Reviews and News:
Before Trump, there was William Jennings Bryan: “As individuals, the gaudy businessman from New York City and the Great Commoner from the prairies don’t have much in common. But the political movements that they have championed do share much in common—both on the way up and, perhaps, on the way down.”
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The taverns of the American Revolution: “Before the battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775, minutemen were gathered at places like Wright Tavern and Buckman Tavern. Indeed, some say that ‘shot heard ’round the world’ came from the Buckman. (I can hear General Gage now, screaming, Those Massholes!) Two years later, while pursuing General ‘Mad Anthony’ Wayne in Pennsylvania, British redcoats captured a colonist suspected of knowing Wayne’s whereabouts. He was interrogated and tortured at the General Warren Inne. With information successfully extracted, the British then killed 53 Americans near another tavern (Wayne escaped)… These taverns are still around. So why not embark on a journey that combines a bit of history and a bit of booze? That was Adrian Covert’s wonderful idea when he wrote Taverns of the American Revolution.”
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The mirrors behind Rembrandt’s paintings? “In a paper published Wednesday in the Journal of Optics, Mr. O’Neill lays out a theory that Rembrandt set up flat and concave mirrors to project his subjects — including himself — onto surfaces before painting or etching them. By tracing these projections, the 17th-century painter would have been able to achieve a higher degree of precision, Mr. O’Neill said. His research suggests that some of Rembrandt’s most prominent work may not have been done purely freehand, as many art historians believe.”
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Revisiting the Great Hound Match of 1905: “Some disputes simply cannot be resolved by rational debate but must be settled in the field, and by blood. Alabama and Auburn people can, for instance, argue 364 days of the year about which ‘program’ is superior. Then, on the 365th, all the calls to Paul Finebaum’s radio show will be forgotten and the test of arms will be conclusive. So it was in 1905 when the burning issue was—which was the superior foxhound: the one bred according to British standard, or the more recent version that had come along in what many a fox-hunting man back in the mother country still surely thought of as ‘the colonies.’ There were two fox-hunting men who advocated for their dogs and arranged a showdown. In Virginia. And in that part of the state, to be precise, that is known as ‘hunt country.'”
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In Case You Missed It:
W.E.B. Du Bois was the first scholar to claim that American slaves were freed by “a general strike which transferred…labor from the Confederate planter to the Northern invader, in whose army lines workers began to be organized as a new labor force.” He was wrong, Allen C. Guelzo argues, in a review of two new books on black emancipation.
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Letters from Vanity Fair: “Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau is not a name that trips lightly off the tongue, or, indeed, is widely known at all. This is a great pity. As this handsomely produced and, in all senses, weighty book proves, he was a traveller whose company can only be relished. His observations, here presented in letters home, are critical of what he finds distasteful and admiring of the congenial. He is sharp, witty and has an ear for a good story. What more could be asked of a companion? In 1826, the prince faced bankruptcy. A self-styled ‘parkomaniac’, he had ruined himself by trying to turn several square miles of sand and pine forest in Muskau in Silesia into English parkland. In the process, he had gone through his own patrimony and his wife’s dowry. Something drastic was called for and a dramatic scheme was decided on. He and his adored wife, his ‘precious and constant one’, would divorce. Once free, the prince would set off for England to find a new, rich wife, who would be brought back to Muskau to live in harmony with the old one. It would be a very original variation on the ménage à trois.”
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Vatican digitizes a 1,600-year-old fragment of the Aeneid—the world’s oldest version of the epic poem.
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Jack Shafer reviews Gay Talese’s Voyeur’s Motel: “If hell is writing about another person who has watched hundreds of people having sex, Talese may have discovered Hades.”
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Classic Essay: Russell Kirk, “Will American Caesars Arrive?”
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Interview: John J. Miller speaks with Arthur Herman, author of Douglas MacArthur: American Warrior.
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