Historians/History

Muddling the Holocaust in Lithuania

by Steven F. Lawson

As Peter Novick argues in The Holocaust in American Life (1999), in the late 1940s Americans, especially Jews, hesitated to discuss the Holocaust openly.  The Nuremburg Trials and the presentation of film footage of Nazi atrocities in the concentration camps had appropriately shocked citizens in the U.S. and allied countries. The conversion of postwar Germany into an ally against the Soviet Union as the Cold War began did not change the horror of the extermination of six million Jewi

The Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations: A Sad Lesson from American History

by Robert Justin Goldstein

In his 1952 book The Loyalty of Free Men, Alan Barth, a Washington Post editorial writer, described the so-called “At

Did Nixon Commit Treason in 1968? What The New LBJ Tapes Reveal.

by Robert "KC" Johnson

In the end, no one was held accountable for actions that Johnson had labeled “treason.”

A School Abolishes the Humanities--And Our Culture Suffers

by Amy Solowiej

Webster's defines culture as äcquaintance with and a taste in fine arts, humanities...."It is also enlightenment and excellence of taste aquired by intellectual and aesthetic TRAINING." But the English-speaking peoples live in an age of affluence and ease. Even our "work" s tends to be easy.We've been numbed to believe everything should come easy--especially our culture. (Hence the all too common expression "I just want the peice of paper.") The Bache

Highlights of Past Inaugurals

by Rick Shenkman

Who gave the longest address? The shortest? Who had the biggest protests?

Is This the Black Activist Everybody Forgot?

by Jeffrey B. Perry

There is a growing interest in Hubert Harrison, the race- and class-conscious “intellectual giant” of the World War I era.

The Historian as Cartoonist: Drawing George W. Bush

by Joshua Brown

A few years ago, Art Spiegelman, the author of the iconic graphic account of memory and the Holocaust, Maus, explained his wariness about getting “caught in the sway of the totally ephemeral possibilities of political cartooning." The problem, he explained in an October 2004 Mother Jones interview (marking the publication of his 9/11 visual memoir, In the Shadow of No Towers), “is that political cart

How 9-11 Shaped Writing a Book About King Coal

by Thomas G. Andrews

Historians make sense of the past through the dilemmas and preoccupations of the present moments in which we research and write. This idea, hardly new, still sits uneasily with most scholars; to them, “presentism

Who Can Write Obama's History?

by Kenneth Weisbrode

American presidents have been known to want a loyal follower close at hand to record their achievements for the ages. Lincoln had Nicolay and Hay. Grant had Twain. Franklin Roosevelt had Sherwood and Rosenman. Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan each had Edmund Morris. What about Barack Obama? Who will write his history? The answer is simple: Obama himself. It's hard to recall a recent president entering office with so heavy a historical burden. No fewer than half a dozen majo

History without Heroes: A Case in Point

by Stephen Dando-Collins

If history teaches us one thing, it is that most so-called heroes are flawed. Take the central figures of my latest book on American history,

Going Back to the Future—Shanghai Style

by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom

The last few decades have seen a dramatic change in the way historians work.  We treat a broader range of topics, write about a wider spectrum of people, look to a larger number of neighboring disciplines for inspiration, and turn to a gre

The Holocaust Memoir that Wasn't

by Kenneth Waltzer

On Saturday, Berkley Books canceled Rosenblat's memoir,"Angel at the Fence." Rosenblat acknowledged that he and his wife did not meet, as they had said for years, at a sub-camp of Buchenwald, where she allegedly sneaked him apples and bread. The book was supposed to come out in February.-- Associated Press I have learned tonight that Penguin Ber

Why Don Hollenbeck Fascinated Me Enough to Write His Biography

by Loren Ghiglione

In writing CBS's Don Hollenbeck: An Honest Reporter in the Age of McCarthyism (Columbia University Press), I wish I could say that I wrote out of a sense that Faulkner was right:"The past is never dead. It

The Ambivalence of Deep Throat

by Ron Briley

When writing college letters of recommendation for my high school students, I often employ the somewhat pretentious phrase that the student displays a sophisticated appreciation for the role played by paradox and ambiguity in historical causation.  The saga of former FBI official Mark Felt provides yet another example of history’s ambivalence.  And with the death of Mark Felt and the acclaimed cinematic adaptation of Broadway’s Frost/Nixon by filmmaker Ron Howard,

How Islamists Use the Crusades

by Jonathan Riley-Smith

Western men and women have wiped the reality of the crusades from their minds.

The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North: An Interview with Thomas Sugrue

by David Liebers

Thomas J. Sugrue is Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. He specializes in American politics, urban history and the history of race in America. Sugrue

Who Is the Real Cleopatra?

by Joyce Tyldesley

Her people regarded Queen Cleopatra VII (reigned 51-30 BC) as a living goddess, the earthly representation of the divine mother Isis. Three hundred y

An Interview with Thomas P. Slaughter, Author of The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman, Apostle of Abolition

by David Liebers

Thomas P. Slaughter is Professor of History at the University of Rochester.  He is an award-winning author of many books including, Bloody Dawn, The Whiskey Rebellion and Exploring Lew

Why Jewish Blood Runs in Modern Spaniards

by Shelomo Alfassa

On December 5, 2008, the New York Times reported that 20% of the population of the Iberian Peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal) had Sephardic Jewish ancestry and 11% had DNA markers reflecting Islamic ancestors. To those familiar with the long and dark history of the Jews of Spain and Portugal, this is not of tremendous surprise. To understand the history of the Sephardic Jews is to understand why the genetic testing returned such results. Jews most likely arrived in what

In the Footsteps of a Forgotten Emigration - America, Russia and the Archaeology of Genocide

by Tim Tzouliadis

At the height of the Great Depression, several thousand American emigrants left New York on the decks of passenger liners, waving goodbye to the Stat