January 2011

50 Years Ago

July 11, 1955 The U.S. Air Force Academy begins classes with 306 cadets at Lowry Air Force Base, near Denver. It will later relocate to its present site in Colorado Springs.

100 YEARS AGO

June 11, 1905 The Pennsylvania Railroad announces a train that will travel between Chicago and New York in the unheard-of time of 18 hours. A week later the New York Central responds with its famous Twentieth Century Limited, which also promises 18-hour service. Both trains suffer wrecks in their first week, costing a total of 19 lives.

July 29, 1905 In a secret agreement with Japan, the United States agrees to let the Japanese occupy Korea in return for Japan’s pledge not to interfere with the U.S. occupation of the Philippines.

150 YEARS AGO

I must take issue with the writer Ray Robinson’s categorizing George Gipp as an “overrated” college football star (“Overrated & Underrated,” October 2004). No less than his coach, the great Knute Rockne, wrote that Gipp “was the greatest football player Notre Dame ever produced.” Not only was Gipp a superstar on offense, he was equally adept on defense in an era when players went both ways. Rockne said Gipp “had the timing of a tiger in pouncing on its prey. He never missed.” Rockne also wrote that “not a single forward pass was ever completed in territory defended by George Gipp.” Gipp’s rushing record at Notre Dame wasn’t broken for nearly 60 years. Some of his other records are still standing. Not bad for an overrated player.

There has been too much maligning of Gipp over the years by writers who were rehashing old misinformation. Fortunately, authors like Patrick Chelland ( One for the Gipper ) and Emil Klosinski ( Gipp at Notre Dame ) have attempted to set the record straight.

I especially enjoyed your column “History Now: Who Invented the Fortune Cookie?” (February/March 2005). In the spring of 1972 my parents and I went to a local Chinese restaurant in North Leominster, Massachusetts. My fortune that night read, “The position you desire will soon be yours.” I was a 26-year-old college senior and Marine Vietnam vet, and I was seeking a job that everyone considered a hopeless quest. But in November of that year I defeated the incumbent Democratic state senator by 9 votes out of 60,000 cast, becoming the first Republican to win that seat since 1938. I still have that fortune in a scrapbook.

Years later I was at a fundraiser for a colleague I admired, Sen. Allan McKinnon, a Democrat (Massachusetts politics were not as partisan at that time as Washington is today). On each table was a bowl of fortune cookies containing anti-McKinnon slogans. They had been placed there by his Republican opponent. Dumb move. They inspired McKinnon’s supporters to greater efforts, and Allan won handily. I figure fortune cookies are accurate only if you don’t try to fiddle the results!

Your issue was an excellent and very comprehensive summary—except for the fact that there was no mention of the medium that shaped generations from 1925 to 1965, radio. This is easily rectified. John Dunning’s On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio , published in 1998 by Oxford University Press in New York, is a stunning work of history that deserved a Pulitzer Prize. Dunning is a brilliant writer. He left nothing out in its 820 pages, from the “A & P Gypsies” to “Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.” His essays on Bob Hope, Eddie Cantor, Bing Crosby, Jack Benny, Fred Allen, and soaps like “One Man’s Family” are invaluable. His extensive coverage of radio newscasters and commentators during those years cannot be found anywhere else. Thanks for listening.

A definitive guide to the greatest books about our past without mentioning the Dutch possession of New York? How about The Island at the Center of the World , by Russell Shorto. Better still, A Sweet and Alien Land , by Henri and Barbara Van der Zee, which even Shorto didn’t mention.

I’m sorry Kevin Baker overlooked Oscar Handlin’s The Uprooted in his collection of great books on the subject of immigration. This easy-to-read book not only turned me on to our history but gave me a new respect for my parents, who came to this country in the 192Os. And it seems to do the same to everyone else who takes my advice to read it.

I know you’ll receive thousands of caveats about the "10 Best Historical Novels.” The greatest American historical novel is Drums Along the Mohawk , by Walter D. Edmonds (1936; Little, Brown and Company). It is so intense I don’t think I could reread it. Erie Water and Rome Haul by Edmonds, making a Mohawk Valley trilogy, are also absolutely first-rate.

The issue with the best books on American history is terrific. As reference librarian at a college in Montreal, Canada, I have found it a very useful collection-assessment tool for looking at our American history books. Many thanks. But I do think it unfortunate that there is not a section on American Indians. There are a few books on Indians in the entry on the West, though not too many. It seems to me that this omission reflects the way in which the historical profession has abandoned native people to the anthropologists.

2005_3_78

Not long ago “Readers’ Album” received two remarkably similar submissions. from Pennsylvania Dorothy Hrtyanski wrote about this grassy suburban scene: “It was May 1945 and V-E Day. My older brother Jack, my cousin Donna, and I [at right] knew we had to celebrate this special day, so we decided to parade around the neighborhood. Mother took our picture before we started out and told us that someday we would look back and remember what a special time it was for our country. ”