A narrative for our time: The Enola Gay "and after that, period"

Technology and Culture

Volumn 45, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 373-395

  Post, Robert C ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 2942545820     PISSN: 0040165X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (87)

1. William Triplett, "Hold Everything!" Smithsonian, December 2003, 58-63, quote on 60.
2. Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore, 1987), 14; Crouch to Harwit, 21 July 1993. This memo is reproduced in The Enola Gay Debate, one of several bound volumes of documents, articles, and manifestoes available from the Air Force Association in Arlington, Virginia.
3. Tom Engelhardt, "Fifty Years Under a Cloud: The Uneasy Search for Our Atomic History," Harper's, January 1996, 72.
4. Thirty-six thousand readers and an unspecified number of journalists responded to the poll; results are available at www.newseum.org/century/ finalresults.htm. White, 24.
5. Aside from Zeppelin raids during World War I, the devastation of the Basque town of Guernica by Franco's Nazi allies on 27 April 1937 is regarded as the first deliberate targeting of civilian populations from the air in order to "break the spirit" of resistance. A reproduction of Picasso's mural Guernica that hangs outside the entrance to the United Nations Security Council often provides the backdrop for diplomats speaking to television reporters - but not always; it was covered up in February 2003 when Colin Powell went to the UN to make the case for invading Iraq. As to proper endings, I assume that a great many historical outcomes will be contingent on whether neoconservative unilateralism is as misconceived as it seems as I write.
6. Tibbets made this remark, though not for the first time, in an article titled "Our Job Was to Win," American Legion, November 1994, 68.
7. A facetious remark of mine - about a line-by-line review of the script by the American Legion perhaps leading, in another context, to a similar review by the Christian Coalition ("A Museum in Crisis," U.S. News and World Report, 13 February 1996, 74) - brought quite a few letters, one of them informing me that it would be God's will if the Christian Coalition "had the exclusive privilege of deciding what is exhibited and how."
8. Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War (New York, 1989), 133, 138, The first iteration of the script, minus photo captions, is printed in Philip Nobile, ed., Judgement at the Smithsonian (New York, 1995), with the quoted phrases - which did unending damage to NASM despite being edited out of subsequent revisions - on page 3.
9. Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War (New York, 1989), 133, 138, The first iteration of the script, minus photo captions, is printed in Philip Nobile, ed., Judgement at the Smithsonian (New York, 1995), with the quoted phrases - which did unending damage to NASM despite being edited out of subsequent revisions - on page 3.
10. See Joanne M. Gernstein London, "A Modest Show of Arms: Exhibiting the Armed Forces and the Smithsonian Institution, 1945-1976" (Ph.D. diss., George Washington University, 2000). The tone of NASM's formal authorization, which includes a phrase about "provid[ing] educational material for the historical study of aviation and space flight," is entirely different from the authorization of the aborted armed forces museum, which concludes thus: "the sacrifice demanded in our constant search for world peace shall be clearly demonstrated."
11. Richard H. Kohn, "History and the Culture Wars: The Case of the Smithsonian Institution's Enola Gay Exhibition," Journal of American History 82 (1995): 1044. Before going to Chapel Hill, Kohn had been chief of air force history from 1981 to 1991.
12. Matthew W. Roth, "Face Value: Objects of Industry and the Visitor Experience," Public Historian 22 (summer 2000): 33-48, quote on 35.
13. Kohn to Alex Roland, 8 March 2004, copy in author's possession.
14. John Leo, "The National Museums of PC," U.S. News and World Report, 10 October 1994, 21.
15. Howard Means, "The Quiet Revolutionary," Washingtonian, August 1987. Adams spent thirty-seven years at the University of Chicago before coming to the Smithsonian.
16. See, for example, Harwit, "Our Reputation Is Not for Rent," Washington Post, 23 December 1989, and, for the attitude of curators toward including such a "highly controversial object," the exchange of correspondence in the Journal of American History 83 (1996): 305-18, among Von Hardesty, Harwit, and others.
17. See, for example, Harwit, "Our Reputation Is Not for Rent," Washington Post, 23 December 1989, and, for the attitude of curators toward including such a "highly controversial object," the exchange of correspondence in the Journal of American History 83 (1996): 305-18, among Von Hardesty, Harwit, and others.
