[Vision2020] What's in a Book Blurb?

[Art Deco]

Nick writes:

"The Daily News refused to let him have a guest column to respond to 
Wilson's Nov. 5th piece."

Perhaps, Nick, you missed the good news.  Soon the Daily News will be 
rechristened The Christ Church Clarion as it should have been long ago.

W.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <nickgier at adelphia.net>
To: <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 12:08 PM
Subject: [Vision2020] What's in a Book Blurb?


> To the Editor of the Daily News:
>
> We all know how misleading book "blurbs" can be, so what are we to make of 
> the fact that Doug Wilson keeps trotting out (most recently Nov. 5) 
> historian Eugene Genovese's praise for Wilson's self-published book "Black 
> and Tan"?
>
> Of all the professional reviews that I have read of Wilson's work on 
> slavery, it is only Professor Genovese who has approved it.  Two UI 
> history professors and a University of Washington expert on the Civil War 
> (and member of a Wilson related Christ Church in Seattle) have condemned 
> it. The historians on George Mason University's History News Network 
> (http://hnn.us) have roundly rejected it.
>
> When the Seattle professor told Wilson that 20 percent of the early 
> booklet "Southern Slavery As It Was" was lifted from another book, Wilson 
> withdrew it from circulation and promised to fix the "citation problems" 
> and reissue it as soon as he could.  But it took Wilson 18 months to 
> republish it as "Black and Tan," with substantial revisions responding to 
> the criticism that he had once publicly rejected.
>
> Here is the real rub, however.  The original slavery booklet has now been 
> reprinted without change (except for quotation marks around the lifted 
> portions) in "The War Between the States: America's Uncivil War," which 
> historian Ed Sebesta claims "incorporates every 'Lost Cause' and modern 
> Neo-Confederate idea."
>
> Genovese's blurb raises another serious problem.  Here are the relevant 
> parts: "Wilson . . . has a strong grasp of the essentials of the history 
> of slavery. . . .  Indeed, sad to say, his grasp is a great deal stronger 
> than that of most professors of American history, whose distortions and 
> trivializations disgrace our college classrooms."
>
> Perhaps Genovese thinks that none of his professional colleagues will read 
> or hear of Wilson's book, so that he can spew this venom about them behind 
> their backs.  Genovese's betrayal of his profession, however, is now all 
> over the internet.
>
> Nick Gier, Moscow
>
> My thanks for Bill Ramsey, UI history professor, for help in writing this. 
> I wish he would write a letter, too.  The Daily News refused to let him 
> have a guest column to respond to Wilson's Nov. 5th piece.
>
>
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