Roundup: Historians' Take

Steven Lagerfeld: Today we lionize the wealthy

Jay Gould, the wealthiest man in America, was only 56 years old when he died in 1892, and the general opinion was that he had already lived too long. "So far as his life and career made him conspicuous he was an incarnation of cupidity and sordidness," declared The New York World. The Herald reported that there was "much quiet rejoicing" on Wall Street. The New York Times weighed in with a relatively measured judgment: "It is in our time that the 'operator' has been born

Aaron Belkin: A Sting He Didn't Deserve (Re: Larry Craig)

[Aaron Belkin is an associate professor of political science at the University of California-Santa Barbara and director of UCSB's Palm Center, which has done studies of military policy toward gay men, lesbians and other sexual minorities.] ... Craig's case apparently was handled according to the book. But the use of everyday gestures that fall short of sex to mete out punishment for sexual misconduct illustrates a revealing departure from methods that investigators used to carry out

Stanley I. Kutler: Civics for Cheney

[Stanley I. Kutler is the author of Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes.] Has the field of constitutional law and history been so infiltrated by the Federalist Society and its brigades of Rehnquist-Scalia-Thomas law clerks that Vice President Dick Cheney's remarks about belonging to the executive and legislative branches continue to stand unchallenged and unanswered? Anyone with an elementary knowledge of political science, or even eighth-grade civics, must know the most basic

Gary Leupp: Sen. Larry Craig in the Toilet

[Gary Leupp is a Professor of History, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion at Tufts University, and author of numerous works on Japanese history. He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu.] The Jeff Gannon Affair drew our attention to the fact that a male prostitute can sleep over at the White House on multiple occasions. The Mark Foley Affair alerted us to the phenomenon of conservative Republican lawmakers’ passion for

Juan Cole: The war against Iraq's prime minister

[Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. His most recent book Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) has just been published. He has appeared widely on television, radio and on op-ed pages as a commentator on Middle East affairs, and has a regular column at Salon.com. He has written, edi

Jonathan Zimmerman: Why is it a more serious crime to kill a dog than hit a woman?

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author of"Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century" (Harvard University Press). ] I am a carnivore. I eat chickens, cows, and sometimes even pigs. For food.    Michael Vick is a dogfighter. He teaches dogs to kill each other, and sometimes he even kills them himself. For fun.    What's the difference?    We've just concluded a month-long media gang-tackle against Vick, who

Daniel Pipes: Ban Islam?

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his blog.] Non-Muslims occasionally raise the idea of banning the Koran, Islam, and Muslims. Examples this month include calls by a political leader in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders, to ban the Koran — which h

Juan Cole: Churchill on When to Throw in the Towel on Iraq

Glenn Greenwald once remarked that "the highest achievement to which one can aspire in the neocon universe it to be compared to Winston Churchill." So Churchill would advocate another surge and toughing it out forever in Iraq, right? Here is what he wrote in 1922, a couple of years after Britain was awarded Iraq by the Versailles Treaty as a 'mandate' (i.e. colony). [Britain was forced out as mandatory power in Iraq in 1932, when it became an independent country, though of

Edward J. Renehan: Larry Craig and Sumner Welles

[Mr. Renehan's latest book is COMMODORE: THE LIFE OF CORNELIUS VANDERBILT, due out in the Fall.] The predicament of conservative Republican senator Larry Craig brings to mind old Sumner Welles, FDR's brilliant, well-connected, and personally tormented undersecretary of state. Welles was far beyond being a closeted gay. He was a man who lived long years in personal denial of his sexual identity (a life of near-total repression), who drank secretly in order to help himsel

Johann N. Neem: When it comes to manufacturing, it's still a "Jungle" out there

[Johann N. Neem is assistant professor of history at Western Washington University in Bellingham.] When Upton Sinclair wrote "The Jungle" (1906) describing the horrendous conditions in Chicago's slaughterhouses, he hoped to convince Americans to improve labor standards for American workers. Instead, disgusted by Sinclair's descriptions of what entered their food supply, Americans passed the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Meat Inspection Act, wh

