Musical artists to me have rarely spoken to me in a way Noah Kahan’s music did, so upon hearing it, it was life changing. That is not hyperbole, either. It really did change who I am.

Kahan’s story, at least on the surface, is not unfamiliar. He grew up in Vermont, in a small town that sits within the broader cultural landscape of New England, a place defined as much by its beauty as by its isolation. That matters, not simply as a biographical detail, but as a lens. Because when you listen to his music, it does not feel like someone writing about New England from a distance. It feels like someone who has lived within its rhythms, who understands its silences, who knows what it means to grow up in a place where the environment shapes not just your surroundings, but your interior life. And that is where his music begins to take on a different kind of weight.

Living in New England is not just about geography. It is about atmosphere. It is about the way time feels during the winter months, when days shorten and nights stretch longer than you want them to. It is about the quiet that settles into small towns, where everything slows down just enough for your thoughts to become louder than usual. It is about the unspoken expectation that you endure, that you carry things without necessarily putting them into words, because that is simply how people here have learned to live. There is a certain kind of restraint that defines this region, and over time, that restraint becomes internalized.

What Kahan does, and what makes his work feel so influential to me, is that he gently pushes against that instinct without completely abandoning it. He does not turn inwardness into spectacle. He does not dramatize it beyond recognition. Instead, he gives it language, and in doing so, he makes something visible that is often left just beneath the surface. Listening to his music feels like stepping into a space that is already familiar, but seeing it more clearly than you ever have before.

When I listen to “Homesick,” I am not just hearing a reflection on place. I am hearing a tension that feels deeply embedded in what it means to be from somewhere like this. The idea that home is not a fixed point, but something complicated, something that can simultaneously pull you back and push you away. There is something unsettling about that realization, because it forces you to confront the possibility that leaving does not necessarily free you from the influence of where you come from. If anything, it makes you more aware of it. What does it mean to feel homesick for a place that you once needed distance from?

That question lingers in a way that feels unresolved, and maybe that is why it feels so honest. Because there is no clean answer. There is only the recognition that home is not just a location, but something that exists within you, something that follows you whether you want it to or not.

“Maine” carries a different kind of weight, one that feels quieter but no less significant. There is a stillness to that song that feels almost geographic, as if the landscape itself is shaping the emotional tone. You can picture the coastline, the gray sky, the cold air, but what stays with you is not just the imagery. It is the distance that runs through it. Not just physical distance, but emotional distance.

The kind that develops slowly, almost imperceptibly, until suddenly it is there and you are not entirely sure how it formed. It makes me think about how often we allow distance to grow, how often we avoid difficult conversations, how often we convince ourselves that time will resolve things that we are not ready to confront. In a region where people are often more comfortable sitting with things than addressing them directly, that distance can become part of the fabric of everyday life.

Then there is “Growing Sideways,” which feels like one of the most quietly devastating songs he has written. The idea of growth that is not linear, not upward, not forward, but sideways, is such a simple shift in language, but it reframes everything. It suggests that movement does not always equate to progress, that change does not always bring clarity, and that time does not always lead to resolution. That is an uncomfortable idea to sit with, because it raises a question that feels both personal and universal. What if you are not becoming who you thought you would be?

Not in a dramatic sense, not in a way that feels like failure in the traditional sense, but in a quieter, more persistent way. The sense that you are moving through life, that things are happening, but you are not entirely sure what it is all building toward. In a place like New England, where life can feel cyclical, where seasons repeat and routines settle in, that feeling can become amplified. It is easy to confuse stillness with stability, to assume that because things are not changing rapidly, they must be secure. But they are not always the same.

“The Great Divide” from his next album feels like stepping back and looking at all of this from a distance. There is something in that song that feels broader, almost collective. It is not just about individual experience, but about a shared sense of disconnection, a gap between expectation and reality that feels increasingly difficult to bridge. It makes me think about how many people are navigating that same space, how many are quietly grappling with the distance between who they thought they would be and who they have become and how often that struggle goes unspoken.

But what elevates all of this, what makes his work feel even more significant, is the way he approaches mental health, not as a theme he occasionally returns to, but as something woven into the foundation of his music. It is not presented as a singular struggle or a dramatic turning point. It is constant, ambient, and often quiet, much like the region he writes from.

There is something distinctly New England about the way mental health exists here. It is present, often deeply so, but rarely announced. It shows up in small ways, in withdrawal, in humor, in deflection, in the tendency to keep moving even when something feels off. There is an unspoken understanding that you manage it, that you carry it, that you do not always make it visible. Kahan challenges that without completely breaking from it.

There is a difference between hearing someone talk about mental health and hearing someone articulate a thought you have had but never said out loud. The latter carries a kind of weight that is difficult to replicate, because it does not just inform you. It reveals something about yourself.

I find myself thinking about how many people everywhere are navigating similar internal landscapes, how many are dealing with the same quiet heaviness, the same uncertainty, the same sense of being slightly out of step with where they thought they would be. And I wonder how often those experiences go unnamed, how often they remain internal because there is no language readily available to express them. Noah Kahan provides that language. Not in a way that resolves the struggle, but in a way that acknowledges it, that makes it visible without turning it into something it is not. He allows it to exist as part of everyday life, which, in many ways, is what makes it feel so real. That is where his influence extends beyond music.

When something that has been internalized for so long is suddenly articulated, it shifts the way you think about it. It makes it harder to ignore, but it also makes it easier to understand. It creates a space where reflection feels possible, where honesty feels less isolating. That kind of impact is subtle, but it is significant.

What Kahan does across all of these songs is not resolve these tensions. He does not offer solutions or easy answers. Instead, he allows them to exist, and in doing so, he gives them legitimacy. He makes it feel acceptable to sit in uncertainty, to acknowledge it without immediately trying to move past it. That, to me, is where his influence becomes most meaningful.

In a place like New England, where there is often an unspoken expectation to endure, to keep moving without necessarily explaining why something feels difficult, that kind of honesty feels significant. It does not disrupt the culture in a loud or dramatic way. It shifts it quietly, by making space for reflection, by giving people the language to articulate what they might otherwise keep to themselves. That kind of shift, even if it is subtle, matters.

I find myself returning to his music not because it provides comfort in the traditional sense, but because it provides recognition. It reflects something back to me that feels real, something that might otherwise remain unarticulated. And in that reflection, there is a different kind of comfort, one that does not rely on resolution, but on understanding. It also makes me think more deeply about the relationship between place and identity. How much of who we are is shaped by where we come from? And how much of that remains, even when we try to move beyond it?

Would his music feel the same if I had grown up somewhere else?

It is a question I keep returning to, and I am not sure there is a clear answer. But I suspect that part of what makes his music resonate so deeply is not just the themes he explores, but the specificity of the lens through which he explores them. It feels rooted in something tangible, something geographic, but also something emotional that is harder to define. Maybe that is what makes it so powerful.

With a new album on the horizon, there is a sense of anticipation that feels layered with all of this. It is not just excitement for new music, although that is certainly part of it. It is curiosity. It is the question of where he goes from here, whether he continues to explore this same emotional landscape or begins to move beyond it.

If there is one thing his music makes clear, it is that place is not just a backdrop. It is something that exists within you, shaping the way you think, the way you feel, the way you understand yourself, even when you are not consciously aware of it; in New England, where so much is felt but not always said, having someone put words to that experience matters. It matters more than we often realize.

In the end, I do not think Noah Kahan’s influence comes from spectacle or even from innovation in the traditional sense. It comes from recognition. From the ability to take something that feels deeply personal and reveal the ways in which it is also shared. From the willingness to sit in the quiet, to examine it, and to give it shape without trying to rush past it. His music does not just soundtrack this place. It helps explain it.

And for those of us who have spent our lives trying to understand what it means to be from New England, that kind of explanation feels invaluable.

Maybe that is where this becomes most personal for me, because at a certain point, this stops being about analysis or interpretation and becomes something much simpler. I love Noah Kahan’s music not just because it is well written or emotionally resonant, but because it arrived at moments when I needed it without fully realizing that I did. There have been times when his songs have sat with me in ways that nothing else quite could, giving shape to feelings I did not have the language for and, in doing so, making those moments feel a little less isolating. It is one thing to hear music that sounds good. It is another to hear something that feels like it understands you.

So there is a level of gratitude that comes with that, one that feels difficult to fully articulate but important to acknowledge. Because while his music may be rooted in a specific place, its impact reaches far beyond it, into the lives of people who find pieces of themselves within it. I am one of those people. And for that, for the honesty, for the recognition, and for the quiet way his music has helped me move through moments I did not always know how to navigate, I am genuinely thankful. I cannot wait for his next album in April.

After failures to publish it in various academic journals for the last year because it “lacks interest” for a general audience, I am publishing it myself. Rejection letters are always a bit discouraging, especially when you are so proud to share your research with the world. As a historian, my interests are Early American New England, and the Adams Family has always fascinated me as a study. My undergraduate thesis was based on John Adams retirement and a lot of my graduate work always goes back to them. This time, I was interested in understanding Abigail Adams a bit more under the concept of Republican Motherhood—an integral part that women played in the development of the United States.

When I started my research, I was interested in the development of American Identity in the early years of the United States. A deep research dive led me to the relationship between Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren (the subjects of this paper). While reading their letters, I found an underlying theme of feminism, motherhood, and politics. This attracted me because of the different perspectives on what a woman’s role was in the Early Republic, and I wanted to know their developing thoughts on the subject. This essay is the result of that research.

