The first day of the fall semester of my senior undergraduate year, I ran into a friend of mine, a fellow history major, outside of the student union building at the research university we attended. We stopped and talked for a bit, updating each other on our lives and comparing our fall schedules. My friend had just been to the university bookstore, and he showed me a textbook he had just bought for a History of the Old South class that the history department was offering that fall. Intrigued, I sat in on the class and … [Read more...] about Scholar’s Call: The Joy of Becoming a Generalist
history
Book Review: Mere Believers
Mere Believers: How Eight Faithful Lives Changed the Course of History, Mark Baer. Eugene: Cascade Books, 2013. Summary: Can individuals seeking to live faithfully to their calling change history? These profiles of eight British believers demonstrate that “mere believers” can indeed have a transformative influence in matters both of the heart and of the intellect. … [Read more...] about Book Review: Mere Believers
Book Review: The First Thanksgiving
McKenzie, Robert Tracy. The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us About Loving God and Learning from History. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013. Review by Joshua Shiver “Ours is a present-tense society,” historian Robert Tracy McKenzie notes, “We live in a time and place in which thinking deeply about the past is a countercultural and even a radical act.” Twenty-four hour news channels, instant status updates, and communication with the click of a mouse or tap of a finger have made ours a world of … [Read more...] about Book Review: The First Thanksgiving
Faithful Is Successful: Interview with Howard Louthan
ESN continues its series of interviews with authors of Faithful Is Successful, with Esther Harris interviewing Howard Louthan. You can read Esther's previous post on Howard's chapter in Faithful Is Successful here. In fall 2015 Howard Louthan and his wife Andrea Sterk will be assuming new positions at the University of Minnesota. They both previously taught history at the University of Florida. Howard specializes in the cultural and intellectual history of Renaissance and Reformation Europe with a particular … [Read more...] about Faithful Is Successful: Interview with Howard Louthan
ESN Local: Malice Toward None; Charity for All
Fellow-Countrymen . . . With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. - Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address (March, 4, 1865). On Sunday, November 30, John Fea (Chair, Dept of History, … [Read more...] about ESN Local: Malice Toward None; Charity for All