Fifty years ago this week, the Concorde took flight. The supersonic jet, capable of flying at twice the speed of sound, traveled between New York and Paris in less than four hours, cutting the average flight time in half (and then some). Of course, the Concorde’s high airspeed and flying altitude was exceeded only by … Continue reading “A Tool Devised to Outwit Time”
In my very first post on this blog, I wrote about the origins of the name. I see the past as a sort of palimpsest—something that still shines through in places, but which has been “written over” time and time again by subsequent generations. But I also noted a personal reason for the name: As … Continue reading Life as a Palimpsest
In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I have spent the weekend finally reading Jeanne Theoharis’s A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History. Following up on her celebrated biography of Rosa Parks, Theoharis now turns her critical eye toward the civil rights movement at large. A More … Continue reading The Histories We Need
Today is the thirtieth anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s Farewell Address. As I discussed in my previous post, the speech is rife with historical missteps. But revisiting Reagan’s address thirty years on also allows us to take note of another remarkable change that has occurred over the past three decades. Let’s start here: Remember the polarized … Continue reading Reagan’s Farewell Address, Revisited (Part II)
As I mentioned in my last post, I am a voracious reader. At any given time, I typically have two or three books on my nightstand or coffee table. And since 2011, I have chronicled the books I’ve read in my beloved “Book of Books.” (Seriously, I didn’t realize how much I cared about it … Continue reading The Five C’s of Historical Thinking
