Historians/History

Why Are Liberals So Grumpy About the Course of American History?

by Kenneth Wagner

An often heard charge against the American left, especially the section of it occupied by those in academe, is that they hate America. Columnist Suzanne Fields, writing in the Washington Times, laments the “America-bashing” found in history textbooks used in public schools. Sandra Stotsky in a report for the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation agrees with this charge: “it is only America that can be shown as having an unending history of social strife, political repression

Lewis Gould, professor emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin, is well-known as an authority on the American presidency. His latest book is about the U.S. Senate: The Most Exclusive Club: A History of the Modern United States Senate (Basic Books, 2005).

So Libby and Others Were Taking Notes?

by Maarja Krusten

In the Washington Post's Sunday Outlook Russell Riley, professor at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs, raises important issues of vital concern to historians and archivists. Dr. Riley begins by noting:While much of Was

The Reversal in the Politics of German Memory: Should We Be Alarmed?

by Mark M. Anderson

Are the former Allied nations willing to acknowledge German suffering and loss during World War II? Are they willing to question the morality of the means by which they won the war, even the firebombing that laid waste to 131 German cities and towns, and killed more than half a million people (most of them women, children and the elderly)? Or was the extremity of Nazi aggression so great, the urgency to defeat Hitler so compelling, that the Allies have effectively been shielded from the kind of

The Executive Branch’s Response to the Flood of 1927

by Kevin R. Kosar (Congressional Research Service)

This article was published by the Congressional Research Service under the title,"Disaster Response and Appointment of a Recovery Czar: The Executive Branch’s Response to the Flood of 1927."SummaryIn the wake of the destruction caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the press and policymakers have looked to the past for examples of federal responses to natural disasters that might serve as models for emulation today. Some Members of Congress have expressed an interest in creating a cabinet-level “czar” to administer Hurricane Katrina and Rita relief programs. Since the federal response to the flood of 1927 featured Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover as the director of the flood response and wielding immense executive powers, this episode in federal history may be of particular interest to Congress.

George Washington, Politician

by Thomas Fleming

After forty years of reading and writing about the American past, I have reached one undebatable conclusion: history is full of surprises. Not many readers realize that historians are sometimes among the surprised. A book that seems relatively simple to create

Did Thomas C. Schelling Invent the Madman Theory?

by Jeffrey Kimball

On October 10, 2005, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that it had awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences to Thomas C. Schelling and Robert J. Aumann for their separate work in having “enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis.” The Academy’s press release explained that Schelling’s contribution included his ideas about “uncertain retaliation”: Against the backdrop of the nucle

Was Katrina the Biggest, the Worst Natural Disaster in U.S. History?

by Normand Forgues-Roy

How did Katrina compare with other natural disasters?

Japanese Textbooks, Koizumi, Sex Slaves, & the Nightmare of Nanking

by Rhawn Joseph

We had fun killing Chinese. We caught some innocent Chinese and either buried them alive, or pushed them into a fire, or beat them to death with clubs. When they were half dead we pushed them into ditches and burned them, torturing them to death. Everyone gets his entertainment this way. Its like killing dogs and cats. --Asahi Shimbun, Japanese soldier, describing Japanese atrocities during the Rape of Nanking.

Helen Keller: What She Really Taught Us About People with Disabilities

by Kim E. Nielsen

When Helen Keller turned seventeen, she optimistically wrote that "the future looks bright and full of promise, and I shall carry with me through all my life the memory of a happy childhood." Indeed, her future was bright and full of promise. Even today, 125

Was Columbus a Jew? and Other Tales of Political In-Correctness in American Textbooks

by William Marina

October 12th, the Discovery. It was nice to have known America, it might have been better not to.--Mark Twain, Puddenhead Wilson  Twain was too early to have to deal with "political correctness," but we must now say it is 513 years since Columbus "encountered" America. The recent death of Simon Wiesenthal, the great Nazi hunter, who was a famous fan of the view that Cristobal Colon was a Jew, reminded me of my own views

225 Years After Yorktown and We're Still Not Honoring the Virginia Black Soldiers Who Fought There?

by Anita L. Wills

October 16, 2005, will mark the kickoff of the 225th anniversary of the Siege of Yorktown, one of the deciding battles of the Revolutionary War. The Yorktown Battle was fought after a defeat at the Battle of Camden South Ca

The Organization that Fights for Human Rights for Historians

by Antoon De Baets

This article is being published on the 10th anniversary of the Network of Concerned Historians. On 13 October 1995, the Network of Concerned Historians (NCH) was established at the History Department of the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Its purpose was and still is to provide a bridge between international human-rights organizations campaigning for censored or persecuted historians and others concerned with the past on th

Interview with Howard Zinn

by Tom Engelhardt

Tomdispatch: You and Anthony Arnove just came out with a new book, Voices of a People's History of the United States, featuring American voices of resistance from our earliest moments to late last night. Now, we have a striking new voice of resistance, Cindy Sheehan. I was wondering what you made of her? Howard Zinn: Often a protest movement that's already underway -- and the present antiwar

The Struggle to Be Heard

by David Horowitz

Maurice Isserman, a leftwing professor at Hamilton College, which invited first a convicted terrorist to join its faculty and then Ward Churchill to be a faculty sponsored speaker, has written an attack on me in Academe, which is the publication of the American Association of University Professors. The purpose of this piece, portentously called "David Horowitz and the Truth" is to discredit first me and through me the academic freedom movement, on which the AAUP has declared u

Reporter's Notebook: The State of Cultural History: A Conference in Honor of Lawrence Levine

by Victor Greene

The organizers of this meeting, which was held at George Mason University in September, stated that its purposes were indicated succinctly in the title. It was to have dual goals, to review the field of cultural history and at the same time recognize Prof. Levine for his distinguished teaching and scholarship in that area.Without question these two goals according to this reporter as well as those attending and participating were well achieved. One proof was the surprisingly large audi

The McCloy Memo: A New Look at Japanese American Internment

by Greg Robinson

The removal and confinement of some 120,000 American citizens and permanent residents of Japanese ancestry from the Pacific Coast during 1942, popularly (if inaccurately) known as the Japanese American internment, remains a powerful event in the nation’s consciousness. In the decades since the war, historians have exhaustively documented the primary role of anti-Japanese prejudice and war hysteria by West Coast Army officers and civilians in bringing about the issuing of Executive Orde

Is Sociology Stuck in the 60s?

by Kenneth Wagner

Attempting to treat its numerous self inflicted wounds, the academic field of sociology continues to use the curious remedy of shooting itself in the foot. I refer to a collection of articles on the current state of the field by prominent sociologists in a recent edition of the Chronicle Review (August 12, 2005).The discipline of sociology has good reason for introspection. Since the 1970’s sociology has seen a decline in student interest and relative research funding, t

Interview with Stephen Kinzer: 1953+1979=2001 (Well, There's a Link)

by Rick Shenkman

Mr. Kinzer is the author of All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (John Wiley & Sons, 2004). He is a correspondent with the New York Times.Let's start with history. In 1953 the Eisenhower administration backed a

Why Historians Have a Stake in the Debate Over Evolution

by Kevin C Armitage

As any newspaper reader knows, the American public has little regard for the theory of evolution. Despite its nearly universal acceptance among scientists worldwide, both the president of the United States and the Senate majority leader—an MD—favor the teaching of a competing, unscientific (indeed, antiscientific) theory known as “Intelligent Design” as a counterpoint to evolution in the public schools. Even before such powerful politicians openly supported “int