18. Quoted in J. Lynn Lunsford and George E. Hicks, "Interview - Paul W. Tibbets," Dallas Morning News, 5 February 1995.
19. Engelhardt (n. 3 above), 76.
20. Johnson had been informed by the press that ten thousand copies were already in print, and presumably these were shredded. In 1989 and 1990, the museum had hosted a series of talks and discussions on strategic bombing, with a stellar array of speakers ranging from Kurt Vonnegut to Curtis LeMay, and Harwit repeatedly announced that the Smithsonian would publish a volume titled The Legacy of Strategic Bombing. It never appeared either. Still, rather than bearing out Eugene Emme's 1982 lament that NASM "has spent more of its energy on the circus and newsworthy things rather than becoming the center for world research as might have been hoped for" (Emme to the author, 13 June 1982), staffers have left a remarkable legacy of scholarship during the past twenty years, including Michael Neufeld's The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemunde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era (New York, 1995), which won SHOT'S Dexter Prize in 1997.
21. Martin Harwit, An Exhibit Denied: Lobbying the History of the Enola Gay (New York, 1996), xiv, viii, 429.
22. Sam Johnson to Heyman, 22 March 1995, copy in The Enola Gay Debate (n. 2 above); John T. Correll, "The Three Doctors and the Enola Gay" Air Force, November 1994, 8-11. Correll claimed "that Smithsonian as a whole and Air and Space curators in particular. . . sometimes took a skeptical or disparaging attitude toward aviation, flight, air power, space exploration, even science and technology per se" ("War Stories at Air and Space," Air Force, April 1994, 26). In fact, such curators were in a distinct minority. At the 1994 SHOT business meeting in Lowell, Massachusetts, an NMAH curator sought a resolution arguing a breach of academic freedom, but by the end of the meeting that had been reduced to an innocuous comment about "professional integrity."
23. Sam Johnson to Heyman, 22 March 1995, copy in The Enola Gay Debate (n. 2 above); John T. Correll, "The Three Doctors and the Enola Gay" Air Force, November 1994, 8-11. Correll claimed "that Smithsonian as a whole and Air and Space curators in particular. . . sometimes took a skeptical or disparaging attitude toward aviation, flight, air power, space exploration, even science and technology per se" ("War Stories at Air and Space," Air Force, April 1994, 26). In fact, such curators were in a distinct minority. At the 1994 SHOT business meeting in Lowell, Massachusetts, an NMAH curator sought a resolution arguing a breach of academic freedom, but by the end of the meeting that had been reduced to an innocuous comment about "professional integrity."
24. Sam Johnson to Heyman, 22 March 1995, copy in The Enola Gay Debate (n. 2 above); John T. Correll, "The Three Doctors and the Enola Gay" Air Force, November 1994, 8-11. Correll claimed "that Smithsonian as a whole and Air and Space curators in particular. . . sometimes took a skeptical or disparaging attitude toward aviation, flight, air power, space exploration, even science and technology per se" ("War Stories at Air and Space," Air Force, April 1994, 26). In fact, such curators were in a distinct minority. At the 1994 SHOT business meeting in Lowell, Massachusetts, an NMAH curator sought a resolution arguing a breach of academic freedom, but by the end of the meeting that had been reduced to an innocuous comment about "professional integrity."
25. Like Harwit, Engen had spent a term as a NASM fellow, during which time he wrote an engaging memoir, Wings and Warriors: My Life as a Naval Aviator (Washington, D.C., 1997).
26. In January 2004 Small was sentenced to two years probation for violating a federal law by purchasing for his personal collection South American tribal artifacts made with the feathers of protected species such as the great egret, and in February the director of the zoo, Lucy Spelman, one of Small's first appointments, announced her resignation. For just a sampling of the devastating criticism levied at Small, see Bob Thompson, "History for $ale," Washington Post Sunday Magazine, 20 January 2002; Larry Van Dyne, "Money Man," Washingtonian, March 2002; and Joanna Neuman, "The Storm at the Smithsonian," Los Angeles Times, 2 June 2002.
