Week of October 8, 2012
Historian's Take: The Vice-Presidential Debate
 Joe Biden: Barack Obama's Hatchet Man He put the "vice" in vice president last night -- an undignified performance from a man holding the second-highest office in the land. |
 Three Reactions to Last Night's Debate The Mideast dominated foreign policy, Biden came off as a jerk, and neither candidates talked much about principles. |
 Biden Nailed It |
 Did Either Ryan or Biden Manage to Rally Women Voters? Women are the key to the election, but neither candidate made effective appeals. |
Your Take
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Blogs
 Obama's Other Debate Failure: No Narrative At least Teddy could string together a story about the middle class in America. |
 How the Democrats Can Win on Taxes The math on Mitt's tax plan just doesn't add up. |
News at Home
 Why Obama Lost the First Debate And how he can win the next one, with acting tips courtesy of the Gipper. |
 Barack's Lost Idealism He's stopped speaking the truth because what he has seen of America since 2009 has broken his heart |
 Hey Mitt, When Are You Going to Apologize to My Parents? They were part of the "47 percent," but they were the hardest-working people I've ever known. |
 Affirmative Action's Unlikely Allies How corporations and the military stopped Reagan from abolishing affirmative action. |
 Historian's Take: The First Debate Contributions from Ira Chernus, Lewis Gould, K.C. Johnson, Leo Ribuffo, Ruth Rosen, Gil Troy, and Bernard Weisberger. |
News Abroad
 Overwrought Empire U.S. military power is more ubiquitous than ever ... and don't expect the next administration to change things. |
 Post-Mortem on the Muhammad Protests The video really did matter. |
 A Policy Lesson from Reagan for Obama and Romney |
Historians & History
 Eric Hobsbawn's Brilliance ... And His Blindspot Unlike Eugene Genovese, Hobsbawm remained an unrepentant Marxist to the very end. |
 Why Aren't We More Worried About Pandemics? New breakthroughs in neuroscience illustrate why humans remain optimistic in the face of potential catastrophe. |
Google Questions
 Did Lincoln Own Slaves? No, of course not, but a surprising number of Google searches are about this. |
 Is Elvis Alive? No, he's not. Drugs and peanut butter and bacon sandwiches killed him. |
 Did Hitler Escape from Berlin? Even though the Soviets found his charred body, this ridiculous conspiracy theory just won't go away. |
Culture Watch
 The Innocence Project Hits the Stage The Exonerated is a relentless, scalding indictment of the U.S. justice system. |
Books
 Review of Julie Levinson's The American Success Myth on Film |
 Review of Steve Hochstadt's Exodus to Shanghai: Stories of Escape from the Third Reich |