On July 25, 1773, two years before the United States declared its independence, Mercy Otis Warren wrote to Abigail Adams that the responsibility of a mother was to “rear the tender plant and Early impress the youthful mind” and if lucky enough, the children would “become useful in their several departments on the present theatre of action.”1 This letter sparked a friendship that was cultivated through the ideals of what a woman’s role was in the Revolutionary Era. Through hundreds of letters, both Warren and Abigail2 wrote about how the work of their husbands, James Warren and John Adams, was influential to the state of the newly created nation. Both women believed that their husbands endured a positive place in history, and both were incorrect in that assumption.3 And yet, by the time of the establishment of the Early Republic in 1789, Mercy Otis Warren and Abigail Adams began to question their own role in the ideals of a country.

Women by 1789 were encouraged to “commit themselves politically and then justify their allegiance,” which created an interest in what a woman could be in the Early Republic.4 In the wake of the republic, an idea called “Republican Motherhood”5 spread throughout the United States and into the homes of women. This ideology sought to prioritize the role women played in the Early Republic and to the development of American values. Women became the center of this ideological shift in how gender dynamics were perceived and revealed after the Revolutionary War. Both Mercy Otis Warren and Abigail Adams influenced their husbands’ ideas and both of them understood that a woman’s role in the Republic was not just dormant inside the home but active within the gears of American society and its politic.

This essay argues, through the lens of their friendship, the degree that Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren understood the concept of “Republican Motherhood” and how it developed their own American Identity. This essay gives a large emphasis to the role Abigail and Warren played in their own lives, but also how that can help us understand the broader role of women. Both women were revolutionary in their own right—Abigail Adams consistently argued to her husband to “Remember the Ladies” while he argued for independence and used her platform as a wife to enhance the importance of women’s education and autonomy in the development of a republic.6 Warren was a poet, playwright, and historian who wrote the first history of the American Revolution called History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, in which she laid out her personal thoughts on the war. She was severely critical towards John Adams and even George Washington, which caused a disruption between the friendship of Warren and both Adamses.

Both women used the ideals of Republican Motherhood to further and develop their own identity as Americans in the age of the New Republic. Seen through letters, diaries, and even published works, the ideals of Mercy Otis Warren and Abigail Adams are not theirs alone. With the friendship came an understanding of what it meant to be a woman in the early days of the United States. The friendship they created was one that resonated throughout the Early Republic because it helped understand the broader movement and ideology of women. By understanding their friendship, the ideals of the Early Republic became apparent, understood, and expanded as the perspective helped form an original American identity.

The friendship between Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren began just prior to the American Revolution. The two met through the inner political circles that developed in the late eighteenth century as a post-war response to women’s political candor. Many men believed that women did not have political responsibility in the Early Republic, and thus lacked the necessary skills to combat the politics of the day.7 These circles provided women access to political discourse and socialization.

Women from all classes gathered to not just discuss the politics but engage in how these discussions can influence the basis of their homes. These circles did not change their domestic identity as wives and mothers but challenged the ideas of how domesticity influenced the balance of power.8 Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren are prime examples of how that transformed identity persuaded deeper Republican values.

Both women were part of a larger family that was heavily involved in politics. Abigail was married to John Adams who was a lawyer and politician, and she grew up in a family dominated by politics through her relation to the Quincy’s of Massachusetts—a large name in Massachusetts politics. Mercy Otis Warren was married to James Warren who was a merchant, politician, and respected military officer of the Revolutionary army. Her brother, James Otis Jr., was of similar acclaim as he was a staunch Patriot and lawyer in Massachusetts.

Both Abigail and Warren understood the value of politics, civics, and virtue through the work of their family early on. Both women, though, believed that the importance of politics and virtue began with the children they raised at home. In the first letter Abigail Adams sent to Warren, she suggested a book titled On the Management and Education of Children which detailed innovate ways to educate children from the female perspective. Abigail complimented Warren’s ability as a mother and said that it does “not [come] from an opinion that you stand in need of such an assistant… [but] tell me whether it corresponds with the plan you have prescribed to yourself.” Warren’s reply to Abigail was candid, as she explained to her that she still has little idea the best way to be a mother, and that she “must acknowledge I fall so far short of the Methods I heretofore Laid down as the Rule of my Conduct.”9

It was not long before the two women discussed politics. In December of 1773, Abigail wrote to Warren about the deeper restrictions imposed by the British. Adams discussed that “it will greatly aggravate your anxiety to hear how much [the colonies] is now oppressed and insulted.”10 The discussion of politics throughout their friendship was a steadfast comprehension of how they viewed the world. Both women debated the ideas of the Revolution and what it meant to be a woman in the days of oppressive laws.

In the Early Republic, many marriages were set to the law of coverture which emphasized patriarchal control over women’s assets, and while it was shaped as protective, it stripped a woman’s independence.11 Even so, neither Warren nor Abigail were afraid to discuss politics with the men in their family. In a lengthy letter to John Adams in 1780, Abigail Adams wrote about local politics in Massachusetts—admittedly, John Adams favored local politics than national, so he relied on Abigail to keep him informed about their home state—and how she viewed national politics in context of the war. “What a politician you have made me,” Abigail Adams wrote, and “if I cannot be a voter upon this occasion, I will be a writer of votes. I can do some thing in that way but fear I shall have the mortification of a defeat.”12 Abigail understood that while she could not vote, she expressed her grievances to those who can. Through letters and political circles, she was able to understand the depth to which her voice mattered. If not to her husband, then to the people that surrounded him. If not to them, then their wives, mothers, and sisters as a sound board.

Mercy Warren discussed politics with her brother, James Otis Jr. who was involved in the creation of the United States. James Otis Jr. and her husband James Warren encouraged her to engage in politics in the public sphere. A prolific writer, she wrote numerous plays that were published throughout the Revolutionary era into the Early Republic. James Warren called his wife “the scribbler” because she was fast to comment on political actions and ideas.13 This motivated Warren, as she quickly became a voice for republicanism and civic virtue—key qualities central to Republican Motherhood.

At the start of 1787, John Adams was in England as a diplomat for the United States. Abigail Adams joined her husband in 1784 after peace was secured from Great Britain. In the United States, while the Adamses were in Europe, the Constitutional Convention began without the input from John Adams. In a letter, Abigail commented on the fact that the men in Philadelphia, tasked with creation of a new Constitution, was “not terrified with the prospect of a proffligate prince to govern it appears to be in an untranquilized state.”14 Abigail feared that country was not going to come to any rational conclusion, and was further frustrated that her own husband was unable to be at the convention. However, the two women saw their disagreements in light of the Constitution’s creation and that it was no longer about crafting a new nation but protecting the one that existed.

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Both women debated with each other on how the United States was going to be preserved. Warren was unsure of how the new government was going to be formed. In a letter, Warren encouraged John Adams to view the Constitutional Convention, and politics itself, with three perspectives: full support of the new Constitution, total opposition to it, and the third who “will decidedly support whatever they think right: or that tends to the General welfare.”15 Abigail Adams was confident that even though her husband was not at the convention, the civic inspiration of the Greeks and Roman was going to helped the United States obtain its highest civic virtue.16

There was a significant gap between the letters Abigail Adams and Mercy Warren wrote to one another. The reason for this gap is unclear; however, a possibility is that by 1790, the two women lived close enough to engage one another. Nonetheless, Mercy Warren often wrote to John Adams about politics and told him what his future was in the wake of the ratification of the new Constitution. John Adams suspected, through friends and correspondence, that he was going to be Vice-President under the new Constitution. Adams wrote about his ideas of an American identity and “Spirit of Union” that was prevalent in America. With the new Constitution, John Adams realized, “The Resources of this Country are abundantly Superiour to every Exigency and if they are not applied, it must be owing to a Want of Knowledge or a Want of Integrity.”17

While Warren did not respond to this directly, she implied that her son was a “Victim to public Virtue” that carried “the Determined system of political enmity that has ransacked the lower Regions.” Warren claimed her son was an individual who carried the ideals of Republican Motherhood—civic virtue and dedication to patriotic values—to his own life and career as a lawyer. She rapidly pushed against these ideas in favor of her son who “never deviatied from the line of probaty in public or in private life.”18 This developed an American identity for Mercy Warren because she raised her son to have values of a civic identity, patriotism, and dedication to country. Even though she believed politicians were dishonest with her son, she knew that that the country she raised her son in, her ideals and intentions, all related to motherhood and being an American.19 An American identity came quickly for Warren because she began the ideals from her own childhood and instilled them into her own children. It was easy for her to recognize that civic virtue and intentional patriotism was part of who she was, and thus, became her identity. Being a mother helped Warren identify these ideals further.

Abigail Adams felt a similar way, as she was fond of her son John Quincy Adams who she believed was necessary to carry on the legacy of her ideals.20 John Quincy was a diplomat in the Early Republic, and she made sure that his duties were kept with promise and intrigue. It was why she let John Quincy as a boy go with his father when John Adams negotiated peace for the United States during the American Revolution in the 1780s. She knew he was going to be an individual grown to the highest ideals of a man and American citizen. More than anything, she was proudest of John Quincy.

