The World has Lost Its Historian: James W. Vardaman

Professor James W. Vardaman

"Book Junkies," Waco's Magazine
Kevin Tankersley

I received word yesterday of Profesor's Vardaman's passing. I hope to put up a better blog post about him soon, when I have more details. The photo above shows him at about 86 years old, and I think the article was published around 2016, so my educated guess puts him at about 88 as his age upon passing.

Vardaman was a great teacher. He came to class without notes and spoke without hesitation for the full 50 minutes of lecture time in profound detail, and answered questions in even more depth.

I've known a lot of historians in my own time as a historian, but I've never met anyone remotely like him - nobody with such breadth and depth and such total recall. His field was British history, but he seemed to know everything. He was the world's historian.

But he wore his knowledge lightly - and more impressive than his memory was his humanity. You might find some of that here.