Tom Wolfe and the Age of Self-Involvement
Tom There’s writers in there like Pynchon. But if he were a realist. There’s thorough knowledge of American history and the people who wrote it down...
Tag: United States
Out Now Everywhere: My Book ‘Wires That Bind’
I am very happy to announce that my book Wires That Bind: Nation, Region, and Technology in the Southwestern United States, 1854–1920 is now available worldwide...
Donald Trump Is No Lyndon Johnson
John Fund at the National Review recently compared Lyndon Johnson to Donald Trump. Citing also this blog, he argued that there were similarities between the two...
On Patriotism: How to Practice a Constitution
Playwright Tony Kushner wrote of “beautiful systems dying, old fixed orders spiraling apart” in the 1990s, referencing the changes palpable at the e...
There’s Precedent for All of This Except Everything
Donald Trump will put all his business dealings in a blind trust. Except it’s not a blind trust, because it will be run by his kids. Not to worry. It̵...
One Nation, Divisible
There’s no sugarcoating it. This is it. This is the end of a noble dream of progress, dreamt happily and fully still a week ago by those who thought the m...
Note to Self: Do Not Normalize the Trump Presidency
You’ve already heard and read much about what the stunning result of Tuesday’s U.S. election means. Opinions are about a-plenty, so I won’t ma...
History Rhymes: The Trumpian Moment And Its Jacksonian Parallels
Mark Twain is credited with all sorts of things he never said or wrote. He did not say “history never repeats itself but it rhymes.” That exact line...
The Donald and His Discontents
”We” live in Trumpy times, indeed. Caricature by DonkeyHotey (CC BY-SA 2.0) A quick note at the top: Donald Trump’s candidacy is obviously happening in th...
The Power Conduit: Robert Caro’s LBJ
Robert Caro’s growing multivolume biography of Lyndon B. Johnson is a lesson in how to do biography as history, and one in how power works in the American...