Tea Parties, Reinhold Niebuhr, Barack Obama, and Gordon Wood

This week’s edition of the History News Network has several good articles that might be of interested to our readers.

Jim Sleeper’s article ,”How the Modern Day Tea Partiers Missed the Message of 1773,” reminds us that the Boston Tea Party was not as much a the colonial protest against the Tea Act as it was a protest against England’s decision to give only a few merchants the right to sell East India tea, thus creating a monopoly.

Bryan DuBose Peery, in “Obama Niebuhr, and Partisanship,” defends Obama against the charge, recently put forward by John Danforth, that he does not exemplify Niebuhrian humility.

Jill O’Neill interviews Gordon Wood. When asked what he wanted his students to understand about history, Wood answered: “History is the Queen of the humanities. It teaches wisdom and humility, and it tells us how things change over time. A novel such as The Leopard can do that too, but history is the ultimate humanist discipline.”