You heard that right. It was just a matter of time before someone came up with the idea of basing a reality TV show around the eccentricities and annoying behavior of history buffs. Here is the description for the casting call: Are you a curious person, and obsessed with history? Can you recite facts inside [...]
John Hennessy
I love this photograph, which was taken this past weekend in Gettysburg during our panel discussion on the teaching of Civil War memory in the classroom. It was a real privilege for me to be seated in between the two historians (David Blight and John Hennessy), who have had the biggest impact on my understanding [...]
Bonus Posts on Fredericksburg and the Richard Kirkland Story: Is it True?, Mac Wycoff Responds, Does it Matter? Today is the 150th anniversary of the battle of Fredericksburg. Back in 2008 I delivered the keynote address for the National Park Service’s annual commemoration of the battle. In it I reflected on the meaning of the [...]
I so wish I could be in Fredericksburg, Virginia this weekend to take part in events commemorating the 150th anniversary of the famous battle and the war in 1862. I’ve been following events through my preferred social networks, but this video captures what remembering the war should be all about. John Hennessy is the chief [...]
I have plenty to share about this past week’s CWI at Gettysburg College. It was an honor to be asked to speak and I had a wonderful time meeting and talking with the participants. Peter Carmichael has done a fabulous job as the institute’s new director and I look forward to returning in 2014 to [...]
It’s always nice to have someone who can do a better job of expressing a thought that you are struggling to formulate. That’s how I feel about this editorial by John Hennessy, which appeared yesterday in the The Free Lance-Star. I heard John give a version of this essay a few months back as part [...]
I’ve taken a great deal of heat for much of my commentary on how Civil War battlefield preservation is typically framed for public consumption. The most recent example can be found here. This morning I read John Hennessy’s description of a recent NPS event that marked the anniversary of Stonewall Jackson’s wounding at Chancellorsville on [...]
Unfortunately, this year’s picks are based on a slightly shorter list of books than in the past owing to the amount of time I spent over the summer revising my book manuscript on the battle of the Crater. However, that didn’t prevent me from reading a fairly large number of books that are worth acknowledging [...]