27. In January 2004 Small was sentenced to two years probation for violating a federal law by purchasing for his personal collection South American tribal artifacts made with the feathers of protected species such as the great egret, and in February the director of the zoo, Lucy Spelman, one of Small's first appointments, announced her resignation. For just a sampling of the devastating criticism levied at Small, see Bob Thompson, "History for $ale," Washington Post Sunday Magazine, 20 January 2002; Larry Van Dyne, "Money Man," Washingtonian, March 2002; and Joanna Neuman, "The Storm at the Smithsonian," Los Angeles Times, 2 June 2002.
28. In January 2004 Small was sentenced to two years probation for violating a federal law by purchasing for his personal collection South American tribal artifacts made with the feathers of protected species such as the great egret, and in February the director of the zoo, Lucy Spelman, one of Small's first appointments, announced her resignation. For just a sampling of the devastating criticism levied at Small, see Bob Thompson, "History for $ale," Washington Post Sunday Magazine, 20 January 2002; Larry Van Dyne, "Money Man," Washingtonian, March 2002; and Joanna Neuman, "The Storm at the Smithsonian," Los Angeles Times, 2 June 2002.
29. Benjamin Forgey, "Lots of Air, and Plenty of Space," Washington Post, 16 December 2003.
30. Matthew L. Wald, "A Museum Increases Its Wingspan," New York Times, 16 November 2003. In March 2004 the theater was featuring IMAX NASCAR, "thrills, spills, and white-knuckle chills" (per the Dallas Morning News), narrated by Kiefer Sutherland. Go figure.
31. Matthew L. Wald, "A Museum Increases Its Wingspan," New York Times, 16 November 2003. In March 2004 the theater was featuring IMAX NASCAR, "thrills, spills, and white-knuckle chills" (per the Dallas Morning News), narrated by Kiefer Sutherland. Go figure.
32. Udvar-Hazy quoted in Jacqueline Trescott, "The Gift that Got an Air Museum Off the Ground," Washington Post, 8 October 1999; also Smithsonian Today 1 (fall 1999): 1.
33. Udvar-Hazy quoted in Jacqueline Trescott, "The Gift that Got an Air Museum Off the Ground," Washington Post, 8 October 1999; also Smithsonian Today 1 (fall 1999): 1.
34. Ringle, "Ready for Takeoff," Washington Post, 14 December 2003.
35. The 707 was restored by its manufacturer, probably NASM's most reliable corporate angel. On 7 December 2003, Boeing placed a dramatic spread in a twenty-page Udvar-Hazy "advertorial" supplement in the Washington Post Sunday Magazine, which mentioned "commercial aviation, space exploration, and unmanned flight," but not military aviation. This was perhaps understandable in view of a current scandal involving Pentagon procurement of Boeing tankers. Joe Corn emphasizes a crucial factor in NASM's history, namely that "aerospace probably generates a larger community of interest between those who interpret it and those who manufacture and use the artifacts than any other technological subject." "Tools, Technologies, and Contexts," in History Museums in the United States: A Critical Assessment, ed. Warren Leon and Roy Rosenzweig (Chicago, 1989), 244.
36. Lawrence M. Small, "A Century's Roar and Buzz," Smithsonian, December 2003, 20.
37. House Subcommittee on Libraries and Memorials, Smithsonian Institution: General Background - Policies and Goals from 1846 to Present, 91 Cong., 2d sess., 21 July1970, 185.
38. Michal McMahon, "The Romance of Technological Progress: A Critical Review of the National Air and Space Museum," Technology and Culture 22 (1981): 296.
39. Quoted in Ken Ringle, "Enola Gay, at Ground Zero: Smithsonian Exhibit Plans Produce a Fallout of Controversy," Washington Post, 26 September 1994. On Harwit's aim "to come to terms with the societal significance of technologies," see Sam Batzli, "From Heroes to Hiroshima: The National Air and Space Museum Adjusts Its Point of View," Technology and Culture 31 (1990): 830-37.
