January 2011

The secret life of a developing nation Politics comes on the screen Is America falling behind Plus

It was a crude, raw, hard-drinking, hard-fighting country, a place of brutal diversions and inscrutable customs. It was America in the first half of the nineteenth century, and it was not at all the tranquil, simple, rural republic that is so firmly lodged in the popular imagination. In a triumphant feat of the most challenging sort of historical research, Jack Larkin has retrieved the irretrievable: the intimate facts of everyday life that defined what people were really like, the all-important minutiae that almost nobody bothered to record. Larkin will introduce you to those who came before you, and they’re likely to make you a little uncomfortable.

In 1934 Upton Sinclair, the muckraker and lifelong socialist, won the Democratic nomination for governor of California so resoundingly that it scared his opponents into inventing a whole new kind of political campaign. They used the old standbys of vote buying and coercion, but they also lit on the idea of phony newsreels. Across the state, moviegoers watched wild-eyed malcontents endorsing Sinclair because he was the “author of the Russian government, and it worked out very well there, and it should do so here.” Greg Mitchell’s spirited account of the ferocious campaign also offers us a look at the birth of modern media politics.

The excellent article by Thomas Fleming on West Point in your April issue will no doubt serve as a valuable source of information for many of those who will visit the United States Military Academy this summer and in years to follow.

I hope they will all understand, however, that pregnant paratroopers encountered anywhere on the grounds are not members of the Corps of Cadets. The officer to whom Mr. Fleming refers may have been a member of the West Point faculty or its supporting staff or perhaps a visitor herself. She may also have been a graduate of West Point. But, as a captain, she could not have been a member of the Corps.

Thank you for the marvelous story on West Point. I read this with great interest, and when I next go to Norfolk, I’ll have it placed in the general’s library.

As a footnote to the interesting and instructive discussion of George Templeton Strong and his diary by Professor Daniel Aaron in your March issue, I would like to inform your readers that a one-volume abridgment of Strong’s diary will be published this summer by the University of Washington Press, Seattle, Washington 98195.

The contrasting pictures in “Then and Now” (March) should be appreciated by all Bostonians. The stately trees and awnings on Tremont Street give a smalltown flavor to the 1899 view. There is, however, one obvious error in the narrative. The old “cottage-like vestibule” is not closed. It functions now as it did in 1899 as an exit for the Green Line and the Red Line. To the right of the vestibule and out of sight is a similar stone structure, which serves as an entrance to the Park Street station.

American Heritage is a perfect magazine for me since I’m something of a history buff. But I think it’s truly a magazine for all Americans. In many ways I find it more pertinent to today’s events than weekly news publications.

American Heritage is no museum piece, thanks to the lively selection of articles. To dust off a phrase: It’s wonderful reading from cover to cover.

In your article “101 More Things” (December 1987), Mr. Garraty states that “Pershing had earlier [prior to the late 1890s] commanded the 10th Cavalry.” I believe that Mr. Garraty meant to say that Pershing had earlier commanded a troop in the 10th Cavalry.

Thank you for the article on Hawaii (“History Happened Here,” March). My compliments to the author for capturing so much of the rich history and the sites of the island of Hawaii in such a brief narrative.