7 Questions With Author Daniel Burghard, Things They've Seen

 

Daniel Burghard, born in 1990 and hailing from Melbourne, Australia has done everything he can to make his life an adventure. With his main profession as a teacher, Daniel has used the time during every holiday to explore this wonderful world we live in. In particular, he has a keen interest in history and spends a lot of time and effort to visit historical locations, in an attempt to get as close to the "real picture" as possible. While Daniel has a love for the ancient times, spending many years researching every aspect of the ancient Roman and Greek cultures, even going so far as to taking part in an archaeological dig, Daniel is never one to ignore an opportunity to learn more about our more recent history. This has to be at least part of the reason Daniel moved to Berlin in 2015. For more info, his website is https://eyewitness-history.com/ . His recent book is Things They've Seen.

1. How and when did you get hooked on history?

I’m not sure there was an exact point. I do remember as a young boy looking at travel catalogues at my Grandparents place and seeing pictures of the pyramids. I knew then I wanted to go and see them, so that surely was an influence. There was also a series called “Where’s Wally’s History of the World”, which definitely helped to stoke the fire.

2. What role does history play in your personal life?

Well, I like to do a lot of historical reading. There is plenty to learn about and I love a good historical podcast or documentary in my spare time. Its also been a driving force for a lot of my travels. I normally pick destinations with some historical significance.

3. How does history play a part of your professional life?

Outside of the book, I am a science teacher. People are often surprised but history plays a big role in this. I like to show the students experiments from the past and show them, through these experiments how the ideas developed to what they ended up as today.

4. Why is studying/knowing history important?

There are so many reasons why history is important to learn. From a purely entertainment point of view, there are plenty of wild, interesting and peculiar stories to learn about, as good as any fiction book. From a more serious point, the idea is that each generation learns from the past and improves on what has been done. In order for that to work, people need to know where we have come from, to make informed decisions on how they want to move forward. As the old saying goes, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.

5. What is your favorite period or aspect of history to learn about?

I like different eras for different reasons. The modern history, such as WWII and the Cold War is amazing, because (if you are lucky) you can still talk to people that lived through it. So, there is a very personal touch to it, that I find fascinating. Otherwise, I love my Greek and Roman history. There are so many big personalities that still shine through after thousands of years, it is impossible not to want to know more about them.

6. What prompted you to write “The Things They’ve Seen”?

What got me writing this book was pure luck. There was a monthly meeting at a hotel in Berlin that used to invite one guest each time to discuss their experiences in either WWII or the Cold War. However, one day, the meetings just stopped. I honestly panicked. I had never heard stories like those at the meetings before, and I was afraid of losing them all to time. So, I managed, with the help of an archive, to get into contact with as many as I could and interview them so others can learn from their experiences in those times. I feel very privileged that they trusted me to bring their stories to the public.

7. What will readers learn and take away from reading “The Things They’ve Seen”?

The main thing they will get by reading the book is the view from common citizens living in Germany during WWII and the Cold War. Each interviewee brings a unique perspective to the book, one that is less often heard. Whether it is a son losing his father to the concentration camp, or someone suffering in a Stasi prison, or a German soldier during WWII or a Jewish girl fleeing Nazi Germany, with each story we learn more about the past and hopefully avoid such horrors in the future.

7 Questions with Jason Vuic, Author of Swamp Peddlers

 

Originally from Punta Gorda, Florida, Jason Vuic is a writer and historian from Fort Worth, Texas.  He is the author of several books, including The Swamp Peddlers: How Lot Sellers, Land Scammers, and Retirees Built Modern Florida and Transformed the American Dream (UNC Press, 2021), The Yucks! Two Years in Tampa with the Losingest Team in NFL History (Simon and Schuster, 2016) and The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History (Hill and Wang, 2010).  Jason is a graduate of Wake Forest University and holds an M.A. in history from the University of Richmond and a Ph.D. in history from Indiana University Bloomington. He has been both a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar and a Fulbright Scholar, and has appeared on such well-known programs as NPR’s Weekend Edition, Fox and Friends in the Morning, and C-SPAN’s Book TV.  His website is  www.jasonvuic.com .

