Recently Published

Dissenting Against War Is as American as Apple Pie

by Ron Briley

As Congress recesses for the 2006 campaign season, the President hopes to resurrect Republican electoral hopes by once again appealing to the politics of fear. Building upon his politicization of events commemorating the fifth anniversary of the 2006 terrorist attacks, President Bush has pushed for the Congress to authorize military tribunals for the trials of detainees described as terrorists. The President and his Congressional supporters describe those opposed to the legislation, whether t

Shhh! Don’t Talk about Herbert Aptheker

by Jesse Lemisch

Public talk vs. private talk. If we consider, first, the volume of off-list private e-mail that I have received since History News Network published my "About the Herbert Aptheker Sexual Revelations"

Why We Should Leave Iraq Now

by John Weiss

We face a paradox in Iraq: the longer we stay, the stronger our enemies become. We cannot defeat either the insurgency or the civil war resulting from our invasion and occupation; in fact, both have grown stronger. Nor can we protect the Iraqis we came to save. A corrupt Iraqi government wastes the billions we have allocated for rebuilding, while the middle class flees to avoid the danger. The Pentagon trains Iraqis to fight, but we may well be training the army of our future enemies

Was the Dred Scott Decision Morally Wrong but Still Legally Correct?

by Mark A. Graber

Dred Scott has too long been considered the disreputable old maid of American constitutionalism. As in the card game, the party to a constitutional debate that gets stuck with the Dred Scott card loses. Proponents and opponents of such controversial decisions of Roe v. Wade repeatedly insist that their rivals are relying on the same principles of constitutional interpretation that Chief Justice Roger Taney used when he concluded in 1857 that slaveholders had a co

The Black Panthers: Their Dangerous Bermudian Legacy

by Mel Ayton

"The Sixties defined itself by its efforts to delegitimize the police as an ‘army of occupation’ while also celebrating crime as a form of existential rebellion and the outlaw as a perceptive social critic. There was a numbing barrage against what was derided as ‘law and order’ seen in slogans such as ‘off the pigs’, in the insistence that ‘all minority prisoners are political prisoners’, and in the romanticizing of murderers

For Iraq, a Lesson from Africa

by Derek Catsam and Tom Bruscino

No one's looking, because no one's inclined to look in such an unlikely place. But it turns out that there's much to learn about how to handle the Iraqi quagmire by looking to Africa -- and, of all places, to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).   The lesson is simple and yet has been almost universally ignored by American politicians and military planners alike: If you focus too much on security and the mere appearance of democracy and do not work toward fostering the deve

Interview with David Cannadine: His New Biography of Andrew Mellon

by Rick Shenkman

Last week Knopf published Mr. Cannadine's latest book, Mellon: An American Life. The following interview was conducted by email.Was Mellon a cold fish? It's impossible not to start with this question. He was certainly a distant, fenced-in, taciturn man. It was said that he and the equally unloquacious Calvin Coolidge conversed in pauses. He was a very difficult man to get to know; I don't think anyone ever knew him well; and I'm not sure that he knew hi

History Doyen: Anne Firor Scott

by Bonnie Goodman

What she's famous for.

About the Herbert Aptheker Sexual Revelations

by Jesse Lemisch

My first reaction to the shocking news in Bettina Aptheker’s book that her father, Herbert, sexually abused her as a child (as described in Chris Phelps’s article in the Chronicl

Bomb them Back to the Stone Age: An Etymology

by Nick Cullather

Just after 9/11, the United States allegedly threatened to bomb Pakistan “back to the stone age” unless it joined the war on terror. In his forthcoming book, Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf attributes the ultimatum to Richard Armitage, who flatly denies it. Sounding slightly less sure, President Bush says he was “taken aback by the harshness of the words.” Harsh, maybe, but hardly original. Journalists, fifth-grade bullies, and maybe

Is Bush a Revolutionary?

by Lee P. Ruddin

Many detractors have berated President George W. Bush, condemning him for jettisoning two centuries of custom. Lafayette History Professor Arnold Offner was just one who asserted that Bush’s new policy (the ‘Bush Doctrine’) was an extremely radical--indeed revolutionary--departure from American practice. National Security Tsar Stephen Hadley has even weighed in (though not intending to disparage his chief) underlining the revolutionary ethos of his boss's doctrine.&

Gilder Lehrman Summer Seminars: Interpreting the Constitution

by John McGoldrick

Each summer the Gilder Lehrman Institute holds seminars for public, parochial and independent school teachers "designed to strengthen educators' commitment to high quality history teaching." More than 6,000 teachers have participated in the program through the years. In the summer of 2006 600 participants from 49 states and 6 foreign countries took part. HNN asked partic

It's Not North Korean Nukes that's the Chief Korean Problem

by Mark Selden

The essence of the “Korea Problem” lies not in the threat of North Korean development of atomic weapons; nor does it lie in the existence of a rogue regime in North Korea (DPRK), as the international press and some American presidents and politicians would have it. The central problem is the division of the Korean peninsula, the outcome of half a century of Japanese colonial rule and a legacy of the incomplete character of independence resulting from US-Soviet division of Korea an

Gilder Lehrman Summer Seminars: New York in the Gilded Age

by Steve Laise

Each summer the Gilder Lehrman Institute holds seminars for public, parochial and independent school teachers "designed to strengthen educators' commitment to high quality history teaching." More than 6,000 teachers have participated in the program through the years. In the summer of 2006 600 participants from 49 states and 6 foreign countries took part. HNN asked partic

What the Believers in American Power Have Overlooked

by Joyce Appleby

The Iraq war has produced more ironies than successes. The greatest of them is that an attack designed to demonstrate the preeminent power of the United States has ended up making clear that we now live in an era of supranationalism.   The United States stands poised between wanting to write its own ticket and wishing to speed efforts to solve the world's problems. Conspicuously first among equals, it is going to have to get used to the idea that national sovereignty belongs to th

Why the Founding Fathers Count

by Joseph Ellis

During the past decade there has been a discernible surge of interest in the Founding Fathers. An electromagnetic field has always surrounded the founding generation, which is one reason we have felt obliged to capitalize and mythologize those “present at the creation.” But until recently the tendency has been to k

The Myth of Tokyo Rose

by Rick Shenkman

Even the NYT has been fooled.

Disarmament is a Two-Way Street

by Lawrence S. Wittner

The Bush administration’s current confrontation with Iran over what it claims is that nation’s nuclear weapons development program raises the question:  Can the disarmament of one country occur in isolation from the disarmament of others?That question seemed to be answered by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968.  Signed by almost all countries of the world, including the United States, it provided that the non-nuclear nations would forgo building nu

Islamofascism ... Bush Is on to Something

by Daniel Mandel

When speaking of today's affairs, are historical analogies and allusions helpful? Several commentators think not, at least when it comes to US President George W. Bush's recent references to "Islamofascism." Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson has argued that "the

An Obama Presidency for Lincoln’s Two-Hundredth Birthday

by Robert S. McElvaine

The next president will be inaugurated just over three weeks before Abraham Lincoln’s two hundredth birthday. It will mark a most appropriate moment for the nation to return to the ideals and principles from which it has strayed so far under the leadership of what so plainly is no longer the Party of Lincoln.The disastrous war in Iraq, growing violence in Afghanistan, unprecedented deficits and debt, a slowing economy, soaring energy prices, global warming, the loss of respect a