Roundup: Talking About History
This is where we excerpt articles about history that appear in the media. Among the subjects included on this page are: anniversaries of historical events, legacies of presidents, cutting-edge research, and historical disputes.
Andrew Roberts, in the London Sunday Telegraph (1-30-05):
Why did Napoleon lose the battle of Waterloo? It is a question that has intrigued the keenest historians for the past 190 years. He had a larger army than the Anglo-Allied one that faced him across the undulating slopes of Mont St Jean on the morning of Sunday June 18, 1815. His troops were the hardened veterans of many campaigns, unlike the untried soldiers under his opponent, the Duke of Wellington. Napoleon had far more cannon, he had been victorious against the Prussians only two days before at the battle of Ligny , and he was supremely confident on the day. So what went wrong?
More than 300 books have been written about Waterloo since 1815, putting forward scores of different theories. But on one thing they are all agreed: the climactic cavalry charge undertaken by Marshal Ney 's 43 squadrons of French cuirassiers and lancers, which smashed itself against 14 mainly...
Deborah Lipstadt, in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (1-30-05):
... Many people worry that when the voice of the witness is lost, Holocaust deniers will find it easier to spread their lies. This fear suggests that without the survivors, there will not be enough evidence to "prove" what happened at Auschwitz. Though a survivor can speak with the unique voice of the eyewitness, this fear is unfounded....
[But o]ther forms of denial --- declaring President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to be Hitler's equivalent or denouncing Israeli soldiers as Nazis --- are still prevalent. These charges are a form of Holocaust denial because, irrespective of how one feels about the United States' or Israel's policies, comparing them with the actions of the Third Reich is a complete distortion of the truth.
There is, however, a region of the world where wholesale denial is alive and kicking: the Arab world. Abdel Aziz...
John Hiscock, in the LAT (1-31-05):
Ever since he was seized with a .22-caliber revolver in his hand in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in June 1968, Sirhan Sirhan has maintained he was hypnotized into shooting Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
The contention was discounted by the jury, which, after deliberating for 16 1/2 hours, found him "alone and not in concert with anyone else" guilty of murder in the first degree. Almost everyone who studied the case subsequently agreed.
But nearly 40 years later, the story refuses to die. In recent months, several people have emerged to suggest that Sirhan may have been telling the truth; that he may have been hypnotized into becoming a "Manchurian Candidate"-style assassin. The catalyst for the campaign is a new book, "Nemesis," by British author Peter Evans, who, using CIA documents and interviews, claims to have identified the hypnotist as Dr. William Joseph...
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, in the London Independent (1-31-05):
The Tories want history to be made compulsory in schools. Who can disagree with that? Kenneth Baker's educational reforms in the 1980s pushed history into the wilderness and many parents have long argued that the subject should be made mandatory again. Careful now. This latest idea tossed out by Tim Collins the Conservative education spokesman comes at a time when a nervous, possibly manic condition is spreading fast through Michael Howard's party as they anticipate the oblivion that awaits them in a few months. As desperation rises Tories start kicking up dust storms over immigration, asylum and terrorists, and now jingoistic history. They warn the survival of the nation depends on our young understanding "our shared heritage and the nature of our struggles, foreign and domestic, which have secured our freedoms". The problem is that "shared heritage" for...
Anna Bernasek, in the NYT (1-30-05):
In 1897, Britain celebrated Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee with grand ceremonies, lavish parties and parades that stretched for miles. It was all in tribute to a monarch who had reigned for 60 years, but it was also a celebration of Britain's unrivaled world power and success. Never before had an empire been as wealthy or as vast, spanning a quarter of the world's population and land mass. Yet within 50 years, the British Empire would vanish.
No living memory survives to compare the speeches, parade and celebrations surrounding President Bush's inauguration with those of Queen Victoria's day. But the president's triumphal tone in his Inaugural Address was just one of a growing number of factors that evoke shades of empires past.
Today the United States is the unrivaled world leader in commerce and political and military force. As such, it faces many of the same questions that have concerned powerful nations...
Cathy Young, in the Boston Globe (1-31-05):
[Cathy Young is a contributing editor at Reason magazine. Her column appears regularly in the Globe.]
WAS ABRAHAM LINCOLN gay? And does it matter? These questions have been the subject of heated debate in the past few weeks, thanks to a new posthumous book by the late sex researcher C.A. Tripp,"The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln."
The gay Lincoln theory has been floated among the academic left before, but the current debate brings it closer to the mainstream. Andrew Sullivan, the right-of-center gay commentator usually known for challenging politically correct orthodoxy, has proclaimed in an online New Republic essay that the only question left is just how gay Lincoln was. Rejection of this"truth," Sullivan has argued, stems from the homophobia of the modern Republican...
- « first
- ‹ previous
- 1
- 2
- 3