She never saw him become president because of her death, but she witnessed many accomplishments of his that proved that her assumptions were right. These moments became the craft of Abigail’s own identity as an American. Beyond her husband’s accomplishments, John Quincy was the spitting image of all the ideals she set for him as a boy. Even as a grown adult, Abigail never stopped encouraging the ideals of republicanism to her children. In a letter in 1790 when John Quincy established his law office, she offered him some useful advice—fresh from the republican values she established early on in his life:

Be patient and persevering. you will get Buisness in time, and when you feel disposed to find fault with your stars, bethink yourself how preferable your situation to that of many others, and tho a state of dependance must ever be urksome to a generous mind, when that dependance is not the effect of Idleness or dissapation, there is no kind parent [bu]t what would freely contribute to the Support and assistance of a child in proportion to their ability.21

When John Adams won the presidential election of 1796, Mercy Warren wrote to Abigail several months later in March of 1797 to congratulate and grieve for her on his victory. Warren wrote that “my Gratulations on mr Adams elevation to the presidential Chair are secondary to my Condolence,” which offended Abigail. Not only did Warren insult her husband when she called it a condolence, but the letter was months too late for her liking. On inauguration day, Abigail Adams replied to Warren so she could “accept my acknowledgments, considering it as the voluntary and unsolicited Gift, of a Free and enlightned people” and “every virtue of the Heart, to do justice to so sacred a Trust. Yet however pure the intentions, or upright the conduct, offences will come.”22

The friendship of Warren and Abigail began to deteriorate after John Adams’ election to the presidency. Warren’s political views contrasted with both Adamses and she felt disconnected to them. While Warren largely disagreed with John Adams use of executive power, she remained cordial with both of them. Friends who disagreed, but endured tribulation at every corner. When John Adams passed the Alien and Sedition Acts that allowed the imprisonment of journalists and deportation of anyone deemed dangerous, Warren worried. She worried for the new Republic, and realized that her friend, John Adams, was the result when executive power was too powerful.23 John Adams was unable to recover from the violation of the First Amendment that he swore to protect and was not reelected in 1800. A somber Adams Family retired to Peacefield in Quincy, Massachusetts where politics was at the back, and reflection started in the forefront.

The death of the Warren-Adams friendship started after Adams retired from public life. In 1805, Mercy Otis Warren wrote the first full length history of the Revolution titled History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution. Her story was three volumes, and she interviewed and corresponded to many people of the Revolution including Jefferson and Adams to provide an honest reflection of the war. While Warren labeled the book “the new and unexperienced events exhibited in a land previously blessed with peace, liberty, simplicity, and virtue,” she was influenced by the Republican party that she belonged to.24 While scholarly in writing, her historical arguments were nationalistic and interpreted with crucial influence from the Republican party. One of her largest critiques was to John Adams, who she wrote has as a “partiality for monarchy,” which was a common criticism.25 This was the first time that Adams heard from Warren about her issues with him, and this discouraged him. Furthermore, Abigail Adams was also hurt by these allegations. John Adams, however, defended his honor and the Republican principles he helped fight for.

When John Adams wrote to Warren to debate her book, it was from a place of initial friendship. Adams defended his honor and civic integrity with hostility: “If I were to measure out to others, the treatment that has been meted to me I could make wild Work with some of your Party. Shall I indulge in retaliation, or not?”26 Adams was angry, and his retaliation never came. Warren replied with frustration and defense of her own character and integrity as she was insulted but recognized that “Passions are sometimes the heavenly gales that waft us safely to port, at others the ungovernable gusts that blow us down the stream of absurdity.”27 The conversations between John Adams and Mercy Otis Warren continued to be bitter, and the relationship never recovered.

Later, in 1813, John Adams reflected on their correspondence and the book for an unfair perception of his complex legacy. Adams wrote that her book was dangerous and that “History is not the Province of the Ladies.”28 Adams was bitter about Warren’s version of his history and was confident that future historians would write the truth about him and his place in the broader Revolution.

The end of Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren’s friendship was significant, as both of them ended the relationship with love and admiration. In the midst of the American Revolution, the two women were a solace for one another and engaged in political discourse that only they understood. The perspectives of motherhood allowed them to view the depth of civic virtue in a way only they understood it. Near the end of their lives in 1812, Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren reconciled their longstanding friendship with tokens of gratitude for one another. Warren gave Abigail a lock of her hair—a sign of respect, devotion, and trust—and Abigail crafted a custom-made ring. That moment in Plymouth, Massachusetts was the last time either of them saw each other and was the closure they both needed.

With her eyesight completely gone, but her mental faculties never diminished, Mercy Otis Warren died on October 19, 1814.29 The last letter Warren wrote before she died was an olive branch to John Adams to try and reconcile their friendship. Her final literary words were an affirmation that she “shall never cease to love the children of my friends, so long as I find them worthy, good, and amiable.”30 Republican Motherhood was the fullest intentions of her life.

In December of 1816, just after Christmas, Abigail Adams came down with a severe illness that she envisioned as her last. She started to draw up her will and included pieces of her personal property to each of her children. Beyond her jewelry, gowns, cloths, and dresses that went to her daughters, Abigail Adams gave all of her investments, nearly $4,000 dollars’ worth, to her son, John Quincy Adams. After she settled her will in 1818, she caught typhus fever which was her beacon call to heaven. She died on October 28, 1818, three days after celebrating her fifty-fourth wedding anniversary with John Adams. Her only regret was that “she should like to have the family together once more.”31 Similar to Mercy Warren, her last thought was of the children she raised and the people she loved.

Republican Motherhood was the foundation for both Mercy Otis Warren and Abigail Adams. The principle reiterated that a woman’s role in the Early Republic was not just to maintain the home but to help establish an autonomous society. While so much fighting was present in politics, women played the role of equating the necessary values and virtue into the children they raised.32

Both women believed that education was the essential factor to how children were raised. Education was the essential tool to raising strong American citizens.33 Both women viewed motherhood as the most important part of their life, and even more so, believed that it was what made themselves uniquely American. Encouragement of Republican ideals and virtue allowed for both women to articulate an America where their children belonged, and where the role of women became precedent of a larger movement.

SUGGESTED READING:

1. Abrams, Jeanne E. First Ladies of the Republic: Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, and the Creation of an Iconic American Role. New York: New York University Press, 2018.

2. Hacker, Jeffrey H. Minds and Hearts: The Story of James Otis Jr. and Mercy Otis Warren. Amherst & Boston: Bright Leaf, 2021.

3. Holton, Woody. Abigail Adams: A Life. New York, NY: Free Press (Simon & Schuster), 2019.

4. Jacobs, Diane. Dear Abigail: The Intimate Lives and Revolutionary Ideas of Abigail Adams and Her Two Remarkable Sisters. New York: Ballantine Books, 2014.

5. Kerber, Linda K. Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America. New York: Norton, 1986

6. Kerber, Linda. “The Republican Mother: Women and the Enlightenment-An American Perspective.” American Quarterly 28, no. 2 (1976): 187–205. https://doi.org/10.2307/2712349.

7. Lewis, Jan. “The Republican Wife: Virtue and Seduction in the Early Republic.” The William and Mary Quarterly 44, no. 4 (1987): 689–721. https://doi.org/10.2307/1939741.

8. Murrin, John M. “A Roof without Walls: The Dilemma of American National Identity.” In Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity, 333–48. Chapel Hill & London: University of North Carolina Press, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1987. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9780807839324_beeman.16.

9. Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. This Violent Empire: The Birth of an American National Identity. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

10. Travers, Len. Celebrating the Fourth: Independence Day and the Rites of Nationalism in the Early Republic. Boston: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1997. https://hdl-handle-net.ezpro.cc.gettysburg.edu/2027/heb33582.0001.001.

11. Zagarri, Rosemarie. “Morals, Manners, and the Republican Mother.” American Quarterly 44, no. 2 (1992): 192–215. https://doi.org/10.2307/2713040.

To understand that moment, it is necessary to recall that American involvement in Vietnam did not begin in August of that year. For more than a decade, the United States supported the Republic of Vietnam through financial aid, military advisers, and covert activities along the coast of North Vietnam. These operations intensified during the John F. Kennedy administration and continued into Lyndon Johnson’s presidency. Covert maritime actions known as Operation 34A placed pressure on North Vietnam and created a tense environment in which American naval vessels gathered intelligence. By the summer of 1964, the region was saturated with suspicion and conflicting intentions. President Johnson faced a strategic dilemma where he wished to avoid a dramatic escalation while also avoiding any impression of weakness during an election year. This balancing act set the stage for the events that followed.

President Lyndon B. Johnson with an American soldier in Vietnam; SOURCE: NYT

On the second day of August, the destroyer USS Maddox encountered three North Vietnamese patrol boats while operating in the Gulf of Tonkin. Shots were exchanged. The Maddox reported that it had come under attack and returned fire, damaging the vessels. This first incident certainly took place, though later investigations revealed that the broader context was more complicated than initial reports suggested. North Vietnamese forces were aware of the American backed raids taking place along their coastline, and the presence of the Maddox carried implications that were not widely communicated to the public. Still, the Johnson administration presented the incident as a clear act of aggression.1

Two days later, the situation became far more complex. The Maddox and another destroyer, the USS Turner Joy, reported that they were again under attack. Radar images seemed to show incoming vessels. Sonar readings suggested hostile activity, and crew members caught glimpses of what they believed to be patrol boats advancing through the night. Within hours, doubts surfaced among officers and intelligence analysts. Some on the ships questioned whether any attackers had been present. Storm conditions, irregular radar returns, and human error created an illusion of danger. Analysts at the National Security Agency were uncertain almost immediately, and their later reports reflected this ambiguity.2 Despite this uncertainty, the Johnson administration announced that a second attack took place and framed it as evidence of escalating hostility.

