Word: historians
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...tends to think of the future as if it were a distant country, across an ocean of time. From the viewpoint of the historian, each decade has a character and often even a language all its own, and the passage from one period into another is a real, if invisible border crossing in human lives. Trying to determine that language and that character ahead of time is a hazardous venture. No one in 1959 foresaw the turmoil of the '60s, especially the rebellion of the young. Assassinations can rob a nation of its leaders, unexpected wars can desiccate...
...wits, "and always will be." Sadly enough, the prospect for Brazil and most other underdeveloped nations of the Third World during the '70s could scarcely be gloomier. The prognosis is for a decade of anarchy and political instability, of coups and countercoups, and of widespread suffering. Historian Arnold Toynbee predicts that "the present worldwide discontent and unrest will become more acute, and will express itself in worse and worse outbreaks of violence. In fact, I expect to see local civil wars take the place of a third international...
...American romantics of the '60s shared with their forerunners a vision of profound, if unspecific change that would regenerate mankind. In urging the abolition of the common law in England and the repudiation of the national debt, Percy Bysshe Shelley, according to Historian Crane Brinton, "saw nothing between himself and his dream." A poetic-minded radical of the '60s, Carl Oglesby, described the comparable Utopian stance of today's revolutionary: "Perhaps he has no choice and he is pure fatality: perhaps there is no fatality and he is pure will. His position may be invincible, absurd, both...
Momentary Glow. Gibbon got off to an unlikely start to be historian of anything. Until he was in his teens, he was so frail that his father, Edward Gibbon, gave the name Edward to several succeeding sons-just in case. By his own account, young Gibbon "swallowed more Physic than food," had a "strange nervous affection" in his legs, and was bitten by "a dog most vehemently suspected of madness...
...long statement to the Faculty explaining his decision, Ford said he is resigning for personal reasons-primarily to continue his career as a historian...