Talk:Francis Parkman

message: Here's his entry from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.  I may work on incorporating some of it, or someone else can.  Gamaliel 06:56, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: EB1911

message: I'm not the person to do it, at least not yet, but I would like to see more balance and perspective to this entry, instead of the almost wholly negative assessment in the last paragraphs.RodneyPWelch 00:45, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Needs balance 

message: If Jennings is "controversial", should he be quoted here? The loudest, most vitriolic voice is not the one I seek out for objective information. The language in the quote might fit in a magazine article of greater length than this one, but here it just says more about the author than the subject. MarkinBoston 16:39, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jennings 

message: The article says he is accused of being biased, but I can't tell in what way. Is it that he has very little or no respect for Native American societies? I simply can't tell. JoshNarins (talk) 17:26, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Question of Bias

message: I removed the phrase "originator of several flowers" from the article as I don't know what this means.  Did he identify and name them?  Did he develop them as varieties or cultivars?  "Originator of several flowers" just doesn't make sense.  I hope whatever was meant to be said here can be re-introduced to the article. - House of Scandal (talk) 03:02, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: originator of several flowers

message: On 8 February 2008, someone deleted the entire Legacy section and replaced it with a nasty racial slur.  Strangely, even though the slur was promptly removed, the Legacy section was never restored. This was unfortunate, because it contributed modern points of view on Parkman that deserve consideration from Wikipedia readers.  Several of the commentators quoted under Legacy are respected historians.
However, I agree with the above opinions expressed by RodneyPWelch and MarkinBoston: overall, the prior Legacy section came across as far too negative in its assessment.  The previous inclusion of extended quotes from Parkman's biggest detractors practically made this article into a soapbox for his critics.  Why devote so much space to Jennings, who goes so far as to call Parkman a "liar"?  To allow a statement like that to pass unchallenged seems patently unfair, given that Parkman is long past being able to defend himself.
Therefore, I have decided to take the middle path of restoring most of the prior text, but condensing the criticism.
By the way, I just today finished reading Parkman's "Montcalm and Wolfe", which I feel is a true masterpiece of English prose.  Yes, he is quite opinionated.  Parkman does not refrain from taking sides—but neither does he try to hide his predispositions (for example, he is baldly anti-Catholic).  But his writing is far from one-sided and clearly very well researched, making constant reference to original source material. Dynamitecow (talk) 16:31, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Legacy restored, with better balance

message: I re-read Bernard DeVoto's book, The Year of Decision: 1846, recently, in which DeVoto describes Parkman's visit to the Sioux. DeVoto mentions Parkman's physical ailments and it sounds to me a lot like Lyme disease. He may well have been in delicate health as a child, but after all his hanging out in the Massachusetts woods, what hit him at 17 could well have been a tick-borne illness. The malaise, the dysentery DeVoto mentions, the eye problems, a mysterious "brain fever," are all present in Lyme disease. Amazing that he lived to be 70 years old! D. Claridge drusillaclrdg@gmail.com 65.19.17.77 (talk) 17:33, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Was Parkman's mysterious ailment Lyme Disease? 

message: I made a few edits, such as taking out the phrase "despite his obvious bias" from the first paragraph, and a short of Francis Jennings, while leaving quotes from historians about Parkman's work. It is proper to refer to historical discussion on parkman, but it seems better to let the reader decide if his work amounted to "bias." We should keep in mind what Francis Jennings apparently forgot: Parkman lived in the 1800's and should be judged by its standards more than our own, and Parkman was half blind and might not be responsible for some of the mistakes in his work.Chagallophile (talk) 18:43, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trimming references to bias