40. Quoted in Ken Ringle, "Enola Gay, at Ground Zero: Smithsonian Exhibit Plans Produce a Fallout of Controversy," Washington Post, 26 September 1994. On Harwit's aim "to come to terms with the societal significance of technologies," see Sam Batzli, "From Heroes to Hiroshima: The National Air and Space Museum Adjusts Its Point of View," Technology and Culture 31 (1990): 830-37.
41. As for the audience at Udvar-Hazy, when I visited in January and spent time in the vicinity of the Enola Gay, it was white, 90 percent male, at least 50 percent older than fifty.
42. Dailey quoted in Matthew L. Wald, "A Big Museum Opens, to Jeers as Well as Cheers," New York Times, 16 December 2003.
43. Introductory letter, 23 August 2003, signed by Peter Kuznick, Kevin Martin, and Daniel Ellsberg, and "Statement of Principles," www.enola-gay.org.
44. Quoted in McMahon, 282.
45. It needs to be added that not all the engines of destruction are American built, but German, Japanese, British, French, and Soviet as well.
46. Engelhardt (n. 3 above), 76.
47. Even Crouch's superb book, Wings (New York, 2003), 14, simply includes the Enola Gay in the midst of a long list of NASM's well-known planes (". . . Wiley Post's Winnie Mae, Howard Hughes's classic H-1 racing aircraft, the B-29 Enola Gay, the Bell X-1 . . ."). Of the aircraft shown in a picture book about Udvar-Hazy, America's Hangar (Washington, D.C., 2003), about three-fourths are warplanes. Some photos are shamelessly trivial, as when the Blackbird is posed with a red Corvette and is captioned "the Corvette of modern aircraft" (48).
48. Courtland Milloy, "The Enola Gay in a Truly Terrifying Light," Washington Post, 17 December 2004.
49. Dailey quoted in Jacqueline Trescott, "Enola Gay Exhibit Won't Be Changed," Washington Post, 11 November 2003.
50. One piece of the context of this remark is particularly worth noting: While the deaths of Americans in Iraq were making the news nearly every day, the media was largely mute about "all casualties associated with the conflict" - that is, other casualties. "We don't keep a list," said a Pentagon spokeswoman.
51. London (n. 9 above), 5.
52. See Robert C. Post, "'A Very Special Relationship': SHOT and the Smithsonian's Museum of History and Technology," Technology and Culture 42 (2001): 401-35, and Alex Roland, "Celebration or Education? The Goals of the U.S. National Air and Space Museum," History and Technology 10 (1993): 77-89. In 2004, NMAH will open a military history exhibit that comes as close to the present as Iraq, funded by a donor intent on transforming what he decries (with baffling logic) as "a multiculture museum" into "an American history museum"; Kenneth Behring, quoted in Thompson, "History for $ale" (n. 22 above), 25.
53. See Robert C. Post, "'A Very Special Relationship': SHOT and the Smithsonian's Museum of History and Technology," Technology and Culture 42 (2001): 401-35, and Alex Roland, "Celebration or Education? The Goals of the U.S. National Air and Space Museum," History and Technology 10 (1993): 77-89. In 2004, NMAH will open a military history exhibit that comes as close to the present as Iraq, funded by a donor intent on transforming what he decries (with baffling logic) as "a multiculture museum" into "an American history museum"; Kenneth Behring, quoted in Thompson, "History for $ale" (n. 22 above), 25.
54. See Robert C. Post, "'A Very Special Relationship': SHOT and the Smithsonian's Museum of History and Technology," Technology and Culture 42 (2001): 401-35, and Alex Roland, "Celebration or Education? The Goals of the U.S. National Air and Space Museum," History and Technology 10 (1993): 77-89. In 2004, NMAH will open a military history exhibit that comes as close to the present as Iraq, funded by a donor intent on transforming what he decries (with baffling logic) as "a multiculture museum" into "an American history museum"; Kenneth Behring, quoted in Thompson, "History for $ale" (n. 22 above), 25.
