Historians/History

The Holocaust Memoir that Wasn't

by Kenneth Waltzer

On Saturday, Berkley Books canceled Rosenblat's memoir,"Angel at the Fence." Rosenblat acknowledged that he and his wife did not meet, as they had said for years, at a sub-camp of Buchenwald, where she allegedly sneaked him apples and bread. The book was supposed to come out in February.-- Associated Press I have learned tonight that Penguin Ber

Going Back to the Future—Shanghai Style

by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom

The last few decades have seen a dramatic change in the way historians work.  We treat a broader range of topics, write about a wider spectrum of people, look to a larger number of neighboring disciplines for inspiration, and turn to a gre

History without Heroes: A Case in Point

by Stephen Dando-Collins

If history teaches us one thing, it is that most so-called heroes are flawed. Take the central figures of my latest book on American history,

The Ambivalence of Deep Throat

by Ron Briley

When writing college letters of recommendation for my high school students, I often employ the somewhat pretentious phrase that the student displays a sophisticated appreciation for the role played by paradox and ambiguity in historical causation.  The saga of former FBI official Mark Felt provides yet another example of history’s ambivalence.  And with the death of Mark Felt and the acclaimed cinematic adaptation of Broadway’s Frost/Nixon by filmmaker Ron Howard,

Why Don Hollenbeck Fascinated Me Enough to Write His Biography

by Loren Ghiglione

In writing CBS's Don Hollenbeck: An Honest Reporter in the Age of McCarthyism (Columbia University Press), I wish I could say that I wrote out of a sense that Faulkner was right:"The past is never dead. It

The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North: An Interview with Thomas Sugrue

by David Liebers

Thomas J. Sugrue is Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. He specializes in American politics, urban history and the history of race in America. Sugrue

How Islamists Use the Crusades

by Jonathan Riley-Smith

Western men and women have wiped the reality of the crusades from their minds.

Why Jewish Blood Runs in Modern Spaniards

by Shelomo Alfassa

On December 5, 2008, the New York Times reported that 20% of the population of the Iberian Peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal) had Sephardic Jewish ancestry and 11% had DNA markers reflecting Islamic ancestors. To those familiar with the long and dark history of the Jews of Spain and Portugal, this is not of tremendous surprise. To understand the history of the Sephardic Jews is to understand why the genetic testing returned such results. Jews most likely arrived in what

An Interview with Thomas P. Slaughter, Author of The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman, Apostle of Abolition

by David Liebers

Thomas P. Slaughter is Professor of History at the University of Rochester.  He is an award-winning author of many books including, Bloody Dawn, The Whiskey Rebellion and Exploring Lew

Who Is the Real Cleopatra?

by Joyce Tyldesley

Her people regarded Queen Cleopatra VII (reigned 51-30 BC) as a living goddess, the earthly representation of the divine mother Isis. Three hundred y

In the Footsteps of a Forgotten Emigration - America, Russia and the Archaeology of Genocide

by Tim Tzouliadis

At the height of the Great Depression, several thousand American emigrants left New York on the decks of passenger liners, waving goodbye to the Stat

The Historians' Paradox

by Peter Charles Hoffer

History is impossible. Nothing I have written or could write in The Historians' Paradox: A Philosophy of History for Our Times, will change that brute fact. We cannot go back in time. But doing history, stu

The Myth of Arab Innocence

by Elliott A. Green

The myth of Arab innocence throughout history --particularly concerning Jews-- has long haunted British and American writing about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Professors Walt and Mearsheimer put it as follows in their anti-Israel tract: ...in the Christian West... Jews suffered greatly from the despicable legacy of Anti-Semitism... But ... the creation of Israel involved additional crimes against a largely innocent third party: the Palestinians. This art

When Writing About John Muir, I Had to See What He Saw

by Donald Worster

For the past seven years I have been busy writing, in my non-teaching hours, the life story of the great California naturalist, John Muir.  Part of the rea

Lincoln in His Time and Ours: Highlights from the Columbia University Symposium

by Nicholas Osborne

If pressed to select the unifying lesson of “Lincoln in His Time and Ours,” a

Jefferson and Hemings: An Interview with Annette Gordon-Reed

by David Liebers

Annette Gordon-Reed, professor of law at New York Law School, made a splash with her book Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Contro

Can a Turkey Be a Historical Artifact?

by Jonathan Rees

A few weeks before Thanksgiving 2007, the New York Timesran a story about the booming market for heritage turkeys.  A heritage turkey can be any turkey from a breed other than the kind found in most grocery stores.  As the Times described it, this niche has grown greatly in recent years in response to the homogenization of the

Why We Need A People's History of Sports

by Dave Zirin

There are those who insist that sports and politics don't belong in the same sentence, the same zip code, or the same universe.They mouth platitudes about how these two worlds must be hermetically sealed from one anot

Please, President-Elect Obama, Reverse Bush's Muzzling of Presidential Records

by Joseph Palermo

On March 25, 2003, President George W. Bush issued Executive Order 13292 that delayed for years to come public access to millions of pages of documents that were scheduled for release. He claimed that “sensitive information” needed to be reviewed prior to the release -- though the federal government had many years to get ready for this deadline. The Bush order reversed President Bill Clinton's previous order (12958) that held a presumption in favor of disclosure. Weirdly, Bush

The Civil War Through Slaves' Eyes: An Interview with Andrew Ward

by Robin Lindley

Thousands of books have been written on the American Civil War, a brutal and devastating four-year conflict from 1861 to 1865 that left more than 600,000 combat