Peter Gilbert
CommentatorPeter Gilbert is executive director of the Vermont Humanities Council.
For commentaries from Peter before April 2013, visit the VPR Archive.
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Not long ago, after she’d finished reading two science-related magazines, my aunt passed them along to me and for some unknown reason I turned first to…
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In the face of calls for the abolition of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Corporation for Public…
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Every year, between December 1st and the end of February, if winter storms in the North Pacific send really big waves on to the North Shore of the…
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After the attack on Pearl Harbor 75 years ago, President Franklin Roosevelt named Admiral Chester Nimitz Commander of the Pacific Fleet.Nimitz arrived in…
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Felix Frankfurter was a close advisor and friend to President Franklin Roosevelt, who, in 1939, appointed him to the Supreme Court, where he served for 23…
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My brother, Ken, lives in Dallas. He met his future wife at an election night party forty years ago, the night Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford. And…
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Two hundred years ago tomorrow, the British poet John Keats wrote one of the greatest short poems in the English language. It’s about autumn, something…
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Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said that “All biography is autobiography.” It’s usually taken to mean that in writing about other people, biographers reveal…
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Norwich University’s William E. Colby Award is given annually to a first-time author in recognition of a book that has made a major contribution to the…
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I once heard Sir Christopher Ricks observe that a scholar is someone who tells you something you didn’t know, and a critic is someone who tells you…