There’s a lot to like about the Netflix series The Crown, but I’m particularly struck that it’s that rarest of TV shows: one that takes religion seriously. In season 1, that theme showed up as the family of Queen Elizabeth II educate her about her role. Her dying grandmother insists that “Monarchy is God’s sacred mission … More Religion in Season 3 of The Crown
Back in the fall of 2016, while my family was on sabbatical in Virginia, an editor’s suggestion that I write a religious biography of Charles Lindbergh made him the unnamed center of a three-part series on biography that I wrote for The Anxious Bench. If I did write such a book about Lindbergh, I mused … More “An Honest Witness”: The Diaries of Anne Morrow Lindbergh
One reason my blogging here has been rather hit-or-miss lately is that I’ve been busy researching my “spiritual, but not religious” biography of Charles A. Lindbergh. I didn’t repeat last summer’s productive East Coast swing through Lindbergh papers at Yale University and the Library of Congress, but I have been reading a wide variety of … More Lindbergh and the Space Race
This weekend I’d like to take a break from That Was The Week That Was and share something lighter… For those of you who aren’t Twitter, here’s a recent thread of mine: a perhaps not-quite comprehensive list of depictions of Charles Lindbergh on film and TV. (You can tell that I’m not much of a … More Silver (and Small) Screen Lindberghs
On Monday Christians around the world heard again Luke’s story of the Nativity. But after lingering in some detail on the first day of Jesus’ life, that evangelist moves rapidly through the next couple decades. In the same chapter that begins with Jesus’ birth, Luke skips ahead to age 12, then summarizes Jesus’ adolescence and … More Why Every Biography Is Incomplete
I’ve only half-followed the recent Twitter dust-up between historians Thomas Kidd and John Fea and journalist Jonathan Merritt. You can get caught up to speed with this morning’s Anxious Bench post from John Turner. Throw in editor John Wilson (who rose to the historians’ defense), and you’ve got several of my favorite Johns/Jonathans sparring over what it meant … More I’m a Historian, Not an Expert
I haven’t done a lot of work on my Lindbergh biography this fall after a great summer of research. In part, that’s not by choice: I’d much rather learn about aviation than wrestle with a financial crisis at work. But I have tried to let the project lay fallow for a short season, in order … More What Am I Trying to Do as a Biographer?
As we come to the end of Bethel’s summer break, I’m pretty happy with the research I’ve been able to do for my new Charles Lindbergh biography. As I told historian Jared Burkholder today for his new Historians on the Hot Seat series, The very idea of writing a spiritual biography of a someone as non-religious as Lindbergh is a bit … More A Good Summer of Lindbergh Research
“We are not here to-day to mourn their deaths. Nothing would so shock the devoted and exultant spirit of their service.” So said former Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson in November 1920, as Yale University dedicated tablets in Memorial Hall with the names of 227 Yalies who had fallen in the recent World War. “We … More The Birth of America First
I’ve written before that “I’ve dreaded the day I’ll finally need to write a chapter or two on [Charles] Lindbergh’s response to the rise of Nazi Germany.” That concern came back to mind yesterday, when I visited the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and went through the temporary exhibit on “Americans and the Holocaust.” About halfway … More Was Charles Lindbergh Anti-Semitic?
