Historians/History

Ten Weird Facts About Presidential Conventions (With Pictures!)

by HNN Staff

FACTThe 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, was forced to delay for a day due to an approaching hurricane. This is the second consecutive GOP convention where the opening day was delayed due to an approaching hurricane; in 2008, the convention in St. Paul, Minnesota was delayed due to Hurricane Gustav making landfall in Louisiana. This is, however, the first instance where the threatened city is also the convention host.FACTThe first presidential nominating convention ever was held by the now hilariously-named Anti-Masonic Party in 1831. How bizarre was the Anti-Masonic Party? At one point they tried to convince Henry Clay to join, despite the fact that he was a Freemason himself.FACTThere hasn't been a floor fight for a major-party nomination since 1976, when Ronald Reagan battled Gerald Ford at the Republican National Convention in Kansas City. (This was also roughly the last time a political convention actually mattered.)FACT

Niall Ferguson's "Newsweek/Daily Beast" Cover Story Ignites a Firestorm

by HNN Staff

Table of ContentsThe Original ArticleThe ResponseFerguson's DefenseThe CounterpunchReflectionsRound Six: Ferguson's Second RiposteThe Newsweek/Daily Beast Cover ArticleNiall Ferguson: Obama's Gotta Go

Rome: The Origin of Empire

by Greg Woolf

The Roman Empire at its greatest extent, under Emperor Trajan in 117 AD. Credit: Wikipedia.

Does David Barton's Flameout Make This a Scopes Moment for American History?

by Adam Laats

Entrance to the Oral Roberts University campus, where David Barton received his B.A. in religious education. Credit: Wikipedia.

Middle East Studies Association to Israelis: “Go to the Back of the Bus”

by Alan Luxenberg

A scandalous -- but unreported -- event took place in Washington, D.C. late last year at the Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), a constituent organization of the prestigious American Council of Learned Societies.As is customary at such meetings there were well over 200 panels to discuss a wide range of topics -- historical, political, and cultural -- with four or five scholars presenting different perspectives at each panel. The purpose of such meetings is to provide a forum for these scholars to exchange ideas, present their research findings for critical review by peers, and in general to promote the advance of knowledge. Scholars come from all over the world to participate. All of this is unremarkable but what happened at one particular panel this past December merits public attention.

How a Left-Wing Look at America's "Heroes" Reveals Its Own Ignorance

by Ron Radosh

The Nation magazine is playing a trick on me. I regularly receive a lot of books, since publishers know I review many and they’re hoping I’ll respond by writing up the one they are pushing. Many are conservative books; others histories; others simply by publishers who know I’ve written on a topic that their new book covers.But until now, Nation Books, an imprint of the Perseus Book Group, has never sent me one of the books by any of their left-wing authors. But two days ago, I received a copy of Peter Dreier’s new book, The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame. Dreier is the E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and director of the Urban and Environmental Policy Program at Occidental College, and happens to be one of the main characters of Stanley Kurtz’s new book on Obama’s radical redistributionist plans for a second term (he has an entire section).

Hiroshima: Truman’s Choices Revisited

by Stanley Kutler

Credit: HNN Staff/NARA.The historical reconstruction of the decision to use the atomic bomb in August 1945 is an interlocking puzzle, revealing a seemingly inexorable choice to use the weapon. The United States had made a bomb and successfully tested it in July, and the scientists, generals, politicians and civilians caught up in events readily supplied the accelerating momentum to a decision: we must use it. Civilian decision-makers anxious to justify expenditures of unprecedented sums of money to develop a weapon designed to end the war offered no resistance.The historical narrative to use the bomb largely derives from the recollections and rationales of President Harry Truman and his civilian and military advisers. For them, the stark choice came down to drop the bomb or invade the Japanese homeland and sustain a “million” American casualties -- an arbitrary, unsubstantiated figure propelled by its own momentum, with apparently no consideration of the potential for Japanese civilian casualties. A small number of scientists raised ethical and moral considerations, but their influence was of no immediate consequence. 

