Roundup: Talking About History

Diane Ravitch: First, Get the Knowledge

[Ms. Ravitch is a research professor of education at New York University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the Hoover Institution.] Who was the greatest American president? According to the latest Gallup poll, 18% of Americans picked Abraham Lincoln. Second place goes to Ronald Reagan, 16%, followed by John F. Kennedy, 14%, Bill Clinton, 13%, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, 9%. These numbers demonstrate that the public is woefully ignorant of history. That

Lisa Jardine: What's so bad about replicas? (Cutty Sark)

The Cutty Sark is to undergo yet more restoration work after being ravaged by fire. Parts of it will be too badly damaged to be saved, so at what point does it cease to be the original ship? I have spoken more than once, in the course of these broadcasts, of my fascination as an historian with the survival of things from the past, and the way touching and handling objects, or fragments of material, can help us recall with particular vividness and intensity otherwise inaccessible m

Rich Lowry: It is a mistake to think that war history is unimportant

... Battles are so important to history that their names alone — Vienna, Waterloo, Stalingrad — can evoke the beginning or end of epochs and empires. Violent conflict is one of the most persistent characteristics of human history, and warfare features the interplay of strategy, weaponry, chance, logistics, emotion, and leadership. It is an occasion for folly and brutality, and — as we remember on Memorial Day — heroism and sacrifice. It is for all these reasons that books and TV pro

Paul Muldoon: Paving over history as old as Stonehenge in Ireland

[Paul Muldoon is the author, most recently, of “Horse Latitudes.”] TOMORROW is the anniversary of the Battle of Tara Hill, fought on May 26, 1798, between 4,000 United Irishmen and 700 British yeomanry. The British carried the day. More than 200 years later, the hill of Tara, a little over 30 miles north of Dublin, is the scene of yet another battle, between the forces of modern Ireland, represented by the advocates of the M3 motorway, and those of us who believe that the routing of

Dmitry Shlapentok: How Iran is using history to bolster nationalism

[The writer is associate professor of History at Indiana University South Bend in the United States.] THE history of Iran - as of any other nation - has never existed outside its political context. Iran's recent increased interest in its Achaemenian past, as seen in events ranging from the strong official response to the Hollywood film 300 to the organisation of global exhibitions featuring artifacts from its pre-Islamic past, could be a sign of a vital change in the ideology and ge

Economist: Israel's wasted victory

ON THE seventh day Jews everywhere celebrated Israel's deliverance from danger. But 40 years after that tumultuous June of 1967, the six-day war has come to look like one of history's pyrrhic victories. That is not to say that the war was unnecessary. Israel struck after Egypt's President Nasser sent his army into the Sinai peninsula, evicted United Nations peacekeeping forces and blockaded Israeli shipping through the Gulf of Aqaba. Israel's victory opened the waterway and smashed its enemies'

Danny Loss: The failings of narrative history

[I'm Danny Loss. I currently work as a library assistant at the Harvard College Library, but I'll be starting a PhD in history at Brown this fall.] A few weeks ago, while reading responses to the teaching of the Holocaust in British schools, I came across the Conservative History Journal. CHJ's "Tory Historian" expressed an intriguing belief that "History teaching should start at the beginning and go forward in a chronological fashion." Back on May 13, Ralph Luke

Judy Creekmore: Louisiana River Parishes slave rebellion was the largest in U.S. history

This story is part of an occasional series celebrating the bicentennial of the River Parishes. For months during the cane grinding season, slaves and their masters alike worked long, hard shifts to bring in the crop and produce sugar. When the season was over, resentment of forced labor, chattel status, and other indignities suffered by those held captive was more likely pronounced, more vividly on their minds at harvest time than at any other, historian and author Gwendolyn Midlo Ha

Paul Hawken: Largely unnoticed, the largest social movement in history is developing world-wide, in response to massive ecological degradation and global warming

[Paul Hawken is an entrepreneur and social activist living in California. His article in this issue is adapted from "Blessed Unrest," to be published by Viking Press. ] Something earth-changing is afoot among civil society -- a significant social movement is eluding the radar of mainstream culture.... By conventional definition, this is not a movement. Movements have leaders and ideologies. You join movements, study tracts, and identify yourself

Elaine Pagels: Why we may have to rewrite the history of the Gospel of Judas

[ELAINE PAGELS is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University and has published widely on Gnosticism and early Christianity. Her latest book, coauthored with Karen King, in Reading Judas.] The first time I heard of the Gospel of Judas was about five years ago, when I got a call from someone who said, I have a book for you to edit—the Gospel of Judas. That astonished me, since I knew that the "church father" Irenaeus had mentioned such a gospel

Will Fitzhugh: Why There's Not Much to Cheer About in the Results of the Latest National History Test

[Will Fitzhugh is Founder and President of The Concord Review.] One of the most misleading aspects of the just-released National Assessment of Educational Progress report on American students’ knowledge of United States history in the schools, is the NAEP practice of reporting how many students performed at the levels of “Basic or Above.”

