ABSTRACT
In the fall of 1973, I was teaching at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem—or would have been, if the Egyptians and Syrians hadn’t invaded four days after we arrived—when C. Vann Woodward came to town to deliver a series of lectures. I had to tell my department chairman what the “C” stood for, so he could get some posters made. (Cecil, Charles, and Comer—the right answer—would all be different initials in Hebrew.) Most students and faculty were still mobilized when the Woodwards arrived, so my wife and I were assigned to entertain them, the start of a casual friendship that lasted until Vann’s death in 1999. To publicize the lectures, I reviewed Woodward’s most recent book for the Jerusalem Post.
