Steve Goddard's History Wire

New Wine in an Old Bottle

Little did the folks who invented x-ray crystallography a century ago envision that their early 20th century technique would be used to solve early 21st century challenges:

"In x-ray crystallography, the crystals of protein structures are subjected to high-intensity
x-rays. This creates an image of the protein, making it possible to see what its structure
looks like. Dr. Rosalind Franklin famously used the technique to create an image of what
would be identified, in 1953, as the double helix of DNA."

New York Times reporter Claudia Dreifus explores the use of old techniques to yield new scientific breakthrough in an interview with scientist E. Erec Stebbins.

It's Greek to Us

Kalee-maira!

Is that right? Let me look at the book again. Yes, that's right. Kalee-maira means good morning.

Can you believe that while the air corridors are clogged with tourists returning from Greece, that's exactly where History Wire is going on Friday. Don't we know the Olympics is over? Sure do, but for us, that's when the fun begins. Now, free of the distractions of marathoners, gymnasts and swimmers. History Wire can concentrate on a country that perhaps has no equals in what it has bequeathed to civilization. We've lined up experts, from academics to local leaders, to share the glorious heritage of Greece with us, as we tour the city of Athens and the island of Poros, among others. We'll have a full report upon returning and, as circumstances permit, will post dispatches for your enjoyment from places of interest. Stay tuned!

Book Review / It's Not All in the Genes

Human genome research has galloped ahead with such blinding speed in the last several decades that one can lose sight of the fact that it was also the preoccupation of scientists and practitioners of "nature philosophy" centuries ago. Henry Gee of Nature Magazine links past to present, summoning writers like Goethe and scientists Gregor Mendel and Charles Darwin to the stage for curtain calls. Reviewer Anne E. Magurran, in The New York Times book review calls Jacob's Ladder: It's Not All in the Genes a beautifully written account of the history of the human genome."

Start with Carts

Hartford, CT found itself with a dilemma this summer. After the State of Connecticut had anted up nearly $1 billion to construct a riverside development called Adraien's Landing, the retail partner in the venture pulled out. Richard Cohen, president of Capital Properties and, perhaps more notably, husband of TV anchor Paula Zahn, is rumored to have run into roadblocks signing up retail tenants. So with the opening of the project only a year away, the city is scouring the landscape for developers who can attract restaurants, bookstores and boutiques and build structures for them adjacent to the spectacular convention center.

It's entirely possible that conventioners may arrive in Hartford next summer only to find a landscape of dirt where stores should be. But, as History Wire's own Steve Goddard says, it doesn't have to happen. His prescription for a quick fix leads The Hartford Courant's Commentary Page. Once again, history to the rescue, as Steve recounts an eerily similar parallel in Boston's Quincy Market some 30 years ago. Hero of the day: pushcarts.

Another Surprise from Arnold

The American highway lobby contends that the road versus rail tension in American life is, and should be, solely a creature of the marketplace. It is remarkable then that Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Republican governor of California, has injected government into the debate in a gesture so striking that the auto industry, including Ford Motor Company President William Clay Ford, is up in arms. The New York Times reports that California will open its HOV lanes to single-occupant cars which attain a fuel efficiency of 45 miles per gallon or more, a policy move benefitting largely the Toyota Prius. Mr. Ford tells The Times the governor might as well promote a "Buy Japanese" campaign.

Actually it's a myth that the struggle for primacy in surface transportation is a free market affair. For more than a century now, government has weighed in in a big way. The Brookings Institution, for instance, estimates that trucks pay for only about 14 per cent of the true expenses their presence on the American roads costs taxpayers. People choose cars over trains, in part, because government subsidizes cars and driving so heavily. Should the public be grateful to government for subsidizing the cost of roads and starving the rails? Hardly, because what Washington appears to put into our one pocket, it takes out of the other, through a raft of other property, sales, excise and other taxes. Congress, in fact, spends $62 on interstate highways alone for each $1 it spends on the rails.

A century ago, when the federal government tired of the rapacious rails, it sought to sell the idea of building roads to a wary public through what it innocently called "propaganda." It set up demonstration road projects in the hinterlands, so Farmer Brown could see what a treat it was to walk Bessie over a paved surface. It sponsored essay contests for children and scholarships for the college bound interested in a career in road engineering. History Wire's own Steve Goddard has written a panoramic account of this phenomenon in Getting There: The Epic Struggle Between Road and Rail in the American Century, which has gone through four printings and is now available in paperback.

Not a Lincoln But a Pretty Good Ford

It's hard to imagine a starker contrast to the machinations of Lyndon Johnson and the mendacity of Richard Nixon than the what-you-see-is-what-you-get Gerald Ford, who succeeded the disgraced Nixon 30 years ago this month. Hale and hearty at 91, Ford recently held a reunion with staffers, at which he offered the upbeat and forgiving assessments of his time that has become his trademark.

President Ford offered "an invigorating contrast to the emotionally convoluted [Lyndon] Johnson and Nixon," says Fred Greenstein in a Weekly Standard interview with Fred Barnes. . "Presidents and presidential advisers who dismiss the Ford experience will miss out on a rich set of precedents about how to manage the president," he says.

Passing of a Pioneer

For TV station KTLA in Los Angeles to hire an African-American as a weathercaster in 1971 was a major advance. Who would have thought Larry McCormick would not only blossom in that job but move up in time to news anchor? On his passing this week, the Los Angeles Times's Angela Neufeld recaps the career of a telegenic newsman who faced painful challenges not shared by his white brethren. McCormick once commented, "It's not easy to be on-camera and deliver a very negative story about your culture."

When Conventions were Conventions

It's been a long time since a national political convention agonized through six ballots. Charlie Peters, long-time chief of The Washington Monthly calls the 1940 Republican convention "The Greatest Convention," as on the eve of war it nominated one-worlder Wendell Willkie, the head of Commonwealth & Southern utility holding company. Such heavyweights as Thomas Dewey, Robert Taft and Arthur Vandenberg, isolationists all, proved no match in the end for the political newcomer who feared Adolf Hitler as the great menace he turned out to be.

A Lot Has Changed in 50 Years

If you think the biggest changes in American home and family life in the last half-century are the Corvette and the DVD, think again. Paul Berman, writing in the New Republic, renders his top 10 on the eve of his magazine's 50th anniversary. Predictably, half of them have to do with gender relations.

Tricky Dick is Back?

Think the young protesters haunting the Republican National Convention in Manhattan next week have a trick or two up their sleeves? Well, you can't fool Tricky Dick. Not that one -- he's history. But 80-year-old Dick Tuck, who has tormented candidates for more than four decades, is still around. The New Yorker's Talk of the Town takes us back to the Kennedy-Nixon debates in 1960 and scrolls through to the present, recalling career highlights of the prankster candidates love to hate.