January 2011

Put not your trust in princes,” said King David some three thousand years ago, and he knew what he was talking about. But if biographers were to take his admonition to heart, they would go broke—and we would be the worse for it. So long as humans measure their own lives by those of the extraordinary, so long will they find the stories of the great in every field worthy of contemplation. Historians of late have made much of the oppressive shadow cast by the giants of the ages; the “new” historians prefer to focus on the multitude of obscure lives that make up a total picture of historical times. In viewing history from the bottom up, they have done innovative and useful work by illuminating the lives of women, minorities, workers, farmers, and others. But if you asked those neglected groups themselves, they would probably say it was the extraordinary among them who are of the most interest.

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There has been a great deal written about Henry Ford—in fact two large new biographies have come out this year —but one older book that David Halberstam found particularly readable was Keith Sward’s “irreverent” The Legend of Henry Ford , originally published in 1948 and reissued as a paperback by Atheneum in 1968. There is also, he said, a “very good small book” by Anne Jardim, The First Henry Ford , published by the MIT Press in 1970. Allan Nevins’s trilogy, Ford , much praised by scholars, is no longer in print but is still available in libraries. For a vivid sense of the man’s life, readers can visit Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan, which is open year-round. Writing about this “stupendous” museum in the December 1980 issue of American Heritage, Walter Karp said that the collection reflects Ford’s mind so intimately that it becomes almost a three-dimensional autobiography.

The unveiling of the Statue of Liberty was not the only event that stirred the passions of New Yorkers in 1886. That year also was marked by one of the most exciting may-oral contests in the city’s history—a contest that pitted one of the city’s foremost business leaders against one of the nation’s fiercest critics of business, with a future president thrown in for fun.

The candidates were a businessman-turned-congressman, Abram S. Hewitt, for the Democratic party; a 28-year-old firebrand named Theodore Roosevelt for the Republican party; and the author and reformer Henry George for the newly organized Labor party.

With his partner Edward Cooper (the son of the manufacturer and philanthropist Peter Cooper), Hewitt had introduced the first American open-hearth furnace in 1862 and had made the first American steel in 1870. A man of immense wealth and progressive views, he had helped to overthrow the notorious Tweed Ring in 1871 and had run his steelworks at a loss to protect the jobs of his employees during the depression years of 1873–78.

On even the briefest visit to Annapolis, Maryland, you’ll find yourself wandering the same streets over again; and each time is an occasion for wonder. It’s that compact—the historic district measures a mere third of a square mile—and that rich, dense, and rewarding.

When it comes to tarrying, you might be drawn as I was to two special places that together evoke the essential Annapolis; as it was in the first stirrings of its mid-eighteenth-century golden age and as it is, reborn, today. One destination lies along the harbor; the other occupies a walled garden.

Annapolis lies midway between Baltimore and Washington, D.C.—about twenty-two miles in either direction. For information about lodging and upcoming events, contact Maryland’s tourist office, 45 Calvert Street, Annapolis, MD 21401 (301-269-3517). Guided walking tours are offered by Historic Annapolis, Inc., Old Treasury, State Circle, Annapolis, MD 21401 (301-267-8149) and Three Centuries Tours, 48 Maryland Ave., Annapolis, MD 21401 (301-263-5401). Walking tours are also available at the United States Naval Academy, Guide Service, Ricketts Hall, Annapolis, MD 21402 (301-267-3363 or 263-6933). Of the hotels located in and around Annapolis, those run by Historic Inns of Annapolis are perhaps the most agreeable for a historyseeker: 16 Church Circle, Annapolis, MD 21401 (301-263-2641). Recommended reading: Maryland: A New Guide to the Old Line State , by Edward C. Papenfuse et al (Johns Hopkins Press, 1976), and Tobacco Coast: A Maritime History of Chesapeake Bay in the Colonial Era , by Arthur P. Middleton (Johns Hopkins Press, 1984).

In the summer of 1940, Adolf Hitler could have won the Second World War. He came close to that. Had he won, we would be living in a world so different as to be hardly imaginable. So, let us contemplate that dangerous summer. It was then that the shape of the world in which we now live began to take form.

There was a curious, abstract quality to the Second World War when it started. On the first day of September in 1939, Hitler’s armies invaded Poland. In 1914, the Germans had gone to war not knowing what the British would do. In 1939, the British had given Poland a guarantee to deter Hitler, to make it clear that a German attack on Poland would mean a British (and a French) declaration of war against Germany. Until the last minute Hitler hoped that the British did not mean what they said. In a way he was right. The British and the French governments kept their word and declared war nearly three days after the German armies had driven into Poland. Yet the British and French armies did virtually nothing.

My father, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, grew up in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen and is now, at 59, the senior senator from his home state. He began his education in New York’s public schools, the Benjamin Franklin High School in East Harlem and City College of New York. After serving in the Navy, he received his bachelor’s degree from Tufts University in 1948 and his Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He began his career in government as an aide to New York’s governor Averell Harriman from 1955 to 1958. It was there he met my mother, Elizabeth Brennan, herself a Harriman aide. He went on to serve in the cabinets of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford, the only person in American history to serve in four successive cabinets or sub-cabinets.

Henry Luce, co-founder of Time Inc., wanted to start a new weekly magazine—a news picture magazine. “He’s got it in his blood bad,” a colleague said in early 1936. Photojournalism had developed rapidly in recent decades, partly due to the advent of miniature cameras such as the Leica, which allowed quality photographs to be snapped quickly under the worst conditions. But “the cream of the world’s pictures,” Luce said, had yet to be made accessible within one publication. Neither had anyone tried to “edit pictures into a coherent story,” he argued, “to make an effective mosaic out of fragmentary documents which pictures, past and present, are.” On November 19, after months of frantic labor at Time Inc., some two hundred thousand copies of the magazine went on sale. It was called Life , and most copies were snatched from newsstands before the day was out.