January 2011

1786 Two Hundred Years Ago 1836 One Hundred and Fifty Years Ago 1911 Seventy-five Years Ago

Instead of fading away, as some thought it would, interest in the Vietnam War seems to be growing steadily. Last year all three networks devoted hour-long specials to the tenth anniversary of the end of the war, with weighty pronouncements on the meaning of it all. Newspaper columnists published similar pieces on the same subject. The Washington Post “Book World” devoted most of an issue to books about Vietnam, all of which had appeared during the previous few months. Stanley Karnow’s Vietnam: A History became a best seller, and the related television series received phenomenal Nielsen ratings. Both the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the University of Southern California held lengthy symposia during 1983 in which distinguished scholars, journalists, and former officials searched for the “lessons of the war.”

Walter Karp’s “A Fascination with the Commonplace” (August/September issue) was of particular interest to me as I, too, collect the commonplace. The guidelines I use in my acquisitions are not unlike those of Margaret Woodbury Strong, except that my objects must be not only commonplace but useless as well.

In this era of functionalism. almost every object is built to accomplish a useful purpose, at times regardless of its aesthetic appearance. My collection of objects is not burdened by a social conscience and it repulses the idea that items must be useful. To paraphrase Descartes, “It is. therefore it is.”

Deep bas-relief plates in which food remains stuck that can only be removed with a one-lined fork represent reigning examples of some of my more glorious commonplace. In that league, too. are three-inch-tall Kiffel Towers that have views of lhe Luxembourg Gardens hanging on medallions between the arches. This laller ilem is very scarce, as most Eiffel Towers have thermometers down the side, rendering them useful.

Shame on Elting E. Morison for pretending to write “Positively the Last Word on Baseball” (August/September issue). The interesting premise (not at all new, however) that baseball and American culture are inseparably linked is ruined by the author’s ridiculous support for the “orthodox” view that Abner Doubleday invented baseball. He accepts this version “because it feels right.” Oh, my.

In junior high school my history teacher taught me to look at the facts and draw historical understanding from them. It has long been apparent to students of baseball history that Abner Doubleday had nothing whatsoever to do with the origin of the game. The casually mentioned American Heritage article of three years ago (“The Man Who Didn’t Invent Baseball,” June/July 1983) is but one of dozens of fantasy-breakers in our research literature. The evidence is truly overwhelming. Perhaps Dr. Mor ison is actually connecting baseball to another aspect of the American character—the perpetuation of myth.

I very much enjoyed Professor Morison’s article on baseball, although such a learned treatise on something I have just enjoyed since my early days as a Brooklyn Dodger fan back in the thirties seems a bit heavy. Maybe Eddie Stanky was known as “Stinky” in Boston. In Brooklyn he was the “Brat,” who couldn’t run, hit, or field—just a guy who could win games.

But more seriously, Professor Morison states that “a foul ball is never counted as a third strike unless it is a foul tip caught by the catcher.” Has he never seen a batter (usually the pitcher) bunt foul with two strikes on him? Since I can remember, and I’m sure long before that, a foul bunt with two strikes has been an automatic strikeout.

While reading Gerard Fiel’s “… to thy jubilee throng” (August/September issue), 1 noticed the picture of Benjamin Peirce and Louis Agassiz, “two of Harvard’s most eminent scientists,” with a globe between them. The name Benjamin Peirce stimulated my memory enough to send me searching for my two-volume first edition of Elsie Venner , written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., and published by Ticknor and Fields in 1861.

My hunch was correct. On the flyleaf of Volume I there was an inscription, “Benjamin Peirce from his friend and classmate—O. W. Holmes.” Both professors were born in 1809. Holmes was the author and physician; Peirce was the astronomer and mathematician.

Curiosity also prompted me to check out the Harvard gentleman on the other side of the globe. Prof. Louis Agassiz, “zoologist and geologist,” was also a colleague of Holmes. Holmes outlived these friends and wrote memorial verses in their honor:

A F AREWELL TO A GASSIZ

As a past contributor to American Heritage and as a historian of Uncle Sam’s last Indian War, in 1972-73 ( The Road to Wounded Knee , 1974), I thought I might have to reach under the bed for my automatic weapon when I saw the line “An Unsentimental View of Indians” on the magazine’s cover. However, when I read the article itself (“Indians in the Land,” August/September issue), I was mollified. It was balanced, fair, informative, and written with understanding and taste. The two authors are to be commended for producing an article that lives up to the high standards American Heritage has always practiced when dealing with the first Americans.

I have one small point of criticism: The authors make the blanket statement that the Sioux were not farmers. I remember distinctly that the Eastern Sioux (called Dakota in their own language, as opposed to Lakota, or Plains Sioux) did practice at least limited farming in historic times.

The closest thing to a comprehensive history of Tammany Hall is Tigers of Tammany (1967), by Alfred Connable and Edward Silberfarb. Also valuable are M. R. Werner’s Tammany Hall (1928) and the two-volume History of Tammany Hall , published in 1901 by Gustavus Myers, one of the pioneer muckrakers.

In Boss Tweed’s New York (1965), Seymour J. Mandelbaum tells you everything you ever wanted to know about New York in the Age of Grab. Herbert Mitgang’s The Man Who Rode the Tiger (1963) is an excellent biography of Samuel Seabury. For a good short account of the Seabury investigations, see Arthur Mann’s La Guardia Comes to Power: 1933 (1965).

There are dozens of volumes about authentic and traditional New Orleans cuisine, according to Bethany Ewald Bultman, but she suggests that cooks who are unfamiliar with this style of cooking might find the following general cookbooks most useful: The Plantation Cookbook , assembled by the Junior League of New Orleans (Doubleday)—“the recipes are wellselected, well-tested, and well-presented”—and The New Orleans Cookbook , by Rima and Richard Collin (Knopf)—”almost every local recipe carefully deciphered for the nonlocal.”