Recently Published

On the Trail of the FBI's KKK Source: What I Discovered

by Gary May

Perhaps I’ve read too many murder mysteries and police procedurals, seen too many movies and watched too much television—-especially the CSI shows that multiply like crab grass. It may explain why l

Sports: My or No Way

by Murray Polner

At New York Yankee home games during the seventh inning stretch, a sonorous voice on the P.A. system asks the crowd to stand – how many brave souls would dare refuse? – for the playing of Irving Berlin’s "God Bless America."Nothing much was said publicly about standing for the song until first baseman-slugger Carlos Delgado, then of the Toronto Blue Jays, refused last year to rise from his dugout bench, declaring he wasn't thrilled how th

Yasukuni Shrine: Ritual and Memory

by John Breen

Yasukuni is first and foremost a site for the performance of ritual before the kami (gods), those men, women and some children who sacrificed their lives for the imperial cause. This article examines the organizing of space and ritual at Tokyo's shrine to the war dead and the implications for memory.The most important of several ritual spaces is that within the Honden or Main sanctuary. This is the central, elevated building located along the east-west axis that runs up from the bottom

Is the Way We and the Japanese Now Remember World War II Significant?

by Laura Hein

One of the central lessons of the literature on the invention of tradition is that historical symbols are always available for reinterpretation in a variety of ways. Yet, there are some facts that are still rooted in the incontrovertible logic of the human life span. The sixtieth anniversary of anything means that those who were active participants are no longer making decisions in public capacities although some of them are still here. For example, this spring Lisa Fittko, who had helped such f

The Framers Vs. Senator Frist

by David E. Kyvig

Conservatives portray the men who framed the Constitution as repositories of democratic wisdom. If that's what they believe, they ought at least be faithful to one of the Framers' core principles. But they aren't doing so. Instead, ignoring that principle, they're rushing headlong to impose a radical reform on the United States Senate. Senate Republicans, lusting to install a few judges who can only be confirmed by slender partisan majorities, are ignoring a principle in which Jam

Why the Founding Fathers Would Be Appalled at Tom DeLay's Call to Impeach Judges

by David E. Kyvig

Update 6-18-05: The office of Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) says that he has not called for the impeachment of judges for unpopular rulings as Mr. Kyvig stated in this piece.I blame Congress over the last fifty to a hundred years for not standing up and taking its responsibility given to it by the Constitution. The reason the judiciary has been able to impose a separation of church and state that’s nowhere in the Constitution is that Congress

The Puzzling Story of NATO's Secret Armies During the Cold War: Just What Were They Up to?

by Daniele Ganser

After the Cold War had ended, then Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti confirmed to the Italian Senate in August 1990 that Italy had had a secret stay-behind army, codenamed Gladio – the sword. A document dated 1 June 1959 from the Italian military secret service, SIFAR, revealed that SIFAR had been running the secret army with the support of NATO and in close collaboration with the US secret service, the CIA. Suggesting that the secret army might have linked up with right-wing organiz

Gay Rights Movement: Going Forward or Backward?

by Hugo Schwyzer

Much has happened since I last taught my course on gay and lesbian history in the fall semester of 2002.  On the one hand, we've seen sudden, dramatic, exciting progress: the "Massachusetts Miracle" that has resulted in thousands and thousands of legal marriages, the elevation of the openly gay Gene Robinson to be a bishop in the Episcopal Church, and the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas (particularly considering the breadth of Justice

Interview with James F. Simon About Jefferson and Marshall

by Rick Shenkman

Mr. Simon, Martin Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus at New York Law School, is the author of What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States (Simon & Schuster, 2003).

