In my thirty years of researching and writing anniversary history books there have been many moments of exhilaration; times when a discovery or new frame of reference either confirmed or confounded months of theories and assumptions. Some of the enjoyment comes from the thrill of the chase. But there is something more fundamental at work—these […]
Over the years I have spoken to hundreds of potential clients interested in corporate history books. Nearly all understood that there is a difference between history and public relations, but few seemed to know what it was. One company even got a proposal from me, handed it over to its PR team, and came back […]
In 2019 I had the honor of serving as oral history consultant for the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), among the oldest and largest of the institutes under the National Institutes of Health. My preparation for a series of video interviews took me through diverse areas of research that have […]
The year 1920 marked the emergence of decentralized management, which enabled large, capital intensive firms to succeed for the rest of the century. But every company was not a GM or a DuPont. There were other businesses in mining, textiles, and construction, for example, which sought to remain efficient and competitive while operating on a […]
The year 2020 may well change the course of business history for years to come. The year 1920, another time of turmoil and recession, most certainly did. The turn of the century had begun a lengthy period of growth for American business giving rise to national, capital-intensive companies that could obtain ever higher efficiencies due […]
On my Kindle is a famous novel of a Welsh mining family, on my Spotify playlist a classic album from the cutting edge of the outlaw country music movement, and on my calendar, a reminder to write a blog. Obviously then, the subject will be the role of experience in storytelling. At least a dozen […]
This spring the Monongahela National Forest celebrated its 100th Anniversary. It is generally assumed that national forests were set aside as places to recreate and reflect. In this case, however, those aspirations came later. The creation of the Monongahela National Forest was all about the water. In the early 20th century lumber barons were clear-cutting […]
For every Lincoln and Roosevelt there have been many other presidents content to blather their way through office. Few did as much damage to our language as a former Ohio newspaper editor whose speeches, a contemporary wrote, sounded like “an army of pompous phrases moving across the landscape in search of an idea.” Recently I […]
College students face a tough close to the school year. The Atlantic, with its characteristic sense of history recently called the coronavirus pandemic “the single most disruptive event in American higher education in at least a half century.” It is worth looking back fifty years in university history to the last time school was out. […]
Allan Nevins was a journalist, biographer, oral historian, and chronicler of corporations. He was never officially a historical consultant. His life’s work, however, set standards that every historian worth his or her hire should follow, namely: that history should be well-written, that it should be informed by lived experience through oral history, and that it […]