January 2011

“Maybe you have to have seen the Bob HopeBing Crosby Road movies when they came out,” wrote Pauline Kael in 5001 Nights at the Movies , “to understand the affection people felt for them, and to appreciate how casually sophisticated the style seemed at the time.” The cheesy melodramas the Road pictures spoofed, Kael pointed out, have long been forgotten. Maybe, but as the recent DVD incarnations of three of the most popular in the series— Road to Singapore (1940), Road to Zanzibar (1941), and Road to Morocco (1942)—prove, you don’t necessarily have to have been there to get a good laugh today.

If yesterday’s Presidents examined their images on today’s coins and then turned them over, Lincoln might be embarrassed to encounter a grandiose monument to himself, while Washington would probably be pleased and surprised to find 50 states sharing quarters with him. It is certain, however, that Jefferson would be proud to see his beloved Monticello. The sumptuous Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello (Thomas Jefferson Foundation, 218 pages, $45.00) is illustrated with everything from sweeping aerial views to exquisite interior shots to close-ups of dusty hand tools and bits of slate unearthed by archeologists. The text, by four members of Monticello’s scholarly staff, discusses the house and plantation from the standpoints of architecture, decorative arts, horticulture, and the daily lives of Jefferson, his family, and his free and enslaved workers.

A surprise ratings winner on television this spring was “Celebrity Boxing,” the pugilistic equivalent of karaoke, which showcased such long-awaited matchups as Tonya Harding vs. Paula Jones and Vanilla Ice vs. Todd Bridges. Purists condemned the show for defiling the noble sport of boxing, something they evidently feel is best left to professionals. Yet we can’t help wondering how American history might have been different if some of our nation’s greatest feuds and rivalries had been worked out between the ropes:

Miles Standish vs. John Alden

The hotly anticipated showdown is a disappointment because of Standish’s curious reluctance to fight. His request for Alden to throw a few punches at himself is scornfully rejected. Alden scores a quick knockout and is immediately married to Priscilla Mullens at center ring.

Alexander Hamilton vs. Aaron Burr

The Confederate States of America surrendered its army at Appomattox in April 1865. It gave up its air force last year and its flagship air show this year.

The Confederate Air Force was born in 1957, started by Lloyd Nolen, a World War II flight instructor who had purchased a surplus Curtiss P-40 Warhawk in 1951 and kept it in Webster, Texas. In 1957 he and four friends doubled the collection with the addition of a P-51 Mustang, and one day they discovered that someone had painted “Confederate Air Force” on its side. The name stuck. In the words of Neils Agather, a former official of the organization, “You’re looking at South Texas in the fifties. They were a bunch of crop-dusters out there having fun flying old planes. They never dreamed it would grow into an international organization with 10,000 members.”

The word Yankee is bound up intimately with American history, starting life as a term of disparagement, especially for New Englanders, before becoming a synonym for American , as in “the Yanks are coming” or—after they’ve gotten there and finished the fighting—“Yankee go home.”

Yankee has been dated to 1683. The earliest references are to “Yankee Duch” and “Captain Yankey,” two Dutch pirates (or possibly the same one) in the West Indies. A century later Dutch farmers in New York complained about sharp-dealing traders in Connecticut and their “Yankee tricks.”

They also used yankee as a verb meaning “to cheat,” and as early as 1798 they described their neighbors to the immediate northeast as “damn Yankees,” thus anticipating American Southern usage by several generations.

This September 11, welcome books will publish The Little Big Book of America (352 pages, $24.95), an illustrated compendium of things that make our country great. The anthology is edited by Lena Tabori and Natasha Tabori Fried, of the family that makes up the middle third of Stewart, Tabori and Chang (a publishing house whose very name encapsulates several centuries of American history). The editors have chosen letters by such diverse figures as Abigail Adams and Groucho Marx; recipes for what has come to be known as “comfort food”; songs ranging from “Yankee Doodle” and “My Darling Clementine” to “American Pie” and “Born in the U.S.A.”; and literary selections, including the following, written by E. B. White and originally published in The New Yorker :

“We received a letter from the Writers’ War Board the other day asking for a statement on The Meaning of Democracy.’ It presumably is our duty to comply with such a request, and it certainly is our pleasure.

The Elements of Freedom WHY DO WE SAY THAT? THE LOST CAUSE LOSES ITS WINGS Historical celebrity Boxing EDITORS’ BOOKSHELF ON EXHIBIT SCREENINGS HAVE YOU SEEN THIS FOUNDING FATHER?