On Other Websites: Archives October 2001 through May 2002

An Ominous Reversal on Gun Rights (NYT)
Using a footnote in a set of Supreme Court briefs, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced a radical shift last week in six decades of government policy toward the rights of Americans to own guns.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/14/opinion/14TUE3.html

The Future of War and the American Military
Demography, technology, and the politics of modern empire
http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/050218.html

Our Past, Cobwebs and All
History is messy. Why tidy up a museum devoted to it?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56383-2002May8.html

Remembering the Heroes
The guns fell silent long ago, but interest in World War II remains strong.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/747853.asp

Seniors Don't Have Basic Grasp of History (NYT)
More than half of America's high school seniors do not have even the most basic grasp of U.S. history, showing no improvement in a nationwide test since 1994.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-life-history.html

A Time to Change
Atlantic articles from the past forty years have considered the troubles and the institutional weaknesses plaguing the Catholic Church.
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/catholicism.htm

Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany Had Plan to Take New York
Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm had drawn up detailed plans in 1900 for an invasion of the United States centered on attacks on New York City and Boston, according to documents in a military archive published on Thursday.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020508/od_nm/invasion_dc_1

Except for that 10 pages . . .
The MobyLives.com website reports that after months of silence from Stephen Ambrose, during which time numerous instances of plagiarism continued to be discovered in several of his books, and barely a week after it was revealed that he was suffering from lung cancer, the embattled author has finally commented at some length on the plagiarism charges.
http://www.stephenambrose.com/

Nixon Archives Portray Another 'War' on Terror
The response to '72 massacre and '73 Mideast War has many echoes in Bush Administration's challenges.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42809-2002May6.html?referer=email

New Details Emerge From the Einstein Files (NYT)
The Einstein File: J. Edgar Hoover's Secret War Against the World's Most Famous Scientist, by Fred Jerome, reveals pursuit of Einstein by the FBI.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/07/science/physical/07EINS.html

The Disappearing History Term Paper
Here’s a look at what passes for high-quality student writing about history these days.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/125/oped/The_disappearing_history_term_paper+.shtml

Back to the Future
The proposed solution to the crisis in the Middle East is predicated on one notion: the return of the West Bank and all the other lands occupied by Israel after June 10, 1967. However, let us not forget what was occurring in 1967.
http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson040202.asp

Writing Old Wrongs
Terence Smith reports on how The Clarion-Ledger newspaper of Jackson, Miss. prompted the reinvestigation of more than a dozen civil rights-era crimes.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/jan-june02/clarion_5-6.html

Eric L. McKitrick, 82, Historian and Writer, Dies (NYT)
Dr. McKitrick was a Columbia University historian who chronicled the evolution of the American republic, and was best known for his Andrew Jackson and Reconstruction (1960), reissued by Oxford University Press in 1988. He was also the co-author, with Stanley Elkins, of The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800 (Oxford University Press, 1995).
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/06/obituaries/06MCKI.html

Book Names New Anne Frank Informant (NYT)
The enduring mystery of the Anne Frank story is, who betrayed her to the Nazis? Now, a biographer of Anne Frank has published a new theory which has intrigued the nation and revived a dark chapter in Dutch history -- the failure to protect Jewish citizens from the genocidal Nazis.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Anne-Franks-Betrayal.html

Books in Brief: Who Owns History? (NYT)
When Eric Foner, who is white, was hired in 1969 to teach the first course in black history at Columbia University, black students conducted walkouts and disrupted his class in protest. Foner survived that ''baptism by fire'' to become the DeWitt Clinton professor of history at Columbia and a pre-eminent scholar of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/05/books/review/_0505br-foner.html

Book Review: Inventing America
A review of James F. Simon's book, What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States.
http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/9/epps-g.html

After the war is over
If political talks can eventually be relaunched, the Taba negotiations would be a good starting-point.
http://www.economist.com/printedition/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=1077422

Friendly Fire
In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/jointchiefs_010501.html

The Arrogance and the Ecstasy
Powerful people expect to get away with behaving badly toward those less powerful than themselves. And this is the unspoken lesson of the revelations that Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose are shameless plagiarists.
http://www.villagevoice.com/vls/177/perlstein.shtml

