A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Inning 7: The Capital of Baseball (1950-1960) Written by: Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns Directed by: Ken Burns The Americans are on the move. Moving to the suburbs. Moving across the country. They are, it seems, restless, Of course, if you're a baseball fan in New York, you don't want to move. You're in baseball heaven.  Year after year, the Yankees are on top of the American League. Year after year, the Giants and the Dodgers fight for the National League crown. Starting in 1949, there is a New York team in the World Series for 10 straight years. And in six of those years, both teams are from New York.  On September 26, 1994, the 300 member stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) broadcast The Capital of Baseball (1950-1960), the seventh episode (or "inning") of Ken Burns'  nine-part documentary that chronicled America's national pastime from its beginnings in the 1840s to the early 1990s. Co-written by Burns with historian (and ...

© 2012 University of Illinois Press In February of 2012, the University of Illinois Press published Donald R. Hickey's The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict, Bicentennial Edition, an expanded and updated version of a 1992 work about the United States' second and last war with Great Britain. Based on Hickey's 15 years of studying and writing about specific topics related to this long-neglected conflict in American history, The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict, Bicentennial Edition is considered by many historians and literary critics to be the definitive account of "the Second War of Independence," as the three-year clash of arms was dubbed by many of its contemporary supporters. Hickey, who teaches history at Wayne State College in Nebraska, goes beyond the usual "military history" approach of other authors who focus almost exclusively on the battles on land and sea. In The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict, the respected author of such books as D...

© 1977 Simon and Schuster On September 7, 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Panamanian General Omar Torrijos signed two treaties,  The Treaty Concerning the Permanent Neutrality and Operation of the Panama Canal and The Panama Canal Treaty, in Washington, D.C. Known as the Carter-Torrijos Treaties, these documents guaranteed Panamanian sovereignty over what had been the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal Zone as of 1979 and sole ownership of the Panama Canal as of December 31, 1999. In essence, these agreements - which were highly controversial in American conservative circles before, during, and even after they were negotiated, signed, and ratified by both countries, replaced the 1903 Hay– Bunau-Varilla Treaty, a document which, in essence, ceded the canal and the land adjacent to it (including islands within the canal itself) to the United States.  Earlier in the year, Simon and Schuster of New York published The Path Between the Seas: The...

Cover design by Rex Boronelli. (C) 2010 Last Laugh, Inc. and Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all the territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited. Section 2. The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress. - The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which became the law of the land in January of 1920 "THE STREETS OF San Francisco...

How can we return American society to the 1950s, when people were more politically incorrect? You can’t. Time, societies, and history only go forward in time,  not  backward. The idealized 1950s Extreme conservatives who also happen to be white, religious (often Evangelical Protestants but, really, from any denomination) that miss the “good ol’ days” seem to be asking this, not just on Quora, but in other social media and in “real life” conversations. On the surface, asking “How can we return American society to the ‘50s, when people were more politically incorrect?” seems rather innocent enough, evoking nostalgia for an era where life seemed idyllic. Idyllic, that is, if you were a white person, especially a white male person, with strong religious beliefs and staunchly conservative political views. What the questioner is really asking, though, is this: Why can’t we return American society to a period of history when it was: Okay to discriminate against ...

(C) 2017 Alfred A. Knopf  Books; Cover art by Public Broadcasting Service On September 5, 2017, almost two weeks before The Vietnam War: A Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick premiered on TV's Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), Alfred A. Knopf published the companion book, The Vietnam War: An Intimate History. Co-written by the series' writer, Geoffrey C. Ward, and producer-director Ken Burns, this 640-page volume brings the tragedy of the Vietnam War back to life on the printed page with the same sense of historical sweep as the 10-part documentary it complements. The Vietnam War was more than a Cold War-era clash of arms fought mainly by the U.S. and its South Vietnamese allies against the Communist-led government of North Vietnam and its guerrilla allies of the National Liberation Front - known by Washington and Saigon as the Viet Cong - in the South. It was that, of course, but the war was also the most divisive event in American history since the Civil War of the m...

Episode Six: Things Fall Apart (January 1968-July 1968) Written by: Geoffrey C. Ward Directed by: Ken Burns and Lynn Novick At the onset of the Tet holiday, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launch surprise attacks on cities and military bases throughout the South, suffering terrible losses but casting grave doubt on the Johnson administration's promise that there is "light at the end of the tunnel." The President decides not to run again and the country is staggered by assassinations and unrest. - from The Vietnam War's Episode List On September 24 2017, millions of television viewers watched "Things Fall Apart (January 1968-July 1968)" on their local Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) stations, streamed it on the PBS.org website, or had already binge-watched it on high-definition Blu-ray (the box set was released on September 19). Per PBS:   Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's ten-part, 18-hour documentary series, THE VIETNAM WAR, tells the e...