January 2011

The great fair…

A century ago, when Americans took an altogether more sanguine view of Columbus’s feat, the city that most epitomized the clamorous spirit of the industrial age threw a tremendous party commemorating it. Few events have been more emblematic of their age than Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition, and on its hundredth anniversary Donald Miller shows us both a serene vision of a sugar-white metropolis and the seething fang-and-claw city that mounted the show.

A life in crime

The modern mystery novel is as much an American invention as heavier-than-air flight. Now, one of the leading contemporary practitioners of the genre, Lawrence Block, uses his own career as a jumping-off point to examine his predecessors (they stretch back to Edgar Allan Poe) and assemble a reading list of the all-time greatest American crime novels.

Plus…

Dr. John A. Meyer’s “Cigarette Century” in the December issue is the confirmation of my long-held views on the evolution of cigarettes and their habitual use. My father, Laird O. Miller, Sr., M.D., was a member of the staff of the Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; he and a number of others on the staff volunteered in 1917 to go to France as a medical unit. They returned in late 1919. Dr. James Lee Gilmore was the youngest of that group.

Dr. Gilmore attended the birth of my youngest brother in 1920. My mother died of lung cancer in 1933—the same year that Dr. Gilmore became the first patient to survive removal of the whole lung for cancer. My father and I gathered with others at the AGH to bid good-bye to Dr. Gilmore as he left with high hopes for St. Louis for his historic surgery.

Thanks not only for the article on legalizing drugs but for your superb publication. American Heritage is a great contribution to literature and history.

As a young antiprohibitionist, I was delighted to read Ethan Nadelmann’s intelligent essay. Too often this argument is ignored by the mainstream media, while America perpetuates the glorified fascism of the “drug war.” Those who have studied the legalization issue know the hypocrisy of the history of drugs in America. We antiprohibitionists are against drug abuse, and yes , we do have “family values” and patriotism. That is precisely why we want change. We want freedom, justice, real solutions, and honest drug education.

I do not view the issue as very complicated. In fact, I think it is relatively simple. There are absolutes in our society. One thing that is absolutely wrong is the sale and consumption of dangerous narcotic drugs.

The two articles in “Should We Legalize Drugs? History Answers” in your February/March issue laid out the arguments on both sides of this issue in a compelling manner.

The advocates of drug legalization often frame their case by discussing the need to allow somebody else to become enslaved by addiction. But think about it on a personal level. Would you want your son or daughter or spouse to spend their days smoking crack, or injecting heroin, or hallucinating on LSD? Is this the way you would choose to spend your own life?

I remain convinced that the drugs we outlaw today must remain illegal, because I have personally witnessed the effects of drugs too often and too painfully. I have seen crack babies, trembling, their minds and bodies damaged by their mothers’ drug abuse. I have seen people dying of AIDS they contracted by sharing needles to inject drugs. I have seen innocent victims maimed and murdered by drug addicts.

Established in 1949, the National Trust for Historic Preservation concentrates most of its efforts on advising and assisting local preservation groups. But it owns 17 properties outright, and in Of Houses & Time William: Personal Histories of America's National Trust Properties, William Seale tells the story of these residences. Rather than devote a chapter to each building, Seale, an architectural historian, tells his story chronologically. He begins with three colonial mansions—Drayton Hall in South Carolina, Cliveden in Philadelphia, and Montpelier in Virginia—and the families that owned them, each deciding whether to remain loyal to the king. Then, era by era, he evokes the sweep of American history by examining the changes taking place at the those houses.

On June 5, after accepting his triumph in the California primary and promising “on to Chicago” to his supporters, Robert Kennedy exited the Embassy Ballroom toward the serving pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles and was shot by a young man with a .22-caliber pistol. The assailant, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, was a Jordanian by birth who later claimed that Kennedy’s strong statements in support of Israel had driven him to attack the senator. Twenty-five hours later Kennedy died in the early morning of June 6.

On May 28 Gen. Robert Lee Bullard’s 1st Division joined the 1st French Army in its battle against the powerful German drive on Paris. American soldiers had done their first fighting at Seicheprey a month before; now, after two back-and-forth days fighting under German artillery fire, they had their first clear success in France. They held the town of Cantigny, but at a cost of more than a thousand casualties.

Cantigny was heartening to people back home and boosted sales of Liberty Bonds, but it was quickly put in perspective by the U.S. Marines’ battle for Belleau Wood, which began in June. Readers had some premature good news early in the fight when the American reporter Floyd Gibbons published his highly specific account of the ongoing battle before losing his left eye to a bullet on June 6. His story, which ordinarily might have been held by censors in Paris, made its way to the American newspapers on the strength of a rumor that he had been killed and the dispatch was his last. Gibbons survived and later became known for his eye patch.

The renowned Australian fighting kangaroo “Miss Fitzsimmons” died in Chicago on May 14. “Miss Fitzsimmons’ style of attack,” the Police Gazette eulogized, “was to balance herself on the bone of her tail and jab her adversary in the shins with her two long and pointed feet. She had a way of shooting out and uppercutting a man on the knees. She also used her short upper legs with some effect in clinches and while in motion kept them paddling like an egg beater.” Miss Fitzsimmons’s promoters could take comfort, however, in the fact that they still had their regular fighters, as well as “a monkey that swims.”