A Clash of Symbols: Defining Holy Sites on Faith (NYT)
History and religious tradition clash not just at the Church of the Nativity, but at many other sites in the Holy Land.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/28/weekinreview/28KINZ.html

Why the Cardinals Kept Mum (NYT)
What happened to the Catholic Church in the late 1960's was a bit like what the American military experienced when public opinion turned against the Vietnam War: its aura of unassailable authority crumbled.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/28/weekinreview/28STAN.html

Stephen Ambrose says he has cancer
Stephen Ambrose, the best-selling historian whose books on World War II inspired a wide-ranging resurgence of interest and led to the founding of The National D-Day Museum in New Orleans, has been diagnosed with lung cancer.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/neworleans/index.ssf?/newsstory/o_ambrose01.html

History for a Democracy
A democratic nation needs a democratic history, but few professional historians are providing it.
http://wwics.si.edu/OUTREACH/WQ/WQSELECT/HISTORY.HTM

Tipperary-born Bishop Betrays Candadian Uprising
Two hundred and two years ago this week, inspired by successful revolutions in France and America, nearly 400 Irishmen living in the Canadian island of Newfoundland stood ready to rise up against British authorities. Only their bishop stood between them and considerable bloodshed.
http://www.thewildgeese.com/pages/unitedir.html

A War of Words on a Prize-Winning Story
No Gun Ri authors cross pens on First Amendment battlefield.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/04/07/IN89398.DTL

Actors to Re-Create WWII Internment (NYT)
At noon on Saturday, Japanese-American men, women and children in fedoras and flowered dresses will report to a government building, attach tags with government-issued numbers to their suitcases and buttonholes, and ride a bus to a place with fences and guard towers.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Re-creating-Internment.html

Scholars to Investigate History Book (NYT)
A team of scholars is investigating a disputed, prize-winning book about the role of guns in the United States. The dean of Emory University, where author Michael Bellesiles is a professor of history, asked for the panel after the school concluded its own inquiry of"Arming America."
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Historian-Inquiry.html

The Middle East According to Robert Fisk
Controversial British journalist Robert Fisk believes that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might turn into something as apocalyptic as the French-Algerian war.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12919

PBS vs. the History Channel
PBS treats making TV shows as if it were noble but tedious missionary work; the History Channel manages to create some comical, intriguing visual rants about"history"—and at the same time attract viewers.
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2064540

Not Quite an Arab-Israeli War, but a Long Descent Into Hatred (NYT)
The recent Israeli incursions into the West Bank are assuming their own place in the long list of armed conflicts that Israel has fought with its Arab neighbors.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/22/international/middleeast/22MIDE.html

Slave Site for a Symbol of Freedom (NYT)
The National Park Service's plans to showcase the Liberty Bell next year in a new $9 million pavilion in Philadelphia have come under attack from historians and local residents, who have accused the Park Service of trying to cover up a less noble element of American history on the same spot: the existence of slave quarters.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/20/arts/20BELL.html

Mount Vernon Acts to Bolster Washington's Presidential Image (NYT)
Curators at Mount Vernon, the estate of George Washington, said today that an orientation center and museum would be added to the grounds in an effort to strengthen his reputation as the indispensable man of American history.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/20/national/20VERN.html

Jefferson Heirs Plan Cemetery for Slave's Kin at Monticello (NYT)
Thomas Jefferson's heirs are proposing the creation of a separate cemetery on the grounds of Monticello, Jefferson's estate in Virginia, for the descendants of Sally Hemings, the slave who may have been the mother of at least one of his children.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/21/national/21SLAV.html

The Seminole Tribe, Running From History (NYT)
A tribe is struggling mightily to distance itself from a history in which black Seminole warriors and chiefs had starring roles.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/21/opinion/21SUN3.html

Presidents and Crises
NewsHour historians discuss the American president's challenging role in the Middle East conflict.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/jan-june02/historians_4-17.html