The Nixon Foundation *Did Not* Delay the Opening of the New Watergate Exhibit at the Nixon Library

by Bob Bostock

Nixon Library and Gardens, Yorba Linda, California. Credit: WikipediaNumerous reports about the obstacles the Richard Nixon Foundation supposedly placed in the way of Nixon Library director Dr. Timothy Naftali over the three years it took him to produce a new Watergate exhibit are entirely unfounded. It is time to correct the record. Quite simply, the Nixon Foundation – the private, non-profit foundation that seeks to work with the National Archives to promote the legacy of the 37th president – did not attempt to delay or derail the new exhibit.When the Richard Nixon Foundation turned the Nixon Library over to the National Archives (NARA) in 2007, both parties agreed that the National Archives would produce a new Watergate exhibit to replace the one that had been in place since the Library opened in 1990. They also agreed that the Nixon Foundation would have the opportunity to review and comment on the exhibit as it was being developed. This is consistent with the practice at every other presidential library in the National Archives system.

Mark Twain's Progressive and Prophetic Political Humor

by Walter G. Moss

Mark Twain in 1907. Photograph taken by A.F. Bradley.In the midst of a presidential campaign, with ads (and money to pay for them) flying left and right, what better time to recall Mark Twain? He was our first major stand-up political humorist. On one lecture tour in 1871-72, this author and public speaker/entertainer gave more than eighty speeches. Not only a humorist, he was also akin to a Jewish prophet criticizing his society for not living up to its principles. Thus, a major study of Twain as a radical social critic (by Maxwell Geismar) is entitled Mark Twain: An American Prophet.

What Can Historians Learn from Neuroscience?

by Christopher U.M. Smith

False color image of a human brain. Credit: Wikipedia.There is a flourishing academic interest in the history of neuroscience. An international society, the International Society for the History of the Neurosciences (ISHN) is devoted to its study, publishes a quarterly journal (the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences) and conferences are held each year.But is there a similar interest in the neuroscience of history? Should there be? Can the great accession of knowledge in the neurosciences over the last decades be used to illuminate, to use the words of H.G. Wells, "what happened in history?"

History Meets Neuroscience

by Daniel Lord Smail

The brain of Charles Babbage, father of modern computing, on display at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. Credit: Wikipedia.The facts are coming in and the truth isn’t a pretty one. It turns out that we’re addicts. All of us.

Jim Downs: Civil War and Emancipation the "Greatest Biological Catastrophe of the Nineteenth Century."

by Robin Lindley

Contraband during the Civil War. Credit: Wiki Commons.January 1, 2013 will mark the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the effective date of the Emancipation Proclamation.We tend to think of the emancipation of African American slaves in the South as a celebratory moment of jubilation and ecstasy. But there is a darker, bitterly ironic side to this triumphant story -- a grim story of neglect and indifference to a vulnerable population of uprooted men, women and children left to negotiate their freedom in a hostile, war-torn, disease-plagued land.

"The Other America": Still Invisible

by Ron Briley

A deserted, dilapidated street in Camden, New Jersey, 2009. Credit: WikipediaIn 1962, Michael Harrington published The Other America, alerting middle-class Americans during the post-World War II affluent society and move to suburbia that poverty persisted in the inner cities and many rural areas. Responding to the pleas of Harrington and the awakening of the nation’s social conscience inspired by the civil rights movement, President Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty, but these dreams of the Great Society and the programs required to address economic inequality were sacrificed on the altar of the Vietnam War. Since the Reagan era, the economic gap between rich and poor continues to grow, but, unfortunately, our ability to ignore the plight of the poor seems to have also increased fifty years after the publication of Harrington’s book

How Suffering Shaped Emancipation: Interview with Jim Downs on the Plight of Freed Slaves During the Civil War and Reconstruction

by Robin Lindley

January 1, 2013 will mark the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the effective date of the Emancipation Proclamation.We tend to think of the emancipation of African American slaves in the South as a celebratory moment of jubilation and ecstasy. But there is a darker, bitterly ironic side to this triumphant story -- a grim story of neglect and indifference to a vulnerable population of uprooted men, women and children left to negotiate their freedom in a hostile, war-torn, disease-plagued land.

