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How the Professional Media Creates Its Own Reality

by Jack R. Censer and Jerry Prout

Americans trying to take a collective deep breath after September 11, 2001, found themselves the very next fall unexpectedly confronting another form of terror.  Over a harrowing period of three weeks in October 2002, in and around Washington D.C, anonymous snipers trained their high

Obama Follows Reagan-era Blueprint After Earthquake in Haiti

by Alexander Poster

In response to the Haitian earthquake, one of the costliest natural disasters ever to strike the Caribbean, President Obama took immediate action.  After promising an initial commitment of $100 million to earthquake relief, the President insisted that further U.S. action in Haiti would be necessary, stating “this investment will grow over the coming year”.  Not surprisingly, right-wing pundit Rush Limbaugh voiced his disapproval of the President’s decision.&nb

Reid's Obama Blunder and What It Means

by Adriane Lentz-Smith

What do we talk about when we talk about race?  Or, more pointedly, what do we talk about when we talk about the foolish things that people sometimes say?  Reporters Mark Halperin and John Heilemann ha

What Obama is Doing Wrong

by Judith Apter Klinghoffer

Candidate Barack Obama challenged Americans to be audacious enough to hope that being perceived as racist bullies was at the root of all their security and economic woes.  The best way forward, therefore, was to elect as president a first term multiracial senator who would change the “unfair” free enterprise system.  The majority of American voters accepted the challenge, to worldwide cheers.  The greatest achievement of the Obama presidency has now been to p

Texas Social Studies Reform: What Texans Aren’t Talking About—But Should Be

by Keith A. Erekson

This week the year-long process of revising the Texas social studies standards will become dramatically public as the State Board of Education (SBOE) hears testimony in Austin. Two preliminary revisions of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) have been circulated and the hearings will lead to a final draft to be passed into law in March.1 Unfortunately, the process has been constrained by a “laundry list” approac

Nuclear Terrorism: How It Can Be Prevented

by Lawrence S. Wittner

The recent furor over an unsuccessful terrorist attempt to blow up an airliner is distracting us from considering the possibility of a vastly more d

Why It's Unlikely Obama Will Suffer Carter's Fate

by Ashley Wayne Cruseturner

A whole host of conservative commentators and bloggers have taken to predicting that the presidency of Barack Obama will replicate the tragic trajectory of the Jimmy Carter administration.  There are, of course, some parallels: both presidents broke onto the national scene as fresh-faced outsiders, dropping from the sky during unique moments in American politics in which the electorate desperately craved inexperience.  Both presidents articulated a dreamy utopian foreign policy—d

Obama, Diplomat-in-Chief

by Kenneth Weisbrode

“2010” graced the titles of so many forecasting reports in the 1990s—“China 2010,” “Global Finance 2010,&rdqu

What Would You Include in a Children's Book About the Ancient World?

by Cathy Diez-Luckie

Can a child of the 21st century imagine the way people lived 2,000 or 3,000 years ago? This was one of the questions I pondered as I started writing Famous Figures of Ancient Times. The ancient world had no car

History without Reading

by Jim Cullen

Imagine, if you will, the study of history without reading. No primary source documents to ground a discussion. No monographic studies to situate a discourse. Not even a textbook for background information. How much a sense of the past could you possibly have? This is not a rhetorical question. Nor is it solely an invitation to consider the ongoing deprivations and inequities that riddle our educational system. Actually, the situation I'm describing is probably the de facto

How an Ancient Act of Terror Brought Down a Republic

by Adrienne Mayor

Mozart’s once-obscure opera “Mitridate” has been touring Europe since 2007. Instead of the 18th century French court costumes, the stag

Divide and Confound—or Divide and Empower? The Opportunities and Dangers of Strategic PSYOP against the Alawi Rulers of Syria

by Timothy R. Furnish

At times it has been the policy of the United States to appeal directly to foreign populaces, rather than  to the tyrannical elites or unresponsive dictators who rule over them. This approach is applicable throughout the entire range of operations from peace through conflict to war. PSYOP can be not only a powerful arm of this strategy but also the only appropriate weapons system in the preconflict environment .1 I. Introduction: A Brief History of Strategic Ideological-based PSYOP

Backup of Highlights of the 2010 Convention

HNN Daily Reports Day 1 Related Links HNN Coverage: Past AHA & OAH Conferences News San Diego Tsunami A Grim Year on the Academic Job Market for Historians H

Highlights of the 2010 Annual Convention of the American Historical Association in San Diego

by David Austin Walsh

Index Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 News Bloggers VideosRelated Links HNN Coverage: Past AHA & OAH Conferences HNN Hot Topics: Gay Marriage

The Hall of Fame for Great Americans: Organizational Comatosis or Hibernation?

by William N. Thompson and Ernita Joaquin

The world’s first organization that has been specifically designated as a “Hall of Fame” was established in New York City in 1900.  The Hall of Fame for Great Americans honors 102 Americans.  It has served as a model for hundreds of other “halls of fame,” the most prominent being baseball’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, established in 1939.  While the Hall of Fame for Great Americans remains the original icon in a history of popular cul

In My Wildest Dreams: The Marriage That Dare Not Speak Its Name

by Marc Stein

Living in Maine for much of the successful recent campaign to overturn the state’s legalization of same-sex marriage, I grew increasingly confu

The Extraordinary Story of the Hanging of the Black Man Who Owned Slaves

by J. William Harris

The bare bones of the story are simple.  A black man, Thomas Jeremiah, was accused in 1775, in Charleston (then, Charles Town), of trying to organize a slave insurrection.&nb

Why Did the Bush White House Copy and Print Every Email It Received? It's a Long Story

by Nneoma Amadi-obi

Who owns the President’s papers? Prior to the passage of the 1978 Presidential Records Act, American presidents claimed legal ownership of the records generated during the course of their presidency, and established public access to these historical materials at their own pleasure. The 1978 Presidential Records Act essentially put an end to this tradition by establishing that ownership and control of presidential records belonged to the United States. The PRA requires Presidents upon leavi

A Closer Look at "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell

by John J. McLaughlin

Americans rightly  regard General Joseph W. Stilwell as a hero. Few know that he was a total failure with respect to his primary  mission which was to be the Commander of American Forces in the China Burma India  theater (CBI) and Chief of Staff to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek! That story has not been told. Stilwell became an iconic hero in the annals of World War II. His famous "walk out from Burma," his salty language, and his later  retaking of Burma

The Historian as Time Traveler

by Ian Mortimer

For most historians, the idea of actually visiting the past is something of a joke. For a start, it is impossible. What’s more, it always will be – if anyone in the future were to invent a time machine capable of going backwards in time, by