Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast, episode 124.

I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and I'm recording this on July 31, 2023, in a secure, undisclosed location near Tupper Lake, New York. We are telling the history of the

lands now encompassed by the United States from the beginning without presentism, or at least as

little as possible. Well, we are well along on our summer road trip.

I put out the last episode early in the morning on July 25th, and then almost immediately departed New Orleans by car for the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, a distance

of around 1,600 miles.

But it was worth it.

As I write these words, it is 68 and gently raining, and after the

last month in Austin and New Orleans, it's glorious. Seeing as how I am on vacation, and it is

challenging to find a good place to record in this little house, and I can only be anti-socials so much, episodes will be

catches catch-can for the next few weeks. I did, however, bring along both the microphone

and tote bags of books, so we'll be able to get out a couple episodes at least.

The idea for this episode came to me in a flash as I thought about an email from Robert from Portland, a long-standing and attentive listener.

Here are the pertinent bits of his email, quote.

My recollection is that your description of what presentism means has varied, at least in emphasis.

More recently, such as in the Rhode Island podcast, you talk about limiting one's judgment of behavior long ago, at least is

it edges toward the present day deplorable. I will call this judgmental presentism.

I recall that in one or more earlier podcasts, you talked about

the problems with studying history with a goal of drawing lessons for the present, and how that

leads one to ignore or undervalue facts that conflict with a lesson one thinks one is drawing.

I will call this lesson presentism.

Although I had not thought about it before your podcast, I subsequently saw it everywhere I turned.

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