Historians/History

How Germans Remember World War II

by Max Hastings

A cultural collision took place in Germany in 1945, between societies whose experience of the Second World War was light years apart. What the Soviet and German peoples did, as well as what was done to them, bore scant resemblance to the war the America

Allen Weinstein: The Overlooked Controversy in His Career

by Rick Shenkman

Allen Weinstein's Statement in Response to This News Article Allen Weinstein moved one step closer to becoming the next national archivist on Monday night, when the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs approved his nomination and forwarded it to the full Senate.--Chronicle of Higher Education 2-8-05On the

How the History Wars in Japan Left a Black Mark on NHK TV (Their BBC)

by Gavan McCormack

NHK altered its 2001 documentary on a mock tribunal over Japan's wartime sexual slavery before it was aired because of"political pressure" from senior lawmakers in the Liberal Democratic Party, the TV program's chief producer [says]....."We were ordered to alter the program before it was aired," Satoru Nagai told reporters in Tokyo."I would have to say that the alteration was made against the backdrop of political pressure." The program originally included footage of a mock trial

What You Should Know About the Author of the NYT Bestseller, Politically Incorrect Guide to American History

by Eric Muller

Regnery Publishing has a bestseller in Thomas E. Woods's Politically Incorrect Guide to American History.Regnery was the publisher of Michelle Malkin's In Defense of Internment, which, you'll recall, was an effort to demonstrate that everything most people know about one tragic episode in American history—the Japanese American inte

Why 2 Historians Now Have to Fear the Chemical Industry

by Jon Wiener

Twenty of the biggest chemical companies in the United States have launched a campaign to discredit two historians who have studied the industry's efforts to conceal links between their products and cancer. In an unprecedented move, attorneys for Dow, Monsanto, Goodrich, Goodyear, Union Carbide and others have subpoenaed and deposed five academics who recommended that the University of California Press publish the book Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution, by

So Now I Am Being Taken to Task for Being Soft on Islam?

by Daniel Pipes

This article was written in response to Lawrence Auster's "The Search for Moderate Islam", which was published last week by FrontPageMag.com.Lawrence Auster characterizes my approach to Islam as"ecumenist" and his own as" civilizationist." I prefer to call my approach historical and his essentialist. That is, I emphasize that things change over time and he sees them as static. For example, he emphasizes cont

What "People's History" Is All About

by Howard Zinn

When I decided, in the late 1970s, to write A People's History of the United States, I had been teaching history for twenty years. Half of that time I was involved in the civil rights movement in the South, when I was teaching at Spelman College, a black women'

Why It's Time for a Patriot's History of the United States

by Larry Schweikart

For a half a century, the interpretation of America's story has drifted steadily leftward, sometimes almost imperceptibly and sometimes rather obviously. Whether through deliberate revision designed to qu

Peter Charles Hoffer’s Past Imperfect and the Value of Historiography

by Jonathan Rees

Historiography means “The history of history,” or the study of historical writing. Why bother studying historiography? After all, if one makes the reasonable assumption that historians’ ability to depict the past have gotten better over time, isn’t it fair to ask why anyone needs to know anything about what historians used to write regarding a particular historical issue?I have been teaching historiography to undergraduates off and on for five years now and I co

American Historical Association Announcement

This announcment was dispatched by email to AHA members on January 27, 2005. Readers wishing to comment can do so at the bottom of this page.The American Historical Association is proud to announce the most comprehensive revision of its Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct since that document was first adopted in 1987 is now available on the AHA’s web site at http://www.historians.

Will They Be the National (Secret) Archives?

by Jon Wiener

On Inauguration Day, January 20, the classified papers of former President George H. W. Bush became eligible for release -- as the law specifies, twelve years after he left office. Historians and journalists are hoping those papers will shed more light on the first President Bush's decision not to pursue Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and occupy Iraq during the first Gulf War in 1991. They could also resolve questions about Bush Senior's pardons of the principal figures in the Iran-contra a

Interview with Kevin Boyle, Winner of the National Book Award

by Bonnie Goodman

Kevin Boyle, a professor of history at Ohio State University, recently won the National Book Award (non-fiction) for Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age. The book tells the st

Why Has a New Book that Claims Lincoln Was Gay Been Treated So Charitably?

by David Greenberg

The most surprising thing about The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, the new book that claims the Great Emancipator was bisexual, is how charitable the reviews have been. Even skeptical reviewers have allowed that the author—the late psychologist C.A. Tripp—may have a point and have retreated to the safer position that Lincoln's sexual orientation doesn't really matter anyway—that Tripp's project is a trivial one. The conservative journalist Richard Brookhiser, fo

How Have Wartime Inaugurations Been Handled in the Past?

by Bonnie Goodman

Looking at earlier wartime inaugurations the trend was toward simple ceremonies such as James Madison's in 1813, Abraham Lincoln's in 1865, Woodrow Wilson's in 1917, Franklin Roosevelt's in 1945, and Dwight Eisenhower's in 1953. The simplest of all was Roosevelt's fourth inaugural in 1945 amidst World War II. However, the post World War II era saw inaugural ceremonies becoming increasingly more lavish affairs despite the fact that war or protest was ensuing. Lyndon Johnson's in 1965, and Ri

Why Do Historians Ignore Noam Chomsky?

by John H. Summers

Noam Chomsky has written more than 30 books over the last three decades. Yet neither the Journal of American History, nor the American Historical Review, nor Reviews in American History has reviewed them. If the journals had overlooked one or two of Chomsky's books, then the omissions might not rise to the status of a problem, and could be attributed to a combination of reasons each of them incidental to Chomsky himself. If the journals had in fact devoted attentio

Nixon Pigeon-Proofed His Inaugural Parade Route

by Rick Shenkman

Fun facts about inaugurations past:Weirdest moment: At Harry Truman’s 1949 inaugural parade five B 36 bombers staged simulated attacks on the White House, flying within 1500 feet of the building. Unsurprisingly this is the only known instance where something like this occurred.Oddest fact: Richard Nixon’s inaugural parade route was pigeon-proofed, officials spraying a chemical on Pennsylvania Avenue that the birds found offensive. Th

The Myth of Academic Deviance

by Ron Robin

Do we live in particularly deviant times? A cursory glance at academic newspapers, internet bulletin boards and, of course, the recent spate of books, suggests that an epidemic of academic crimes and misdemeanors--ranging f

Why an Academic Freedom Movement Is Flourishing at Brooklyn College

by Robert "KC" Johnson

By any measure, Brooklyn College’s current leadership sports a dreary record regarding the protection of academic freedom on campus. In 2002, the college unsuccessfully attempted to deny me promotion and the resulting tenure for “uncollegial” behavior—which the administration defined, in writing, as disagreeing with the political, curricular, and personnel opinions of some senior colleagues. Last fall, the administration proposed making “collegiality” a basis

The Parallel Passages

by Philip Nobile

In the current Weekly Standard -- in an article republished by HNN -- I accuse Simon & Schuster of knowingly plagiarizing my work in C.A. Tripp's The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, just published by its Free Press division. My accusation is unusual because publishers are usually unaware of their author'

Broken Promises, Plagiarism, Misused Evidence and the New Gay Lincoln Book Published by the Free Press

by Philip Nobile

The Parallel Passages By Philip Nobile The notion that Abraham Lincoln had homosexual experiences is hardly new. All the way back in 1924, Carl San