On Thu, 2 Dec 1999, Met History crossposted and quoted:

> Ric Burn's epic PBS series, "New York: A Documentary Film" has come and gone.
>  While it was being shown, I heard many comments about the program.
> Professional historians of  my acquaintance, with few exceptions, didn't much
> care for it,  while my non-historian friends generally were much more
> enthusiastic.  For myself, I found this long-awaited series rather
> disappointing.  The level of accuracy was often quite poor.

Janice called me away from programming work, saying "they're talking about
what Alexander Hamilton did for New York."  I watched it for a few minutes
and was not impressed.  I wasn't planning to write a review, so I didn't
note down what the issues were; I just remember saying several things that
each started with "Yes, but ..."  And I'm neither a New Yorker nor an
expert on Hamilton.

It did make the interesting point, though, that New York acquired some of
its distinctive character through NOT being the national (or even the
state) seat of government.

But eventually I gave up and went back to writing subroutines.

---
Lawrence Kestenbaum, [log in to unmask]
The Political Graveyard, http://politicalgraveyard.com