Microsoft Innovations: Empowering the Mobile Experience

February 18, 2020 By Benjamin Park in Uncategorized

Microsoft is a global technology leader, constantly driving innovation and transforming the digital landscape. With cutting-edge mobile applications and cloud solutions, the company enables users to work, learn, and enjoy entertainment wherever they are.

Innovative Solutions for Business and Personal Use

Products such as Office 365 and the Azure platform have revolutionized the way both businesses and individuals operate. Microsoft’s mobile solutions provide seamless access to essential tools, ensuring productivity and connectivity on the go.

Security and Reliability

Security remains a top priority for Microsoft. Regular updates and advanced protection technologies guarantee that users’ data stays secure, whether they’re managing business tasks or accessing personal information.

Discover More

Committed to making technology accessible for everyone, Microsoft continues to innovate and grow. To explore the latest developments and learn more about their diverse range of products, visit the official website at Microsoft.

Q&A with Nick Bunker, author of Young Benjamin Franklin

December 10, 2018 By Benjamin Park in Uncategorized 1 Comment

[Today we are happy to share a Q&A with Nick Bunker, author of the new Young Benjamin Franklin: The Birth of Ingenuity (Knopf, 2018). Tomorrow our own Sara G. will post her review of the book.]

Starting with his own autobiography, there have been many treatments of Benjamin Franklin’s life. How did you approach the project when you were aware of this vast literature, and how did you attempt to carve out your own space?

Yes, library shelves are crammed with books about Franklin, but the literature is biased towards the second half of his life, and his achievements as politician, diplomat, and man of letters. The period up to age 40 has come to be neglected, and the same is true of his scientific career. This is because – for the most part – in chronicling Franklin’s early life biographers have preferred to rely entirely on his autobiography. But written though they are with panache, Franklin’s memoirs are really a sketch or an essay, not a rounded narrative. He mentions his scientific work only in passing and he skips through his youth in an episodic, impressionistic way. So I began by working my way through the autobiography, and Franklin’s early writings, compiling lists of questions left unanswered, references unexplained, and incidents where other sources might be available. Then I went in search of material to fill in the gaps. The central question I was asking was this: just why was Benjamin Franklin so ambitious, and so energetic? In the 1740s an opponent called Franklin “an uneasy spirit” – which he was! – and I wanted to find out why this was so. Continue reading →

Q&A: Craig Bruce Smith, author of American Honor

May 3, 2018 By Benjamin Park in Book Review, Historiography Tags: 18th Century, American Honor, American Revolution, Craig Bruce Smith, Founders, Founding Fathers, Honor, intellectual history 1 Comment

Screen Shot 2018-05-02 at 9.58.33 PM We are pleased to host a Q&A with Craig Bruce Smith, author of the recently released American Honor: The Creation of the Nation’s Ideals During the Revolutionary Era (UNC Press). Dr. Smith received his PhD from Brandeis and is an assistant professor of history at William Woods University. We will be featuring a review of the book in the coming weeks. Continue reading →

A New Era for The Junto

April 16, 2018 By Benjamin Park in Administrative, Announcements Tags: Administrative 3 Comments

Hey, remember us?

A few months ago we decided it was time to take a break here at The Junto. Our first five years were far better than we ever expected—you can get a run-down of our achievements here—but we were a bit burned out, to be honest. Most of us have been blogging since the beginning, and we only have so many good ideas to blog about. We were also ready for the next phase of The Junto‘s history. Continue reading →

A Half-Decade of The Junto

December 11, 2017 By Benjamin Park in Administrative 3 Comments

Five years ago, The Junto was born. The immediate context was parochial: as a PhD student studying early American history at the University of Cambridge, I was lonely for fellow scholars. But the niche the blog filled was much more broad: there was a need for a digital space to serve as a hub for early American scholarship. The reception we’ve since received, and the readership we still welcome, has been overwhelming. The blog’s success is indicative of our field’s vibrancy. Continue reading →

Book Review: Max Mueller, “Race and the Making of the Mormon People”

September 26, 2017 By Benjamin Park in Book Review, Recent Scholarship, Review / Q&A Tags: Mormonism, race 4 Comments

Modern Mormonism is known for being a predominantly white religion—at least in America. But a new book by religious studies scholar Max Mueller argues that the LDS faith has a complex and evolving story of racial imagination during the antebellum period. This is a declension narrative that is at once riveting and wrenching, and one that deserves a close reading.

Mueller Max Perry Mueller, Race and the Making of the Mormon People (University of North Carolina Press, 2017). 352 pp., 17 halftones, notes, bibliography, index. [Also, make sure to see Mueller’s interview with The Atlantic.]

