previous research missed a new phenomenon: that members of nondenominational churches often identify themselves on surveys as unaffiliated or even as having “no religion.” Because traditional surveys do not provide categories that adequately describe those who attend nondenominational congregations, their members often check “unaffiliated” in typical surveys and questionnaires.

According to a recent survey by the Pew Forum, 44 percent of Americans have switched their religious or denominational affiliation. Much of the media coverage suggested that something much different had happened: that a significant portion of the American population had left the faith of their youth. But that is not what the research actually discovered. These are two vastly different stories, with profoundly different implications for American religion in general and evangelicalism in particular. Switching churches or denominations should not be interpreted as a proxy for losing one’s faith.

On the second point, Johnson writes:

Another false conclusion frequently drawn from the 2008 election is that young evangelicals are leaving the “Christian right” and becoming social liberals. Early in that election year, ABC World News ran a story titled “Are Young Evangelicals Skewing More Liberal?” The report claimed that young evangelicals were moving to the left on social issues. (The subtitle was “Observers Say Younger Christians Have Longer, Broader List of Social Concerns.”) Similarly, the conservative National Review ran “Among Evangelicals, a Transformation,” an article that drew the same conclusion. Pundits on the left seem hopeful this is true; those on the right fear it may be true. But what do the data tell us?

There is some evidence for this contention. Analyzing data from the Baylor Religion Survey, Buster Smith and I found that young evangelicals were more likely than older evangelicals to think more should be done to protect the environment (57 percent versus 43 percent) and less likely to say that the government was doing too much (52 percent versus 61 percent).

We found no statistically significant difference between younger and older evangelicals on other moral and political issues, however. Younger evangelicals were, in fact, sometimes more conservative than their elders. More of the young believed that abortion of a child conceived as the result of rape was almost always or always wrong (61 percent versus 50 percent of older respondents), and more believed that stem cell research was almost always or always wrong (61 percent versus 51 percent). Younger evangelicals were no less conservative than their elders on marijuana use (72 percent versus 73 percent thought it almost always or always wrong); on homosexual marriage (85 percent versus 83 percent disagreed or strongly disagreed); on government spending on health care (63 percent versus 61 percent thought the government was doing too little); and on the war in Iraq (39 percent versus 37 percent disagreed or strongly disagreed that going to war was right).

Read the entire article here.