Leslie McFarlane, the Hardy Boys, and the American Past

We don’t live there anymore: A look at journalism and fiction writing of the early 20th century.

Alexander Elliot (L) and Rohan Campbell star as the Hardy brothers, sleuths based on a book series dating from the 1920s. The series is a current production. Hulu

When we set out to investigate the past, like archaeologists we dig up and examine all sorts of information. We might begin with history texts, like Wilfred McClay’s “Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story,” which provide us with a barebones but broad account of people and events from another era. We then zero in on a particular incident, reading a book like David McCullough’s “The Johnstown Flood” if we wish further enlightenment.

Stirred by such an account, energetic truth seekers may then navigate from these secondary sources to primary ones. To explore the Johnstown flood, for example, they may look for newspaper articles or letters from eyewitnesses of that disaster.

Lives in Print

Of course, memoirs, accounts of a specific time or event in a person’s life, and autobiographies, which tell the story of a life in full, also serve as excellent firsthand records of the past. Here, we generally think of those books left to us by the great and the famous, like Winston Churchill’s memoir of his youth, “My Early Life,” or Benjamin Franklin’s “Autobiography.” A close reading of such works reveals as much about the times as about the person.