Bush Sets Role for U.S. in Afghan Rebuilding (NYT)
President Bush today embraced a major American role in rebuilding Afghanistan, calling for a plan he compared to the one Gen. George C. Marshall devised for Europe after World War II.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/18/international/18PREX.html

Selling Martin and Malcolm's Papers
The strange and twisted saga of both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X's personal papers reveal much about the legacy, players and pitfalls of the civil rights era.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12874

Pulitzer Prize Winner for History
Ray Suarez talks to Louis Menand, who won the Pulitzer Prize in History for his book The Metaphysical Club.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/conversation/jan-june02/menand_4-15.html

Accessing Historical Documents
Testimony from a hearing entitled"The Importance of Access to Presidential Records: The Views of Historians," held before the House Government Reform Committee on April 11, is posted here:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2002/index.html#pra

Teachers Get Ready to Return to Space
From Cape Canaveral, TIME's Broward Liston takes a look at the first school teacher to step aboard a space shuttle since the Challenger explosion.
http://www.time.com/time/education/article/0,8599,231109,00.html

Unsigning the ICC
As the US mutes its response to the call for a global embrace of the rule of law, it traduces a critical principle of American democracy.
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020429&s=anderson

History Meets Mystery
Was 'The Bondwoman's Narrative' written by a female former slave in the 1850s? Henry Louis Gates Jr. thinks it was.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/106/living/History_meets_mystery+.shtml

It’s the War, Stupid
The secretary of state has sloshed back into the endless swamp of"peace process" and"shuttle diplomacy" in his Middle East interactions, and he is doomed to fail, as all his predecessors since Henry Kissinger failed. They all failed — and he will fail — because they thought they could"solve" the Israel/Arab"problem" by just talking it out.
http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen041502.asp

Roosevelt in Retrospect
A collection of turn-of-the-century Atlantic articles by and about Theodore Roosevelt sheds light on his roles as politician, outdoorsman, and scholar.
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/roosevelt.htm

A Long Road
What would the United States have done after September 11 if, rather than four coordinated attacks killing some 3000 Americans, it had sustained more than 70 attacks over an 18-month period that killed 20,000 Americans? A comparison between September 11 and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
http://www.nationalreview.com/owens/owens041202.asp

Politics
Historians seek perspective on Reagan.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/03/31/MN216005.DTL

Taking On Catholic Guilt
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, the author of the 1996 best seller “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust,” which ignited a furious debate among Holocaust scholars, is now tackling an even larger theme: the entire question of Roman Catholic guilt.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/731897.asp

The Shores of Tripoli
Our first fight against international terrorists.
http://www.americanheritage.com/AMHER/2002/01/innews.shtml

Torturing History
A military historian abuses the past.
http://www.reason.com/0204/cr.cb.torturing.shtml

History Lesson
Yehudah Mirsky on fascism, communism, and jihadism.
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=express&s=mirsky041002

At a Festival, Documentaries as History (NYT)
Many of the most compelling films at this year's Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, formerly the DoubleTake Festival, dealt with historical events.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/10/movies/10ARTS.html

Study Faults Small Schools on Social Studies (NYT)
A study by two Columbia University professors has found that many of New York City's small high schools teach a diluted version of social studies that does not adequately prepare students for citizenship's demands. A student in a small high school may never be exposed to important events in history, like the Civil War, World War I or the American Revolution, the report says. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/10/education/10SCHO.html

New Japanese Textbook Stirs Up Controversy Over War (NYT)
A Japanese citizens' group criticized the government's decision Tuesday to approve a new high school history textbook written by nationalist historians, saying it glossed over Japan's wartime aggression.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-japan-textbook.html

Putin, Schroeder Avoid Former Concentration Camp (NYT)
Germany and Russia dodged confronting a shared past shame Tuesday when leaders of both countries decided not to visit a former concentration camp where Nazis and then Soviets killed thousands of people.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-germany-russia-buchenwald.html

U.S. Catholics See Priest Scandal Testing Faith and Vatican (NYT)
A look at the current sex scandals within the Catholic church in relation to other issues that the church has faced historically.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/08/national/08CATH.html

