Real History?

As I'm reading the bio of the Wright Brothers by David McCullough, I am reminded of several conversations I had with a colleague at one of the colleges.

I've always been fond of McCullough's works, beginning with his massive bio of Harry Truman.  I believe the HBO series on John Adams was based on McCullough's fine bio.  And I have a signed copy of his 1776, given to me by a former student.  ("To Mr. Marinucci," he wrote on the title page, "Greetings from one historian to another."  I hope he isn't putting me in his league!  And my former student?  Perhaps my former students exaggerate like my college teammates??????)  He's written books on the Johnstown Flood, the Panama Canal, Teddy Roosevelt, American expatriate artists and authors in Paris in the '20s, and more.  I think McCullough is a fine historian, one of my two or three favorites to read.

And that brings me to my point.  My college colleague, since deceased, always was critical of McCullough and his works.  "He's not a trained history," was his repeated denunciation.  I would argue, "But are his works accurate?  Are they readable?"  My colleague couldn't deny that they were both, very readable and accurate.  But he stuck to his guns, again with, "He's not a trained historian."

If I recall, McCullough's degree is in English and his early jobs included work at newspapers, writing and editing.  He learned well, I think.  Some might quibble with his conclusions/assessments.  For instance, he holds Truman to be "a great President."  I am not quite as effusive, but almost, in my praise for Truman; I think he belongs in the top ten of rankings, ahead of others whose popularity rates more than their effectiveness.  But that's fine--"great" or near great?  That's the stuff of history, the interpretation.

McCullough is also a good speaker and has delivered sound speeches on the importance of history and, esp, how to teach it.  He's big on bringing in the human aspect of history, that history is made by people, people of all stripes.

I'd really like to see McCullough write a bio of Franklin Roosevelt.  I'm curious as to his assessment.  I realize that FDR is a "great" President in so far as his influence is concerned.  I don't think that "greatness" is reflected in the good of his influence; that is, I think what he did, short-term as well as esp long-term, was detrimental to the US and the American way of life.  I know that's contrary to what we see in most US History textbooks or hear from most historians, but like Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, the Coolidge Presidency, and other episodes of history, I think mainstream historians have got it wrong.  Still, I'd relish to see McCullough's evaluation of FDR.

In a similar vein, perhaps, a few days ago I sent around the Word of the Day entry.  The word was "mugwump."  It's general definition is "a person who is unable to make up his or her mind on an issue, esp. in politics; a person who is neutral on a controversial issue."  There are more specific references, too, with etymology stemming, it is claimed, from the Algonquin language.  In the e-mail I forwarded, I included this, "Some of you who had Professor Rozwenc might recall his definition of 'mugwump.'  It was one "who sat on a fence, his mug hanging over one side and his wump over the other."  Professor Starr (Math), from Amherst, replied to me, "Thanks, Ron.  I always wondereed what 'mugwump' meant.  Takes a history like you to inform me."  Praise from the gods is always cool!

I mentioned my thesis for my third, ugh!, masters degree.  It was 268 pages.  The title?  French Foreign Policy of the Interwar Years.  Mostly, with some background of the '20s, it focuses on French actions, reactions, and inactions of the '30s, up to and including the Munich Agreement.  It ,sprang from a couple of papers I had done earlier, both at Amherst and in grad school, on the British actions, reactions, and inactions of the '30s.  I suppose, in a sense, my thesis was a look at the French the way John Kennedy (at Harvard) looked at the British in his thesis (later becoming a book, Why England Slept.)  I chuckle at the thought......  Instructions for the thesis included a suggested length of about 75 pages.  Oops!  I just kept going and going and going.  The toughest part was typing; this was before computers and word-processing!  After my oral comprehensive exams at Amherst (which were very difficult), I was really sweating my thesis defense, in front of three professors.  I was almost shocked when my adviser opened with something like this, "It's apparent you know far more about this than we do.  What do you want to talk about?"  I didn't have to defend my thesis; apparently it defended itself.  I asked if I could just go home.  My son Matt had been born just a few weeks earlier and I wanted to spend time with my family after weeks of hectic preparation for the defense, a new-born, etc.