Remember Richard Jewell? He was accused of placing a bomb in Atlanta’s Centennial Park during the 1996 Olympics. He endured a horrific trial (and conviction) by media and had his life destroyed. Turned out he was innocent. The guilty party was anti-abortion terrorist Eric Rudolph. Jewell sued several media outlets (including CNN), reaching settlements in […]
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Playing with pain: RGIII and the challenge of The Sport Ethic
It’s not often you get to see one of your research interests play out in real-time. But last night, during the Seahawks-Redskins playoff game, we saw The Sport Ethic clearly illustrated. Quick refresher: The Sport Ethic is a concept from sports sociology (Hughes & Coakely, 1991) in which they found four traits that elite athletes believe. One […]
Netflix streaming movies: the 18 horror of 2012
As if to say, “oh, the horror.” Oops, did I miss a word? Shouldn’t that be “the best of horror 2012?” No. If I did a Top 18 list for 2012 releases available via Netflix streaming, that would be all of them. This really is just the horror of 2012. That’s right, and this is […]
Review: Django Unchained
I am not a movie guy, but this weekend I saw a movie so spectacular, so breathtaking that I feel compelled to attempt a review. The movie is Django Unchained, and I went to see it, I admit, because I just wrote a book that also features a black gunman. I was afraid that coincidence […]
Telling History vs. Making Art: Fictions and Histories
Final part of a series “[H]istory and historical fiction,” says historian Paul Ashdown, “are alternate ways of telling stories about the past.” In that context, Ulysses S. Grant spoke more truth than he realized when he said “Wars produce many stories of fiction.” Aside from yarn-spun anecdotes about apple-tree surrenders and lemon-sucking generals, war also produces “stories […]
Do we need winter storm names?
For those of you who have not noticed, the Weather Channel has decided to start a new trend: named Winter Storms. I had not realized this effort was being made until a colleague referred to the current storm heading towards the Great Lakes as “Draco.” “Draco” as in “Draco Malfoy” from Harry Potter. Actually the […]
Playing Far Cry 3 in the aftermath of Sandy Hook
The Atlantic describes “Far Cry 3″ as the “First Video-Game About the Millennials.” John Walker, at rockpapershotgun.com, describes it more prosaically: “A group of wretched white rich kids arrive on an island for a holiday of self-indulgence and thrill-seeking, their fear of leaving adolescence exposed by their need to jump out of aeroplanes rather than […]
Sandy Hook: a media feeding frenzy
Like everyone else’s, my heart is with the victims of Sandy Hook. Whatever else is said surrounding every conceivable side issue, this is the one thing on which I believe we can all agree – that this tragedy is first and foremost about the victims, the family and friends, the colleagues. Our sincere condolences and […]
Telling History vs. Making Art: Fictions told until they are believed to be true
Part eight in a series “Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true,” Ulysses S. Grant said in his Personal Memoirs. Grant was specifically referring to a fiction “based on a slight foundation of fact” from Appomattox Court House, where Robert E. Lee’s army surrendered. The formal surrender […]
Telling History vs. Making Art: Communicating “the incommunicable experience of war”
Part seven in a series “We have shared the incommunicable experience of war,” Oliver Wendell Holmes says at the beginning of Ken Burns’ documentary The Civil War. Burns could not have picked a more appropriate quote to start his film with, not just because it set a particular tone for the entire eleven-hour documentary but because it […]
Telling History vs. Making Art: The Civil War’s great storyteller
Part six in a series. No written work embodies the tension between art and history more fully than Shelby Foote’s mammoth three-volume The Civil War: A Narrative. Few people realize Foote was a novelist before he became the “warm and folksy raconteur” of anecdotal Civil War history; his novel Shiloh sits almost forgotten in the shadow of his magnum […]
Telling History vs. Making Art: Killer Angels, real and fictional
Part five in a series. In my last post, I began to discuss Michael Shaara’s aesthetic choices for constructing The Killer Angels as he did, and how he adopted a Lost Cause-interpretation of Robert E. Lee as a central choice for his novel. Where Shaara deviates significantly from Lost Cause tradition, though, is his choice to make Confederate […]
Is Paul Ryan a “Global Thinker?”
This explains so much. Foreign Policy magazine, that impressive and deep-looking tome that stands out on magazine stands because it looks, well, really serious, has published a list of the most important “Global Thinkers” in the world today. Since I’m not a regular reader, I don’t know if this is an annual list, like the […]
Telling History vs. Making Art: Gods & Jacksons
Part four in a series. One of my favorite places to work at Fredericksburg & Spostylvania National Military Park is the Stonewall Jackson Shrine, the small plantation office building where the Confederate general died. It’s a story I love so much that I wrote a book about it, The Last Days of Stonewall Jackson. But no book […]
Telling History vs. Making Art: “Frankly, my dear….”
Part three in a series As the horn section carries Max Steiner’s score from its overture into the sweeping, now-iconic strings of its main theme, Gone With the Wind opens with haggard-looking slaves returning from a hard day’s work set against the first of many sunset backdrops. On-screen text immediately evokes a romanticized antebellum past: There was a […]
S&R Honors
Click here to learn more about past honorees...- “Where Girls Grow Strong” – and Boy Scouts follow
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