Artful Deception
Historians who pass off other people's work as their own are widely condemned -- just ask Stephen Ambrose or Doris Kearns Goodwin. But publishers seem exempt. These days, entire books are written by people other than their purported authors.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38888-2002Mar30.html

Agoraphobia
Yossi Klein Halevi says the Passover bombing, with its unmistakeable historical echo, was a clarifying moment for Israelis.
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020415&s=diarist041502

Devil in the Details: George W. Bush, policy plagiarist
What harm is there in writing what has already been written?" The answer, apparently, is a lot if you're a Brooklyn Dodger-loving historian like Doris Kearns Goodwin, but not much if you're the leader of the free world.
http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2002/03/shilander-j-03-29.html

Hugh Graham, 65, Historian Who Led Study on Violence, Dies (NYT)
Hugh Davis Graham, a scholar of modern American history who was co-director of a notable 1969 study for the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, died on Tuesday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/01/obituaries/01GRAH.html

Bush to Transfer Island to NY (NYT)
President Bush will transfer Governors Island to New York state for a nominal fee, preventing the historic island off the southern tip of Manhattan from being sold to the highest bidder.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Governors-Island.html

Oscar's Step Toward Redemption (NYT)
By naming Denzel Washington best actor for"Training Day" and Halle Berry best actress for"Monster's Ball," the 74th annual Oscars made news, and made history, as few of their predecessors have.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/31/movies/31SCOT.html

U.S. Lied About Cuban Role in Angola (NYT)
The United States and South Africa intervened in Angola months before Cuban troops arrived in 1975, and not afterward as Washington claimed, according to a historian who recently wrote a book on the subject.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-cuba-usa-angola.html

A Golden Reign of Tolerance (NYT)
A thousand years ago, Al Andalus was a place where Jews, Christians and Muslims lived side by side and nourished a culture of tolerance.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/28/opinion/28MENO.html

When Janie Came Marching Home: Women Fought in the Civil War
History buffs, including Lauren M. Cook, set out to document the full story of women who went into combat during the Civil War.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/23/arts/23WOME.html?ex=1017928825&ei=1&en=b21

Cockburn on Bellesiles, Ambrose and Goodwin
Call it the year of the yellow notepad. Doris Kearns Goodwin, ejected from Parnassus, from Pulitzer jury service and kindred honorable obligations, sinks under charges of plagiarism consequent, she claims, upon sloppy note-taking on her trusty yellow legal pads....
http://counterpunch.com/yellownote.html

Historians Conclude Swiss Aided the Nazis (NYT)
An independent historians' commission concluded on Friday that the Switzerland's neutrality was twisted to justify policies that helped the Nazis.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/23/international/europe/23SWIS.html

Gallup: Bush Remains High in the Polls
"Six months ago, George W. Bush registered the highest presidential job approval rating in Gallup’s polling history, at 90%. Since that time, his approval rating has fallen only slightly, to 80%. Bush’s 10-percentage-point drop six months after his high point compares favorably to the average six-month approval declines of other recent presidents. Looking at Gallup’s presidential approval archives back to Dwight Eisenhower, the average decline in job approval at the six-month mark following the date of each president’s high score is 16 points. In three cases (John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon), the decline was less than 10 points."
http://gallup.com/poll/releases/pr020321.asp

Dallek on Bush
ROBERT DALLEK reviews Frank Bruni's new book about George W."'When I was a boy,' Clarence Darrow said, 'I was told that anybody can become president. I'm beginning to believe it.' Frank Bruni's Ambling Into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush will make believers of us all."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/20/books/20DALL.html

Nixon, Jews, and Dope
From the new Nixon tapes:"You know, it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them? I suppose it is because most of them are psychiatrists."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58812-2002Mar20.html

The Loyal Opposition: Soundbite Patriots
Can Free Speech Undermine Freedom? War deserves debate -- at the start and during its course. If it cannot bear close examination and critical barbs, then perhaps it does not warrant firm support.
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5268

Billy Graham Responds to Lingering Anger Over 1972 Remarks on Jews (NYT)
Eveangelist Billy Graham acknowledged, but repudiated some anti-semitic statements he made on tape in the Nixon White House 30 years ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/17/national/17GRAH.html

