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Mass Market Paperback A place for Theodore: The murder of Dr. Theodore Parkman, Boston, Massachusetts & Whitehall, North Carolina Book

ISBN: 0965648400

ISBN13: 9780965648400

A place for Theodore: The murder of Dr. Theodore Parkman, Boston, Massachusetts & Whitehall, North Carolina

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Format: Mass Market Paperback

Condition: Good

$23.19
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Customer Reviews

4 ratings

a handbook on primary material

Review of A Place for Theodore by Prudence Steiner The writing of history is difficult. If you're writing about someone or something already well known you face a hoard of kibitzers who question every statement that doesn't fit their preconceptions of the case. If you're writing about something unknown, well, where do you begin? How do you know what to look for? How do you know you have found everything? And how do you know how to organize what you do have? George Williams, in A Place for Theodore, has confronted both problems. Well-known is Charles William Eliot, President of Harvard, notable New Englander from a notable family. Loyal Harvard alumni and conventional historians of higher education already "know" all about him. Virtually unknown is Theodore Parkman, chemist, soldier, who was killed and, literally, lost in a small and complicated Civil War battle at Whitehall, North Carolina in 1862. The intersection of these two lives, the process by which Williams has accounted for what is known to have happened, his speculations about what might have happened and why, form the substance of this paperback (Holly Two Leaves Paperback, ISBN 0-9656484-0-0). Don't expect a tidy narrative. That's not how historians work. Pieces--letters, photos, newspaper clippings, old bullets, public proclamations and private denials--swim into the net or are dredged up from murky corners in an unsystematic way. With each new piece, historians must revise their first ideas about what happened, their earlier interpretations of the causes. Most published histories appear after years of research and speculation have refined and polished them into coherence. Williams has chosen another method. For the most part the book brings us the raw materials in a very rough chronological order. Facing pages may include the author's narrative, original materials, photos or diagrams, in an assemblage of elements that is hard for the casual reader to follow but that accurately and vividly evokes the very process by which historians gather and sort out information. Williams' favorite typographical elements seem to be the question mark and the italic; hardly a page appears without several of both. Ordinarily these devices raise suspicion: how much of this book is true? Why is the writer so insistent? Is he right? But this is not an ordinary book; in the best sense, it is not even a finished book. Rather, it shows the process of writing history, and leaves us, the readers, with a sense of the materials and an eagerness to push on, to learn more about Theodore Parkman and why historians are still looking for him. As a former teacher of research techniques, I commend A Place for Theodore to other teachers as well as to Civil War buffs. You may be irritated, you may disagree with the author's tone and conclusions, but Williams's book will give you an unusual collection of materials as well as valuable insights into the slipperiness of "facts."

A unique look at an overlooked incident during the Civil War

Everyone is aware of friendly-fire and "collateral" deaths in war. The Mai Lai massacre in Viet Nam is the most famous. Incidents from the Gulf War are still in the news. Did a President of Harvard help cover-up the death of a Harvard student? Major George Williams has written an interesting tale using historical documents and the soldier's perspective of war. This book is a unique look at an overlooked incident during America's Civil War.

Award

A Place for Theodore won a Willie Parker Peace History Book Award from The North Carolina Society of Historians on Nov. 1, 1997. Mr. L.G. Williams also won two other awards for associated projects.

Full of information such as maps, pictures, documents, etc.

Very detailed description of this battle with very thorough documentation. All of the pages of this inexpensive book were used to the fullest. I felt like I had gotten my moneys worth.Just like being there and some thought provoking conclusions were presented.
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