Huntington Botanical Japanese Garden |
The Huntington Library in San Marino (think Pasadena), besides being in a spectacular setting, is one of the nation's foremost repositories in the areas of American and English history and literature. Sure, there's a priceless Shakespeare collection and a Gutenberg bible, but for the purposes of this blog, let me note that lesser Civil War historians are often identified right off the bat by their failure to include the Huntington in their bibliography. Many years ago, I spent a lovely few days there collecting after-action reports that didn't make it into the O.R., for inclusion in Broadfoot's Supplement to the Official Records.
For their own 150th commemoration, the Huntington put together a conference of historians whose presentations are slowly being made available online. Brooks Simpson, one of the presenters, wrote about the gathering here, replete with a photo of the presenters. Here's one link to some of the presentations, and I believe they're probably the same ones available on iTunes now as free podcasts. And no one chronicles a Civil War event like Hal Jespersen.