Almost Great

Jill Lepore's review of the new book by Nathaniel Philbrick on Pilgrims and King Philip's War uses the career of Samuel Eliot Morison as a vehicle to find fault in Philbrick's history. The review skirts around great, but never lands right on it. Still, worth a look, if only to remind us to read Morison.
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Glossary to that pretentious post:

Jill Lepore is professor of Early American history at Harvard and award winning author of multiple books, including The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity and A is for American: Letters and Other Characters in the Newly United States.

Nathaniel Philbrick is the founding director of the Egan Institute of Maritime Studies, which sounds important, and is a popular historian and author of such award-winning books as Sea of Glory: America’s Voyage of Discovery—The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842, and In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex.

Samuel Eliot Morison was a Harvard professor of History, Naval officer, and prize winning author of dozens of books, including biographies of Christopher Columbus, Matthew Perry, and John Paul Jones, and the entire official U.S. Navy history of World War II.