Tim Weston: The media's response to China's coal mine disaster--and ours

[Mr. Weston is an Associate Professor in the Department of History, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO.] Like many Americans, I watched with hope, apprehension, and finally with real sadness as the saga of the six miners trapped underground at Utah's Crandall Canyon mine played out earlier this month. Anybody in the United States who keeps even half an eye on the news is familiar with the broad outlines of the Utah mine story. But how many of these same Americans who

Douglas Brinkley: The Reckless Abandonment of New Orleans

[Douglas Brinkley is a history professor at Rice University and the author of "The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast."] ... New Orleans appears to be largely abandoned by the Department of Homeland Security, except for its safeguarding of the Port Authority (port traffic is at 90 percent of pre-Katrina numbers) and tourist districts above sea level, such as the French Quarter and Uptown. These areas are kept alive largely by the wi

David Michael Green: What's Bush's dad really think?

[David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. ] We'll never know whether Germanicus, the highly accomplished Roman general, was mortified by the actions of his spawn, the insane and insanely destructive emperor Caligula. Or whether he was even more humiliated that, on top of that particularly notable contribution to imperial history, his grandson Nero would later strive valiantly to best the family high-water mark for sheer degenerate

Robert Rabil & Walid Phares: The Lebanese Government and the US ... Allies Behind Doors?

[Dr Robert Rabil is a Professor of Middle East Studies at Florida Atlantic University and the author of Syria, the United States, and the War on Terror in the Middle East Dr Walid Phares is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the author of The War of Ideas: Jihadism against Democracies.] Blaming the United States for everything gone awry underneath the sun of the Middle East has become the fashion of the day. Interestingly enough, critics are not co

Juan Cole: Bonaparte and Bush on Deck

[Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. His most recent book Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) has just been published. He has appeared widely on television, radio and on op-ed pages as a commentator on Middle East affairs, and has a regular column at Salon.com. He has written, edi

Juan Cole: Hillary develops Foot in Mouth Disease on Dumping al-Maliki

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com/.]PM Nuri al-Maliki responded to Senator Carl Levin's (D-Michigan) call for him to be unseated, and Bush's failure to support him on Tuesday by unwisely getting hot under the collar and saying he can find other friends in the world to support his ende

Manan Ahmed: Pakistan's supreme court decision is a good start

[Manan Ahmed is finishing up his dissertation on Islam in South Asia at the University of Chicago. His personal blog on South Asia and everything else is (http://www.chapatimystery.com) Chapati Mystery. He also hangs out at (http://hnn.us/blogs/2.html) Cliopatria - the Historian's Collective.] The Supreme Court decisions continue to change the landscape of Pakistan's history and politics. Since Ch

Michael H. Ebner: How comparable are Iowa and Staten Island?

[Michael H. Ebner is James D. Vail III professor emeritus of American history at Lake Forest College, Lake Forest, Ill.] Rudolph Giuliani invoked the specter of Staten Island in responding to Betty Schuler’s question about his experience as a former mayor of New York City now campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination in rural Iowa.Here is a handful of census data (2005), based upon Giuliani’s response to his questioner.

William Lambers: Surge of Humanitarian Aid Needed In Iraq

[William Lambers is an author and historian. His writings have been distributed by the History News Service and the History News Network. ] The hunger and poverty afflicting millions of Iraqis harm any peace efforts in the war-torn nation. In July, the charity Oxfam International released a report citing eight million Iraqis in desperate need of help. Iraqi children, in particular, are suffering. The Oxfam report showed that 28 percent of Iraqi children are malnourish

Bernard Weiner: Bush Bunker Crew's Legacy ... "Dangerous Losers"

[Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked as a writer/editor for the San Francisco Chronicle for two decades, and currently is co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org)] President Lyndon Johnson gave up his chance for re-election in hopes that the ongoing Vietnam War eventually would resurrect his political reputation and land him a place o