Good Will Hunting and Amazon Reviews

This is fun--watch this classic scene from Good Will Hunting, in which Matt Damon schools a Harvard graduate student, then peruse the customer reviews of a book mentioned in the scene: Daniel Vickers' Farmers & Fishermen: Two Centuries of Work in Essex County, Massachusetts, 1630-1850.

Alexander Hamilton Rap

This rap was part of a recent White House performance. It is really good, though marred somewhat by the nervous laughter of an audience that was having trouble getting their heads around a serious rap song about Alexander Hamilton. But why not? The most interesting thing to me is how artist Lin-Manuel Miranda sees Hamilton--as a lower class striver who made good, a kid from the 18th-century 'hood. Rather than as an oppressive reactionary, you know.

Blogging John Adams

A heads-up for my readers--J.L. Bell over at Boston 1775 has a been crafting a wonderful series of posts about the HBO series John Adams. Bell seems to be enjoying the series but is quick to use his comprehensive knowledge of the topic and the time period to poke holes in many of the details of the TV show, as Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam notes in this appreciation of both the series and of Bell's blog. What Bell is doing is a model of historical blogging at its best and most relevant.

I promise to do a similar set of posts when HBO launches it blockbuster dramatic epic Spokane Garry--the Red River Years.

Estimable History Blogs #2: Boston 1775

When I got the idea for series of posts pointing to excellent history blogs it was plan to save Boston 1775 for last, sort of a crowning post. But J.L. Bell's piece today, Fact-Checking the Huckabee Campaign, is too wonderful not to share. Alert readers may recall that only last month Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee claimed in a speech that "most of" the signers of Declaration of Independence were clergymen. You probably also read or heard that in fact only one of the signers was a clergymen. Bell goes much further than a simple debunking, examining the signers of the Constitution in search of clergymen. Bell's post is sort of a follow-up to an even better post on Mitt Romney's use of somewhat spurious story about the Continental Congress. This is historical fact-checking of a very high degree.

I am highly skeptical of history bloggers who drag politics into the mix, it usually results in predictably pompous and unreadable pieces (see the History News Network or Crooked Timber). But when a politician lobs one right into our court with a spurious historical argument we have a professional duty to set the facts straight.

I should hasten to add the Boston 1775 is rarely political in the modern sense. More typical is this delightful series of posts about comic books that portray revolutionary history, or this series about the eccentric Dr. John Jeffries: physician, Loyalist, aeronaut. What sets Bell's blog above the rest is the deep research that goes into every post. Enjoy.