The American public received the mainstream narrative at face value. Newspapers reported the administration’s claims with confidence. Television broadcasts echoed the official account and the Cold War context reinforced a sense of urgency. Many Americans believed the nation was engaged in a global contest that required decisiveness and vigilance. The idea that communist forces had attacked a United States vessel resonated strongly.

President Johnson responded by asking Congress for authorization to take all necessary measures to repel armed attacks and prevent further aggression. The resolution that emerged, known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, was brief yet expansive. It passed with overwhelming support. In practice it gave the President broad authority to conduct military operations in Southeast Asia without further congressional debate.3 Johnson insisted that the measure was defensive and limited. In reality, it became the legal foundation for a vast escalation.

Public opinion initially supported the administration’s approach. Editorials praised the firm response and the narrative of unprovoked aggression shaped early perceptions of the war. Only later did discrepancies become widely known. The Pentagon Papers revealed that the administration had not fully disclosed the uncertainty surrounding the second attack.4 These revelations created a profound shift in public trust and intensified skepticism regarding presidential power and intelligence claims.

Historians have since examined the Tonkin episode through multiple lenses. Fredrik Logevall and others noted that the administration faced significant strategic pressure.5 Some advisers argued that escalation was necessary for geopolitical credibility while others urged caution. The Tonkin events provided momentum for those who favored stronger action. Scholars have also explored the structural tendencies within the American political system that allow executives to shape narratives during crises. When intelligence is unclear, leaders may present selective information, and legislatures often defer to the executive when told that national security is at stake.

Tonkin reveals a pattern that appears across different eras. Intelligence that is ambiguous or disputed is sometimes framed as certain. Crises unfold quickly. Action often precedes full debate. Only after decisions have been made do questions arise about the reliability of the initial claims. This rhythm has returned in various forms throughout American history. The recent reports from Venezuela contained faint traces of this structure. Officials made urgent claims. Intelligence was not released. The justification appeared before a broader public discussion could develop. The resemblance was not literal but structural.

The enduring lesson of Tonkin is that narratives created during the earliest hours of a crisis carry enormous power. They shape public expectations. They influence legislative decision making. They expand or contract the reach of executive authority. A democratic society depends on critical evaluation during such moments, yet the pressure of urgency often narrows the space for careful reasoning. Historical memory serves as a safeguard. When citizens recall how narratives influenced the path to war in the past, they are better prepared to examine contemporary claims with clarity and restraint.

Tonkin remains a cautionary example of how foreign policy decisions can hinge on uncertain information and how quickly power can expand when danger is framed as immediate. It demonstrates the importance of skepticism, oversight, and transparency in democratic life. The faint echo that appeared during the Venezuela incident was not a sign of repetition but a reminder. It urged a return to history to understand how narratives of crisis are formed and why their earliest moments matter most. Memory does not predict the future, yet it sharpens awareness and helps ensure that decisions are guided by understanding rather than haste.

To my surprise the documentary ventured in a different direction. From the opening minutes the presence of Native Americans, enslaved people, and the wider Atlantic world is unmistakable. Rather than appearing as marginal figures they occupy the center of the story. Their voices are woven into the political and military developments in a way that recognizes their importance and restores them to positions of historical influence. This relieved my concern that Burns might offer a comforting patriotic story that overlooks the complex inequalities that shaped the era. If anything, the work is far more sensitive to these issues.

My own training as a historian lies in Early American New England. The region’s political culture, Indian confederacies, racial dynamics, and the Atlantic world have long been at the center of my research. The documentary spends considerable time in this landscape and captures many of the essential forces that shaped it. The towns of Massachusetts, the pressure of Native alliances, and the presence of slavery in New England appear throughout the first two episodes. Watching the documentary through this lens gave me the opportunity to consider the production not as a casual viewer but as someone with disciplinary commitments and expertise. The documentary touches the corners of the field that I know well, and in doing so it invites a more careful reflection about the strengths and limits of Burns’ approach.

The Story That Was Told

The documentary presents the Revolution as a convergence of several interpretive traditions. It is a conflict over land, political rights, social tensions, and competing visions of liberty. It is also an ideological struggle in which colonists brought together legal, philosophical, and religious ideas to justify resistance against British authority. Burns attempts to tell all these stories at once, but he keeps the political story firmly in the foreground. Battles appear, but they are secondary to the broader context and do not overwhelm the documentary. This decision mirrors current scholarship, which seeks to balance political and military history with social, cultural, and racial histories. The result is a narrative that avoids dominance by any single interpretation.

Much of the success of the early episodes comes from the selection of historians. Burns has often been criticized for leaning too heavily on one voice, but this time he provides a wide range of perspectives that reflect the rich diversity of the field. Bernard Bailyn appears in the first episode, a meaningful choice because his work reshaped the study of the Revolution in the mid twentieth century. His argument that ideas lay at the heart of the conflict remains central to scholarly debate. Pairing him with Gordon Wood and Joseph Ellis reinforces this intellectual tradition.

Alan Taylor, whose transatlantic framework influenced my own path into Early American studies, offers a counterbalance. His work insists that the Revolution was a continental and Atlantic story, shaped by migration, Indigenous diplomacy, imperial competition, and environmental change. His presence in the documentary broadens the frame beyond the thirteen colonies and situates the conflict within the larger world that shaped it.

Other historians deepen the interpretation. Ned Blackhawk explains Native strategies during the imperial crisis. Annette Gordon Reed emphasizes the racial and legal contradictions that defined the era. Colin Calloway focuses on documents and the motivations of Indigenous leaders. Christopher Brown and Rick Atkinson contribute military insight. Kathleen DuVal, Jane Kamensky, and Serena Zabin reveal the social and cultural forces that rose to the surface as conflict intensified. This varied collection of voices gives the documentary a sense of scholarly richness and continuity. For a historian it feels like entering a room filled with colleagues whose work has shaped the field for decades.

The primary sources provide the emotional and intellectual foundation of the story. Burns uses letters, diaries, poems, and political documents to animate the era. The voice acting is particularly effective because it gives the sources texture and immediacy. Phillis Wheatley appears early, and Amanda Gorman’s reading of her poetry creates one of the most memorable moments of the opening episodes. Many viewers will be unfamiliar with Wheatley’s presence in Revolutionary Boston or her connections to its political culture. Bringing her voice forward is not only accurate but essential to understanding the intellectual world of eighteenth century Africans in America.

The presentation is strong, although the documentary sometimes moves quickly over longer passages without displaying the full text on the screen. For academic readers this can feel rushed. Many of us prefer to see the full quotation to parse the language and context. Yet for general audiences this choice prevents visual clutter and keeps the pacing manageable.

Some simplification is inevitable in a documentary of this size. Burns is not attempting to resolve historiographical debates. His goal is storytelling grounded in evidence. He relies on the expertise of historians rather than formal argumentation. This may disappoint some specialists, but it aligns with the expectations of the format. What stands out is that Burns has become more careful as his career has progressed. He no longer adopts broad interpretive claims without acknowledging complexity. The criticisms that followed The Civil War concerning the Lost Cause tradition have made him more attentive to scholarly responsibility. Here he makes a visible effort to respect accuracy while still creating an accessible narrative. It is clear he wants the series to speak to both historians and general audiences as the nation approaches its semiquincentennial.

The representation of diverse communities is one of the great strengths of the series. Native nations appear not as victims of imperial expansion but as political actors who shaped the course of the conflict. Enslaved people and free African Americans appear throughout, not only as symbols of contradiction but as individuals with agency and influence. Women appear as political commentators and observers with insight, not as background figures. This inclusiveness is handled with care. It does not feel forced or ornamental and instead feels like an acknowledgment of the reality that the Revolution was always a story of many peoples, not simply a story of elite politicians.

The aesthetic quality of the documentary is impressive. The musical score blends original pieces with period music and creates a sense of atmosphere that never feels overwhelming. The sound editing during the Battle of Lexington and Concord in particular captures the fear and confusion of the moment. The visuals make excellent use of archival images and landscapes. Some sequences feel long, but the slower pacing allows space for reflection rather than spectacle.

There are places where the documentary moves quickly, but this is a matter of pacing rather than interpretation. Burns appears far more careful with accuracy here than in earlier decades. The documentary is not intended only for experts but is meant to bring a wide audience into contact with scholarship that has developed over the last half century. Burns has said that the series should spark conversation. That ambition requires a balance between scholarly depth and narrative clarity, and he generally achieves that balance.

What this documentary offers the public is a chance to revisit the American Revolution from perspectives that most viewers have never encountered. Too often the Revolution is told as a story that centers on political leaders while treating Indigenous peoples, African Americans, women, and ordinary colonists as background. Burns resists that habit. He tries to present the Revolution as a complex world of competing visions and lived experiences. This matters because public memory shapes national identity. As the 250th anniversary nears, the way we talk about the Revolution will influence how we understand ourselves. Burns’s documentary happens to arrive at precisely the moment when a national conversation about the meaning of the Revolution is needed.

The documentary does not simply reproduce national myth. If anything, it complicates that myth by acknowledging the contradictions within the Revolutionary era. His press comments might suggest a more celebratory approach, but the documentary itself is far more balanced. It recognizes the presence of injustice and inequality. It acknowledges that figures like Washington and Jefferson held enslaved people and that their legacies carry inherent contradictions. Burns lets historians and documents speak for themselves, which allows viewers to form their own interpretations.

