March 2016 - Richard M. Langworth

Lehrman on Churchill and Lincoln

24 March 2016 Comments 0 Comments

Lewis E. Lehrman, co-founder of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, offers a compelling two-part comparison of Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill at the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. (To read in entirety, start here.)

Mr. Lehrman is author of Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point (2008) and Lincoln “by littles” (2013). Uniquely among the Lincoln scholars I’ve heard on Churchill, he has as fine a grasp of the English statesman as he does the American president. He tells me he regards each as the outstanding figure of his respective century. No argument there.

1. Lehrman on Preparation for Greatness

Excerpt: President Lincoln and Prime Minister Churchill found themselves challenged by wars of national survival.…

Ty Cobb: Inconvenient Truths

10 March 2016 Comments 0 Comments

Cobb as Monster: “Give people something they want to believe and they will take it and run with it and make it their own. After all, who doesn’t like a monster story—especially one that allows the teller to express his own superiority—to say, ‘I’m not a slave to feelings of racism and anger like this pathetic man was; I look down upon that kind of behavior.’ A scary story that is also a feel-good story is hard to beat.”

Charles Leerhsen has done a rare thing: bucked popular cant and human nature to deliver a breathtaking reappraisal of the greatest baseball player of all time.…

Chartwell and Churchill, 1955

1 March 2016 Comments 0 Comments

Chartwell, 1955— Here is one of the finest—as it is the most revealing—portraits of Churchill at Chartwell we can read, by the Oxford historian A.L. Rowse, who spent a memorable day at Churchill’s home.

It gives an insightful view of Churchill and Chartwell ten years after World War II, not without pathos and sadness, for even now he was beginning to reflect that he had “achieved a great deal, only to achieve nothing in the end”: a thought however inconceivable in his case, but worth pondering by us all. Read full article at Hillsdale College Churchill Project.…