Ambrose: "To America"

I am moving along on my reading list. Last week or so, I knocked off another book, completing Stephen Ambrose's "To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian," a book that has sat on my bookshelf for years. It was worth the wait. An enjoyable read through Ambrose's personal thoughts regarding various people and events he's studied and written about. The reader traverses through a variety of United States events and personas, each one giving some insight into America past, present, and future.

It was a pleasure to read a historian discuss his personal reactions to various topics and people. What I found most intriguing was Ambrose's admission that history changes simply because those who study, write, and teach history change in how they view particular events or individuals. As a social science, the historian cannot help but place some sort of himself or herself into the work. It may color history some, but I think it makes it a little more interesting too.

Perhaps the most interesting thing (this may be an exaggeration) may be found in the book's subtitle: "Personal Reflections of an Historian." That's right... it's "an Historian." This threw me off, but I trusted some editor knows much more than I about the English language and the usage of "a" or "an." Well, I did a little online grammar research, and found that apparently there is no real consensus for words that begin with "h." Apparently, since the "h" is often said softly, "an" can be appropriate. Mark Twain, however, disagreed, saying that true American writers would use "a historian" rather than "an historian" and get rid of the pretense. I personally like a little pretense every now and then, and next time I'm in class or clinical supervision, I want to ask about "an hallucination" and see the others try to correct me or scoff at my grammar. Now that'll make history.