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Punish Torture? Hollywood's Answer.

by Robert Brent Toplin

Ever since the Justice Department released four memos from the time of George W. Bush’s administration that justified waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques, Washington has been abuzz. Some politicians reacted by calling call for prosecution of high-level officials. Others defended the people who crafted these policies because the aim of forceful interrogation was to protect the country from terrorist attacks. Americans who are curious about the stakes in this lively debate

What About Michelle's First Hundred Days?

by Stacy A. Cordery

While the mixed assessments of President Barack Obama’s first hundred days pour in, Michelle Obama has maintained a near-flawless record of behavior and pushed campaign questions about her equanimity into obscurity. In the process, she has managed to accomplish The First Lady Ideal: pleasing most of the people most of the time. She has done this through a media-savvy combination: her actions remain reassuringly conventional while she personifies the Obama message of hope and change. M

Americans' Unceasing Quest for a Moral Economy

by Robert M. Saunders

In this period of economic stress, a big-picture examination of Western economic thoughts and practices can provide insights for the present. Some 2,500 years ago, Aristotle began the quest for a moral economy with a call for the government to establish “just” prices and wages. The Christian church adopted the concept of a “just society” based on the belief that individuals should subordinate their selfish interests for the common good. The Puritans who came to Amer

How Did Obama Do in Latin America?

by Alan McPherson

President Obama announced that he did not attend last weekend’s Summit of the Americas in Trinidad to talk about the past but “to deal with the future.” Yet the past was all around him, and he made remarkable use of it. “We must learn from history. But we can’t be trapped by it,” he said. In the hands

A Story. About What? Well, You Wouldn't Want Us to Spoil the Surprise, Would You?

by Kimit A. Muston

I will be celebrating the fourth of July this year. But I will also be celebrating the fifth of July, because on the fifth of July in 1883 the U.S. government granted patent #278967 for a formula of something that had never existed in the world before. The patent was granted for an invention that every one reading this has probably used at least once in the past year, and if you haven’t used it in the past year, you really ought to. It was the brainchild of an energetic young marketing gen

John W. Dean III and the Watergate Cover-up, Revisited

by Luke A. Nichter

Related Links HNN Hot Topics: The Watergate Transcript Controversy On Super Bowl Sunday—because my wife is from Pittsburgh I remember that otherwise unimportant detail vividly—I picked up the New York Times from my driveway and was surprised to find a front-page article about Watergate. After all, this is 2009, not 1974. The article, “John Dean at Issue in Nixon Tapes

I Love It When You Talk Retro

by Ralph Keyes

Our national conversation is filled with historical allusions: Ponzi schemes, smoke-filled rooms, talking turkey, even Harry and Louise (to say nothing of Thelma and Louis

Rational Pirates? The Hidden Economics of History’s Most Notorious Criminals

by Peter T. Leeson

Few characters in history inspire as much fascination or mystery as pirates. For this reason pirates make perfect fodder for pop-culture, which typically

OAH 2009: Sam Wineburg Dares to Ask If the Teaching American History Program Is a Boondoggle

by Rick Shenkman

His audience knew in advance this would be no ordinary luncheon address for a convention of historians. They had to get no further than the title to know that much: "An Antidote for an Ailing Profession or a $836,000,000 Boondoggle: The Future of the TAH Program." TAH--the Te

How Feasible Is Obama's Nuclear Disarmament Agenda?

by Lawrence S. Wittner

Not since Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, decades ago, talked of abolishing nuclear weapons has an American president pledged to work toward that goal.  Yet, speaking in Prague on April 5, 2009, President Barack Obama proclaimed "clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons."Furthermore, Obama linked his announcement of this lofty aim with a discussion of specific actions that his administration would

The Challenge of Writing Contemporary History

by Sir Lawrence Freedman

Contemporary history is a challenging craft. Unlike other forms the official archives are usually limited, the actors are very much alive and ready to comment on any misrepresentation, while the subject

Highlights from the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians

by Rick Shenkman

Related Links HNN Coverage: Past AHA & OAH Conferences News Rick Shenkman: Sam Wineburg Dares to Ask If the Teaching American History Program Is a Boondoggle OAH Finances Take a Slide and Convention Attracts Fewer Attendees

Dealing with Somalia’s Piracy Problem Won't Be Easy

by Paul J. Sullivan

The US Navy is clearly deserving of kudos for saving Captain Phillips of the Maersk Alabama in the treacherous waters off of Somalia. Maybe this is a sign for a new phase in the world’s relations with the pirates off the non-country of Somalia. One might have the whimsical feeling to call this “gunboat diplomacy,” but how can you have diplomatic relations with a state that does not exist. Will gunboat diplomacy work? Somalia has been a grating problem for the w

Are the Somali Pirates Like the Barbary Pirates?

by Lawrence A. Peskin

At a recent press confrence, Secretary of State Clinton pointed out that piracy in Africa is not a new problem for the United States.  In a similar vein, the New York Times noted that the rece

HNN Hot Topics: The Watergate Transcript Controversy

News Frederick J. Graboske, Nixon Tapes Archivist, explains why he attacked Stanley Kutler NYT Public Editor says the Times blew the Kutler story"out of proportion" AHR won't be considering article about Kutler's Watergate transcripts

Deeper Into the Muck: Ward Churchill and the “Everybody Does It” Defense

by Larry DeWitt

In my prior essay on Ward Churchill I had a broader thesis I was arguing, so I didn’t go into much detail about what I described as Churchill’s “shoddy” and “unprofessional” scholarship. I gave one extended example (the pox-infected blanket story) but beyond that I did not really bother to document the kind of work that Churchill routinely turns out. This would not matter except that later that same week the N

Predicting the End of Faith in America

by Christopher McKnight Nichols and Charles Mathewes

The end of religion in America is near. As Easter approached the cover of Newsweek read, “The Decline and Fall of Christian America.” Jon Meacham, the magazine's editor, set the tone quickly inside: Recent national polls indi

Historians No Longer Own History

by Jerome de Groot

In 1994 the social historian Raphael Samuel gave television ‘pride of place’ amongst the manifold ‘unofficial sources of historical knowledge’ which historians should attend to in order to conceive of history as a social e

A Tale of Two Crises: 1848-9 and 2008-?

by Mike Rapport

An economic crisis cutting deep, rising food prices, a shortage of credit, spiralling unemployment – and the advent of a new government promising radical

Why I Attempted a History of the Papacy

by Roger Collins

The great outpouring of public grief that followed the news of the death of Pope John Paul II in April 2005 showed the remarkable impact he had made on