Historically Thinking

One California afternoon William Damon received a call from his daughter. A sleepless night had led her to do a little internet sleuthing, and the result was Damon discovering that the father he had thought died in World War II had in fact not only lived, but had a career in the United States Information Agency, before dying in Thailand in 1992 after a long illness. One of the results of that discovery, and the years spent not only learning about his father but reviewing his own life, is Damon’s new book A Round of Golf with My Father: The New Psychology of Exploring Your Past to Make Peace with Your Present. As one friend of Damon’s has written, it is “a gripping detective story, a deeply touching personal memoir, a critique of developmental psychology, a compendium of life-giving maxims, and a celebration of disciplined life review.” William Damon is Professor of Education at Stanford University, and Director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence.   For Further Investigation Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets Joseph Amato, Jacob's Well: A Case for Rethinking Family History Episode 50: Family History is Knowing Yourself--a conversation with Joseph A. Amato

Throughout human history, we have been deeply affected by our environment, particularly climate. At certain times there have been such alterations in climate that they amount to cultural shocks, resulting not only in famine, disease, and violence, but also in religious changes. That's the argument presented by this week's guest, Philip Jenkins, in his new book Climate, Catastrophe, and Faith: How Changes in Climate Drive Religious Upheaval. We discuss the mechanisms by which the climate is altered, and then alters human history, particularly religious history. Then we move on to discuss several periods of climatic shock that resulted in religious change; and speculate about how future climate change will change world religion. Finally I ask Jenkins for his secrets of being a highly productive historian, and whether or not all of his books are just chapters in an enormous book. Philip Jenkins is Distinguished Professor of History at Baylor University, where he is also Co-Director of the Program on Historical Studies of Religion.

Throughout early modern Europe it was expected that neighbor would love neighbor as a spiritual practice, and that this corresponded with a discernible set of rules for everyday living. That's Katie Barclay's argument in her most recent book  Caritas: Neighbourly Love and the Early Modern Self. Moreover she also argues that not only was caritas an ethical norm, it was also an emotion that was part of the experience of people of all levels of society. Using Scottish legal records from the 17th and 18th centuries, she studies how this ethic and emotion of caritas shaped relationships between couples, families, and through the surrounding community. Katie Barclay is Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in the History of Emotions and Associate Professor in History, University of Adelaide. With Andrew Lynch and Giovanni Tarantino, she edits Emotions: History, Culture, Society.

In 1347 the population of England was something on the order of 5.5 million. After the first wave of the Black Death had crashed upon the island’s shores and then receded, that population had been reduced to 2.8 million. Immense tragedy lies behind that number, and immense consequences as well. But the plague would return to England again in 1361, 1369, and 1375, with further human cost. And the climate made war against the English as well, with a cold period that led to crop loss and famine. Investigating the consequences of the Black Death has been one of the major areas of research for historians of medieval England since nearly the creation of modern history. Now Professor Mark Bailey offers us a new interpretation of those consequences, in a deeply researched and thought through study After the Black Death: Economy, society, and the law in fourteenth-century England. Mark Bailey is Professor of Late Medieval History at the University of East Anglia.

In her new book Sick and Tired: An Intimate History of Fatigue, Emily K. Abel has written the first history of fatigue, one which also contains a memoir of her own experiences as a cancer survivor afflicted with fatigue. In this wide-ranging history, Abel shows how our view of fatigue is intimately connected with our view of work, and how "the American cultural emphasis on productivity intersect to stigmatize those with fatigue...When fatigue limits our ability to work, our society sees us as burdens or worse." Beyond that one of the particular burdens of fatigue is that is has such an immediate effect on one's life that no friend or medical test can confirm. Abel explains how fatigue how it has been ignored and misunderstood by both the general public and medical professionals, but she also shows how we have attempted to treat it through a variety of sometimes terrifying means. Emily K. Abel is professor emerita of public health and women’s studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of several books, including Hearts of Wisdom: American Women Caring for Kin, 1850–1940.

A young boy hands out  flags to the public prior to the start of the 1981 Inauguration Day parade. Source: US National Archives “Patriotic history is more suspect these days than it was when I was its young student, 50 years ago,” writes Eliot Cohen. But, he continues, “civic education is also inextricably interwoven with patriotism, without which commitment to the values that make free government possible will not exist” since “civic education depends not only on an understanding of fundamental processes and insttitions, but on a commitment to those processes and institutions…” These are observations contained in Cohen’s contribution to a new title from Templeton Press, How to Educate an American: The Conservative Vision for Tomorrow's Schools, edited by Michael J. Petrilli and Chester E. Finn, Jr. With me to discuss this essay, civic education, and the possibility of teaching history for the common good are Jonathan Zimmerman, Professor of the History of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, himself a former public school social studies teacher, and Eliot Cohen, Dean and Robert E. Osgood Professor of the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. We've never tried anything like this on Historically Thinking before--getting together people who disagree about some things, but also respect one another and have a basis from which to reach agreement. But we think that you'll like the result. For Further Investigation Eliot A. Cohen, “History, Critical and Patriotic: Americans need a history that educates but also inspires," Education Next Jonathan Zimmerman, "Civic Education in the Age of Trump: Public schools in the United States Public schools in the United States aren’t teaching students how to engage diverse opinions."

