Essays
The Lady Bird Special: Mrs. Johnson's Southern Strategy
Humanities, May/June 2013
"Just before dawn on Tuesday, October 6, 1964, the Lady Bird Special pulled away from Track 12 at Union Station. Over the next four days, the nineteen-car train carried First Lady Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson on a whistle-stop tour of the South, covering 1,682 miles from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans. Johnson wasn’t going to be sitting quietly and smiling pleasantly while her husband did all of the talking. Instead, she was going to make speech after speech from the back of the train, telling folks in towns big and small why they should vote the Democratic ticket. Before it was over, she would make forty-seven speeches, shake hands with more than one thousand Democratic leaders, and speak before more than two hundred thousand people. It was the first time that a first lady had campaigned alone, without her spouse. Not even Eleanor Roosevelt had done it." (Read more)
The Mysterious Miss Austen
Humanities, January/February 2013
Featured on Longreads.
"In May 1813, Jane Austen mingled among London's fashionable crowd as she took in an exhibition of oils and watercolors at Wigley ’s Great Room at Spring Gardens. Since the beginning of the year, the “ton” had been chattering about and passing around a delicious new book, Pride and Prejudice, which chronicled the travails of the Bennet sisters as they navigated the marriage market. The author, to the dismay of polite society, remained anonymous. So it was with some ease that Austen strolled through the gallery playing a secret game: Which of the portraits that hung on the walls looked like the characters she had created for Pride and Prejudice? Might she see the sweet Jane who marries the equally pleasant-tempered Mr. Bingley? Or Elizabeth, whose fine eyes and formidable wit crack the shell of the aloof Mr. Darcy?" (read more)
When Bram Met Walt
Humanities, November/December 2012
Featured on Arts and Letters Daily, Longreads, The New Yorker, LA Review of Books, and Publishing Perspectives
" . . .But Stoker wasn’t immune to the lure of fandom. He understood it very well. The object of his adoration wasn’t a bloodsucking creature of the night, but an aging American poet who had scandalized America. When he was twenty-two, Stoker read and fell in love with Walt Whitman’s poetry, finding solace and joy between the covers of Leaves of Grass. And, like many fans, he wanted the connection that he felt to Whitman to be real. Late one night, cloaked in the comfort of darkness, Stoker poured his soul out to Whitman in a shockingly honest letter that described himself and his disposition. That letter, when Stoker finally mustered the courage to mail it, would begin an unexpected literary friendship that lasted until Whitman’s death." (read more)
The Dramatist
Humanities, September/October 2012
Features on Vermont Public Radio's Books that Changed History
". . .Tuchman’s writing is almost cinematic as it cuts back and forth between a wide lens shot and a close up, lingering just long enough to convey a telling detail. She contrasts the rainbow of uniforms worn by the kings with the sea of black-attired spectators. Instead of a weather report, the reader learns that it was a sunny day from the way the jewels gleamed. Then there are the sounds: the quiet crowd, gasps of delight, and Big Ben chiming in the background. Rather than highlight two or three sovereigns from the morass of royalty assembled, she offers a pileup of numbers, mindboggling in their scope and variety, to illustrate the significance of the occasion and indicate precedence. When the scene is firmly lodged in readers’ minds, making them feel as if they are part of the crowd, their sore feet forgotten by the delight of the spectacle before them, she drops a hint of foreshadowing—“the muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine”—to suggest this surreal fairytale moment is set for destruction. This is not just the funeral of Edward VII, but a funeral for the generation that would fight World War I and for the end of the long nineteenth century." (read more)
The Making of Rear Admiral David Farragut
New York Times, Disunion, 14 August 2012
“Yesterday I hoisted my flag at the main, and the whole fleet cheered, which I returned with a most dignified salute,” wrote David Glasgow Farragut, commander of the Union’s Western Gulf Blockading Squadron, to his family on Aug. 12, 1862. “I called all hands, and read the act of Congress complimentary of their achievements. I got under way, and stood down the river, leaving a general order to be read to the fleet. I stopped at the forts, to let the men see what they had done to deserve the resolutions. Along with the usual dispatches and delayed newspapers, the previous day’s mail had delivered a Congressional resolution thanking Farragut and his men for their bravery in capturing the city of New Orleans in April. The mail also bore a second piece of news that was definitely unexpected: Farragut had been promoted to rear admiral, making him among the first officers in the United States Navy to hold that rank. (After decades of resisting pleas to add the rank of admiral to the Navy’s command structure, Congress had finally relented in the summer of 1862, and Farragut was one of the first beneficiaries.)" (read more)
Nietzsche is Dead
Humanities, July/August 2012
Featured on Arts and Letters Daily, Longform, and the New York Times' The Stone
"Count Harry Kessler received the news in the officers’ mess of his army regiment from a fellow officer going through dispatches. On October 25, 1900, Friedrich Nietzsche, who had famously announced the death of God, had himself died.
