How does the writing life in pre-Civil War America compare with that of the 1980s? If you had picked up the New York literary newspaper The New Mirror on Saturday, January 6, 1844, you would have read: “The prices paid now to acceptable magazine-writers are very high, though the number of writers has increased so much that there are thousands who can get no article accepted. There are so many people, too, who, like the Ancient Mariner, are under dire compulsion to tell their tale—paid or not paid—that any periodical, with a good furbisher and mender, may fill its pages, for nothing, with very excellent reading. A wellknown editor once told me that he could make a very good living by the sums people were willing to pay to see themselves in print. The cacoethes scribendi [writing itch] would doubtless support — does doubtless support—a good many periodicals.”
Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
SEARCH 75 YEARS OF ESSAYS!
January 2011
The citizens of Worcester County, Massachusetts, had little idea they were on the road to rebellion when they met on August 15 to discuss the economic crisis. Inflation plagued them, and business suffered from England’s vengeful obstruction of American commerce with the British West Indies. Men had returned home from fighting the Revolutionary War with worthless Continental currency in their pockets and, for back pay, certificates they were obliged to sell at a discount. During recent prosperous years, farmers and tradesmen had incurred debts that were impossible to repay now that hard money was scarce. For many in Massachusetts, the final blow had come the previous spring, when the state legislature levied grossly inequitable poll and property taxes that amounted to a staggering one-third of the people’s total income.
The cries of the thirsty faithful resounded across the land last year when, after refreshing Americans for the better part of a century, the Coca-Cola Company announced it was introducing a new Coke and retiring the old version. Eventually the company recanted, of course, and depending upon which story you prefer, either bowed to popular demand or played its next card. The original soft drink is now back on store shelves, but not before having undergone a sort of corporate beatification process —now it’s Classic Coke.
Your excellent article on Robert Benchley (“I’m Fine, Just Hurting Inside,” April/May 1986) reminded me that perhaps thousands of young Americans were first introduced to Benchley rather late in his career. As GIs in World War II, they saw him in a series of short training films, on a variety of subjects, made for the armed services. I remember that the masterful Benchley style and humor made these films not only entertaining but highly effective.
by C. Vann Woodward; Louisiana State University Press; 157 pages; $12.95.
In this wry and mellow memoir, the Yale historian C. Vann Woodward reflects on his choice of career, on the books he has written, and on his critics. The book is, in fact, dedicated to the critics, without whom his life would have been simpler but less interesting, he says. The enormous popular success of The Strange Career of Jim Crow , his seventh book, astonished him. And because it reinterpreted the then-accepted history of Reconstruction, the book also brought angry protests from Southern critics. He was labeled an ideologue, a moralist, a radical.
Thinking back over his career, Woodward muses about the influences and motives that have led him to write “history-with-a-purpose.”
by Chester H. Liebs; New York Graphic Society; 259 pages; $19.95.
Everyone knows that the automobile has remade the way our world looks, but people are only just beginning to pay serious attention to this enormous transformation. A dedicated “windshield archeologist,” Liebs examines the miles of strips outside every American city, and in auto showrooms and drive-ins, in gas stations and motels, he finds much of the history of our century—and a certain jumbled beauty as well. The captions to his well-chosen pictures often reveal the true fondness that fuels his scholarly inquiry, as in a “rare color view of a taxpayer strip.”
by Edward L. Beach, Captain, U.S.N. (Ret.); Holt, Rinehart & Winston; 592 pages; $24.95.
Beach brings a novelist’s skill, a historian’s authority, and the experience of a lifelong naval career to this splendid narrative history. There are lots of rousing scenes of courage on the quarterdeck here, but the author also has a subtler and more complex story to tell: the impact of new technology and the Navy’s subsequent struggle to reinvent itself, which in its quiet way was every bit as heroic as any broadside duel.
by Antony Penrose; Holt, Rinehart & Winston; 216 pages; $29.95.
Lee Miller, the celebrated American model, lover, and photographer of the nineteen twenties, thirties, and forties, lived the troubled, adventurous life of a heroine in contemporary fiction. As revealed by her son Antony Penrose in a tone of loving, suppressed fury, she whirled like a tornado through Europe between the wars, touching down here and there, leaving havoc in her wake. The book is beautifully wrought and generously illustrated with striking examples of her work—celebrity portraits, surrealist set pieces, gritty, haunting scenes from World War II—and with photographs of Miller herself at her most, and her least, lovely.
by William Lee Miller; Alfred A. Knopf; 373 pages; $24.95.
When the founders of our nation worked out the “ancient tangled matter of religion and state,” they secured for us a freedom unique in the world, freedom of religion in both personal and institutional terms. We are immensely proud of this, and, Miller says, we should be. In this sophisticated and delightful book, the author examines the three most important contributors to this radical idea—Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Roger Williams. The Founding Fathers debated fiercely whether public virtue could be assured without an established religion, and the resonances of these battles still sound today. Paradoxically, Miller shows that this first freedom has resulted not only in our great religious diversity today but also in an American devotion to traditional religion that is unmatched in other Western nations.