Comments on: Product Endorsement http://savageminds.org/2006/03/08/product-endorsement/ Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog Sat, 20 Mar 2010 16:28:00 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: suhail http://savageminds.org/2006/03/08/product-endorsement/comment-page-1/#comment-4671 suhail Sat, 01 Apr 2006 14:24:55 +0000 http://savageminds.org/2006/03/08/product-endorsement/#comment-4671 i need to be a knowledge full man so i need those books i need to be a knowledge full man so i need those books

]]> By: John McCreery http://savageminds.org/2006/03/08/product-endorsement/comment-page-1/#comment-4011 John McCreery Fri, 10 Mar 2006 21:57:09 +0000 http://savageminds.org/2006/03/08/product-endorsement/#comment-4011 I, too, find history "(1) systematically accounted for and (2) demystified with a flourish" enormously satisfying and, I would add, a model for effective ethnography. I am reminded about that because I am currently reading David McCulloch's <i>Truman</i>. As I read his description of the Independence, Missouri in which Harry Truman was a boy, I find myself experiencing a shock of recognition. My father is of Scotch-Irish descent and his father and mother moved from Missouri to Georgia, where my father was born. I read, for example, <blockquote>Certain precepts and bywords were articles of faith in such a place, in such times, and nearly everybody growing up there was imbued with them, in principle at least: Honesty was the best policy. It saved time and worry, because if you always told the truth you never had to keep track of what you said. Make yourself useful. Anything worthwhile required effort. If at first you don't succeed, try try again. "Never, never give up," Harry's father would say. Children were a reflection of their parents. "Now Harry, you be good," his mother would tell him time after time as he went out the door.</blockquote> That describes my father and my own upbringing to a T. I, too, find history “(1) systematically accounted for and (2) demystified with a flourish” enormously satisfying and, I would add, a model for effective ethnography. I am reminded about that because I am currently reading David McCulloch’s Truman. As I read his description of the Independence, Missouri in which Harry Truman was a boy, I find myself experiencing a shock of recognition. My father is of Scotch-Irish descent and his father and mother moved from Missouri to Georgia, where my father was born. I read, for example,

Certain precepts and bywords were articles of faith in such a place, in such times, and nearly everybody growing up there was imbued with them, in principle at least:
Honesty was the best policy. It saved time and worry, because if you always told the truth you never had to keep track of what you said.
Make yourself useful.
Anything worthwhile required effort.
If at first you don’t succeed, try try again. “Never, never give up,” Harry’s father would say.
Children were a reflection of their parents. “Now Harry, you be good,” his mother would tell him time after time as he went out the door.

That describes my father and my own upbringing to a T.

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