History Bits

Here are a few historical items I've come across that piqued my interest (but not enough to devote a whole post).

In the wake of "tree gate" and all the Roger Williams talk, wouldn't you know a new book is out about him? Read an excerpt, an interview with the author and a review.

This piece from 2010 by Scott McKay on "Fighting" Bob Quinn is worth reading for those who'd like more insight into Rhode Island political history and (the legacy we still live with!).

On a lighter note: If, like me, a lot of your early reading was done via the pages of comic books, you may recall Classics Illustrated. Now they're online. If you like Fighting Bob Quinn, you'll love Fightin' Abe Lincoln!

More seriously, "Why Irish soldiers who fought Hitler hide their medals" was one of those items that had me shaking my head. In the wake of gaining their independence, I understood how the Irish continued to loathe Great Britain and that this led to Ireland being neutral during WWII. I didn't know they treated the returning war veterans (albeit technically they were "deserters") like pariahs.

Finally, I recently re-read Bernard Bailyn's To Begin the World Anew, a book of essays (it's short) concerning the American founding. I highly recommend--a good library pick. Here's the introductory essay (in a slightly different form than that found in the book).

In the most general sense, what stimulated the Founders' imagination and hence their capacity to begin the world anew was the fact that they came from outside the metropolitan establishment, with all its age-old, deeply buried, arcane entanglements and commitments. From their distant vantage point they viewed what they could see of the dominant order with a cool, critical, challenging eye, and what they saw was something atrophied, weighted down by its own complacent, self-indulgent elaboration, and vulnerable to the force of fresh energies and imaginative designs. Refusing to be intimidated by the received traditions and confident of their own integrity and creative capacities, they demanded to know why things must be the way they are; and they had the imagination, energy, and moral stature to conceive of something closer to the grain of everyday reality, and more likely to lead to human happiness.