USIH Crosspost: Conference Reflections

I just put up my reflections at the USIH weblog on our conference this past weekend. My post adds to those already up by Paul Murphy and Andrew Hartman. - TL

Your Patience Is Appreciated

For those of you who check in regularly, thank you for your patience. I'm getting adjusted to my new job at UIC this week---which means a new commute, new hours, new tasks, new colleagues, new administrative headaches, new lunch spots (woo hoo!), a new coffee shop (meh), and a new sleep schedule. No big deal. On Tuesday, moreover, I was distracted by thievery: I incorrectly locked up my bike and,

What's Happening Here? Oh, Not Much...

My relatively slow posting rate in the past week---or four---derives from three events:1. I've been preparing for the USIH conference. It starts tomorrow and will be in Grand Rapids. The CFP went out in November 2007, so tomorrow is the culmination of a load of work (e.g. proposal reviews, administrative issues, hundreds of e-mails, research, paper writing, panel chair searches). Even after

Churchill On America---And A Brief Research Project

I just heard a British commentator this morning, on NPR, applying a Winston Churchill quote roughly as follows in relation to America's Panic of 2008:"America will always do the right thing, but only after exhausting all other options."I love it. Being an incurably curious academic, I searched for the source. After a little work I found these other versions:"The Americans will always do the

Chardin On The Significance of History

"Everything is the sum of the past and...nothing is comprehensible except through its history." - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man (New York: 1964), 12.

Revisionist History Of The Chicago Fire

A Britannica Blog post by Gregory McNamee posits a revisionist history of the beginnings of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Teaser: The fire starter award contest is between Mrs. Catherine O'Leary and one Daniel "Peg Leg" Sullivan. - TL

USIH Crosspost---U.S. Catholic Intellectual History: The Significance Of Douglas Kmiec's Support For Barack Obama

For those of you interested in U.S. Catholic (intellectual) history, this new USIH post might be worthwhile. Although it involves current events, my goal in putting up the post is to look backwards. - TL

A Positive Development---Or Useless Information Of The Day?

"Social networking sites are the hottest attraction on the Internet, dethroning pornography and highlighting a major change in how people communicate, according to a web guru [Bill Tancer]." Source: Yahoo! News, Sept. 16, author: Belinda Goldsmith.

A Sitting (Lame) Duck: Bush, Truman, And The Question Of Legacy

I usually reserve political commentary for snarky asides in my Friday Fun history trivia posts. There I take brief jabs---both gratuitous and justified---at those with whom I disagree. But a recent historical comparison is prompting a one-time digression into "the swamp."A CBS News poll this week shows that George W. Bush has tied Harry S Truman for the lowest approval ratings since such