Roundup: Talking About History

Charles Laurence: Ted Kennedy ... The Senator of Sleaze

[Charles Laurence has written articles published in MailOnline and The Daily Telegraph.] Senator Edward 'Ted' Kennedy stood for sleaze. Bloated and drunken, he used his standing in the Kennedy clan to chase vulnerable women - which brought his dream of reaching the White House to a shameful end. He was the youngest of the four Kennedy brothers, and by far the longest lived. Incredibly, he was in line to inherit his brother John F. Kennedy's legendary p

Michael Goldfarb: Americans and the lessons of Europe's history with terrorism

[Michael Goldfarb serves as a GlobalPost Correspondent in the United Kingdom.] The Scottish Parliament was recalled from its summer holidays Monday for an emergency debate on the government's decision to release convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi on "compassionate grounds." The dying 57-year-old returned home to a hero's welcome in Libya. The expressions of outrage from the United States, first from the families of the victims and then by Pre

Janet Daley: How the Kennedys changed America

[Janet Daley is a columnist for The Sunday Telegraph.] So it's over. The Kennedy era, in which the political consciousness of most of my American generation was born, ends with a lingering illness and quiet mourning, so unlike the violent deaths of Ted Kennedy's elder – and greater – political brothers. However much the youngest sibling may be lionised in the coming days, it was John and Robert Kennedy whose lives truly electrified American politics and whose assassin

Michael Tomasky: Ted Kennedy made the US a better place

[Michael Tomasky is a columnist, journalist and author. He is currently the editor in chief of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas and Editor of Guardian America as well as a contributing editor for The American Prospect.] One would be hard pressed to argue that Ted Kennedy's death was a more bitter pill for the country than the deaths of his brothers before him – John, the young president whose assassination gave Americans a hard warning about the violent age they were about to enter, or

Robert Gellately: Remembering the Nazi-Soviet Pact After Seventy Years

[Robert Gellately's latest book is Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe (Knopf and Vintage). He teaches history at Florida State University.] The first annual European-wide commemoration of the"the victims of Stalinism and Nazism" took place on August 23. The resolution to hold this event was passed recently by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a fifty-six-nation body, which includes the United States and

Barbara Crossette: Abdullah Abdullah's Unmentioned History

[Barbara Crossette, United Nations correspondent for The Nation, is a former New York Times correspondent and bureau chief in Asia and at the UN.] Abdullah Abdullah, the most powerful challenger to Hamid Karzai in the presidential elections in Afghanistan, argues on his campaign website that "there can be no greater priority than regaining the trust of the Afghan people," a trust he now claims is being squandered again in voter fraud by his rivals. While the

Gordon Taylor: Life and Death in the Perkins Family, 1834 - 1852 (Persia)

The piece that follows was written for the Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies. The readers of that journal, small as it is, would know immediately the name of Justin Perkins. Justin Perkins, D.D., was a pioneer American missionary in Iran, then still known as Persia. For the Nestorian Christians (now called Assyrians) of Urmia and the mountains of Hakkari, in Turkey (the snow-flecked mountains in the above photograph), he made a revolution, working with nativ

Robert McCrum: The Second World War: six years that changed this country for ever

[Robert McCrum is assistant books editor for the Observer.] When I was born in 1953, just after the coronation of Elizabeth II, I had a ration book. This flimsy, red cardboard log now looks like a passport to another country. Many things about that postwar Britain have become unrecognisable: cod liver oil, steam trains, rag-and-bone men, bobbies and telegram boys on bicycles and standing to attention for the national anthem at the end of cinema programmes. Looking back

Terry Teachout: The New-Media Crisis of 1949

[Mr. Teachout, the Journal's drama critic, writes "Sightings" every other Saturday and blogs about the arts at www.terryteachout.com.] The digital apocalypse continues to blight the lives of television producers, music-industry executives and newspaper publishers, all of whom are scrambling to figure out how to reconfigure their business models in such a way as to allow them to make an honest buck. They're trying to second-guess t

Alastair Gordon: The American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959

[Alastair Gordon is a contributing editor for WSJ magazine.] This summer marks the 50th anniversary of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, a golden moment in Cold War one-upsmanship and cultural thaw. Most people know about the so-called “Kitchen Debate,” the heated exchange between Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev that took place in a model kitchen on the opening day of the fair. But most don’t have a clue of where or why it happened.