Can Europe Learn from American Constitution-Making?

by James Banner

With the recent failure of the French and Dutch votes on the European constitution, it's going to be harder than ever to see that we are witnessing one of the most extraordinary developments in recorded history.   Only 60 years after the exhaustion and bitterness of World War II, twenty-five nations of Europe have almost fully yoked themselves together under a single encompassing charter. What's more, the boundaries of the nations so close to placing themselves within a single con

Abe Lincoln's Deep Throat

by Ralph E. Shaffer

With Mark Felt's surprise admission ending the decades-long search for "Deep Throat," scholars and pundits can now return to the still unsolved, century-old enigma posed by published revelations of an Abraham Lincoln confidante. Despite application of the latest high tech methods to determine authorship of The Diary of a Pu

Imagine What FDR Would Say about Bush's Social Security "Reforms"

by William C. Kashatus

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt was asked in 1935 to defend payroll contributions to Social Security, he said that he wanted"to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and benefits.""With those taxes in there," he tartly asserted,"no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program."   Seventy years later, President George W. Bush is making a destructive effort to do just that. Insisting that the Social Security system is i

Like Woodrow Wilson (Who Lost Popular Support) President Bush Has Neglected the Home Front While Fighting His War

by Gene Gerard

A frequent criticism of President Bush is that domestic issues have suffered in the last four years. The reasoning behind this assertion is that Bush has been so focused on the war on terrorism that the home front received little attention. In fact, history suggests that this has been the case before. Between 1917 and 1920, President Woodrow Wilson was consumed with winning World War I and negotiating a peace treaty. Between December 1918 and June 1919 Wilson spent onl

Look, Europe Already Has a Working Constitution

by Jeffrey Vanke

French and Dutch voters have solidly rejected the European constitution, also known as the 2004 Treaty of Rome. As a result, a wave of anxiety has swept European governments and media. What's all the fuss about? Europe has had a constitution since 1951, and the 2004 Treaty of Rome contained only marginal changes in it. So the treaty's defeat will make little difference in European affairs, not to mention European history. To call the defeated document a constitution was only sy

Deep Throat Revealed: Historians' Comments

by Bonnie Goodman

This past week it was revealed that W. Mark Felt, the second in command at the F.B.I. during the Nixon Administrstion, admitted in a Vanity Fair magazine interview that he was "Deep Throat," the insider source who relayed top secret information about the Watergate coverup to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. HNN surveyed major media to see how historians reacted to the news. Text reprinted below was copied straight from news accounts.

The German-Turkish Solution to Darfur

by Diana Muir

Last week week a group of Turkish academics was expected to gather at the Bo gaziçi (Bosphorus) University to hold a conference on "Ottoman Armenians in the Period of the Empire's Collapse." The day before the conference was scheduled to convene, the Turkish Minister of Justice, Cemil Çiçek, rose in Parliament to denounce it, "This is a stab in the back to the Turkish nation... this is irresponsibility… We must put an end to this cycle of tr

South Korea and the United States: Is the Love Affair Over?

by Charles K. Armstrong

September 8, 2005, marks the sixtieth anniversary of the arrival of US soldiers on the Korean peninsula to accept the surrender of Japanese forces. There will likely be little fanfare accompanying this event. At the end of World War II, Koreans viewed the Soviets and the Americans equally as liberators, and neither occupation force was expected to stay long on Korean soil. The special relationship between South Korea and the United States was forged by later events: the formation of the Republic

What History Shows ... Jihad Is a Form of Offensive Warfare

by Daniel Pipes

In his just-released, absorbing, and excellent book, Understanding Jihad (University of California Press), David Cook of Rice University dismisses the low-grade debate that has raged since 9/11 over the nature of jihad – whether it is a form of offensive warfare or (more pleasantly) a type of moral self-improvement.Mr. Cook dismisses as"bathetic and laughable" John Esposito's contention that jihad refers to"the effort t

How Historians Play the Game in Washington D.C.

by Scott McLemee

A member of Congress who says “history” is not necessarily thinking of the same enterprise as a professional historian. This is no Beltway-induced conceptual blockage: For civilians, the important thing about history is story, not methodology. (Even the most devoted viewers of the History Channel have no sense of the century-long debates over the “the objectivity ques

Political Correctness in The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History

by Jeff Lipkes

Ignoring the advice of his academic friends for a second time (he’d already responded to a review by Max Boot), Thomas Woods complained recently on this site that reviewers of his book The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History have dismissed it without bothering to refute its evidence or arguments. He has a point. Critical reviews have been long on indignation and short on substance. Most reviewers have been content to cite h