General audiences will embrace the documentary in the usual way. Many will find in it a familiar sense of coherence and clarity. Historians will watch with different expectations. They will note the choices, omissions, and emphases that shape the narrative. Yet they will also recognize the documentary as a work of public history that brings serious scholarship into the world of popular media. That contribution is significant because it encourages viewers to look beyond the familiar patriotic frame and consider the Revolution as a human story filled with conflict, hope, and uncertainty.

As the two hundred fiftieth anniversary approaches, the question of how we remember the Revolution will become more pressing. The semiquincentennial will likely be marked by celebration, reflection, and political tension. Burns documentary feels like the first major contribution to that moment. It offers an invitation to reconsider the meaning of the Revolution and to think about what its ideals might still offer today. The past is not fixed in marble, but a living subject that changes as we ask new questions and encounter new evidence. A national anniversary should encourage honest conversation, not rote celebration.

Burns’s documentary begins that conversation. It reflects the progress of scholarship, acknowledges the diversity of Revolutionary experience, and provides an accessible narrative that invites viewers to engage with a complicated past. It is not perfect, but it is necessary. It will shape public understanding, provoke discussion, and remind viewers that the Revolution was not a singular achievement but a contested process. As we move toward the semiquincentennial, this documentary may serve as a guide to thoughtful engagement. It offers a way to look back with clarity and to look forward with curiosity and a willingness to consider the many forces that created the United States.

SUGGESTED READING:

Remember to always support your local bookstores.

*******

Alan Taylor, American Colonies. New York: Viking, 2002.

Alan Taylor, American Revolutions: A Continental History. New York: Norton, 2016.

Annette Gordon Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. New York: W. W. Norton, 2008.

Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967.

Collin Calloway, The Indian World of George Washington. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

David Waldstreicher, The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet’s Journey Through American Slavery and American Independence. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.

Rick Atkinson, The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton. New York: Henry Holt, 2019.

Serena Sabin, The Boston Massacre: A Family History. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020.

Phillis Wheatley, Vincent Caretta (editor), Complete Works. New York: Penguin Classics, 2001.

Shenk presents a vision of Abraham Lincoln that is richer and more troubling than the common narratives many readers inherit. Rather than portraying Lincoln as a granite figure who stood above despair, he shows a man who lived with melancholy as a constant presence. This melancholy did not flatten him. It shaped him. It cultivated a capacity for reflection, endurance, and moral depth. Lincoln’s sorrow became one of the forces that made him the kind of leader the nation required during its deepest crisis. This is the argument that moves quietly but steadily through the book, and it remains one of its most compelling contributions to Lincoln scholarship.

Shenk grounds his interpretation in sources that reveal Lincoln’s psychological landscape with striking clarity. He draws from private letters, recollections of friends, early poetic fragments, and newspaper accounts that hint at the internal storms Lincoln weathered in his youth and adulthood. In 1841 Lincoln admitted that he had entered “the worst state I have ever experienced.”1 This was after his longtime love passed away. Such a sentence carries no ornament. It is honest, direct, and painfully human. It is also one of the strongest pieces of evidence that Lincoln experienced periods of emotional collapse that shaped his sense of self.

Among the most evocative artifacts associated with Lincoln’s inner life is the poem known as the Suicide Soliloquy. Published anonymously in an Illinois newspaper in the 1830s, it was later linked to Lincoln through local recollection and stylistic similarities. The poem opens with bleak intensity and captures the voice of someone confronting the overwhelming weight of sorrow. It speaks of a heart “sickened with sorrow” and a life “weary of breath.”2 Scholars still debate authorship, but the raw emotion in the poem aligns closely with accounts of Lincoln’s periodic despondency.

The speaker in the Suicide Soliloquy is a very different figure. He is vulnerable, frightened, and uncertain about the purpose of his own existence. Even those students who question whether Lincoln wrote the poem often conclude that it captures a truth about the emotional world he inhabited. The poem becomes a window into the interior life of the young Lincoln, a glimpse of the storms he had to learn to survive:

Here, where the lonely hooting owl
Sends forth his midnight moans,
Fierce wolves shall o’er my carcase growl,
Or buzzards pick my bones.
No fellow-man shall learn my fate,
Or where my ashes lie;
Unless by beasts drawn round their bait,
Or by the ravens’ cry.
Yes! I’ve resolved the deed to do,
And this the place to do it:
This heart I’ll rush a dagger through,
Though I in hell should rue it!
Hell! What is hell to one like me
Who pleasures never know;
By friends consigned to misery,
By hope deserted too?
To ease me of this power to think,
That through my bosom raves,
I’ll headlong leap from hell’s high brink,
And wallow in its waves.
Though devils yell, and burning chains
May waken long regret;
Their frightful screams, and piercing pains,
Will help me to forget.
Yes! I’m prepared, through endless night,
To take that fiery berth!
Think not with tales of hell to fright
Me, who am damn’d on earth!
Sweet steel! come forth from our your sheath,
And glist’ning, speak your powers;
Rip up the organs of my breath,
And draw my blood in showers!
I strike! It quivers in that heart
Which drives me to this end;
I draw and kiss the bloody dart,
My last—my only friend!

Shenk takes this emotional history and demonstrates how it shaped Lincoln’s public life. Rather than treating melancholy as a private hindrance to overcome, Shenk argues that it developed Lincoln’s patience and helped form the moral seriousness that defined his leadership. Melancholy taught Lincoln to reflect deeply. It taught him to temper passion with thought. It taught him to find clarity even when his own heart carried its own wounds. These habits became essential when he confronted the terrors of civil war.

Lincoln’s writing reveals this connection with remarkable consistency. In April of 1862 he wrote to General McClellan, “If you do not want to use the army, I should like to borrow it for a while.”³ The line is often quoted for humor, but the emotional tone beneath it matters more. The calm, almost weary patience in Lincoln’s language is the product of someone who has learned how to face frustration without letting it dominate him. He expresses urgent need without harshness. He presses forward with clarity rather than bitterness. When I teach this letter, students often notice how different Lincoln sounds from the romantic images they carry of him. They begin to see him not as a symbol, but as a person whose emotional life has formed his public voice.

Another element of Lincoln’s emotional discipline lies in his use of coping strategies. Shenk notes that Lincoln relied on humor as release, on routine as stability, and on close friendships as grounding forces. These practices were not incidental to his leadership. They were the tools that enabled him to endure. His steadiness during the war was not the absence of suffering. It was the product of years spent learning how to live with it.

This understanding reshapes how one reads Lincoln’s greatest speeches. The Second Inaugural Address, often regarded as one of the most profound meditations on national sin and redemption, takes on new meaning when viewed through the lens of melancholy. When Lincoln observed that “every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword,” he spoke not with vindication but with sorrow.3 He understood the cost of suffering because he had lived so long in its company. Beneath the moral clarity of the speech lies a heart shaped by grief. Recognizing that emotional foundation deepens the impact of his words. It makes his appeal to national humility and reconciliation even more powerful.

This is why Shenk’s work remains so valuable for teaching. Students are often surprised to learn that historical figures possessed inner worlds as complicated as their own. When they encounter Lincoln not as the untouchable figure from coinage and sculpture but as a man who battled despair, they discover a more approachable and more profound version of history. They begin to ask better questions. They begin to see how emotional life shapes decisions. The study of Lincoln’s melancholy reveals that history is not a collection of outward events alone. It is also the record of how individuals wrestle with themselves.

Primary sources play an essential role in this process. The Suicide Soliloquy becomes a doorway into psychological history. The letter to McClellan becomes an example of emotional restraint in leadership. The Second Inaugural becomes a testament to how sorrow can lead to moral wisdom. Through these documents students learn that Lincoln’s leadership did not emerge from an absence of feeling. It emerged from the depth of it.

Shenk’s work succeeds because it maintains a careful balance between psychological interpretation and historical grounding. He does not romanticize Lincoln’s despair, nor does he exaggerate its influence. Instead, he presents a portrait that is textured, evidence based, and deeply humane. The book expands the possibilities of how we write about the past. It reminds us that emotional history is not peripheral. It is essential.

As a result, Lincoln’s Melancholy remains one of the most meaningful works I return to. It shaped the way I understand biography and the way I teach. More importantly, it shaped the way I understand Lincoln. It revealed a man who did not avoid sorrow, but who learned how to live in honest conversation with it. That discipline, that interior labor, became part of the strength that carried the nation through its darkest moment.

This is the Lincoln that Shenk offers. Not the marble figure of legend, but a human being whose greatness arose not in spite of his melancholy, but through it. For readers seeking a deeper understanding of Lincoln’s inner life, or for those who simply wish to see how sorrow can become a source of wisdom, this book remains indispensable.

The opening story begins with the language of inventory. O’Brien lists what the men carried: “P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent.”1 The list feels mechanical at first, almost bureaucratic. Yet with each repetition the tone changes. The physical weight begins to reveal its emotional counterpart. “They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing. These were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity.”2 The phrase “emotional baggage” has been flattened by overuse in modern speech, but O’Brien restores its original force. He gives weight to the intangible. Every item becomes a unit of feeling. The story is not about logistics or equipment but the unbearable arithmetic of survival.