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormons, had audacious beginnings. They claimed a new book of scripture, a modern-day prophet, and a restored ecclesiastical structure. It was a reenactment of Christianity’s origins. And according to Max Mueller, those origins included a reformulation of America’s racial imagination. Contemporaries during the mid-nineteenth century were, to use a complex and problematic term, “secularizing” racial differences. They sought to justify slavery and segregation through a strict delineation of racial compartmentalization. Race, in other words, was becoming a fixed identity. But among Joseph Smith’s radical protests was an attack on that very assumption: Smith, the book Smith translated, and the movement Smith led, posited that race was a malleable component dependent more on righteousness than descent. They believed in a moderate “racial universalism” that, though it required the subjugation of non-white races, could unite the entire human family. Or, at least, they believed this during their first two decades, before eventually succumbing to a much more mainstream structure of racial difference. Continue reading →

Q&A with Carla Pestana on The English Conquest of Jamaica

August 16, 2017 By Benjamin Park in Recent Scholarship, Review / Q&A, Special Features Tags: 17th Century, Atlantic History, Atlantic World, British Empire, Carla Gardina Pestana, imperial history, Jamaica, Oliver Cromwell Leave a comment

To accompany the review by Casey Schmitt that was published yesterday, we are pleased to have this Question & Answer with Carla Pestana today regarding her new book, The English Conquest of Jamaica: Oliver Cromwell’s Bid for Empire (Harvard University Press, 2017). We thank Dr. Pestana for her time. Continue reading →

Review: Adam Jortner, Blood From the Sky

July 27, 2017 By Benjamin Park in Book Review Tags: Adam Jortner, book review, cultural history, Early Republic, miracles, Political history, religious history 2 Comments

**Adam Jortner, Blood from the Sky: Miracles and Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017).**

Jortner The role of religion in the early republic has received a fair amount of attention in the recent decades. And though there are competing narratives concerning how ministers and denominations took advantage of the post-revolutionary era—the “Hatchites” arguing that they embraced the democratization and empowered the common man, while the “Butlerites” and “Porterfieldites” emphasizing how leaders capitalized on the fear of a chaotic society—there has been a general point of agreement: religion and politics now took place within a secularized sphere. Expectations of democratic governance led religionists to frame their arguments in a way to match the new republican age. Politics drove religious belief and practice, and not the other way around. Continue reading →

Guest Post: Stephen Campbell, “Reimagining the Second Bank of the United States in Early American History”

January 17, 2017 By Benjamin Park in From the Archives Tags: Edward Baptist, Great Britain, Henry Clay, new history of capitalism, race, Second Bank of the United States, Slavery 4 Comments

Stephen W. Campbell earned a doctorate in history from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2013. A lecturer at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, Campbell is the author of articles that have appeared in American Nineteenth Century History, Ohio Valley History, Perspectives on History, and History News Network. He has recently completed a book manuscript entitled Banking on the Press: Newspapers, Financial Institutions, and the Post Office in Jacksonian America, 1828-1834.

Cadwalder Family Papers, Box 98, Folder 24, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. [Click for full-size]

Unexpected “ah-hah!” moments make long hours of historical research worthwhile. A few months ago I was perusing a letter from an edited volume of Henry Clay’s correspondence when my eyes began to drift over to an adjoining page. A letter, dated August 17, 1830, showed the great senator and orator instructing his Washington agent, Philip Fendall, to send one of his slaves, Lotty, back to Kentucky. Clay wanted Lotty “to have the means to bring herself home…but if she wants money for that purpose I will thank you to apply to Mr. R[ichard] Smith to advance her the necessary sum.” Nothing in the footnotes or index shed light on this enigmatic Smith (an exceedingly common name both then and now), but I had come across this name several times before. This was almost certainly the cashier of the Washington branch of the Second Bank of the United States (BUS), the nation’s de facto central bank. A few weeks later, Clay again penned Fendall: “There are persons frequently bringing slaves from the district [of Columbia] to this State, some of whom might perhaps undertake to conduct [Lotty] to Maysville, Louisville, Lexington, or some other point from which I could receive her.”[1] Continue reading →

My Favorite Books from 2016; or, a Christmas Book List for Your Early American History Nerd Friends

December 19, 2016 By Benjamin Park in Academia, Lists, Recent Scholarship 2 Comments

2016 sucked in a lot of ways. Future historians will likely give lots of attention to this year and its events, and not with a positive assessment. But while we cope with this new reality, we at least can console ourselves with the fact that it was an excellent year in historical scholarship, especially in the field of early America. This post is a sequel to my Christmas Book List I posted last year, and may very well become an annual tradition. Below you’ll find some of my favorite books from the past twelve months.

Just a few of my favorite books from the past year.

However, I should quickly add, these were far from the only excellent volumes to be released. (Like I said: it was a very strong year.) These books reflect my own interests and background. I hope others will share their favorite books, whether mentioned or not, in the comments. Continue reading →