PDA

View Full Version : The History of Us



ballyhoohoo
05-03-2010, 08:32 AM
Is anyone watching this on the History Channel? Very well done show, I like how is is almost commerical free as well as the celebrities that they have selected. They chose well spoken and well known celeb to fill in some spots. Over all it is very well done

BandAid
05-03-2010, 08:41 AM
I didn't watch it. The History Channel is usually the last place I go for actual history. Most of their shows are conjecture or based on conspiracy. I presumed this series would be the same...

ballyhoohoo
05-03-2010, 09:01 AM
I didn't watch it. The History Channel is usually the last place I go for actual history. Most of their shows are conjecture or based on conspiracy. I presumed this series would be the same...

In my opinion it has been done by the book, seems pretty strait foreward. Michael Douglus and Diddy played heavily in to last nights, I would reccomend giving it a try.

bobbiemcgee
05-03-2010, 10:09 AM
Like the content pretty much...diddy, douglas and the donald shouldn't be anywhere near this. We have plenty of actual American heroes to choose from.

XUOWNSUC
05-03-2010, 10:27 AM
I think it is a good show but why the F is Michael Douglas in this? I guess he is a great historian. :rolleyes:

Also, when they showed the events of the American Revolution, they showed Paul Revere on his midnight ride. Wasn't William Dawes with him too? They didn't show him. If so, how historically accurate is this show?

ballyhoohoo
05-03-2010, 10:38 AM
I think it is a good show but why the F is Michael Douglas in this? I guess he is a great historian. :rolleyes:

Also, when they showed the events of the American Revolution, they showed Paul Revere on his midnight ride. Wasn't William Dawes with him too? They didn't show him. If so, how historically accurate is this show?

It is my understanding that they were dispatched together, but rode seperate, with Dawes taking the Longer land route and Revere crossing the river to get to lexington?

Snipe
05-03-2010, 05:57 PM
From The Tipping Point (http://www.sheilaomalley.com/archives/000846.html) by Malcolm Gladwell:


Paul Revere's ride is perhaps the most famous historical example of a word-of-mouth epidemic. A piece of extraordinary news traveled a long distance in a very short time, mobilizing an entire region to arms ...

At the same time that Revere began his ride north and west of Boston, a fellow revolutionary -- a tanner by the name of William Dawes -- set out on the same urgent errand, working his way to Lexington via the towns west of Boston. He was carrying the identical message, through just as many towns over just as many miles as Paul Revere. But Dawes's ride didn't set the countryside afire. The local militia leaders weren't altered. In fact, so few men from one of the main towns he rode through -- Waltham -- fought the following day that some subsequent historians concluded that it must have been a strongly pro-British community. It wasn't. The people of Waltham just didn't find out the British were coming until it was too late. If it were only the news itself that mattered in a word-of-mouth epidemic, Dawes would now be as famous as Paul Revere. He isn't. So why did Revere succeed where Dawes failed?

The answer is that the success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts. Revere's news tipped and Dawes's didn't because of the differences between the two men.

[Revere] was gregarious and intensely social. He was a fisherman and a hunter, a cardplayer and a theatre-lover, a frequenter of pubs and a successful businessman. He was active in the local Masonic Lodge and was a member of several select social clubs. He was also a doer, a man blessed -- as David Hackett Fischer recounts in his brilliant book Paul Revere's Ride -- with "an uncanny genius for being at the center of events."

It is not surprising, then, that when the British army began its secret campaign in 1774 to root out and destroy the stores of arms and ammunition held by the fledgling revolutionary movement, Revere became a kind of unofficial clearing house for the anti-British forces. He knew everybody. He was the logical one to go to if you were a stable boy on the afternoon of April 18th, 1775, and overheard two British officers talking about how there would be hell to pay on the following afternoon. Nor is it surprising that when Revere set out for Lexington that night, he would have known just how to spread the news as far and wide as possible. When he saw people on the roads, he was so naturally and irrepressibly social he would have stopped and told them. When he came upon a town, he would have known exactly whose door to knock on, who the local militia leader was, who the key players in town were. He had met most of them before. And they knew and respected him as well.

But William Dawes? Fischer finds it inconceivable that Dawes could have ridden all seventeen miles to Lexington and not spoken to anyone along the way. But he clearly had none of the social gifts of Revere, because there is almost no record of anyone who remembers him that night. "Along Paul Revere's northern route, the town leaders and company captains instantly triggered the alarm," Fischer writes. "On the southerly circuit of William Dawes, this did not happen until later. In at least one town it did not happen at all. Dawes did not awaken the town fathers or militia commanders in the towns of Roxbury, Brookline, Watertown or Waltham."

