Modern History Notes

by Cliopatria

At Google Life, you can search"millions" of photographs, many of them not published before, from Life magazine's photo archive. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.

Christopher Benfey,"The American Loneliness," TNR, 3 December, reviews Robin G. Wilder and Jackson R. Bryer, eds., The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder.

Adam Liptak and Jonathan D. Glater,"Papers Offer Close-Up of Rehnquist and the Court," NYT, 17 November, looks at the stories slowly unfolding from the William Rehnquist papers at Stanford's Hoover Institution. At Legal History, Mary Dudziak offers some tips for research at the Hoover Archives.

David Berreby,"Only in America?" Slate, 17 November, questions the exultation about the election of Barack Obama as an outburst of American exceptionalism. What about England's Benjamin Disraeli, France's Napoleon Bonaparte, Germany's Cem Ozdemir, Peru's Alberto Fujimori, India's Sonia Gandhi, or Kenya's Daniel arap Moi? Or the Roman Empire's North African, Syrian, and Balkan emperors? Outsiders, all.

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Manan Ahmed - 11/19/2008

I am very happy that "something new" has happened. I am just not convinced he is an "Outsider".

Ralph E. Luker - 11/19/2008

I don't deny a single thing that you've said, but to pass over the fact that he is ethnically kin to people who've never had a relative elected President is simply to ignore the very large role that race has played in American history and fails to recognize that something new in our history has happened in this election.

Manan Ahmed - 11/19/2008

Sonia Gandhi.

Manan Ahmed - 11/19/2008

So: throughout the election cycle, the Clinton and McCain campaigns made a damn concerted effort to paint Obama an "outsider" and we are supposed to concede it now? Because he won?

Obama is an American citizen, who went to Columbia and Harvard and was elected to state and national offices. He shares the majority religion and the majority politics. What exactly is analogous to Supriya Gandhi in his life?

Ralph E. Luker - 11/19/2008

Given the much-discussed fact that he is the first person of African descent to be elected President, I think you have to concede that he is, in some sense, an "outsider". But it is equally or, even, more importantly the case that the election probably re-defines and expands notions of what the "inside" is.

Manan Ahmed - 11/19/2008

Obama is an outsider?