Winter 2019 Director’S Column
WINTER 2019 DIRECTOR’S COLUMN If you’ll pardon a personal memory, I remember people who studied households, hearing a short news piece on the radio in, it had to have work and leisure, popular reli- been 1972, when I was twelve. It started, “And here’s a story gion, and what some French you may be hearing more about.” Of course it was about the scholars were calling mental- break-in at Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. ités. Avoiding kings, queens, For the next year and a half, I heard and read a lot and presidents, this was scholarship about things that more about that story. As a kid who wanted to be a mattered to me, especially in wake of how Watergate serious person, I was a fan of politics and political encouraged me to doubt not just the self-righteousness history as much as baseball, and I knew the names and but the very importance of the powerful. I could have parties of all of the presidents and their vice presidents, taken an alternative approach, writing for example, about who ran against them, and some of the major issues of Watergate and southern history (and now that sounds like their presidencies. As a twelve year old, that’s what I an intriguing conference), but in the 1980s my first US assumed history was. So I followed the Watergate news history survey classes rarely said much about presidents as I followed baseball, every day and with great detail. If and people like them. there had been box scores or trading cards for politicians, Pretty quickly there were scholars challenging parts I would have read and collected them.
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