Orlando Figes: The Nazi-Soviet Pact

[Orlando Figes is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of many books on Russian history, the latest of which is The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia (2007). His books have been translated into more than 20 languages.]In the second of a series of articles marking the outbreak of World War II 70 years ago, historian Orlando Figes analyses what the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact meant for Europeans in 1939 - and what it means today.

Matt Phillips Interviews Historian Charles Geistt: Financial Historian on The Dow as 'Cultural Icon'

[Charles Geisst is a professor of finance at Manhattan College. His new book, “Collateral Damaged: The Marketing of Consumer Debt to America,” was recently published by Bloomberg Press.] Wall Street without the Dow?It seems to be a possibility. We know Dow Jones & Co Inc. has been sounding out potential buyers for the company’s stock-market indexing business. The Journal’s story contains this tantalizing bit:"A new owner might have the option to renam

Artyom Krechetnikov and Steven Eke: The 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact

[Artyom Krechetnikov and Steven Eke work for the BBC's Russian Service]The 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact is controversial even today, with historians divided over its importance. In the first of a series of articles marking the outbreak of World War II 70 years ago, the BBC Russian Service's Artyom Krechetnikov and Steven Eke analyse the significance of a treaty that helped set the scene for war. Signed on 23 August 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was accompanied by a s

Ted Sorensen: Kennedy family's remarkable story

[Ted Sorensen was special counsel and adviser to President John F. Kennedy.] The death of John F. Kennedy's sister Eunice Shriver, the founder of the Special Olympics for the developmentally challenged, has given rise to a wealth of news stories -- obituaries and otherwise -- about the recurring tragedies endured by what some call America's "royal family." All of these comments are well intended but off the mark. The Kennedys have been a re

Gregory McNamee: Hawaii: A Pineapple Republic on the 50th Anniversary of Statehood

[Gregory McNamee is a contributing editor for Encyclopædia Britannica, for which he writes regularly on world geography, culture, and other topics. An editor, publishing consultant, and photographer, he is also the author of 30 books, most recently Moveable Feasts: The History, Science, and Lore of Food (Praeger, 2006).] RSS Britannica Blog via RSS RSS Posts by Gregory McNamee via RSS print Print Image of gmcnamee Hawaii: A Pineapple Republic on the 50th Anniv

Catherine Merridale: Stalin's Ghost in Russia

[Catherine Merridale is professor of Contemporary History at Queen Mary University in London.] The rebirth of history in Russia began at least two years before the European turning point of 1989. It was Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost, or openness, launched in 1986, that encouraged the tentative debates, discussions that were sponsored initially by the Kremlin itself. As a graduate student in Moscow University’s Faculty of History in 1986 I watched the process unfolding and I

Charles Powell: Without visionary politicians, the Berlin Wall would still stand

[Lord Powell was private secretary and foreign policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher, 1983-1990.] The next few months mark the 20th anniversaries of the greatest events in Europe since the end of World War Two in 1945. They include the fall of the Berlin Wall, the overthrow of Communism in Eastern Europe, the reunification of Germany and the end of the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union was to follow not long afterwards. Taken together, they were a political earthquake whose t

David Marples: Reviewing a Nazi-Soviet Pact 60 Years On

[David Marples, a professor of Russian history at the University of Alberta, Canada, is the author of “The Collapse of the Soviet Union, 1985-1991.”] Sunday marks the 70th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a nonaggression treaty between the two totalitarian powers of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, as well as a secret protocol that divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence between Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. In May, President Dmitry Medvedev auth

Roscoe Born: What really happened in The Journal's investigation of the JFK victory over Hubert Humphrey in the 1960 West Virginia Democratic primary

As a long-ago friend and colleague of Bob Novak when we both worked for The Wall Street Journal in Washington, I lament his passing. In my 45 years in this business, I never knew a reporter who worked as hard as Bob. His typewriter and piled-high desk were only about three feet from mine, so I knew something of his work ethic. Later, his long-running syndicated column, though by definition filled with opinion, showed that he never quit reporting—as illustrated in the Valerie Plame case.

Roger Simon: The birth of political television

[Roger Simon is the Chief Political Columnist of Politico.com.] In March 1948, Don Hewitt was 26 years old and working at Acme News Pictures in New York handling photographs when a friend called from CBS telling him there was a job for him there. In 1948, CBS meant radio, and Hewitt was confused. "What would a radio network want with a guy with picture experience?" Hewitt asked. "It's television," his friend said. "What