That passage also reveals one of O’Brien’s most enduring ideas: that the things we carry are never fully our own. The soldiers carry objects, yes, but also expectations, reputations, and fears. “They carried their reputations. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained.”3 The sentence dismantles the easy binaries of courage and fear. What he calls “the common secret” turns bravery into something fragile and shared. Heroism becomes an act sustained by shame as much as by strength.

That tension becomes clearest in “On the Rainy River,” one of the book’s most haunting stories. O’Brien describes the moment before he leaves for Vietnam, when he considers escaping to Canada. He stands on the edge of the river, paralyzed between two futures. “I would go to the war,” he writes, “I would kill and maybe die because I was embarrassed not to.”4 The sentence feels plain, but its moral weight is enormous. It strips away the rhetoric of duty and exposes something rawer. Shame becomes a form of destiny.

As someone who teaches the Vietnam War, I have found this story indispensable. O’Brien’s internal conflict captures the cultural divide that surrounded the war itself. It was a war without clear front lines, fought in the midst of national uncertainty, where moral purpose became as contested as military success. His reluctance and fear are not individual failures; they are reflections of a generation’s confusion. When I discuss the shifting public consciousness of Vietnam, O’Brien’s words give that uncertainty human shape. He embodies the paradox of a war that demanded bravery without clarity, obedience without conviction.

O’Brien’s refusal to separate truth from fiction is another reason the book endures. “A thing may happen and be a total lie,” he writes. “Another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.”5 For anyone who teaches history, that line is a quiet provocation. The Vietnam War is one of the most documented conflicts in American history, and yet it resists simple narrative. There are after-action reports, journalistic accounts, film reels, and government briefings, but none of them convey what O’Brien calls “the weight of a memory.” His ‘story-truth’ and ‘happening-truth’ remind me that history is not just a record of what occurred, but an ongoing negotiation over what it meant.

Each year when I teach the war, I use O’Brien’s words to help students understand that the Vietnam conflict did not end in 1975. Its moral and cultural meanings continue to shift. It lives on in literature, film, and silence. O’Brien’s fiction, though technically invented, carries the emotional accuracy that official histories often cannot reach. He gives us access to what the documents omit: the interior cost of endurance.

When O’Brien writes, “They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it,” he transforms metaphor into theology.6 The sky is everywhere and weightless, yet in his sentence it becomes the heaviest burden of all. The soldiers carry not just weapons and gear but the invisible air of history itself. Every veteran carries a version of that sky. It follows them into every quiet moment that comes after the noise.

In “Speaking of Courage,” Norman Bowker circles a lake in his hometown, driving aimlessly in his father’s Chevy. “It was a quiet Sunday afternoon, mid-July, and the town seemed the same as ever. He drove slowly, feeling safe inside his father’s big Chevy. He was home.”7 The repetition of “he was home” does not comfort; it isolates. The world that should recognize him no longer can. O’Brien captures the silence that often follows service, the dissonance between the world one left and the one that no longer fits upon return. It is not the war that kills Bowker, but the absence of a listener.

Reading O’Brien each November alters how I understand remembrance. Veterans Day can drift into performance. The ceremonies, the polite gratitude, the flags, all of it necessary, all of it incomplete. Literature interrupts that routine. O’Brien’s stories make remembrance intimate. They insist that we see the veteran not as a symbol but as a person still negotiating the weight of memory.

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“Stories can save us,” he writes near the book’s end.8 The line is simple but immense. Stories cannot undo loss, yet they can create a space where loss can breathe. They allow what is too heavy to be carried alone to be shared. When O’Brien tells the story of his childhood friend Linda, who died young, he extends the book beyond the war. “I keep writing about her because I still see her,” he says. “Her face, her eyes. She’s not the embodied Linda, but she’s real.”9 Through storytelling, O’Brien makes the dead visible again. He transforms narrative into a form of care.

Teaching the Vietnam War, I return to O’Brien not for chronology but for empathy. His stories remind me that truth develops over time, that understanding war is not an act of classification but of patience. Every decade reshapes how the conflict is remembered. O’Brien’s book teaches that memory itself is historical, that each generation must learn how to carry it anew.

Veterans Day reminds us that remembering is an active verb. It is not simply a pause; it is a practice. Reading The Things They Carried is one such practice. O’Brien honors veterans not through heroics but through honesty. His sentences make remembrance tangible. They teach us to hold the past with both hands, to acknowledge the weight without pretending to lift it entirely.

The Things They Carried endures because it keeps history alive in language rather than stone. Veterans carry the history that the rest of us inherit. Writers like O’Brien make it speak and our task is to listen, read carefully, and remember so we carry what remains.

When New York City elected Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old and the city’s first Muslim and first South Asian mayor, it marked more than a milestone in representation. It revived an older civic pattern: New York’s recurring faith in youth and reform when its machinery feels tired. The last time the city made such a leap was over a century ago, when another 34-year-old, John Purroy Mitchel, took office in 1914.

While they belong to vastly different eras, both men emerged in moments when New York seemed to be questioning whether its institutions could keep pace with its own size — a city turning to youth to make itself new again.

A City in Motion

Mitchel’s New York was a restless place. The five boroughs had only been joined sixteen years earlier, and the city was still figuring out how to govern itself as a single organism. Mitchel, nicknamed the Boy Mayor, ran on reform: anti-corruption, efficiency, and modernization — the watchwords of the Progressive Era’s civic faith.1

His administration lives on in extraordinary detail. The New York City Municipal Archives preserves 127 cubic feet of records from his term that includes correspondence, board minutes, and departmental reports that read like the blueprints of a city being invented.2

Among the most visible projects of that period was the expansion of the subway through the Dual Contracts. These were agreements with private operators signed in 1913 that effectively doubled the system and extended it into the outer boroughs.
The idea was revolutionary: transit could make the newly consolidated city real by binding its edges to its center.3

Another achievement came in 1917, when Mitchel presided over the ceremonial opening of the Catskill Aqueduct, bringing clean mountain water to the metropolis. The event, documented in a civic souvenir volume published by the mayor’s office, turned infrastructure into celebration.4 In both projects, the city expressed a belief that engineering and governance were two sides of the same promise.

Mitchel’s reforms went beyond construction. He reorganized departments, dismissed corrupt borough presidents, and implemented the city’s first zoning regulations which were meant to make government rational, professional, and less beholden to patronage.5

The Machine and Its Maintenance

Fast-forward to 2025. New York has long since built its bridges, tunnels, and skyline, but the problems are uncannily familiar. Subways strain under deferred maintenance, housing costs suffocate families, water tunnels a century old await repair, and climate resilience has become the city’s newest infrastructural frontier.

Into that reality steps Zohran Mamdani who is young, reform-minded, and promising renewal. His campaign drew from the language of fairness and functionality, appealing to voters who felt that the city’s bureaucratic machinery no longer matched their daily experience. Just as Mitchel once embodied the Progressive Era’s faith in modernization, Mamdani arrives as the figurehead of a 21st-century city asking whether it can still work as it should.

The continuity is striking: a youthful mayor comes to power in a moment of infrastructural fatigue, promising to re-tune the city’s engine.

That Mamdani’s victory comes twenty-four years after 9/11 makes it one of the more symbolically charged elections in New York’s modern history. The city that once became a national emblem of grief and suspicion toward Muslim communities has now elevated a Muslim mayor. It is, in a sense, a moment of reckoning and reconciliation with not only with national narratives of identity, but with the city’s own complex relationship to belonging and fear.

In the two decades following the attacks, New York’s Muslim population immigrants from South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa lived both within and against the mythology of the “city that never forgets.” Neighborhoods like Astoria, Jackson Heights, and Bay Ridge became home to vibrant Muslim communities even as surveillance programs and prejudice persisted. Mamdani himself, an immigrant and son of Ugandan-Indian parents, built his political base in Queens, the borough most emblematic of that pluralism.

His election thus operates on two registers: political and cultural. Politically, he represents a new urban progressivism focused on housing and transit equity; culturally, he stands as evidence that the city’s identity continues to stretch and absorb. The same metropolis that once mapped “suspicious activity” around mosques now celebrates a mayor sworn in under their domes.

For New York, this is not amnesia but growth of a slow civic re-imagining of who counts as the face of the city.

Reading the Archive

What makes Mitchel’s story especially tangible is that we can read it. The Municipal Archives’ digital portal hosts letters, proclamations, and reports from his term, showing a young administration trying to master the complexity of modern governance.6 There’s a letterhead, ornate and civic; a memo on salary reform; an audit on water pressure. Each is a fragment of the larger machinery of municipal life.

These records are not mere curiosities but they reveal the administrative texture behind grand ideals. The faith that good paperwork, good plumbing, and good politics belong together may sound quaint now, but it was foundational to New York’s self-image as a city that could build and maintain at scale.

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Today, that same faith survives in a digital form. Instead of archives, we have open-data portals, budget dashboards, environmental reports, and social media which are all part of the same civic hope: that if the city can know itself, it can fix itself.

Mitchel’s story, however, ends abruptly. After one term, his reform coalition fractured; the city’s political tides turned against him. He lost reelection in 1917 and died the following year, at just 38, in a military training accident. His legacy became a cautionary tale about idealism colliding with entrenched systems.

That tension between vision and durability will shape Mamdani’s term as well. Youthful energy may spark reform, but institutions move slowly, and New York’s civic machinery, like its infrastructure, tends to outlast its operators.

