Roundup: Historians' Take

Tom Engelhardt: Why We Can't See America's Ziggurats in Iraq

[Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), a collection of some of the best pieces from his site, has just been published. Focusing on what the mainstream media hasn't covered, it is an alternative history of the mad B

Matthew Dallek: Democratic unity still out of reach

When the primary season began, the Republican presidential candidates were bitterly divided, while the Democrats were satisfied with their choices. Arizona Sen. John McCain mocked former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as the “candidate of change.” Romney broadcast commercials castigating McCain and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as liberals. Six months later, however, the Democratic Party is nursing its wounds, struggling to unify supporters of nominee-in-waiting Barack Obama and also-ran Hi

Jonathan Zimmerman: Obama ... Son of Africa or ugly American?

[Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of education and history at New York University, is teaching this semester at NYU's study-abroad program in Accra, Ghana. He is the author of the forthcoming "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory."] There's a new hit song in Ghana this spring. You hear it everywhere: in bars, restaurants, shops and taxicabs. It has a catchy rhythm, a melodic chorus, and a loud note of praise for an American presidential candidate.

Stanley I. Kutler: The Vice Presidency ... Hype and Flourishes

[Stanley Kutler is the author of “Wars of Watergate” and of numerous writings on American constitutional law and the presidency.] For two centuries, selecting vice presidential candidates was at best a mere afterthought. Hardly anyone knew of the process, if indeed one existed aside from a brief huddle by the presidential candidate with a few advisers and friends. The presidential nominees usually settled on lesser-known figures, deserved obscurities in American history.

Maurice Isserman: Will the Left Ever Learn to Communicate Across Generations?

[Maurice Isserman is a professor of American history at Hamilton College. Among his books are The Other American: The Life of Michael Harrington (PublicAffairs, 2000), and America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s (3rd, rev. ed., Oxford University Press, 2007), with Michael Kazin.] When 32-year-old Michael Harrington, a veteran socialist activist, first met 20-year-old Tom Hayden at a student conference on civil rights in Ann Arbor, Mich., in the spring of 1960, he found him "

Susan Brownell: Could China stop Taiwan from coming to the Olympic Games?

[Susan Brownell is the author of Training the Body for China, which is widely recognized as the single best work by a scholar on Chinese sports.] Actually, this was a trick question.Chinese leaders strongly desire for Taiwan to attend the Olympic Games and other major sports events because they are the most important venue in which Taiwan i

Benjamin Ginsberg: The Perils of Polling

[NOTE: In April, the Governing America in a Global Era program at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at U.Va. held a conference, "Has Polling Killed Democracy?" to examine the past and future of polling and its role in electoral politics. Among those participating was Benjamin Ginsberg, Johns Hopkins University, the author of this op ed.] Politicians, advocacy groups, the media and public officials sponsor thousands of opinion surveys every year to assess public sentime

Elizabeth Wood: Who Is the Real Leader of Russia?

[Elizabeth Wood is professor of Russian and Soviet history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.] Russia's troubled history suggests that Medvedev will probably be more of a figurehead than a real president. Ever since Dmitri Medvedev's nomination to succeed Vladimir Putin as president of Russia, followed by his election and now his inauguration, Kremlin watchers, both Russian and Western, have been discussing the so-called "Putin-Medvedev tandem" and

Martin Kramer: The myth of linkage (Middle East politics)

Last September, when I arrived in Cambridge for my fall stay at Harvard, I opened the Boston Globe and saw this headline over an editorial: “The Other Middle East Conflict.” I immediately said to myself: well, I know what the Middle East conflict is—that’s the Israelis and the Palestinians. So what is the other Middle East

Michael T. Klare: Garrisoning the Global Gas Station

[Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author of several books on energy politics, including Resource Wars (2001), Blood and Oil (2004), and, most recently, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy. A brief video of Klare discussing key subjects in his new book can be viewed by

Juan Cole: McCain Confuses Baghdad with Seoul Again

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.]John McCain says that it isn't too important when American troops leave Iraq, that the main thing is to ensure there aren't troop deaths. He said that the US has troops in a lot of places, including South Korea.

Jeff Biggers: America's First Blogger ... Anne Royall

Call her America's first blogger, albeit two centuries ahead of her times. Today is her birthday. Born on June 11, 1769, Anne Royall was an American original, a stranger to fear, and one of the nation's most daring, impassioned and indomitable social critics in Washington, DC. In the early nineteenth century. To say she was simply a woman ahead of her time overlooks the hard wrought accomplishments of her life and the scandalous legacy she left behind. Unafraid to wrestle with the g

Frederick Kagan & Kimberly Kagan: How Prime Minister Maliki Pacified Iraq

[Ms. Kagan is president of the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C., and author of "The Surge: A Military History," forthcoming from Encounter Books. Mr. Kagan is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.] America is very close to succeeding in Iraq. The "near-strategic defeat" of al Qaeda in Iraq described by CIA Director Michael Hayden last month in the Washington Post has been followed by the victory of the Iraqi government's secur

Tom Engelhardt: One Man's Online Journey through Bush's Alphabet Soup

[Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), a collection of some of the best pieces from his site, has just been published. Focusing on what the mainstream media didn't cover, it is functionally an alternative history o

Ruth Rosen: Tales From Inside the Editorial Board Room

[Ruth Rosen Professor Emerita of History, U.C. Davis Visiting Professor of History U.C. Berkeley.] When I first heard about Scott McClellan's charges that the Bush administration had lied and deceived Americans during the months and years leading up to the war, I burst into tears of happiness. No, nothing he wrote was new. And even if he still seems like a sleazy public relations expert in obfuscation, an insider was finally telling the truth, in one book. My story is differen

Harold James: The Future of Globalization

[Harold James is Professor of History and International Affairs at Princeton University and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. His books include International Monetary Cooperation Since Bretton Woods (1996), The End of Globalization: Lessons from the Great Depression (2001), and Europe Reborn: A History 1914–2000 (2003). This essay is based on his presentation at the 8th Transatlantic Editors’ Roundtable, “

Greg Grandin: What Will the Obama Doctrine Be Like? (Re: Latin America)

[Greg Grandin teaches history at New York University. He is the author of Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism and The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War.] Google"neglect,""Washington," and"Latin America," and you will be led to thousands of hand-wringing

Juan Cole: The Real Question is, Would a President McCain be good for Women?

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.] A spate of newspaper articles has appeared profiling women activists who are furious that their candidate was defeated and who feel Senator Clinton was disrespected because she is a woman. It is often alleged that the

Neve Gordon: Israel's problem, since its 1967 victory, is that it wants Palestinian land but not the people who live on it

[Neve Gordon teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University, Israel. For information about his book, Israel’s Occupation, and more www.israelsoccupation.info ] On June 8, 1967, just a few hours after the Israeli military captured Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, Haram al Sharif, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan visited the site. Noticing that troops had hung an Israeli flag on the cap of the Al-Aqsa shrine, Dayan asked one of the soldiers to remove it

David Greenberg: Historical Perspective on Clinton's Timetable for Conceding

[David Greenberg is a professor of history and media studies at Rutgers and a contributing editor to The New Republic.] Despite what you may have heard, there is nothing slow or delayed about Hillary Clinton's decision to wait until Saturday to formally concede the Democratic nomination--at least as a historical matter. It has been a while since a Democratic nomination fight came down to the wire as this one has, but consider: * In 1984, when Walter Mondale prevailed ov