Recently Published

Why Hiroshima Day Events Matter

by Lawrence S. Wittner

The 62nd anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima occurs today, August 6, 2007, bringing with it thousands of commemoration ceremonies in cities and towns around the world. Such events have become part and parcel of the nuclear era, and include the lighting and floating of lanterns in memory of the dead, silent vigils, religious observances, the chalking of human "shadows" on the ground, readings of John Hersey's Hiroshima, and leafletting.

What's Fair and Not Fair in the Middle East Debates?

by David Slavin

The posting on HNN April 25, 2007 with the title"Norman Finkelstein: Controversy featured at frontpagemag.com" is actually an attack essay by Steven Plaut. Go to Plaut's blog and the following appears: At the new address of this blog (

What Murdoch Won't Want to Change at the Wall Street Journal

by Robert Brent Toplin

Recently, the board of Dow Jones & Co decided to accept Rupert Murdoch's offer to purchase the organization. Murdoch's apparent success in adding this substantial investment to his portfolio has aroused a good deal of concern in newspaper and television commentaries. Critics worry that the media giant will be expanding his already extraordinary influence over the world's news and entertainment businesses. They note, too, that control over Dow Jones will enable Murdoch to affect the Wal

The Scary Origins of Chief Justice Roberts's Decision Opposing the Use of Race to Promote Integration

by Nancy MacLean

Chief Justice John G. Roberts reversed a half-century of precedent and progress on civil rights with his decision on school desegregation. That was the prerogative granted him by the President and the party who entrusted him to shift the Supreme Court to the right. But no one should grant Roberts a free pass when he says “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. ” His opinion has its lineage in a well-documented con

Will We Ever Get National Health Insurance?

by Jill Quadagno

Last year nearly a million more people were uninsured compared to the year before, nearly 48 million in all. The employer-based system that most people of working age have relied on since the 1950s is unraveling at the seams.  Each year for more than a decade the percentage of employers offering health benefits has declined.  The only reason the situation doesn’t look worse is that the government is picking up the slack - through Medicare and Medicaid and through the coverage

150 Years After the Civil War Can We Finally Remember It the Way We Should?

by Robert Cook

Planning is now underway to mark the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War (2011-2015). Nearly fifty years ago the Civil War centennial came close to being an unmitigated disaster. Why was this so and what lessons can be learned from that sobering experience? Centennial organizers in the late 1950s wanted the event to be a genuinely popular and national one. To achieve this end, two of the three leading parties involved – the National Park Service and amateur enthusiasts be

The Miracle of Jewish History

by Benjamin Blech

Over three hundred years ago King Louis XIV of France asked Blaise Pascal, the great French philosopher of his day, to give him proof of the existence of miracles. Without a moment's hesitation, Pascal answered,"Why, the Jews, your Majesty-the Jews." We don't have to speculate what Pascal meant when he gave this answer, because he took the trouble to spell it out. In his masterwork, Pensees, he explained that the fact that the Jewish people had survived until the seventeenth century-the t

Henry Kissinger’s Lessons for George W. Bush

by Jeremi Suri

During the middle of July 1971 Henry Kissinger, acting as President Richard Nixon’s special representative, secretly traveled to Beijing. Kissinger’s voyage provided the basis for a dramatic opening in relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China – two nations estranged from one another, and often on the brink of full-scale war, for more than twenty years. Convulsed by internal upheavals and surrounded by regional threats, Chinese leaders vie

Remember the Agricultural Exchanges Between the US and USSR? What We Can Learn from Them Today

by Lee Winningham

Despite the parade of books and papers during the years following the Cold War, historians continue to overlook a series of events that could add immensely to our understanding of the conflict. In the mid-1950’s, ordinary American farmers and Soviet officials, out of a desire to share agricultural knowledge, attempted to break through the ideological barriers that separated them by participating in an agricultural exchange program. These forgotten events and how people from both count

Why We Need a Cool Assessment of Terrorism

by Gérard Chaliand

The State Department recently released a report on World Terrorism for 2006. More then 14,600 attacks have been recorded, an increase of more than 6% on the previous year: That gives the frightening figure of 40 attacks a day! The public in the West, and particularly in the US, cannot be but impressed by such figures. Shou

