Richard Schickel
Richard Schickel is a film critic and documentary film maker and contributor who has written for Time and The Los Angeles Times Book Review, among other publications. In his time as a critic. Schickel has made over 30 documentaries, covering Charlie Chaplin, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, and World War II cameramen. For his other works, he has held a Guggenheim Fellowship and has been awarded the British Film Institute Book Prize, the Maurice Bessy prize, and the William K. Everson Award.
Articles by this Contributor
April 1968
Some Americans may have trouble listing the fifty united states. Some may be vague about who represents them in Congress. But it’s a sure bet that every one of us—over the age of three— can identify the nation’s most prominent rodent
April/May 2006
The city of his birth sent Richard Schickel off on a lifelong career. Here’s what the film critic and historian discovered when that job brought him back home.

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Why do we need a national nonprofit membership society for American history?
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“Save America’s Treasures” has been totally eliminated—the largest Federal program supporting preservation of such treasures as the original Star Spangled Banner and George Washington’s tent.
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65% of Americans don’t know what happened at the Constitutional Convention, according to a recent survey by Newsweek.
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The “Teaching American History” grants—the largest Federal program supporting history education—have been completely eliminated.
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Visits to the Top 20 Civil War battlefields have dropped in half from 1970 to 2009 according to official National Park Service statistics.
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40% of Americans can’t identify whom we fought in World War II, according to a recent survey by Newsweek.
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A quarter of Americans believe Congress shares power over U.S. foreign policy with the United Nations, according to a recent Annenberg survey.
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“There is little that is more important for an American citizen to know than the history and traditions of his country,” John F. Kennedy wrote in American Heritage.
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The “We the People Program,” which touched some 30 million students and 90,000 teachers over 25 years, has been completely eliminated.
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Two-thirds of Americans could not correctly name Yorktown as the last major military action of the American Revolution, according to a recent national Gallup survey.
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The National Heritage Areas and Scenic Byways program, the only major Federal program encouraging visits to historic places, has been completely eliminated in Congressional committee.