During the previous decade, Nietzsche’s writings had taken German culture by storm. One of Kessler’s friends joked that “six educated Germans cannot come together for a half hour without Nietzsche’s name being mentioned.” Nietzsche had become a hero—and cult figure—to those who wanted to reimagine Germany; and a villain to those who remained attached to Germany’s Protestant roots and traditional order." (read more)
Friends and Allies: The Second Washington Conference
Humanities, May/June 2012
"In mid-June 1942, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was growing concerned about the direction of Allied strategy—with good reason. The Eastern Front had turned into a slaughterhouse, and it wasn’t clear how long the Soviets could hold up. They had managed to push the Germans back from Moscow, but Leningrad remained under siege and the summer campaign season was about to begin. There was also trouble in the Middle East. British and German forces had been trading blows across unforgiving reaches of the Libyan desert in a contest to gain control of the Eastern Mediterranean. Here, again, Germany seemed to be gaining the upper hand." (read more)
Ungoverned Passion
Humanities, March/April 2012
"In October 1794, Gouverneur Morris packed up his possessions and turned the keys to his house, just outside Paris, over to a friend. Morris had lived in France since 1789, and had watched, first as a private citizen and then as the American minister to France, as revolution swept the country. Using bribes, guile, and the power of his office, he had helped several nobles and intellectuals escape the guillotine. But sometimes he failed and was left gazing in horror as heads were chopped off, mounted on pikes, and paraded through the streets. He risked his life to help liberate Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, only to watch helplessly as the plan unraveled at the last minute. They too went to the guillotine.
Morris can rightly be called a Founding Father, but he is rarely included in the usual pantheon, in part due to his youth and his promiscuous ways. . . " (read more)
A Fateful Christmas Meeting
New York Times, Disunion, December 24, 2011
"On Christmas morning 1861, the steps of all three Lincoln sons could be heard pounding on the floorboards of the White House. The eldest, Robert, had recently arrived home from Harvard, to join his brothers, 8-year old Tad and 11-year-old Willie. The reunion of the Lincoln clan was a bright spot on what was proving to be a less than cheery Christmas. The Union had lost several key battles, while the Confederacy seemed no closer to collapse. Then, before the president could sit down to Christmas dinner with his family, he had yet another matter to attend to: deciding whether the Union could risk war with Britain." (read more)
A Diplomatic Education
Humanities, November/December 2011
"In early 1861, twenty-three-year-old Henry Adams sailed from East Boston aboard the steamer Niagara, traveling in the company of his father, mother, and sisters. After the family made port in Liverpool, they journeyed to London. Henry’s father, Charles Francis Adams, had been appointed American minister to Britain, a position held by his father, John Quincy, and his grandfather, John. Henry had been called away from his law studies in order to serve as his father’s unofficial private secretary, a duty that would prove both trying and exciting. Years later, when writing The Education of Henry Adams, a memoir of his adventures and life lessons, Henry titled the chapter of his first year in London “Diplomacy.” (read more)
Going South
New York Times, Disunion, August 21, 2011
". . . Breckinridge had come to Washington looking to preserve the Union, only to find that the Union he had revered throughout his life had transformed into an institution he no longer recognized as deserving of his allegiance. At the end of the Senate session, he returned to Lexington, only to watch as both Union and Confederate troops invaded Kentucky during the fall. When Kentucky renounced its neutrality and sided with the Union, anti-Confederate fever swept the state; Breckinridge became a wanted man, and fled South." (read more)
Marie-Antoine Carême, Cake Boss
Lapham's Quarterly Roundtable, July 2011
