More Noted Things

In Michael A. Elliott,"Rick Warren Gives Pre-Inauguration Sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church," Religion Dispatches, 19 January, Emory's Elliott recounts our misadventures yesterday at the Martin Luther King birthday celebration at Ebenezer. There were gay protesters both outside and inside the four hour service and Elliott earns title as"old iron butt" for sitting through all of it. I had to take a bathroom and fresh air break after the first two hours.

Jill Lepore,"Back Issues," New Yorker, 26 January, looks at the early years of American newspapers; and Lepore,"The Speech," New Yorker, 12 January, reviews the history of presidential inaugural addresses.

David Garrow,"An Unfinished Dream," Newsweek, 21 January, warns against seeing Barack Obama's inauguration as the achievement of King's"Dream."

Books that have influenced Barack Obama; and books that he should be reading. The President need not bother with Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, Debra Dickerson's recommendation. Dickerson and anyone still burdening students with it should read: Michael Kazin,"Howard Zinn's History Lessons," Dissent, Spring 2004. Hat tip.

Princeton's Sean Wilentz on Obama and the history of the presidency:

The opportunity is there for Obama to recast the very nature of the presidency. Not since Reagan have we had as capable a persuader as Obama,* and not since FDR has a president come in with quite the configuration of foreign and domestic crises that open up such a possibility for the reconstruction of the executive.

*Is this not a remarkable concession from the leading Clintonista among historians?

Finally, farewell to Yale's Henry Ashby Turner. He will be remembered both for his scholarship and his zealous pursuit of David Abraham. It was not Turner's finest hour.