What Academic Values Does the British Boycott Protect?

by Richard L. Cravatts

In what has nearly become a perverse, recurring rite of spring, and yet more evidence that universities have become, as Abigail Thernstrom has described them, “islands of repression in a sea of freedom,” Britain’s University and College Union, which represents some 120,000 members, voted in May to call for a boycott against Israeli academics. Why Israeli academic institutions? Because, the boycotters say, “Israel’s 40-year occupation has seriously damaged the fa

Did Fred Thompson Marry a Trophy Wife?

by Rick Shenkman

The picture in the paper the other day of Fred Thompson and his wife was eye-catching and it wasn’t because he towered over her like some giant out of an old circus. (At six foot six he would be the tallest president in United States history.) It’s because he looked old enough to be her father. He’s sixty-four, she’s forty: a twenty-four year difference.

Chasing the Elusive Ghost of RFK in 2008

by Leonard C. Robinson

“The modern Democrats are more a party of tragedy than of triumph. . . . And at the heart of the Democrats' quasi-tragic account, at the very center of the wistful might-have-been-but-wasn't-quite-to-be narrative, is the leader who was cut down before he had the chance fully to lead: Robert Kennedy.”-- William Kristol, Time, March 29, 2007Nearly 40 years after this death, Robert Kennedy remains an iconic figure within the Democratic Party. A

Was the Culture War Ever as Important to Republican Victories as Democrats Think?

by Mark A. Smith

According to many scholars and journalists, America continues to wage an internal “culture war.” For most of the twentieth century, the account goes, domestic politics were fought over economic and class-based issues. In recent decades, however, those concerns have been overtaken by intense cultural conflicts. Stoked by Republican candidates for electoral gain, hot-button issues like abortion, homosexuality, and religious expression in public life have come to dominate our pol

The Art Collector Who Wanted to Stage a Fascist Coup Against FDR

by Nicholas Fox Weber

It sounds like a fabrication whenever I mention that, in researching the great art collector Robert Sterling Clark—proud owner of thirty-nine Renoirs and of the only significant altar piece by Piero Della Francesca in

Lady Bird Johnson: First Lady Innovator

by Lewis Gould

The death of Lady Bird Johnson marks the passing of the most innovative first lady of the second half of the twentieth century. During her five years plus in the White House, Claudia Alta Taylor “Lady Bird” Johnson created the modern structure of how presidential wives operate. Though not the international celebrity that Jacqueline Kennedy was, Mrs. Johnson brought an adroit style to her duties that had been fashioned in running a radio and television station in Texas and in watc

Do the New Nixon Tapes Tell Us Anything New?

by Richard A. Moss and Luke Nichter

The Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library—now officially integrated into the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)—and its director, Dr. Timothy Naftali, should be commended for the release of Nixon tapes that occurred on July 11, 2007. The release, totaling 165 conversations recorded between November 3 and November 19, 1972, was both symbolic and substantive. The release was symbolic, coming as it did on the first day of the Library’s new federal status

How Hard Is the Job of Nixon Archivists? You Decide.

by Maarja Krusten

When the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) accepted the Nixon Library and Museum into its system of Presidential Libraries on July 11, 2007, its officials were all smiles. Library director Timothy Naftali explained that “tribal squabbles” were behind them. But while Richard Nixon was alive and his records still held by NARA’s Nixon Project in the Washington, DC area, his lawyers fought the Archives ov

Excerpts: House Hearings on the Commutation of Scooter Libby's Prison Sentence

by Lee Winningham

In the aftermath of President Bush’s commutation of I. Lewis Libby’s 30-month prison sentence, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee conducted a hearing in which some testimony invoked references associated with the history of the presidential clemency.  Excerpts follow.

Why Did Rome Fall? It's Time for New Answers

by Peter Heather

The Roman Empire stretched from Hadrian’s Wall to northern Iraq, and from the mouth of the Rhine to the Atlas Mountains of North Africa.  It was the largest state that western Eurasia has ever seen.  It was also extremely long-lived.  Roman power prevailed over most of these domains for five hundred years -- and all this in a period where the speed of bureaucratic functioning and of military response rattled along at 45 kilometres a day, something like one tenth of modern