“Lessons learned” is an overused and useless phrase. It is batted around in educated American military circles and indicates an assumption that we made a mistake once and won’t make the same mistake again. Foreign Policy published an article last month titled “The Top 10 Mistakes Made in the Afghan War.” The line that really…
Museum: War birds brought to life
In Addison, Texas, north of Dallas, you can find a gem of a museum. The Cavanaugh Flight Museum specializes in air-worthy historical planes, and is the home of the Commemorative Air Force’s heavy bombers. I last visited the Cavanaugh in December, 2013. Quality of research The Cavanaugh museum has well-researched narrative, especially from a technical…
Letters from the past
What if we could hear, first-hand, what it was like to be on a ship in Pearl Harbor during the Japanese raid on December 7th, 1941? What if one of your family-members had an eye-witness story about the November, 2004 Battle of Fallujah in their email? Are you a U.S. veteran with a stack of…
Get lost in digitized maps
Do you enjoy staring at old maps? The University of Richmond has produced a digital and interactive version of Charles Paullin and John K. Wright’s Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, originally published in 1932. You can find it here: http://dsl.richmond.edu/historicalatlas/ This is a broad collection of maps – it includes information…
Was it a conspiracy?
I recently stumbled across this clip about a particular witness to the JFK assassination, and it made me think about how reputable historians ply their craft. Take a moment to watch it: Josiah Thompson on the Umbrella Man. Mr. Thompson is getting at something profound here: If you have any fact, which you think is…
World War I: Not just trench warfare
One of the conventional ideas about World War I (especially the Western Front), is that technology outpaced tactics. We wrap up the war’s problems this way: Commanders had a pre-machine-gun idea of how battles worked, and they were now living in a post-machine-gun world. In Andrew Weist’s Haig: The Evolution of a Commander, one paragraph…
Welcome!
I’m glad you’re here! Together, we’ll learn about history, discover new ways to interact with it, find out which museums are the most enlightening, and find the best websites and resources for historical exploration. Have fun browsing, and be sure to connect with me if you like what you find!