Every few decades, New York rediscovers this cycle. When it begins to doubt its ability to govern itself, it turns to a young leader to prove otherwise. In 1914, that leader was John Purroy Mitchel. In 2025, it is Zohran Mamdani. Both arrived when the city felt too complex, too crowded, and too in need of faith in its own future.

The parallel is not coincidence but character: New York is a city that believes in repair. It builds, decays, rebuilds, and insists that its next act will be the one that gets it right.

If Mitchel’s water tunnels and Mamdani’s transit pledges share anything, it’s this: both imagine a city that can still reinvent itself, even after a century of trying.

Sources

The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 sought to strengthen the publics communication and connection to the rest of the world through “diversity of its programming depend on freedom, imagination, and initiative on both local and national levels.” Thus came that diverse programming for both adults and children that contained educational programs, like Sesame Street in 1969, and local and national news. However, shortly after its inception, President Nixon asked Congress to cut its funding from $20 million to $10 million.

At a hearing, Congress asked Fred Rogers, who recently started a show called Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, to comment on why the funding was important. He needed to argue why the extra money was pivotal to his role at PBS. Rogers argued that the role of his and other programs was to “make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable” and by continuing the service “we will have done a great service for mental health.” Just like Mr. Rogers did nearly six decades ago, I implore this same reasoning now so we can protect journalism throughout the country.

New Hampshire itself has its own subdivision to include local news along with national. As of 2021, NHPR reported that about 145,000 listeners to their various programs every week. This coincides with a wide variety of choices that enhance citizens understanding of Civics, culture, politics, economics, and many others. This is tailored specifically for New Hampshire, not just the rest of the country that allows a diverse listener experience.

The Trump administration believes that both NPR and PBS are bias but does not explain how in his Executive Order. Moreover, the admin believes that it was created during a time when options for media were limited to local stations. Now, it is “abundant, diverse, and innovative” which remains an “outdated” concept. However, this understanding of journalism is limited, because it leaves out the undeniable sanction against a specific form of media.

Public broadcasting does more than relay the news to constituents. It provides the first step of conversation and resources that other stations and media forms do not. From podcasts to educational resources to the shows we all grew up watching, it is an example of free resources and open access knowledge for many who would otherwise not have it. Cable and streaming are luxuries that many still cannot afford, and public broadcasting allows that wide variety of content to be seen, utilized, and demonstrated across our American culture.

This is not only a violation of the First Amendment, but a calculated political attack on journalists. President Trump consistently demonizes the press as the “enemy of the people” that spews fake news. This dangerous rhetoric has been in front of us since he began his campaign in 2015, and he is now acting on it. As I tell my own students in the history classroom, it is important to understand bias and writing in sources, but just as vital to understand why it was published to start with.

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As of this writing, the classic children’s television show, Sesame Street has found a new home on Netflix as part of a public-private broadcast that will promote new content as well as older ones. While our beloved puppets survive, it should not be this way. The show was always meant for free public access; and now, you can only watch them if you can afford the rising prices of streaming. How else will media transfer into the private hands of corporations? It is a question that plagues journalism and media as consolidation and monopolizing content grows. We must not just act but react and understand why it was published with as much emphasis as Mr. Rogers did six decades ago.

With my civic duty intact, I demand that we protect journalism.

A small note that the name of the blog has changed from “The Historians Bookshelf” to “Footnotes” to better represent the type of articles and work I’d like to post here. I realized that I wanted to comment on current issues while providing context. This is not a new concept, as people like Heather Cox Richardson and Lindsey Chervinsky do similar things. However, I think the wider the perspectives, the better to determine and understand. I may take a different historical take than others, so I hope you stick around. My intentions are to still review books, which will also provide a ‘footnote’ to the conversation.

Finally, to be ironic, there are no footnotes on this article—just links. Thanks for reading!

The river, once thick with industry’s runoff,
glides cleaner now, reflecting the neon
of a city that never expected to glow.

On the shore, weathered lobster boats rock,
their hulls scarred by a livelihood
that costs more than it earns.

Tourists in L.L. Bean boots
point their phones at lighthouses,
capturing a romance that salt-stung hands
don’t have time to believe in.

The backroads still coil through pine and stone,
past farmhouses with collapsing porches,
where old dogs sleep through every season.

Cranberry bogs, cornfields,
orchards still open on Sundays—
tradition, a thing that lingers,
even as Teslas slip past rusting Chevys.

Autumn burns the hills in October,
a spectacle for weekend hikers,
before November smothers it in rain.
Winters are shorter now, meaner,
less predictable, but the plows still scrape
before sunrise, the old rhythm holding on.

And in the small towns, on gray afternoons,
someone still sets a kettle to boil,
watches the sky flatten into snow,
and wonders if this place is leaving them behind
or if they are the ones fading first.

-EPH

This poem was inspired from the novella “The Body,” by Stephen King and “North Woods” by Daniel Mason.

This is a different kind of post for me, and aware that poetry is probably not what you signed up for. But I think that similar to my reviews, a historians bookshelf is shaped by what surrounds it. Poetry is on that shelf, and I thought I’d share some of my own on the occasion. This is my Substack after all. The theme is books and history, and what better way is there than to commemorate them both by poetic reflection?

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I run a book club at my school, and this months theme was “Stephen King” in honor of my birthday. It was my first time reading the story in full after being a life long fan of the film adaption Stand by Me. The book reflects on childhood and origin, and over the last few years, I’ve become more reflective of where I live.

I am a New England boy through and through; I’ve lived in multiple states of the region, and never quite appreciated its beauty until I began to look. It seems like we always want to go elsewhere, and rarely ever acknowledge what is around us already. So many people want to see the New England states for its history, environment, ancestry, celebrations, food, sports (Go Red Sox!), vacation, etc., as it plays such a pivotal role of American life. And you should come visit.

But when you grow up here, it changes you. You become part of New England, and it becomes your whole personality. So I’ve reflected with poetry, because it is often the form I know how to express it in. I do not know if it is any good, and do not really care. I wanted to share this specific poem, because it is probably the best one I’ve written in a couple of years. So I began to reflect on what New England is like in the present day compared to the counterpart of its history. As a historian, I am constantly thinking about the past with my students, so it is only fair I do the same for myself. What I know, how I feel, and the observations I make along the way.

I think explaining poetry takes away the mystique and interpretative element, so I will stop here. I hope that you reflect on where you live and grew up. Sometimes it reveals more about you than you realize.

Donald Trump’s view of a patriotic education portrays constant American excellence, but in truth, that is only one half of the story. The darkness of our past is not unpatriotic, and highlights the change of where we as a country came from. Understanding both helps students develop their own reasons why this country is worth living in; why America is the home of liberty, and how we can uphold the values that are central to us.

In addition to these principles is the reestablishment of the 1776 commission that started in 2020 to combat the conversation surrounding Hannah Nikole-Jones 1619 Project.1 Trump, along with many other conservatives, believe that the United States and its history education has built a curriculum on guilt rather than critical thinking. The order states that no one “should feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of… actions committed in the past.” Trump and his supporters are convinced that history rewritten in the classroom, and that we are living in a time where students are taught to hate their country.

As a history teacher, I know this to be false and a direct attack on educators and historians alike. What I teach is the truth—both sides of the coin in order to present to students the bright and dark moments of our nations past. This includes slavery, racism, sexism, war, and violence. But it also includes political unity, memory, and movements. Teachers describe the history of the nation as it was in order to explain why it is. With the 250th anniversary of the United States’ birth happening next year, conversations from historians, teachers, politicians, citizens, and anyone interested, creates an in depth analysis of every part of the Revolution. From the military battles, political animosity, and various perspectives of individual lives, the Revolution is viewed from so many angles. The Revolution in our American memory is in the fabric of every movement. But how Americans remember the Revolution has dramatically changed over the years.

The development of how America views the Revolution throughout history is the subject of Dr. Michael Hattem’s latest book, The Memory of ‘76. He is a historian of the Revolution and historical memory, and this book is right for the moment. Hattem argues that “the memory of the Revolution has often done more to divide Americans than to unite them” as remembering the Revolution helps to revise a nostalgic tone of the past.2 That tone is what Hattem further explains throughout his book.

The memory of the American Revolution began as soon as the country was built by the United States Constitution. Hattem often utilizes the celebration of the Fourth of July as the focus of a lot of his analysis, as it showcases the development of our commemorations of the Revolution. Almost immediately, Americans used the past to fuel partisan division. Boston, Massachusetts claimed the origin of the Revolution, and more celebrations were held in Boston than anywhere else in the early Republic.3 Tensions between the working class members and Boston Federalists elites caused a rift in how Boston used the memory to remember why the city rebelled in the first place.

Commemorations became more popular after the death of George Washington. When he was alive, he valued his image and by the time of his death, he became the most revered man. Americans reflected on his death as a national unifying event. Americans mystified him with stories, coins, stamps, names, and all kinds of printed material. Decades after his death, a writer named Mason Weems wrote a biography of George Washington—often considered to be the first one—and utilized a lot of fictional stories to expand his work. The Washington in his book was a mythical and untouchable figure. A lot of the stories were false in nature, including the infamous “cherry tree” story where it proved Washington was an honest man. Weems’ book was initially aimed at children, but soon became the most popular book for all ages in the early Republic. The death of Washington helped to create a national identity, and influenced many Americans beliefs of how the Revolution—and soon the Founders as a whole—was remembered.4

This is one of many stories that Hattem discusses in his book, as he chronologically discusses the memory of the Revolution. The stories he tells are important, as the memory influences the development of organizations like the Daughters of the American Revolution and eventually Sons of the American Revolution. Revolutionary War veterans began to write themselves back into history when they told their stories through the application of war pensions. The National Archives holds thousands of these stories of veterans who simply looked to survive financially, but offers a rich history of individual personal experiences.5

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By the time the American Civil War began when America was most divided, both Union and Confederate soldiers relied on the vitality of the Revolution to influence their cause. Confederates used the memories of their forefathers to promote sectional pride. Both sides also used the the Declaration of Independence to emphasize their cause which effectively unified them. Lincoln, too, often read Washington and Jefferson to help him craft decisions.

