Historians/History

Why Richard Hofstadter Is Still Worth Reading but Not for the Reasons the Critics Have in Mind

by Jon Wiener

David Brown's biography of Richard Hofstadter has attracted an unusual amount of attention for a revised dissertation, riding the wave of nostalgia that surrounds the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and liberal icon of the 1950s and '60s. At the New York Times Book Review, the book was the subject of the longest review of the year, and one of the most admiring, written by the editor himself, Sam Tanenhaus, who declared Hofstadter"more relevant than ever." The New Republic ran

About the Herbert Aptheker Sexual Revelations

by Jesse Lemisch

My first reaction to the shocking news in Bettina Aptheker’s book that her father, Herbert, sexually abused her as a child (as described in Chris Phelps’s article in the Chronicl

The Myth of Tokyo Rose

by Rick Shenkman

Even the NYT has been fooled.

Why the Founding Fathers Count

by Joseph Ellis

During the past decade there has been a discernible surge of interest in the Founding Fathers. An electromagnetic field has always surrounded the founding generation, which is one reason we have felt obliged to capitalize and mythologize those “present at the creation.” But until recently the tendency has been to k

Gilder Lehrman Summer Seminars: Interpreting the Constitution

by John McGoldrick

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

Gilder Lehrman Summer Seminars: New York in the Gilded Age

by Steve Laise

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

Interview with Joshua Brown: The Historian as Illustrator (Or Illustrator as Historian)

by Kensington Hatcher

Every week it seems you turn out another illustration. This is an astonishing achievement. Does it wear you down? I enjoy the task of drawing and painting the weekly Life during Wartimeinstallments, but sometimes coming up with ideas is a bit of a drain. You want to avoid repeating yourself (although I'm all too aware how easily that happens). The essential challenge, though, is to devise a concept that is most po

It's Time Mississippi Established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission

by Howard Ball

Change has taken place in Mississippi since three young men—Mickey Schwerner, James Cheney, and Andrew Goodman, were brutally murdered in 1964 by almost two dozen Mississippi Ku Klux Klansmen led by “Preacher” Edgar Ray Killen. At times change has come molecularly. In the last decade, it seems to have moved faster.

How a Professor Trained as an Engineer Came to Write a History of Holocaust Survivors Who Found Refuge in Turkey

by Arnold Reisman

While browsing through an Istanbul book store I came across “Turkey and the Holocaust.” Being a Holocaust survivor and considering myself somewhat knowledgeable about its history the book grabbed my attention. I knew nothing about what was so painstakingly documented by its author Stanford Shaw. Noticing my agitation the shopkeeper engaged me in a conversation. Suddenly I realized that this Turkish native was very familiar with a subject which, upon my return to Cleveland, I learned that statesi

Gilder Lehrman Summer Seminars: The Cold War

by Matt Boesen

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

The Korea-China Textbook War--What's It All About?

by Yonson Ahn

Among recent disputes over history textbook revisions, territorial claims in East Asia, there exists a very central conflict and ongoing debate between China and Korea. It concerns the history and heritage of Koguryo/Gaogouli (37BC-AD668) [1], which is often referred to as one of the ancient Three Kingdoms of Korea, along with Paekche and Silla. Koguryo/Gaogouli encompassed a vast area from central Manchuria to south of Seoul at the height of its power, around the fifth century (Im Ki-hwan 2

The True Story of the SS-Mann Grass ...

by Dagmar Barnouw

The True Story of the SS-Mann Grass does not exist; not in the soul-searching commentaries of the German press, nor in the condemning opeds of the American elite media. The hypocrisy of this tempest in a tea-pot is more blatant in Germany bec

Interview with Timothy R. Furnish: Doing Islamic History

by Rick Shenkman

I was surprised to learn that before you were a historian you served in the military. What's your military background?4 1/2 years enlisted in Army Intelligence (Arabic linguist/interrogator), following college (it paid off my student loans) in the mid-80s. In the late-90s I was commissioned as a chaplain candidate in the Army while I was doing my doctorate at Ohio State, since I had also obtained an M.A. from Concordia Seminary. But when it came to finishing my dissertation or

Oliver Stone, 9/11, and the Big Lie

by Ruth Rosen

When World Trade Center ended, I left the theater tense, my muscles aching. The superb directing and acting, coupled with still hardly imaginable scenes of death and destruction, had sent painful muscle spasms up my back, evoked tears, and left me, yet again, with searing and indelible images of that hellish morning. I felt disoriented in the bright sunlight of a Northern Californian afternoon. As my mind regained its critical faculties, however, another kind of shock set in.

Whatever Happened to the Plagiarism Charges Leveled Against Don Heinrich Tolzmann?

by Daniel Sauerwein

In late 2003 Don Heinrich Tolzmann was accused of plagiarism. What's happened since? At the time the allegation was levelled few paid attention. And the matter seemed to drift. But HNN has learned that the University of Cincinnati, where Tolzmann is the current director of the German-American Studies Program, Curator of the German-Americana Collection, and Bibliographer for Germanic Languages and Literatures, Slavic and Philosophy, is conducting an internal investigation. Tolzmann is a

The Strange Afterlife of the Vietnam War

by Gordon Arnold

As the hostilities in Iraq continue, the United States faces the difficult task of defeating a stubborn and violent insurgency. Some Americans today see uncomfortable parallels to America’s lost war in Vietnam. Others believe the differences far outweigh the similarities. In this debate one thing is clear. The Vietnam War is still among the most toxic labels in all of American politics. Although the nation shows due respect for the many military veterans who served in Vietnam, it is still

The Christian Conservative Who Opposed the Vietnam War

by David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito

To the extent a religious right of any kind existed in 1964, Eugene Siler easily qualified as a platinum card member. In his nine years in the U.S. House, he was unrivaled in his zeal to implement “Christianism and Americanism.” Yet forty-two years ago this month, on August 7, 1964, he did something that would be extremely rare for a modern counterpart on the religious right. He dissented from a president’s urgent request to authorize military action in a foreign war. It was Siler wh

Why the British Don't Remember Their Civil War and Americans Do Remember Theirs

by Diane Purkiss

In 1998, eight years ago, I was privileged to visit Gettysburg with my husband. The American Civil War had long fascinated me by its resonances with the more distant conflict on which I worked. The Battlefield Park was astonishing. There was not one single monument, as at Thiepval on the Somme, but hundreds to

Too Much Lewis & Clark History?

by David Mould

The story of the Lewis and Clark expedition, as author Stephen Ambrose aptly titled it, is one of “undaunted courage.” A 2 ½ year, 8,000-mile journey by river and land, to the Pacific and back, full of dangers and hardships. But the explorers would need a fresh dose of courage to face the deluge of history marking the 200th anniversary of their expedition.From St. Louis to the West coast, there are dozens of Lewis and Clark visitor centers and museums—from ma

The Strange Origins of Thomas Sowell's Theory of Gangsta Rap Culture

by Marc Wiseman

Tartans and Bling: Thomas Sowell’s Tracing of Urban Black Culture to the Grady McWhiney’s 'Celtic Fringe'Thomas Sowell is perhaps the most unexpected heir to the legacy of recently deceased historian Grady McWhiney. Outside of their shared, conservative political leanings, they are quite different. Thomas Sowell is an African-American economist, columnist and historian born in the South (North Carolina), raised and educated in the North (Harvard, Columbia and the University of Chicago