 

1. How and when did you get  hooked on history?

I guess I’ve liked learning about history. I used to read a lot as a kid.  My mom was a voracious reader and a junior high librarian, so we went to our town’s library once a week religiously plus I had access to all the books in her library as well.  My favorite books were those now wildly-out-date biographies of “heroes” like Genghis Khan and William the Conqueror and Napoleon. I also read biographies of sports stars and I guess developed a knack for understanding the past, for understanding what came when and how one era led to another.  

2. What role does history play or has it played in your personal life?

My father enjoyed history...especially World War II documentaries.  He was a Marine during the Korean War and was just a bit too young for WWII.  He kind of idealized the world war so we had coffee table books and visited museums and admired and talked about the “Greatest Generation” in our house long before Tom Brokaw made the Greatest Generation a thing.  Also, my father’s parents were Serbian immigrants from Croatia who came through Ellis Island prior to World War I. We were and are intensely proud of that, so understanding what was what historically, traveling, and reading about the past were really big deals in my family.  My mother’s side also had stories, really interesting ones, so suffice it to say, history and learning history really mattered to us.

3. How does history play  a part of your professional life/career?

I went to a good liberal arts college in the South where virtually everyone who studied history went on to law school. That was my plan but as I entered school the war in Yugoslavia broke out. We had relatives there and had always read and tried to learn about the area and had visited in the 1980s.  My relatives in Croatia lived in the eye of storm and experienced some brutal stuff.  So my interest quickly became a passion, and I gave up trying to go to law school in favor of studying the history of Eastern Europe in hopes of teaching or maybe working over there in some way. I was hooked.

4. Why is studying/knowing history important?

For me, at least, it has always been a matter of learning who you are and where you live and how the world around you came to be. I grew up in a small town in Southwest Florida, which itself was rich in history, but where generations of transplants had little interest in Florida’s past.  Not everyone of course, but people in my part of the state had come to Florida to retiree, to recreate.  There wasn't much interest in the past and it always made me feel kinda rootless.  So history was a matter of learning who I was and where I was from.  

5. What is your favorite period or aspect of history to learn about and why?

I’m all over the place. My Ph.D. is in Balkan and East European history and I have written two books on the subject. But I also taught world history and general European history courses as a college professor and really enjoyed that.  Lately I’ve  focused on Florida history and the history of sport.    

6.        Your most recent book is Swamp Peddlers, about the boom and bust of Florida real estate. Who were the Swamp Peddlers and how did they shape modern Florida?

As I define them, they were big land developers during the early post-World War II period who bought up cattle ranches, denuded forest land, and even swamp land to subdivide Florida into millions of residential lots, which they sold to Northerners on the installment plan, sometimes for $10 down and $10 a month.  They focused first on retirees, so we’re not talking about beachfront property here.  We’re talking about places in southern and central Florida near the coast but more often than not in the undeveloped hinterland of the state.  But, what had been hinterland quickly developed into sprawling communities like Cape Coral, Port St. Lucie, Deltona, and Port Charlotte.  I call these places the “great Florida exurbs,” those giant instant communities with no downtowns that rely on retiree income to keep the lights on but where property is cheap and there are still hundreds of thousands of residential lots.  These places to me are the future of Florida, like it or not.

7. I’ve asked this question, or a variation, of others:  Why Florida? Is there something endemic to Florida that brings out the con artist and Florida man (or woman) in its citizens? What’s your opinion?

I know one explanation as to why Florida man is so prevalent is that Florida has exceptionally open laws regarding police reports and arrest reports so journalists can read the details of arrests in the state far easier than in other states. 

But I also think Florida is in some respects rootless. People aren’t born there. People aren’t from there. Right now less than 40 percent of the state population is native born. It’s a giant mix up and mashup of peoples and cultures from all over the United States and from all over the world so there’s a lot of cultural confusion there.  

As for land sales, Florida has always been wildly pro development, insanely so.  Land developers were good, at least to the state legislature, and the laws they passed and the industry watchdogs they created tended to shield wrongdoers.