In a Preservation Magazine article, Maurice Isserman, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of History at Hamilton College, discusses the value of seeing historical sites, not just reading about them.
Isserman reviews William Leuchtenburg's American Places: Encounters With History, and writes, "For most of us, our historical curiosity outstrips our travel budget. We sharpen our own appreciation of the places we do encounter while traveling afar, or even while passing through familiar neighborhoods, by reading these masters of the arts of careful observation and shrewd analysis." Isserman is currently writing a history of Anglo-American mountaineering.
The complete article will be available on Preservation Magazine's site http://www.nthp.org, later this month.