All posts by Joshua Claybourn
Lincoln Log Podcast Launched
The Abraham Lincoln Association launched a new podcast titled Lincoln Log featuring conversations with leading historians and other officials about their stories, research, and wisdom. I will frequently serve as host, including as host of three initial episodes with David Blight, Michael Burlingame, and Allen Guelzo. Here’s a trailer for the new podcast.
ALA Lincoln Birthday Events
The Decay of Collective Memory
As a historian and Beatle fanatic this headline immediately caught my attention: “How We’ll Forget John Lennon.” In the story by Kevin Berger, he reports on fascinating paper by Cesar Hidalgo titled “The universal decay of collective memory and attention.” Hidalgo attempts to measure the way our cultural memory—for instance, the way a hit song…
Constitution Making in Indiana
In 1851 Indiana held a constitutional convention and the delegates wrote a totally new constitution to replace the one adopted in 1816 when Indiana became a state. This drastic step was made necessary because the earlier document prohibited piecemeal revision. The new document, ratified by voters in 1852, did allow for future amendment. However, only…
The Return of North & South Magazine
North & South is back. The magazine (“The Official Magazine of the Civil War Society”) previously operated from 1997 to 2013 as a staple in the Civil War historical community. Founder and editor Keith Poulter explained the return: With the disappearance of Blue & Gray magazine, I have been inundated with letters and phone calls…
Review: Identity by Francis Fukuyama
Historians and political scientists love to view history as cyclical, helping give rise to the old maxim that “history repeats itself.” But in 1989 Francis Fukuyama challenged that approach when he famously proclaimed that Western-style liberal democracy’s victory in the Cold War marked “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution” and “the end of history.”…
Review: Jack Weatherford on Genghis Khan
As part of my amazing Wesley Advocates study group, we’ve embarked on a study of Jack Weatherford’s 2017 book Genghis Khan and the Quest for God: How the World’s Greatest Conqueror Gave Us Religious Freedom. This follows our prior study of his best-selling 2005 book Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. Weatherford…
Frontier Thesis
Frederick Jackson Turner’s “Frontier Thesis” which burst onto the scene with a famous essay in 1893 titled “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” continues to impact the American view of history in fundamental ways. In it Turner argues the frontier shaped American democracy, independence, ingenuity, and optimism. In the process, the frontier also…
George W. Rains and the Augusta Powder Works
Ted Savas has a new two-part feature article in Civil War Times magazine that reflects some truly ground-breaking research focusing on George Washington Rains and the Augusta Powder Works, the South’s only major source of gunpowder during the Civil War. He writes at his blog, A Publisher’s Perspective: After years of careful study and in-depth…
Donald Trump and the Presidency
Earlier this year I was excited and honored to be selected as a delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention. However, due to political developments since that time, and after considerable thought, I decided not to attend. I could not in good conscience attend a coronation and celebration of Donald Trump. My statement on the…