Today Americans have a deeper understanding of the way in which the media is both a repository of popular opinion as well as a vehicle that helps shape and drive it. Widely mediacized events like the O. J. Simpson trial, the Oklahoma City Bombing, and the Gulf War and Bosnian Conflict demonstrate this. In his book To The Halls Of The Montezumas, historical author Robert W. Johannsen tries to recreate, through the popular media of the era, the mood, character and popular imagination of America and Americans during the Mexican War. The following is a critique of his book.
Publishing Information: Johannsen, R. W. To The Halls Of The Montezumas. New York, Oxford University Press, 1985, 363 pgs.
Robert W. Johannsen is a professor of American history at the University of Illinois, in Urbana. His teaching credentials and his teaching experience qualify him to write a history book on the Mexican War. This qualifies him based on occupation and knowledge of his topic, but it also has the potential to influence the sources he used (most of them from the University of Illinois Library) and his perspective of U.S. “patriotism” (a hair on the romantic side). He is apolitical regarding the war because he omits any politics or political rhetoric arguing that this detracts from his main intention of conveying the popular imagination and spirit during the era the war took place.
To summarize the book, Johannsen gives us a detailed account of the media coverage of the Mexican War, the first war to be covered extensively by war correspondents, as a link between the war and understanding the popular mind and the era during which it occurred. Johannsen provides a preface, a prologue and ten chapters and an epilogue wherein he details the popular spirit and mentality of the ideology of the populace via the media as a shaper and repository of it. He covers a wide range of press sources in order to gives us a greater understanding of th...