Gilbert: What JFK Jr. Taught Me
In March 1998, almost exactly fifteen years ago, Time Magazine celebrated its 75th anniversary with a gala gathering at Radio City in New York attended by 1200 of the biggest movers and shakers in the...
View ArticleGilbert: Marooning The Heroes
In April 1813 two hundred years ago this month, an American ship, the Nanina, was sailing off one of the smaller Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic hunting seals. While ashore, the captain, Charles...
View ArticleGilbert: 1937 Guide To Vermont
Seventy-five years ago, a summer visitor to the state would most likely have consulted the Guide to Vermont, published in 1937 by the Federal Writers’ Project - part of FDR’s Works Progress...
View ArticleGilbert: The Campfire
Harvard professor emeritus Edward O. Wilson is regarded as one of the world’s preeminent biologists, sociobiologists, and naturalists. An entomologist, he’s the world’s leading authority on ants. In...
View ArticleGilbert: Holmes, Hiss And History
I’m often struck by how the arc of history often seems remarkably short. Particularly as I’ve grown older, I’ve noticed how important historical events or eras that I’ve thought of as being remote from...
View ArticleGilbert: Coolidge Oath
Ninety years ago tomorrow President Warren G. Harding died suddenly, probably of a heart attack, while on a long and exhausting speaking tour around the American west. With his death Vice President...
View ArticleGilbert: The Case for Humanities
An impressive commission that included Ken Burns, former Supreme Court Justice David Souter, George Lucas, Yo-Yo Ma, eminent scholars, university presidents, and corporate leaders recently released a...
View ArticleGilbert: Birmingham Bombings
In 1963, September 15th was a Sunday , just as it is this year, five decades later, and at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, it was Youth Sunday, the day that the young people in...
View ArticleGilbert: Vampires in Vermont
During the nineteenth-century, it wasn't unusual for several members of the same family to die of consumption, what we now call tuberculosis. People didn't know then that TB is caused by a contagious...
View ArticleGilbert: New US Capital
With a desperate civil war raging, the major expansion of the US Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. was an inspiring symbol of national confidence in the perpetuation of the Union. Ironically in the...
View ArticleGilbert: Time and Reality
What I read was startling. The newspaper said that a development project could happen [quote] “by 2020, 15 years earlier than anticipated.” I thought, wait, what year is it now? 2014. It didn’t take me...
View ArticleGilbert: Dysfunctional Culture
Last spring, when she was a high school senior, our daughter took part in one of many programs that bring high school students from around the country to Washington. Afterwards, she said that what she...
View ArticleGilbert: River Of Doubt
On April 4, 1914, a hundred years ago tomorrow, deep in the Amazon rain forest, former president Theodore Roosevelt lay delirious with a temperature of 105, too weak to lift his head. In just three...
View ArticleGilbert: Importance of Libraries
The University of Chicago Press recently published a gorgeous book about architecture, with compelling text and spectacular photos. It’s entitled The Library, A World History. It takes us from the...
View ArticleGilbert: Everest Disaster
The sound of a massive avalanche of snow – the feel of it - is terrifying. And unforgettable. I keep thinking of the recent avalanche on Mt. Everest that killed sixteen Sherpas who were preparing the...
View ArticleGilbert: Objective History
I’ve been struck by how many books have been published recently that present history through objects. The first I came across was A History of the World in 100 Objects, all drawn from the British...
View ArticleGilbert: Whoa Nellie Deli
Two summers ago, after my wife dropped our daughter and me off in Yosemite National Park to go hiking, the car needed gas, badly. She told me later, with great excitement, that she stopped at a gas...
View ArticleGilbert: Yosemite Protected
For an old rock climber like me, there’s no place in this country more beautiful, more sacred, than Yosemite Valley, with its soaring cliffs of granite. Well, it was a hundred and fifty years ago...
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