55. James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet (New York, 2004), 212, 213.
56. The text of Cheney's speech is available at www.whitehouse.gov/news/ releases.
57. Walter J. Boyne, The Aircraft Treasures of Silver Hill (New York, 1982), 178.
58. Mark Hosenball et al., "Cheney's Long Path to War," Newsweek, 17 November 2003, 34-40; Mann, 201; Colin Powell, My American Journey (New York, 1995), 405. Of the Vietnam era, Powell also wrote (148), "I am angry that so many sons of the powerful and well placed ... managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units."
59. Mark Hosenball et al., "Cheney's Long Path to War," Newsweek, 17 November 2003, 34-40; Mann, 201; Colin Powell, My American Journey (New York, 1995), 405. Of the Vietnam era, Powell also wrote (148), "I am angry that so many sons of the powerful and well placed ... managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units."
60. Mark Hosenball et al., "Cheney's Long Path to War," Newsweek, 17 November 2003, 34-40; Mann, 201; Colin Powell, My American Journey (New York, 1995), 405. Of the Vietnam era, Powell also wrote (148), "I am angry that so many sons of the powerful and well placed ... managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units."
61. Doctorow quoted in Elizabeth Olson, "Criticism Meets New Exhibit of Plane that Carried A-Bomb," New York Times, 2 November 2003.
62. Barton Bernstein, "The Struggle Over History: Defining the Hiroshima Narrative," in Nobile (n. 8 above), 207; Roth (n. 11 above), 48.
63. Barton Bernstein, "The Struggle Over History: Defining the Hiroshima Narrative," in Nobile (n. 8 above), 207; Roth (n. 11 above), 48.
64. Don Phillips, "Did History End in 1926? One Wonders...," Trains, March 2004, 15.
65. Kuznick quoted in Jacqueline Trescott, "Enola Gay Draws More Flak," Washington Post, 6 November 2003.
66. Edward T. Linenthal, "Struggling with History and Memory," Journal of American History 82 (1995): 1094-101, quote on 1100.
67. William Cronon, "A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative," Journal of American History 78 (1992): 1347-76, quote on 1349. In The Landscape of History (New York, 2002), p. 32, John Lewis Gaddis quotes the satirist Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote that "the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that. . . the cartographers's Guilds struck a map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it." As the editor at the Museum of History and Technology during the 1970s, I found that this weird ideal was quite prevalent among curators trying to construct exhibit scripts. Still in a personal vein, I have wondered what might have happened if there had been somebody at NASM in the mid-1990s with the preparation and presence to fend off criticism that often transgressed the bounds of fair play, as Roger Kennedy was able to do at NMAH with exhibits having an equal potential for arousing ire. In 1985, Stanley Goldberg staged an exhibit called Building the Bomb: Forty Years after Hiroshima that attracted a great deal of comment, most of it constructive, and in 1987 Kennedy adeptly defused jingoistic criticism of A More Perfect Union, an exhibit in which Crouch - temporarily displaced from NASM to NMHT - told of the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, an especially provocative narrative given that it was the bicentennial of the United States Constitution.
68. William Cronon, "A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative," Journal of American History 78 (1992): 1347-76, quote on 1349. In The Landscape of History (New York, 2002), p. 32, John Lewis Gaddis quotes the satirist Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote that "the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that. . . the cartographers's Guilds struck a map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it." As the editor at the Museum of History and Technology during the 1970s, I found that this weird ideal was quite prevalent among curators trying to construct exhibit scripts. Still in a personal vein, I have wondered what might have happened if there had been somebody at NASM in the mid-1990s with the preparation and presence to fend off criticism that often transgressed the bounds of fair play, as Roger Kennedy was able to do at NMAH with exhibits having an equal potential for arousing ire. In 1985, Stanley Goldberg staged an exhibit called Building the Bomb: Forty Years after Hiroshima that attracted a great deal of comment, most of it constructive, and in 1987 Kennedy adeptly defused jingoistic criticism of A More Perfect Union, an exhibit in which Crouch - temporarily displaced from NASM to NMHT - told of the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, an especially provocative narrative given that it was the bicentennial of the United States Constitution.
69. Edward Epstein, "Spreading Its Wings: The Smithsonian's Soaring Annex to the Air and Space Museum Shows Sweep of History, through War and Peace," San Francisco Chronicle, 15 February 2004.