James Castagnera: Falwell v. Flint ... Recalling the Confrontation of Pop Cult Icons

[Jim Castagnera, a Philadelphia lawyer and writer, is the Associate Provost at Rider University. He writes a weekly newspaper column, “Attorney at Large.”] The sudden demise last week of the Reverend Jerry Falwell recalled to me a U.S. Supreme Court case that at one time I taught, when on the faculty of the Widener Law School. The 1988 decision is Hustler Magazine v. Falwell. I’m sure no reader of this highly respectable newspaper has ever purchased a copy of Hustler Magazin

Hank Nelson: The massive Japanese state effort to transport, organize, supervise, and supply some 2,000 women in sexual service in New Guinea

[Hank Nelson is emeritus professor in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies of Australian National University, and author of many studies in Australian and Pacific history, particularly in relation to the Second World War in Australia and the Pacific. This paper was first presented at a Division of Pacific and Asian History seminar at the Australian National University, Canberra on 8 May 2007. It has been submitted for publication to the Journal of Pacific History.] From

Andrew Marr: A swansong to 'olde Britain'

[The 1950s marked the last decade of "olde Britain" - when women were housewives, men smoked pipes and schoolboys sported caps and shorts, says Andrew Marr (right), whose TV history of post-war UK starts on Tuesday.] Between the fall of Attlee's Labour government and the return of Labour under cocky Harold Wilson, Britain went through a time which some believe to be a golden-tinted era of lost content. To millions of others these were the grey, conformist, &qu

Norman Markowitz: The Backlash Against Labor History

[Norman Markowitz is a contributing editor of Political Affairs. ] Author's note: The following is the text of a paper that I gave at the Conference of the Labor and Working Class History Association (LAWCHA)/ Southern Labor Studies Association on May 18, at the Terry Sanford Institute for Public Policy at Duke University. LAWCHA is the kind of scholar activist group that deserves support from anyone interested in understanding and contributing both the past and present struggles an

BBC: History of failed peace talks in the Middle East

In the 40 years since the Middle East war of June 1967, there have been many peace plans and many negotiations. Under Carter, the US oversaw the first Arab-Israeli peace treaty Some of these have been successful, including those between Egypt and Israel and Israel and Jordan, but a settlement has still not been reached in the core conflict, the dispute between the Israelis and Palestinians. The BBC News website is publishing a series of articles about the a

Lisa Miller: The Pope Writes a Biography of Jesus

Who was Jesus, really? It has become acceptable, even fashionable, lately to speak of the Christian Lord in casual terms, as though he were an acquaintance with a mysterious past. Pope Benedict's trip to Brazil last week revived an old retelling of the Christian story in which Jesus is cast as a social revolutionary determined to overthrow the established order. The massive success of "The Da Vinci Code" reflected the hunger of millions to see Jesus as a regular person—a man with a wif

Jon Wiener: Norman Finkelstein, the Holocaust, and Alan Dershowitz

[Jon Wiener started writing for The Nation in 1984. Since then he’s written more than 100 stories and reviews for the magazine, many about American history, university politics, and California life. He’s also professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, and a Los Angeles radio host.] Alan Dershowitz is at it again: First he tried to get California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to stop the University of California Press (UCP) from publishing a book highly critical of him,

Lou Cannon: Falwell didn't elect Reagan

[Lou Cannon is the author of five books on Ronald Reagan and a co-author of the forthcoming “Reagan’s Disciple: What George W. Bush Did to the Reagan Revolution.”] JERRY FALWELL, who died on Tuesday, would no doubt be pleased that so many obituaries gave him credit for putting Ronald Reagan in the White House. Mr. Falwell encouraged this view of his influence, as well as the related notion that he and Mr. Reagan were cut from the same conservative cloth. The record does

Hazem Saghieh: The six-day war, forty years on

[Hazem Saghieh is political editor of the London-based Arab newspaper al-Hayat.] In June 2007 the Arab world will mark a bitter anniversary in its modern history, namely the passing of forty years since the six-day war with Israel. For the Arabs, their decisive defeat in June 1967 occupies a very special, if not unique place in their region's post-independence era. Perhaps this is because the event was laden with significance - political, cultural, economic and of course military -