Grape & Canister

Civil War news, books, videos, and an Otis pic

(Source: Scare Factory)

Movie Discussion

I am going to have to reschedule our discussion of GETTYSBURG. My apologies for this change, but it was unavoidable. Mark your calendars for Sunday, November 19 at 7PM EST and remember this discussion is for paid subscribers only.

News

If you’ve been living under a rock over the past week, you missed the melting down of Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee monument. Here is an interview with Andrea Douglas and Jalane Schmidt, who led the efforts to transform the monument into what eventually will be a new piece of public art.

I recently served on the awards committee for the Massachsetts Historical Society’s Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize. We read a good number of excellent studies about Massachusetts history, but in the end selected Andrew Wehrman’s timely and thought-provoking book, The Contagion of Liberty: The Politics of Smallpox in the American Revolution (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022).

A new poll reinforces what we already knew. Americans across the political spectrum believe that students should be taught challenging subjects, including the history of slavery and racism.

About 78 percent of poll respondents agree with the idea that teaching critical thinking skills requires that teachers challenge students with alternative points of view, even those that aren’t popular and might make some uncomfortable.

And on the subject of history education, check out these incredible students as well as their submissions to the National History Day competition.

New to the Civil War Memory Library

Yael A. Sternhell, War on Record: The Archive and the Afterlife of the Civil War (Yale University Press, 2023).

Ronald C. White, On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (Random House, 2023).

Videos

Check out my good friend and fellow historian Ken Noe discussing the subject of his most recent book on Civil War weather and always remember that “the American Civil War took place outdoors.”

Here is a brief clip of Dr. Jalane Schmidt explaining why the Robert E. Lee monument was melted down.

The staff at the Amerian Battlefield Trust recently took a tour of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Follow along.

Otis

Otis enjoys chewing on a wide variety of things once he is finished with my hand.