Category Archives: books

Captain John Smith: Conqueror, Colonizer, Commissioner

The Sea Mark: Captain John Smith’s Voyage to New England, published by University Press of New England (http://www.upne.com/1611685169.html), juxtaposes three different mentalities and activities: the conqueror, colonizer, and commissioner. Smith the conqueror was a soldier who believed that whoever was … Continue reading

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Love and the Constitution

Love and the Constitution Is our society founded on Christian virtues and teachings? What is the greatest Christian teaching? What is the essence of Christianity? What is the one truth above all others that sums Christianity, Christian teachings, Jesus’s life? … Continue reading

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The Constitution and Religion

The framers of the Constitution developed their conceptions of religion and government based on a variety of sources: classical political theory, such as Aristotle; European political theory, such as Machiavelli; English political theory, such as Locke and Hobbes; but also … Continue reading

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Jean Louis Berlandier

I am teaching this semester a course on the History of Science, and am using two of my books: Science in the Ancient World, and Frontier Naturalist: Jean Louis Berlandier and the Exploration of Northern Mexico and Texas. The latter … Continue reading

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The Pious Scientist Jeremy Belknap

Jeremy Belknap, who is featured in three of my books: Ebenezer Hazard, Jeremy Belknap, and the American Revolution, Passaconaway’s Realm, and the American Plutarch, was a pious scientist. He believed that piety is the most important response of the scientist to … Continue reading

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Pious Scientists

Oftentimes, missionaries in America were people of exceptional learning. Almon Bacone, for example, the founder of Bacone College, as a faculty member in the 1880s and 1890s taught an incredible number of subjects: Greek, Latin, rhetoric, English literature, logic, natural … Continue reading

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Thinking

“I think, therefore I am.” This famous sentence comes from Rene Descartes the seventeenth-French philosopher. Descartes, a skeptic doubting all, looking for the basic rudiments of reality, discovered a core of reality in the awareness of his own being. By … Continue reading

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In Praise of Alexander Posey

Alexander Posey, the Creek poet, was a student and librarian at Indian University, now Bacone College, in the 1890s. During his brief life (1873-1908), Posey published essays, satire, stories, and wonderful poems about nature, life, and death. He wrote whimsically … Continue reading

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The Messenger’s Way

Carved on the northeast corner of the Bacone College chapel is this passage from the Old Testament: Micah, 6:8: He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good: and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly … Continue reading

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America in 1492

The indigenous peoples of America, those people north of the Gulf of Mexico, Rio Grande, and Sonoran Desert in what is today the continental United States and north into Canada stretching from the Gulf of St. Lawrence east to Nova … Continue reading

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