In March 1811, Napoleon and his new wife, Marie Louise, welcomed the birth of a boy, the longed for male heir needed to carry the Bonaparte line forward. A grand feast was ordered to celebrate the christening of the young “King of Rome.” Only a year earlier, a young pasty chef named Marie-Antoine Carême had dazzled the court with a still-talked about wedding cake. . . . (read more)
The Man Who Came in Second: How John Breckinridge and the Democratic Party Lost the 1860 Presidential Election
Humanities, November/December 2010
“ . . . It is surprising that Breckinridge is not better known. He was the youngest vice president ever, elected at the age of thirty-five, and he was the second former vice president, after Aaron Burr, to be accused of treason. A look at his career reveals a man with politics in his blood, but whose personal convictions made it difficult to navigate a moderate course in an era of moral and political extremes.” (read article)
The Spanish Ulcer: Britain, Spain, and the Siege of Cadíz
Humanities, January/February 2010
Featured on Arts and Letters Daily
“ . . . When the dust settled on the Napoleonic Wars, Cádiz held the distinction of being the only city in continental Europe to survive a siege by Napoleon. It wasn’t for lack of effort by the French. For thirty-one months—from February 5, 1810, to August 25, 1812—the French army cut Cádiz off from the rest of Spain and subjected the town to constant bombardment. And for the past two hundred years, historians and armchair generals have debated what would have happened if the French had captured it. Napoleon might have wondered the same. The “Spanish ulcer,” as he would call the Peninsular War, helped to sow his defeat. . . ” (read more)
Imperial Scrolls of China
Humanities, November/December 2009
“In 1689, Kangxi, the emperor of China, embarked on a tour to inspect his southern provinces, undertaking a two-thousand-mile journey from Beijing to the cities and towns of the Yangzi Delta and back. Included in the emperor’s retinue were his mother, the dowager empress, as well as imperial wives, children, concubines, bureaucrats, and thousands of soldiers.
As part of the tour, Kangxi climbed to the top of Mount Tai, the “cosmic peak of the East” and a site sacred to all three Chinese religious and philosophical traditions—Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism. For centuries, Chinese emperors had made pilgrimages to Mount Tai to worship earth (at the base) and heaven (at the summit) and affirm the legitimacy of their rule. An emperor only visited when he could provide a glowing account to the cosmos about the state on the empire. In Kangxi’s case, he could report on a new era of stability in the nascent Qing dynasty and increasing prosperity throughout the empire.(read more)
Supremely Contentious: The Transformation of ‘Advice and Consent’
Humanities, September/October 2009
Featured on Arts and Letters Daily, New York Times Idea of the Day blog, and SCOTUS blog
“. . . The short-and-sweet approach became a thing of the past in the late sixties, as the vetting of Abe Fortas, Homer Thornberry, Clement Haynsworth, and G. Harrold Carswell turned into extended brawls. At issue was the legacy of the Warren Court. But the changes in political process were also important, as they proved long-lasting and transformed the way the Senate provides “advice and consent” to the president on Supreme Court nominees. . .” (read more
The Voracious Pen of Thomas Carlyle
Humanities, January/February 2009.
Featured on Arts and Letters Daily
“When Thomas Carlyle sat down in 1834 to write The French Revolution: A History, he wanted to do more than chronicle the mere procession of events. He wanted readers to smell the fear in the streets during the Terror, to taste the decadence of the Bourbon monarchy, to observe the sartorial cavalcade when the Estates-General meets for the first time since 1614, to picture blood spilling from guillotines. To accomplish his task he marshaled the same tools used by novelists—shifting point of view, imagery, and telling details—and borrowed tone and grandeur from Homer, Virgil, and Milton. What sprang forth from Carlyle’s pen was not a dry account of the French Revolution, but a book brimming with passion and philosophy, one that offered a new style of storytelling that influenced a generation of Victorian writers. . .” (read more)