Right Cinema (Free subscription) | 25/11/2009
Cormac McCarthy, The Road has gone from the Pulitizer prize winning novel set in a post-apocalyptic world to a highly anticipated screen adaptation directed John Hillcoat from a screenplay by Joe Penhall. It stars Viggo Mortensen Robert Duvall, Charlize Theron, and Guy Pearce along with newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee and opens in theaters Weds. Nov. [...]
Lance Mannion (Free subscription) | 20/11/2009
We’ve been watching Ken Burns’ The Civil War and last night we finished the episode that includes the battle of Gettysburg. And when the story Pickett’s Charge, the historian Shelby Foote, the shy-eyed, slow-talking baritone who is the star of the narrational portions of Burns’ documentary, refers to a quote from William Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust about how for young...
Legal History Blog (Free subscription) | 06/11/2009
Minor Myers, Brooklyn Law School, has posted Supreme Court Usage and the Making of an 'Is' It originally appeared in the Green Bag, 2d ser. 11 (Summer 2008): 457. Here's the abstract:This survey examines use of the phrases “United States is” and “United States are” in opinions of the United States Supreme Court from 1790 to 1919. The familiar claim, popularized by Shelby Foote...
TYWKIWDBI (Free subscription) | 25/10/2009
So spoke Abraham Lincoln, besieged by officeseekers desiring jobs in the federal government, quoted by Shelby Foote in Ken Burns' documentary The Civil War .
Elektratig (Free subscription) | 14/10/2009
In two recent posts at The Language Log, Mark Liberman examines the oft-repeated contention that the Civil War dramatically changed the United States from a plural to a singular entity: before the War, the United States "were"; immediately after, the United States "was". As examples of the ubiquity of this idea, Prof. Liberman quotes two worthy sources, the late Shelby Foote and...
The Huffington Post (Free subscription) | 13/10/2009
When you are a hoarder of books, you know that a day will come when your books will prompt an identity crisis, or a crisis of faith; a crisis of space, or at the very least a dust allergy.
Legal History Blog (Free subscription) | 12/10/2009
Supreme Court Usage and the Making of an 'Is' has just been posted by Minor Myers, Brooklyn Law School. It appeared in Green Bag 2D (2008). Here's the abstract: This survey examines use of the phrases “United States is” and “United States are” in opinions of the United States Supreme Court from 1790 to 1919. The familiar claim, popularized by Shelby Foote in the Ken Burns Civil...
Freedom Writing (Free subscription) | 05/09/2009
"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana (1863–1952) The Life of Reason Vol. I, Reason in Common...
matthewgood (Free subscription) | 04/09/2009
The Second World War was the most devastating in human history. No unconscionable stone was left unturned during it, and its aftermath would produce 45-years of global tension, fear, and unprecedented military proliferation that, at points, threatened the destruction of life on earth itself. If the Second World War was the last great battle of [...]
MND/BlogWonks: Your Alternate Daily (Free subscription) | 24/08/2009
Avoiding a Civil War over Health Care (2009-08-24) by David John Marotta Advocates of small government are justifiably angry. And their anger is creating a new and genuine political activism. These citizens are deeply frustrated, and they don’t know where to channel their dissatisfaction. Liberals aren’t very understanding or empathetic. They brand all conservatives as mean or stupid. [...]...
The LRC Blog (Free subscription) | 21/08/2009
By Lincoln’s army during the War to Prevent Southern Independence, says a recent article in the scholarly journal Daedalus by Chrystal Feimster, a history professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I wrote about this more than seven years ago in The Real Lincoln, as did Shelby Foote in his classic trilogy, [...]
The Huffington Post (Free subscription) | 19/08/2009
Friends had asked me, a former national park ranger, if I think "the national park story" will be interesting enough to capture and maintain an audience's attention (read: theirs). I emphatically told them yes.
Tuned In (Free subscription) | 02/08/2009
Ken Burns appeared at the TV critics' press tour in Pasadena to take questions about his new 12-hour documentary, The National Parks, debuting Sept. 27. Yep. Twelve hours. About parks. OK, it's easy to make jokes about Ken Burns' documentaries, which build up wars and sports and campgrounds alike into massive Rocky Mountains of ennobled Americana. But [...]
emergesque (Free subscription) | 01/08/2009
I'm not abandoning the faithmaps blog, but I have started a new Organizational Development and Leadership Blog entitled OrgImpact . Today I posted some thoughts about Shelby Foote's The Civil War .
Jacket Copy (Free subscription) | 31/07/2009
Who could resist William Holden? Certainly not Binx Bolling, the main character of Walker Percy's "The Moviegoer." Partway through its months-long celebration of every winner of the National Book Award for fiction, the National Book Foundation has two authors weigh...
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