Michael Hattem wrote a necessary book, and while I’d love to provide an overview of each argument, I think it is best you buy and read this book yourself. This, more than ever, is required reading for all Americans. As we reflect on the current state of our Republic, regardless of political affiliations, remembering the Revolution is one step of the process. Understanding how we’ve celebrated describes an America that has always held contention with American history, even while it was being written. What Hattem’s book tells us is that the memory of the Revolution, how we teach, celebrate, and interpret has dramatically portrayed continuity while developing change.

You can buy a copy of this book here. I do not make any money for the link.

I am not a reporter in any sense of the word, but watching this fire, reading about it, and seeing pictures has caused me to reflect. I live in the Northeast, and do not know nor understand the realities of this fire as I am not living through it. I am a historian who reflects on the history of us.

Watching the fire has caused me to reflect on the definition of home and memory. Too often residents of LA, as they watch their home burn, are telling their stories with “Everything was in there… all our memories.” Millions of memories, photos, letters, diaries, books, and other personal keepsakes are gone and likely unable to be recovered. Climate Change, drought, and nature caused the fire, and LA will now need to rebuild.

William Cronon is an environmental historian who has written several books on the effects of ecology and nature associated with cities and regions. His most famous book, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1992)2, transformed the historiography on environmental history. So when he wrote about nature, historians listened. In 1995, he published an essay titled The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature3, which critiqued how the world defines wilderness and nature. This essay has never been more relevant as Climate Change rages on, and caused me to think about our role as humans in the relationship between nature.

Cronon begins the essay with how western civilization defined the wild to themselves. The wilderness to Early Europeans and Americans was terrifying, supernatural, and dark. So much of the wild was unknown, and that prospect terrified them. Cronon writes that it “was a place to which one came only against one’s will, and always in fear and trembling.”4 People did not go into nature for solitude; did not interact with it because it offered nothing for them. It was trees, rocks, mountains, flowers, etc. The natural state of the environment gave nothing to those of the western world. It was something that had the potential to be land.

It was not until the nineteenth century that people began to change what nature meant to them. In some respects, people started to look around them and developed a an appreciation for the wild instead of fear. What was once a dim forrest with unexplored terrain was now compared to the biblical Eden. What became known as Romanticism dominated the arts and literature of mid and late 1800s. It focused on how people gained inspiration and an appreciation for nature. Instead of viewing the wild as expendable, it emphasized the individuals connection to that nature. Writers began to use the landscape for their imagination through paintings, poems, and stories. Consequently, the development of the American frontier in the West raised suspicions that nature itself was ruined by human interaction. Thus, it “had to become sacred.”5

And so it did. By the start of the twentieth century, a movement for National Parks began, and environmental preservation was the center of national legislation in the United States. While Romantics believed in the individual, its connection to nature was separate. The environment was biblical and must be preserved for that reason. For those within Romanticism, nature was inspirational and “were those rare places on Earth to… glimpse the face of God.”6

Conon’s argument in this essay is rather stoic, even reminiscent of the earliest writers in Stoic philosophy like Marcus Aurelius. He writes that instead of understanding the environment as two sides of an extreme, we are connected to our it. If we imagine that “our true home is in the wilderness,” we forget about where we actually live.7 We do a disservice to the actual world around us. With respect to Climate Change, Cronon argues that:

Any way of looking at nature that encourages us to believe we are separate from nature—as wilderness tends to do—is likely to reinforce environmentally irresponsible behavior.8

By not viewing the environment as a reflection of ourselves, we change the narrative on how to understand our place within it.

Cronon’s essay is well written, expertly researched, and encapsulates a moment in time that seems to continue. Some of the essay veers off into how extreme environmentalists showcase how humans and their interaction to the environment can only truly result in the eradication of the human race. This, to be clear, he argues against as it is not logical, nor does it give realistic solutions to the human connection to the environment.

This article was the perfect one to reflect on as I thought about the recent fires and how Climate Change maintains its influence daily. Home is not just a structure to sleep and watch TV—it is as much the nature and the woods of your local state park. Home is not the just the memories we create within them, but how we treat the foundation of its influence. If we can alter the perception that we are not separated by the environment, but directly linked, we can maintain responsibility for the ongoing problem. You begin to care about what is ‘out there’ just as much as ‘in here.’ Regardless if you live in a urban, rural, or any in between, we are the nature that surrounds us. The world and nature is our home, and as astronomer Carl Sagan wrote, “Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”9

That single moment in my life is burned into my memory because she was so passionate about Abraham Lincoln. She was never a quiet woman; never one to shy from expressing her opinion, but she also didn’t share many passions. To see her so delighted in an interest I never knew about was a first for me. I, of course, knew who Lincoln was. Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States; he freed enslaved people; he spoke that address at that battlefield.1 Lincoln’s permanence on American culture was always evident. If you know nothing else about American history, you know about Abraham Lincoln. But my grandmothers passion ignited my own, because I wondered “What is it about Lincoln that fascinates her so much?” “Why, of all people, does she idolize him so much?” This gave me the urge to find out as much as I possibly could and answer the why, which led me to my local library.

I don’t remember the first book I read on Lincoln, but I do know the one that captured my attention the most. The book was titled Lincoln’s Melancholy, by Joshua Wolf Shenk. Shenk argues that despite the lack of scientific evidence for depression, then known as melancholy, Lincoln developed a mental illness early in his life. Fueled by the death of his first love and children, Lincoln’s depression was documented and transformed him as president.2 As a teenager that struggled with depression, the idea that a president as memorable and admirable as Lincoln could suffer depression was transformative to me. It informed me of a history beyond a textbook, and of a story that was both sad and riveting. That led me to get as many library books on Abraham Lincoln that I could find. There was no limit to what I read—fiction, history, large books, short bite sized versions, anything I was able to get my hands on. Lincoln, for a short while, became my world. It was the man who I was interested in, and both the books and eventual film helped elevate my interests in history.

Fast forward to March of 2013 when the Blu-Ray edition of Lincoln came out and I bought it the day of its release. I never saw Lincoln in theaters because by the time my full interest in the man was created, the film was already out of the movies. Thus, by March of the next year, I was ready to finally watch it. As I sat in my bedroom alone, the first scene shows Abraham Lincoln talking to soldiers right before they move out of camp. Hearing and seeing Daniel Day Lewis as Lincoln for the first time was the finale to know that history is what I wanted to study as a career. I did not know how to get there, but I knew it had to be done. Eventually, I realized that I was just as passionate about teaching the subject as I was reading about it. Thus began my ‘quest’ to teach history to the masses. (Also, for the record, my Nana loved the film and cried while watching it.)

Eventually Abraham Lincoln led me to other eras of history such as the American Revolution and the Early Republic where I expanded my historical pallet.3 I began reading other topics, and by the time I got to college, I realized I made the right choice. My two mentors, Craig Gallagher and Jim Walsh, helped me understand historical arguments, historiography, Chicago formatting, sources, and so much more. It was their guidance that led me to dedicate my early career to getting it right. For this, I owe almost everything to them.

All those stories brings me to this Substack. Since becoming a historian of my own, I’ve read many books and developed a keen sense for historiography and argumentation. In undergraduate and graduate school, books are read and it is easy to discuss them in class. It is the basis for a lot of history courses. But after that, writing and reading history is a very lonely process. It is just you in the room, your favorite chair, or the archives sifting through someones else’s personal letters. This Substack is a way for me to share my thoughts about books (usually history) that I have read. It is still a lonely process, but writing about it opens the door a tad bit. Even if no one reads the reviews, at the very least, it is a gateway to help me formulate my own thoughts. Although, I do hope you’ll at least indulge in a few of them.

My goal—aside from formulating necessary thoughts—is to help people understand why I enjoyed, or at times found issues with, the books that I’ve read. I am not limiting myself to reviewing only recent or older books because whether it was written in 1975 or 2024, there is value in both. Historiography—the study of how history and topics are written over time—is so important to the discussion of history, as arguments have progressed, developed, and changed. It is not historical revisionism or presentism to compare and contrast, but to see change over time. That is part of the beauty of these books and writing about them in the present moment. They each have something to say about who we are as humans. I even hope you may add them to your own bookshelf and read it yourself.

As a student of history and developing historian, I read a lot of books about history. Every year throughout many bookstores, I buy as much as I read depending on whatever subject peaks my interest; from colonial America to the Holocaust, my reading capacity spans far and wide. I also teach students at various levels, and often use history books to brush up on content or go further in depth with topics I am passionate about. A good chunk of the history books that I read strike me as interesting, engaging, and important. At least here, my thoughts can be expressed, and into the void they go. I know the majority of people reading will probably be friends, family, and even some students, but that is ok. At the very least, it allows me to begin the conversation in hopes that someone responds to it.