Looking back, I cannot say that there was one precise moment when I knew I wanted to be a historian. I have been drawn to history ever since I can remember. When I was about seven years old, in Brooklyn, my mother joined an informal neighborhood reading club that gathered frequently in evenings in neighbors’ homes to discuss books they had read. With my mother away from home, I would grab one of the twenty volumes of the World Book Encyclopedia that my father had bought for the family. I knew that he would joyfully leaf through its pages with me, allowing me to learn about history and happily stay up long past my supposed bedtime.
As a kid, my dentist was also interested in history. His office was across the street from New York’s main public library, known informally as the “Forty-Second Street Library.” During my visits to his office, we often discussed history. I would later spend years doing undergraduate and graduate research at that library.
Another early indicator of my interest in history was my childhood collecting of postage stamps, and, later, coins, which often commemorated historical events. In grade school, history was invariably my favorite subject. My teachers must have considered me some sort of prodigy because by third grade, I had memorized the list of all the presidents of the United States in chronological order. I well remember my third grade teacher sending me to a sixth-grade class to recite the list for the older kids. Harry Truman was president at the time, so there were fewer presidents then than now. To this day I retain the image of their sitting quietly in respectful amusement as I ran through the names of the presidents, starting with George Washington and ending with Truman.
My fascination with history deepened with my enrollment in Brooklyn College as an undergraduate, where an introductory Western Civilization course introduced me to European history and the enjoyment of working with original historical sources. While studying for my doctorate at Rutgers University, I was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for archival research in Vienna, enabling me to write my dissertation. Subsequently, I focused on the political Right in Second World War France. I consider myself most fortunate to have spent my career researching, writing, and teaching students about history.
Bertram Gordon is professor emeritus of history at Mills College. He is also an OLLI member, faculty member and volunteer. His most recent book War Tourism: Second World War France from Defeat and Occupation to the Creation of Heritage grew from his discovery of German-language tourism magazines published for German soldiers during their Second World War occupation of France. He can be reached at bmgordon@berkeley.edu.