70. One can find answers to almost all the questions noted here in fewer than three pages of Anne Millbrooke's Aviation History (Englewood, Colo., 1999), 7.62-65.
71. Chuck Neubauer and Richard T. Cooper, "Senator's Way to Wealth Was Paved With Favors," Los Angeles Times, 17 December 2003. Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation referred to Stevens's "drunken sailor spending attitudes." David Whitney, "Mr. Stevens Goes to Washington," UCLA Magazine 12 (winter 2000): 26-31, quote on 26.
72. Chuck Neubauer and Richard T. Cooper, "Senator's Way to Wealth Was Paved With Favors," Los Angeles Times, 17 December 2003. Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation referred to Stevens's "drunken sailor spending attitudes." David Whitney, "Mr. Stevens Goes to Washington," UCLA Magazine 12 (winter 2000): 26-31, quote on 26.
73. Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), 306. It was with the causes of World War I that the term revisionism became ingrained in historical discourse - in this case with a double meaning. As more documents became available during the 1920s and the war's complex causation more evident, historians revised earlier interpretations and also called for "a 'revision' of that clause in the Treaty of Versailles which declared Germany and her allies were solely responsible." Sidney B. Fay, The Origins of the World War (1928; reprint, New York, 1966), 1:xiii.
74. Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), 306. It was with the causes of World War I that the term revisionism became ingrained in historical discourse - in this case with a double meaning. As more documents became available during the 1920s and the war's complex causation more evident, historians revised earlier interpretations and also called for "a 'revision' of that clause in the Treaty of Versailles which declared Germany and her allies were solely responsible." Sidney B. Fay, The Origins of the World War (1928; reprint, New York, 1966), 1:xiii.
75. Heather MacDonald, "Revisionist Lust: The Smithsonian Today," The New Criterion, May 1997, 17-31. On other instances of Smithsonian involvement in the culture wars, see Robert C. Post and Arthur P. Molella, "The Call of Stories at the Smithsonian Institution: History of Technology and Science in Crisis," ICON 3 (1997): 44-82.
76. Heather MacDonald, "Revisionist Lust: The Smithsonian Today," The New Criterion, May 1997, 17-31. On other instances of Smithsonian involvement in the culture wars, see Robert C. Post and Arthur P. Molella, "The Call of Stories at the Smithsonian Institution: History of Technology and Science in Crisis," ICON 3 (1997): 44-82.
77. Peter Blute, "Revisionist History Has Few Defenders," Technology Review, August-September 1995, 51-52. Under the heading of "The Atomic Age at 50," this issue of Technology Review included seventeen diverse essays; among their authors were John Dower, Bill Holley, Hugh Gusterson, Carl Kaysen, and Alex Roland.
78. John Feinstein, "In Revisionist History, a Final Grade Awaits," Washington Post, 14 February 2004.
79. R. G. Grant, Flight: 100 Years of Aviation (New York, 2002), 255.
80. Linenthal quoted in Nobile (n. 8 above), xliv.
81. Colin Divall and Andrew Scott, Making Histories in Transport Museums (London, 2001), 99.
82. John Dower, "How a Genuine Democracy Should Celebrate Its Past," The Chronicle of Higher Education, 16 June 1995, B1.
83. Donald S. Lopez, quoted in Phil McCombs, "Staying the Course: At Air and Space, a Stout Salute to the Engen Legacy," Washington Post, 15 July 1999. At the time Lopez made this remark, he was acting director of NASM.
84. Kohn, "History and the Culture Wars" (n. 10 above), 1054; Report of the Blue Ribbon Commission on the National Museum of American History Presented to the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution (March 2002), 2.3.
85. Kohn, "History and the Culture Wars" (n. 10 above), 1054; Report of the Blue Ribbon Commission on the National Museum of American History Presented to the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution (March 2002), 2.3.
86. See Robert C. Post, "History and the History of Technology," Technology and Culture 43 (2002); 125-27.
87. See James M. McPherson, "Revisionist Historians," AHA Perspectives, September 2003, 5-6, and, for evidence that the AHA is nothing like an ideological monolith, letters in subsequent issues of Perspectives highly critical of McPherson's remarks about the administration's dissimulation.