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January 2011
The fact that the Sherman tank was equal or superior to its opponents when it was initially introduced only makes our failure to keep it competitive during the later stages of the war more reprehensible. One of the primary principles of modern warfare is that weapons systems must be continually updated to maintain superiority. Allied victory in World War II was in large part based on our ability to do so, notably in electronics and aircraft. As for the constraints on size and weight imposed by existing naval tank transports, that limitation became negligible when we had to transport four or five times as many tanks in order to counter the later German models. We also had to recruit, train, transport, and support four or five times as many tank crew members at a time when our forces in Europe were facing manpower shortages. But we already had a larger, heavier tank, the Pershing, capable of taking on not only the best of the German Panthers but even the monstrous Tigers, as was proven during the closing months of the war. Unfortunately, the Pershing was deployed too late.
While I applaud Ray Robinson for recognizing Walter Alston as an underrated baseball manager, his selection of Connie Mack as most overrated is far off base.
The truly overrated manager in baseball history is Casey Stengel. Stengel’s legend stems from his butchery of English, not from his managing skill. Stengel piloted four teams, and was a loser everywhere except with the Yankees. Before Stengel took the reins of the Braves, they posted winning records under Bill McKechnie. That continued for one year under Stengel; the team then endured a swift decline. After Stengel left, Billy Southworth lifted the Braves into the World Series.
Even the Yankees improved after Stengel left. From 1957 to 1960, under him, the Yankees won 366 and lost 250. From 1961 to 1964, under Ralph Houk and Yogi Berra, they went 408-239, winning the pennant each year and the World Series twice. Finally, Stengel’s laughable performance with the Mets fell short even of low expansion-team standards. In four years there, his best winning percentage was .327.
The following story supports Catherine Clinton’s statement that Frank Lloyd Wright’s “genius for architecture was matched only by his genius for self-promotion.” It was told to me by the architect Eero Saarinen. In 1946 I briefly rented a room from Saarinen and his wife, Lily, in their beautifully restored Victorian brick farmhouse in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. This was during the early design stage of the General Motors Technical Center north of Detroit.
Several years earlier, after dinner with Hero’s father, Eliel Saarinen, at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, in Bloomfield Hills, Wright was walking to the academy’s auditorium, where he was to give a lecture. Eero was right behind him. Noticing one of Eliel’s renderings on the wall, a major project in Finland, Wright stopped to better view the drawing. “My, what a great architect I am,” he exclaimed.
We are pleased to announce that, in this fiftieth anniversary year of American Heritage , one of our favorite books has come back into print. A Sense of History , originally published in 1985, is an anthology of articles that together form a lively, unorthodox history of doings on our continent from the rise of the dinosaurs to the fall of Richard Nixon. iBooks has just reissued the book, augmenting the original text with a provocative fortieth-anniversary poll of how the nation had changed since the magazine first came into being, and a new introduction by James McPherson (848 pages, $29.95).
Your article Overrated/Underrated (October 2003) was informative and entertaining. After reading it I still wondered about one thing: Why did the editors of American Heritage pick Ms. Clinton to weigh in as the “expert” for architecture? Not only does she mistake good old American egotism for a detracting quality, she also misses the point that Frank Lloyd Wright, who forged his own cosmology, pushed architecture forward exponentially. One cannot disagree that Willis Polk was indeed a genius in his own right and apparently a self-effacing character, but one of the reasons we haven’t heard of him is exactly why Wright is still a driving force behind modern architecture and Polk is not. Polk lacked Wright’s sheer will and force of character.
25 Years Ago
February 2, 1979 Sid Vicious, formerly of the notorious British punk-rock band the Sex Pistols, dies of an overdose of heroin at a party in New York City. The party followed his release on bail after being jailed for the stabbing murder of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen.
March 26, 1979 In the NCAA basketball championship, Michigan State, led by Earvin “Magic” Johnson, defeats Indiana State, led by Larry Bird, 75-64.
50 YEARS AGO
February 23, 1954 Dr. Jonas Salk begins inoculating children against polio with his vaccine.
March 1, 1954 Members of a Puerto Rican nationalist group open fire in the House of Representatives and wound five Congressmen.
75 YEARS AGO
Around 4:00 a.m. on March 28, 1979, maintenance workers at the Three Mile Island nuclear-power plant, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania accidentally blocked the flow of water into the reactor core. This water acted as a coolant, absorbing the tremendous heat created there; without it, temperatures would build up dangerously, and the core could even melt down. Events like this had been planned for in the reactor’s design, and the staff was trained in dealing with them. The reactor shut down automatically, emergency water pumps were turned on, and control-room workers looked forward to resuming normal operations in a few hours.