Why? Because Roxbury, Brookline, Watertown and Waltham were not Boston. And Dawes was in all likelihood a man with a normal social circle, which means that -- like most of us -- once he left his hometown he probably wouldn't have known whose door to knock on. Only one small community along Dawes's ride appeared to get the message, a few farmers in a neighborhood called Waltham Farms. But alerting just those few houses wasn't enough to "tip" the alarm.

Word-of-mouth epidemics are the work of Connectors. William Dawes was just an ordinary man.

XUOWNSUC
05-03-2010, 06:42 PM
From The Tipping Point (http://www.sheilaomalley.com/archives/000846.html) by Malcolm Gladwell:

So, to put it another way, Paul Revere is like Xavier and William Dawes is like ud. Years from now, nobody will remember ud whereas Xavier will be "revered" forever.

SixFig
05-03-2010, 07:11 PM
How fast would Revere's message have spread if he had simply Twittered it:

PRevere75: OMG Brits R Comin. 2 arms fellow Patriots @SamAdams @JHancock

xubball93
05-03-2010, 07:14 PM
Fischer's book is fantastic. Revere was captured during his ride and he promptly lied his ass off as to the number of militia that had mustered, greatly exaggerating it as to intimidate the Redcoats.

XU-PA
05-03-2010, 07:31 PM
I've watched the first two installments. They're doing a great job, they bring out some of the more obscure names and facts on occasion and that has helped hold my interest. Overall i'd rate it a 6 or 7 out of ten. It's unfortunate that it's being squeezed into only 9, 2 hour chunks, for history geeks like us they could easily multiply that ten fold and still miss some very interesting stuff.

Muncie
05-03-2010, 08:10 PM
I am sort of a history nut and there have been several points so far that were new to me. I cannot wait till the third part is on.

LadyMuskie
05-03-2010, 08:18 PM
I'm really enjoying the series as well. Although, I have to say that the random celebrities voicing insight on American history is, well, bizarre and distracting. I mean, who looks to P.Diddy, Michael Douglas, or Michael Strahan for their thoughts on American history. I could understand it better if they had celebrities who've had parts in movies about American history, but these choices are just odd.

PM Thor
05-03-2010, 09:39 PM
How fast would Revere's message have spread if he had simply Twittered it:

PRevere75: OMG Brits R Comin. 2 arms fellow Patriots @SamAdams @JHancock

You've hit on a common misconception that many people have held as truth for decades. Revere did not call them "The British". It was "the redcoats" or "the regulars", because, at the time, the people in America didn't consider themselves non British, not yet.

I HATE dayton.

Jumpy
05-04-2010, 08:23 AM
Like the content pretty much...diddy, douglas and the donald shouldn't be anywhere near this. We have plenty of actual American heroes to choose from.

X2. I lost all respect for this show as soon as I saw that they were mixing in interviews with celebrities. Who the hell are they? Why would I want to hear what they theink about the history of our country? Give me quotes from Patton and Teddy Roosevelt, interviews with Warren Buffet and Neil Armstrong. People who actually made a difference in the history of our country.

ballyhoohoo
05-04-2010, 08:41 AM
X2. I lost all respect for this show as soon as I saw that they were mixing in interviews with celebrities. Who the hell are they? Why would I want to hear what they theink about the history of our country? Give me quotes from Patton and Teddy Roosevelt, interviews with Warren Buffet and Neil Armstrong. People who actually made a difference in the history of our country.

What I am taking from them having the celebrities is people who have lived the American dream. People who have worked hard and changed their future. People who might display the American spirit of hardwork and vision.

bobbiemcgee
05-04-2010, 09:53 AM
What I am taking from them having the celebrities is people who have lived the American dream. People who have worked hard and changed their future. People who might display the American spirit of hardwork and vision.

Yeah like Micheal Douglas - his father was an actor who opened doors for him and he was born good looking - what a struggle. PDiddly actually made himself thru selling crap to poor black teenagers and rich white wannabes, and the donald just files bankruptcy on every business of his that goes south - he ain't no JP Morgan. Give me some WWII vets (not many left) who saw combat, or any soldier from Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, etc. How about some 9/11 heroes? I love the Pacific portrayals.

MADXSTER
05-04-2010, 10:31 AM
I really, really enjoy the show. I'm not really concerned in the least about who is narrating the program at all. The info and insight is very good.

If you like this program then I would recommend the book, 1776. Reads a little like a dry history book, but very good and insightful.

xu95
05-04-2010, 11:21 AM
How fast would Revere's message have spread if he had simply Twittered it:

PRevere75: OMG Brits R Comin. 2 arms fellow Patriots @SamAdams @JHancock

Reps for you sir.

xu95