Saul Alinsky Elementary School? How We Honor America's Radicals and Reformers

by Peter Dreier

Some day your child might attend Saul Alinsky Elementary School, named after the controversial community organizer from Chicago. Or perhaps Gloria Steinem Middle School. Or maybe Pete Seeger High.Sound far-fetched?Consider this: A daily newspaper in eastern Pennsylvania recently published an article that began: "The West Chester Bayard Rustin High School Science Olympiad team placed 14th out of 60 teams in the national competition last week."

The Cuban Missile Crisis: The View from Okinawa

by Jon Mitchell

A TM-72 Mace missile is trundled through the Okinawa city of Gushikawa in the early 1960s in a rare open display. Courtesy of Charles Headlee.In October 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union teetered on the brink of nuclear war after American spy planes discovered that the Kremlin had stationed medium-range atomic missiles on the communist island of Cuba in the Caribbean, barely over the horizon from Florida....Six months prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis, however, a parallel drama had played out on the other side of the world as the U.S. secretly brought near-identical missiles to the ones the Russians stationed on Cuba to another small island -- Okinawa.While the full facts of that deployment have never been officially disclosed, now for the first time three of the U.S. Air Force's nuclear pioneers have broken the silence about Okinawa's secret missiles, life within the bunkers and a military miscalculation of apocalyptic proportions -- the targeting of unaligned China at a time when China-Soviet polemics were in full public view.

What is the Least Credible History Book in Print?

by David Austin Walsh

David Barton's book on Jefferson voted the least credible.

The Space Needle at Fifty -- Historian and Writer Knute Berger on His History of the Seattle Landmark

by Robin Lindley

Space needle n.  (a) each of a large number of short copper fibres placed experimentally in earth orbit to reflect communication signals (now rare);  (b) a very tall, slender tower; spec. that opened in Seattle, United States, in 1962.--Oxford English DictionaryAs 1962 dawned, the Cold War was simmering and the United States was lagging in the Space Race with the Soviet Union. It was an anxious time as thermonuclear war between the two superpowers threatened, citizens dug fallout shelters, air raid sirens screamed periodically, and schoolchildren drilled for the apocalypse,But citizens of Seattle were not discouraged by the possibility of nuclear annihilation. In April 1962, an ambitious group of civic luminaries kicked off a world’s fair, the Century 21 Exposition, with the theme of science and the future.

Don't Listen to the Naysayers -- The New Deal Helped to End the Depression

by Anthony D'Agostino

Europe and the United States are now four years into the slump and deepening financial crisis that followed the crash of 2008. Efforts to find a way out have been limited by monetarist notions that dominated the boom years and the central bank response to economic stagnation has been restricted to repeatedly recapitalizing the big banks, printing money, and hoping for a return of confidence. The globalist ideological consensus has been an additional burden with its simplistic notions of internationalism. For the last few decades progress has been more or less defined in terms of getting beyond the Westphalia model of great states, presumably as part of a global process that the EU and the euro were thought to be leading by example. This view was ironclad during the days before the crash of 2008.

Clinton's Laos Visit is an Opportunity to Shed Light on the Devastation of Vietnam

by Jeremy Kuzmarov

The visit of Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to Laos this past week, the first of an American official in over four decades, has raised badly needed attention on one of the darkest episodes of American history, the clandestine bombing of Laos during the Vietnam War. Clinton made the trip to Laos as part of the U.S. “pivot” strategy in Southeast Asia, pledging $9 million in support of bomb clearance initiatives. For many years the U.S. refused to pay any reparations to Laos for war damage or accept any responsibility for civilian casualties and environmental devastation. During Clinton’s stay, she met with victims of the U.S.-led secret war such as Phongsavath Souliyalat, who lost his eyesight and both hands to a previously undetonated cluster bomb on his sixteenth birthday just a few years ago. “So many survivors are without help. Their life is very, very hard,” Souliyalat reportedly told her.