I’m watching the new HBO miniseries “John Adams” and finding it fascinating. The series is based on a book by Pulitzer Prize winning historian David McCullough (also author of 1776 and Truman). And below we have McCullough giving us, if you will, the quick elevator pitch for Adams — that is, two minutes on what made Adams a particularly noteworthy founding father. (The video, by the way, is produced by BigThink, a fairly new site that positions itself as the “thinking man’s YouTube.” They’re backed by Harvard’s ex-president, Larry Summers, and other folks with deep pockets. Whether they’ll be able to turn a profit on intellectual media, I’m sadly doubtful. But that’s not meant to take anything away from what they’re doing. And if anyone wants to throw a few million dollars our way, we’ll consider taking it.)
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I was watching the HBO series John Adams tonight and there was a nod at George Washington’s false teeth. It made me laugh because I remembered that those teeth are on display in Baltimore at The National Museum of Dentistry. Not only that, the map that the American delegation in France used to identify the United States of America at the Treaty of Paris, the actual map from George III’s library, is on display at the Maps exhibitions running at The Walters Art Museum. Check it out http://www.visitmybaltimore.com/video/438/