Sunday, December 22

Tag: american history

When Preachers Were Rock Stars
14Apr By adminNo Comments
Entertainment

When Preachers Were Rock Stars

On an elegant residential block in Brooklyn Heights stands what once may have been the most famous church in America. Plymouth Church, on Orange Street, was founded in 1847 with just twenty-one members. The New York businessmen who established the church, practicing Congregationalists, wanted it to grow, so they offered the job of minister to Henry Ward Beecher, whose preaching prowess had made Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis one of the largest congregations in that city. Beecher accepted the offer. He would preach at Plymouth Church for the next forty years, eventually to full houses of two thousand worshippers of the Christian God.In nineteenth-century America, sermons were a widely diffused entertainment medium. People bought print collections of sermons, but the sermon itse...
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The Joy of the Boston Tea Party, 250 Years Later
16Dec By adminNo Comments
Business

The Joy of the Boston Tea Party, 250 Years Later

A wooden ship called the Dartmouth sailed into Boston Harbor 250 years ago carrying 114 chests of East India Co. tea that brewed, in a way, the American Revolution. On Dec. 16, 1773, fewer than 20 days after the Dartmouth’s arrival from London, dozens of Bostonians climbed aboard and dumped the tea into the harbor, protesting a Parliament-imposed tea tax. The event was recognized immediately as a world-changing event by perceptive observers. “The most magnificent Movement of all,” John Adams wrote in his diary the next day.Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Regarding Henry Kissinger – WSJ
3Dec By adminNo Comments
World

Regarding Henry Kissinger – WSJ

Before I knew him in the flesh, he was a presence on the screen—a shock of white hair, a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, and a gravelly voice out of history: Henry Kissinger on Zoom. It was July 2020, and I was interviewing to become a researcher at Kissinger Associates. Halfway through, a nurse edged a cup of tea and a serving of carrot cake into view. Before indulging, he turned and said to me: “The first time I did this on Zoom, I said, . . . ‘Why don’t you bring some for our guests?’ ” He smiled and his voice softened as he spoke. There it was, the self-deprecating humor. Ninety-seven years old and winking at senescence.Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Henry Kissinger, Statesman and Friend
1Dec By adminNo Comments
World

Henry Kissinger, Statesman and Friend

My father, who worked for the U.S. Treasury in the 1970s, called Henry Kissinger the smartest, hardest-working person he ever knew. As a teenager, I responded by demonstrating against the Nixon administration and the Vietnam War. Little did I understand that Kissinger was working step by step to end the war while the demonstrations took place.Years later I met Henry for the first time. He asked me about how Google worked and joined me on stage at headquarters where he announced that Google was “a threat to the world’s civilization.” The Googlers loved it, and Henry eventually became my best friend.Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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The Intimate Reality of the J.F.K. Assassination
23Nov By adminNo Comments
Entertainment

The Intimate Reality of the J.F.K. Assassination

In the annals of American time, the November 22nd that happened sixty years ago today still casts a very long shadow. It is a cliché, but true nonetheless, that certain events are singularly imprinted—or, maybe, emblazoned—on the consciousness of entire generations. That November day remains pivotal for my generation, as Pearl Harbor was for my father’s, or 9/11 for my daughter’s.What is perhaps less evident is how these events not only forge a strong memory, but will suddenly make memory exist, turning our minds inside out. Whereas private things rising from within ourselves had once reigned, public things, coming from outside, now take pride of place. The private obsessions come back, of course, but the public ones now become hard to shake or ignore. My father feels this way about Pearl...
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