Roundup

Roundup Top 10!

This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editors of HNN.

This Animated Data Visualization Of World War II Fatalities Is Shocking

It’s difficult to conceptualize excessively large numbers, particularly when they pertain to human tragedies. But this highly-engaging animated data visualization by Neil Halloran makes WWII-related deaths all too comprehensible.

Memo to Jeb Bush: It was W’s Surge that created ISIL, not Hillary

by Juan Cole

W's Iraq misadventure was the biggest foreign policy screw-up in American history.

The Daily Show in the Age of Irony

by Johann Neem

What The Daily Show did not do was convince us that political change was possible. We had already given up.

What do the Holocaust and Hiroshima — the two big events of WW II — share in common?

by Ran Zwigenberg

Both were responsible for creating a victim culture in Israel and Japan.

Prep Schools, “Diversity,” and Puritan Conscience

by Jim Sleeper

What we can still learn from the Puritans. 

Can History Save the World?

by Nick Danforth

Only one historian clearly saved the world from destruction:  Barbara Tuchman.

Roots of Reaganolatry

by Paul Krugman

Right-wing Reagan-worship requires a heavy dose of historical ignorance.

Japan’s way of remembering World War II still infuriates its neighbors

by Sarah Hyde

Unlike Germany, Japan never faced up to its wartime crimes. School children barely know what happened.

Political Debates Weren’t Always This Exciting

by Josh Zeitz

Would you want to listen to three-and-a-half hours of Abraham Lincoln?

What Made This Man Betray His Country?

by David Hoffman

How a troubled past turned a Soviet military engineer into one of the CIA’s most valuable spies.

What has nuclear physics ever given us?

by Paul Stevenson

So much science and technology has followed from the nuclear model of the atom. 

The Man Who Gave Air Force One a Lift

by Michael Beschloss

The look of today’s presidential plane originated with a quiet collaboration between President John F. Kennedy and Raymond Loewy, who was perhaps the most accomplished commercial image and design expert of the post-World War II era.

The Tough Love of ‘Austerity’

by Jennifer Szalai

When we talk about the need for austerity in Greece, the word conveys not just an economic but a moral requirement — a lesson that must be taught.

The Great Victorian Weather Wars

by Peter Moore

The history of today’s climate change debate may have begun on Feb. 7, 1861.

Top Cringe Worthy Foreign Policy Moments in GOP Debate

by Juan Cole

Well we had the primetime GOP debate, so the 2016 election season has formally begun. Yikes.

“Deflategate” and the “Father of Football”

by Julie Des Jardins

Today one could argue that the very size and convoluted nature of the NFL rule book is proof of football’s imperfection, but Walter Camp, the father of football, saw this development as progress.

The Nagasaki Experience

by Susan Southard

Entering the Nuclear Age, Body by Body

Remember when Jon Stewart called Harry Truman a war criminal?

by Aaron Goldstein

Later he had to apologize.

The Disappearing Act of the World’s Most Valuable Art

by Nicole Orttung

Sold to anonymous bidders and quiet buyers, classical masterpieces often go into hiding for years at a time. The art market has been operating with minimal transparency or oversight for years – dragging treasured artwork from the spotlight to the shadows.