reviews 
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/12/2021
Review: Was the Constitution a Pro-Slavery Document?
by Gordon S. Wood
Gordon Wood says James Oakes's new book examines the dialectical relationship between 19th century interpretations of the Constitution as a pro-slavery and anti-slavery document and argues that that debate steered Lincoln toward a commitment to racial equality as inextricable from abolition.
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SOURCE: Charleston Post and Courier
12/20/2020
Review: New Book Seeks To Differentiate Between Confederate History And Historical Memory
"Adam Domby’s book provides a helpful guide through White Southern memory, a place where the Civil War never really ended."
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SOURCE: The Guardian
10/26/2020
"Time's Monster" by Priya Satia Review – Living in the Past
Time’s Monster is a book about history and empire. Not a straightforward history, but an account of how the discipline of history has itself enabled the process of colonisation, “making it ethically thinkable”.
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SOURCE: Black Perspectives
9/21/2020
Eric Williams’ Foundational Work on Slavery, Industry, and Wealth
by Katie Donington
Debates over Eric Williams’s work have ebbed and flowed ever since he first published Capitalism and Slavery in 1944. His book inspired a body of historiography to which many historians of slavery and abolition have added their voices over the decades.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
5/14/2020
Familiar Story of the Boston Massacre Becomes Familial
A review of Serena Zabin's upcoming book "The Boston Massacre."
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2/24/20
New, Experimental West Side Story Is an Experiment that Goes Awry
by Bruce Chadwick
The play has lost its focus and sense of history.
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2/20/20
A Tale of the Great Migration
by Bruce Chadwick
Blues for an Alabama Sky, a new play by Pearl Cleage, tells the story of a handful of those people. It is a deep, rich play in which their stories are carried out against the cultural backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance.
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2/5/20
Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice are Back, and the Sexual Revolution with Them
by Bruce Chadwick
The late 1960s was the heyday of America’s sexual revolution and nowhere was it bigger than in California.
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1/28/20
There’s Nothing Like a Good Ghost Story from the Past
by Bruce Chadwick
The terrifying and wondrous Woman in Black is an international hit. It's a play staged in 2020 that was written in 1987 about an event that took place in 1927.
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1/26/20
How Neville Chamberlin Misread Hitler and Allowed the Third Reich to Threaten the World Order
by Jeff Roquen
In the new and magisterial study Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill and the Road to War, Tim Bouverie incisively reconstructs the ideological landscape of post-WWI Britain to explain how Chamberlain and other politicians and pundits misread Hitler and ultimately allowed the Third Reich to threaten the entire world order.
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1/26/20
The Film “1917” and the Allegory of the Wooden-Headed
by James Ottavio Castagnera
Viewed with one eye on this current context, “1917” can surmount its surface characterization as an exciting “war movie” to become an allegory.
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1/21/20
1917: The War Movie at Its Very Best
by Bruce Chadwick
The movie is a story within a story – the two men within the greater war
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1/19/20
A Play About Historical Reenactors Grapples With American Identity
by Bruce Chadwick
Talene Monahon’s new play, How to Load a Musket, takes a deep, hard look at the re-enactors of two wars, the American Revolution and the Civil War.
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SOURCE: BBC History Extra
1/14/20
“A staggering tour de force – but an opportunity missed”: a historian’s review of the film 1917
by Jeremy Banning
How does 1917 deal with the realities of war and what does it show about the real events of 1917 – the retreat by German forces and life in the trenches?
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1/14/20
Depression Era Tenor Hits All the High Notes
by Bruce Chadwick
It is 1934, at the height of the Depression, and an opera company in Cleveland is trying to make enough money to stay in business.
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1/12/20
A New History of American Liberalism
by Bruce W. Dearstyne
Liberals looking for an enlightening but sobering account of their movement's history should read James Traub.
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1/5/20
Somewhere Over Their Rainbows - Deanna Durbin and Judy Garland
by Bruce Chadwick
In the late 1930s and 1940s, Deanna and Judy, just teenagers, were two of the biggest stars in Hollywood. Deanna was not only a superb actress, but as a singer had the voice of an angel.
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1/5/20
Little Women are Bigger Than Ever
by Bruce Chadwick
Director Gerwig, who also wrote the screenplay, has made this a very modern look at life in the 1860s.
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12/10/19
A Concise History of Diets through Life and a Lot of Show Biz Spice
by Bruce Chadwick
The play is warm and loving. It is a memoir of sorts with her as the center. It is not a drama or high comedy or sprawling spectacle, either, but it is good.
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11/26/19
Cinderella, Whose History Goes Back to the First Century, Is Still a Delight, Glass Slippers and All
by Bruce Chadwick
The tale seemed to have first appeared in Egypt around 100 A.D. That story featured a lost Greek girl who stumbled into a party hosted by the Pharaoh.
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