Appropriating the Holocaust (NYT)
The worst trivialization and distortion of the Holocaust comes not from the Jewish Museum, which in this exhibition attempts to examine portrayals of Nazis and the Holocaust, but from other sources like movies that present false renderings of Holocaust history, as well as governments and interest groups that invoke Holocaust symbols to advance their own agendas.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/15/opinion/15REIC.html

What Kind of Nation: Clash of the Titans (NYT)
James F. Simon's new book is a study of the political and legal struggle between Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall, icons of American history.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/10/books/review/10ELLIST.html

Talking History shows in March
Each program will air the week of the designated date.
http://cuwebradio.creighton.edu/history/index.html

Colin Powell's List
The targeting of"terrorist" groups harks back to earlier repression of dissent, from the post-World War I Palmer Raids against socialists and anarchists to the 1950s McCarthyite anti-Communist hysteria.
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020325&s=dreyfuss

Never Again Again
Samantha Power, the author of A Problem From Hell, explores in this interview why America—the home of Holocaust awareness—did all but nothing to stop the genocides of the twentieth century.
<http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/int2002-03-14.htm

100,000 People Perished, but Who Remembers? (NYT)
In one horrific night, the firebombing of Tokyo — then a city largely of wooden buildings — killed an estimated 100,000 people. Despite the huge toll, the firebombing of Tokyo left surprisingly few traces in the popular memory of Japanese, or Americans.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/14/international/asia/14JAPA.html

Through Allende's Broken Glasses, a View of Chile Today (NYT)
An exhibition of a country's history is often as much about the present as the past, and this is nowhere more true than in Chile today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/13/opinion/_13WED3.html

Vienna Skewered as a Nazi-Era Pillager of Its Jews (NYT)
Historians have now documented the extent to which Austrians were among the first war profiteers, moving quickly to expropriate the property of Vienna.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/07/international/europe/07AUST.html

Alamo Redux: A Mission Impossible (NYT)
The biggest news in San Antonio last week wasn't a conference of scholars ruminating on the anniversary of the battle of the Alamo, which took place on March 6, 1836. The real news is that there is going to be another movie about the Alamo...can this movie promise to be more historically accurate than past movie attempts?
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/10/weekinreview/10BARR.html

Malcolm X Letters (NYT)
In a rare trove of journals, letters and other writings attributed to Malcolm X, the fervid civil rights leader shows himself as humbled by his first pilgrimage to Mecca, in 1964, the year he broke with the Nation of Islam amid his growing conviction that not all whites were devils.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/08/arts/08MALC.html

Malcolm X Family Fights Auction of Papers (NYT)
Personal writings attributed to Malcolm X have turned up on eBay, infuriating his family and alarming scholars.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/07/arts/07MALC.html

Women's History Month
For Women's History Month, The Nation is assembling a collection of archival articles plus links and other resources.
http://www.thenation.com/special/2002whm.mhtml

The Consequence of Plagiarism
Overseer Doris Kearns Goodwin should step down for breach of academic honesty.
http://thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=180483

Liberal Arts
The"borking" of historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.
http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2002/03/berger-n-03-07.html

Japan Rediscovers Its Korean Past (NYT)
Recognition of Tsushima, and of Korea's importance as a contributor to Japan's early imperial history, recently received a huge and unexpected push from the highest of sources — Emperor Akihito. With a candor far removed from the usual poetic fog of the imperial court, Emperor Akihito, in remarks to the news media that took Japan by surprise in December, all but declared his own Korean ancestry.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/11/international/asia/11JAPA.html

Threads of History
Trained to seek and to interpret written documents, American historians usually are flummoxed when confronted with the past's household objects. But perhaps these objects can help historians who operate where the paper trail peters out.
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020304&s=taylor030402

Black Historian Joins Heritage Group (NYT)
When Nessa B. Johnson, the 61-year-old author and black history activist, attended her first United Daughters of the Confederacy meeting in January, she said chapter members welcomed her like family even though she is black.