Historians/History

Gerald Ford May Have Been too Much a Product of Grand Rapids for His Own Good (And Ours)

by Randal Maurice Jelks

Gerald Ford placed Grand Rapids on the map, even though it is the second largest city in Michigan. Until Ford's ascendancy to the presidency, Grand Rapids was Michigan's second city, and, perhaps, it's most overlooked city. Ford, as often repeated in television reports valued the lessons of life he learned in Grand Rapids. And yet, few, if any, reports have explored exactly what those values were and how we might understand Ford's decision making at the time of the Watergate crisis.  

The GE Years: What Made Reagan Reagan

by Thomas W. Evans

After November’s elections, Senator John McCain, former Congressman Dick Armey and others called for a return to the principles and policies of Ronald Reagan. At the time these policies were first advanced, many observers believed they constituted a revolution. But how did Reagan himself come to these views and where did he learn to translate them from one man’s vision into governmental policies and acts? In my book, The Education of Ronald Reagan: The General Electric Y

Doing Digital History

by Holly Cowan Shulman

As I finish the second “volume” of The Dolley Madison Digital Edition(University of Virginia Press, 2004 and forthcoming) it’s a good moment to reflect on what it means to be a digital pioneer: a documentary editor who publishes born-digital electronic editions. After all, there is still a fair amount of skepticism about digital history, especially the question of how historians can employ the web to enhanc

History at Yale In the Dark Ages, 1953-76

by Jesse Lemisch

I was at Yale, in and around the programs in Directed Studies, Scholar of the House, American Studies and History; living in Farnam, Berkeley, Silliman; as undergraduate, graduate student, teaching assistant, and finally instructor, most of the time from 1953 to 1963. I have stayed in touch since. I have been active, in my fashion, in alumni affairs, with the perhaps utopian goal of bringing Yale down: I don’t think the place can be reformed, and I see very little place for it in the va

Woodward & Bernstein: The Movie

by Alicia C. Shepard

This past year marked the 30th anniversary of the movie "All the President's Men," starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as investigative reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, respectively. The movie made Woodward and Bernstein forever famous and has become a classic. It still runs on television, is played widely in journalism schools and often is used as shorthand in high schools to teach about one of the most corrupt times in U.S. politics. Although the movie is the

Jerry Ford Was No Accidental President

by Max Holland

Conventional wisdom attributes Gerald R. Ford’s presidency solely to the Watergate scandal of the 1970s. Yet it is no less accurate to say that but for the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, it is likely that Ford never would have become president. His ascent was the culmination of eleven tumultuous years, not two. To be sure, in the early 1960s, many Republicans believed the tall, blond, athletic congressman from Grand Rapids, Michigan represented the GOP’s best

The American Historical Association and Free Speech

by Ralph Luker

Two and a half years ago, when an Organization of American Historians' committee, chaired by David Montgomery, was appointed to investigate threats to academic freedom on American campuses, David Beito, KC Johnson and I asked that it include threats identified by FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Especially, we thought, the committee ought to investigate the threats posed by"speech codes." When the OAH committee turned a de

Did Arabs Help the Nazis Kill Jews?

by Robert Satloff

At every stage of the Nazi, Vichy and Fascist persecution of Jews in Arab lands, and in every place that it occurred, Arabs played a supporting role. At times, Arabs were essential to the process. At other times, the Arab role was passive yet still critical. And there were those occasions when certain Arabs did more than just collaborate -- they made an already trying situation intolerable. If there is one word to characterize the attitude of most Arabs toward Jews during the war years

Gilder Lehrman Summer Series: The Era of George Washington

by Paul S. Rykken

Each summer the Gilder Lehrman Institute holds seminars for public, parochial and independent school teachers "designed to strengthen educators' commitment to high quality history teaching." More than 6,000 teachers have participated in the program through the years. In the summer of 2006 600 participants from 49 states and 6 foreign countries took part. HNN asked partic

In Historical Truths, the Road to an Open Society

by Derek Catsam

In recent weeks the world has seen the passing of two of the most notorious autocrats of the late 20th century: South Africa's P.W. Botha and Chile's Augusto Pinochet. Botha and Pinochet shared many similarities. Both were right-wing ideologues who cynically utilized fears of communism to crush opposition to their tyrannical regimes. Both used the apparatus of their military and police security forces to fight the advances of democracy. Both scoffed at their critics with finger-waving obstinacy.