By August of 1916, the combatants in the First World War had been locked in struggle for two years. While the German Empire had enjoyed astonishing and unexpected success on the eastern front, on the Western Front things were very different. The German plan to bleed the French Army dry at Verdun had begun in February, and had months of further futility and agony to go. The Allied attempt to break the German lines along the River Somme had begun on July 1, and would go on to November, with increasingly marginal and catastrophic results. If ever there was a time for both sides to consider a peace settlement, the autumn of 1916 was it. As Philip Zelikow argues in his new book The Road Less Traveled: The Secret Battle to End the Great War, 1916-1917, the possiblity of peace was much more substantial than has been generally realized. The failure to achieve it would have consequences that are almost too many to categorized, and provides us today with profound lessons. Philip Zelikow is White Burkett Miller Professor of History and J. Wilson Newman Professor of Governance at the University of Virginia. A past director of the Miller Center at UVA, he was also Executive Director of the 9-11 Commission.

This is the third of our conversations on the skills of historical thinking, and this time the subject is sourcing. It’s a term invented by Sam Wineburg–patron saint of this podcast, whom you can listen to in Episode 100, also talking about sourcing–and it refers to the act of identifying sources, contextualizing and assessing documents for bias, reliability, relevance, and point of view. To paraphrase the title of one of Sam's books, sourcing is perhaps the most unnatural act of historical thinking, and it's one that teachers of history perhaps find the most difficult to teach. That's certainly the case for Leah Shopkow, Professor of History at Indiana University in Bloomington. The difference is that she decided to something about it, not just for herself, but for all those attempting to teach sourcing. This she has done in a new book The Saint and the Count: A Case Study for Reading Like a Historian. It’s an exciting book because it's really what I hope will be a new genre.  Simultaneously it's both a monograph on a medieval subject that should be of interest to any medieval historian, and a primer for undergraduates (and graduates; and even faculty) on the art of historical thinking. This is like finding a delicious candy bar that scares away bears, and helps you lose weight. (This week's image was suggested by Leah Shopkow; it's of a reliquary designed to contain a relic of St. Thomas Becket, and on its sides shows his murder. When you listen to the podcast you'll realize how appropriate this is.)

Today's podcast is something we haven't done for a year, a conversation with another history podcaster. A year ago, just as the pandemic was beginning to ooze out over the globe, I talked with Michael Robinson, host of the great Time to Eat the Dogs. This week I talk with Daniel Gullotta, who hosts a podcast I’ve thoroughly enjoyed since it began, The Age of Jackson. Daniel focuses on talking with authors of the latest books that focus on American politics, culture, religion—and just about everything else—in the first fifty years of the 19th century. Lately he has featured conversations on the two Shawnee brothers who shaped American history; fear of Mormons in Jacksonian politics; and “sexual tumult” in 19C America. I talk with Daniel about his funny accent; Sicilian-Australians; why he got interested in American religion; and bespoke tailoring, as well as podcasting, and American evangelical support for the Democratic Party in the 1820s.

In 1696, Isaac Newton, then Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, moved rather suddenly to London. There he took the position of Master of the Royal Mint, residing at first nearby the mint in the Tower of London. He would by the end of his life have spent more time living in London then in Cambridge. Yet historians have often been reticent, even embarrassed, to delve into the second act of Newton's life. After gravity, the calculus, and optics it all seems so pedestrian. Fortunately Patricia Fara, Emeritus Fellow at Clare College, Cambridge, has taken Newton's London life seriously. In her book Life After Gravity: Isaac Newton's London Career she unpacks Newton's other life: as a royal official, a courtier, a builder of institutions, a proponent and beneficiary of empire, and an acquirer of worldly goods. Along the way she shares such gems with us as the number of silver chamberpots Newton owned when he died (two); what Newton changed about Britain's money;  his favorite book of the Bible (Daniel); where he invested his money; and his time in Parliament as Member for the University of Cambridge. And, connecting the various episodes of the book, is an analysis of a painting by William Hogarth, in which there are many Newtonian resonances.