In the Battle Between Pat Buchanan and Winston Churchill, Churchill Wins

by Anthony D'Agostino

NB: This article was first published at TomPaine.com in 1999.Pat Buchanan, who could soon become the Reform Party's candidate for president of the United States, has published a book containing a shocking thesis: it was a terrible tragedy that Britain and the U.S. were drawn into World War II against Hitler's Germany. The British and French should never have given their guarantee to Poland in March 1939. Had they refrained from doing so, "there might have been no Dunkirk, n

Did Early Americans Have a Sexual Identity?

by Thomas A. Foster

What did it mean to be a man in early America? Establishing a household? Owning slaves? Being able to assert one’s will regardless of communal norms? Simply not being a woman, or a boy? Holding true to Christian ideals of moral comportment? Beating the hell out of your inferiors and exploiting those who were weaker? All this and more. The thesis of my recent book Sex and the Eighteenth Century Man: Massachusetts and the History of Sexuality in America (Beacon, 2006), tha

Gilder Lehrman Summer Series: North American Slavery in Comparative Perspective

by Richard Singer

Each summer the Gilder Lehrman Institute holds seminars for public, parochial and independent school teachers "designed to strengthen educators' commitment to high quality history teaching." More than 6,000 teachers have participated in the program through the years. In the summer of 2006 600 participants from 49 states and 6 foreign countries took part. HNN asked partic

About Those Tests Indicating Students Have Low History IQ's

by Jonathan Rees

Thanks to the work of Stanford’s Sam Wineburg, we know that America has gone through a whole series of" crises" in history and civic education, dating back to at least 1917. Our latest in this long tradition has been sparked by a report from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) called"The Coming Crisis in Citizenship: Higher Education’s Failure to Teach America’s History and Institutions." The press release acc

Did the CIA Kill Bobby Kennedy? The BBC's Blunder

by Mel Ayton

Update: On 12-4-06 Mr. Ayton emailed HNN to say that he had developed additional evidence against the case made in a recent BBC broadcast about the assassination of RFK. Mr. Ayton's fresh evidence is incorporated into an addendum posted at the bottom of this article.A recent BBC news program, Newsnight (November 20th 2006) broadcast a report by an Irish screenwriter, Shane O&rs

Why We Should Remember Our Role in Forcing Open Japan When We Commemorate Pearl Harbor

by George Feifer

Who cares that Japan’s opening a century and a half ago was coerced? More of us should. The endeavor - always celebrated here as a brilliant stroke, as Commodore Matthew Perry has always been hailed (currently by the relative handful who know more than his name) as an eminent statesman for masterminding and leading the supposedly benevolent mission - was a tragedy for both countries. Its lasting damage to Japanese-American relations is bad enough, but we may now be fashioning more tribula

Interview with Gordon Wood: Revolutionary Characters

by Rick Shenkman

Gordon Wood is is Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor of History at Brown University. His latest book, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different (Penguin), prompted this interview. In April he was the subject of an HNN Doyens profile. Q. Thomas Jefferson is often remembered as the champion of The People. But as you note in your chapter on the Sage of Monticello, Jefferson in his final

The Myth That “Eight Battleships Were Sunk” At Pearl Harbor

by Richard K. Neumann Jr.

Every year as December 7 approaches we hear and read that eight battleships were sunk at Pearl Harbor. That is even repeated in a 2001 article by HNN staff on the HNN website debunking movie myths about Pearl Harbor. It didn’t happen. Eight battleships were there. Two were “lost in action,” the Navy’s term for damage that permanently destroys a ship’s usefulness. None were “sunk,” which

On the Trail of the Real John Henry

by John Garst

According to an old newspaper account (it was in the Atlanta Constitution) granite cutter Bill Hendricks appeared in court on September 1, 1913, to face charges of disturbing the neighborhood.  He had drunkenly "shouted and sung bad songs."  Bill admitted to one song, an inoffensive stanza of "John Henry" he had known since childhood.  He recited that stanza and said you sing it again if you want a longer song.  Convicted and fined $21.50, he &

Gilder Lehrman Summer Series: The American Revolution

by Mark Wilensky

Each summer the Gilder Lehrman Institute holds seminars for public, parochial and independent school teachers "designed to strengthen educators' commitment to high quality history teaching." More than 6,000 teachers have participated in the program through the years. In the summer of 2006 600 participants from 49 states and 6 foreign countries took part. HNN asked partic