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.
[Ms. Muir is a historian, book reviewer and winner of the 2001-02 Massachusetts Book Award for Reflections in Bullough's Pond: Economy and Ecosystem in New England (University Press of New England).]
The National Museum of the American Indian is an architectural triumph. Walking close to the walls conveys the vertiginous sense of hiking the rock canyons of the American West. The galleries inside are punctuated by windowed spaces offering spectacular views of the National Gallery and the United States Capitol, and prism windows near the top of the dome paint rainbows on the walls of the atrium. Step a hundred yards away from NMAI, however, and the building turns into a yellow sandstone affront to the white granite unity of the National Mall. As with the container, so with the contents. It is as though the architect and curators together are saying, "You...
Steve Friess, in the Christian Science Monitor (2-25-05):
At a time of new focus on nuclear risks, a museum reveals - at least partly - a desert state's role as test site....
On one level, the Atomic Testing Museum here in Las Vegas echoes a past that now seems strangely distant: the duck-and-cover era of the US-Soviet arms race. Yet its centerpiece exhibit Ground Zero Theater - complete with a flash of light, trembling benches, and a rush of air sweeping through the room - is also a visceral reminder of very present realities and risks.
The cold war, perhaps, is only technically over in an era of tensions over Iran, North Korea, and nuclear trafficking. And in this state, its past of unsung effort and controversial sacrifices lingers long after the mushroom clouds have gone.
"It's only now, after the cold war is over, that we realize that even though it was a 'cold' war, it did [...
Dr. Yutaka Arai, in a letter to the editor of the London Financial Times (2-26-05):
Sir, I was horrified to read Yuko Tojo, granddaughter of the wartime Japanese prime minister Hideki Tojo, denying the existence of the Rape of Nanjing of 1937 ("Let sleeping gods lie", Lunch with the FT, FT magazine, February 19).
True, there is a continuing controversy about the number of deaths and the status of those soldiers who were alleged to have discarded uniforms in the besieged town. It is likely that, as some leftwing historians in Japan and the west claim, the number of victims of this massacre is not as high as 300,000, which is the official figure provided by the Chinese government, but is rather between 20,000 and 50,000.
However, the issue of the number of victims is a mere semantic matter that must not cast any doubt over the nature of atrocities. Further, even the conservative figure of 20,000 is about three times as high as the...
Roger Cohen, in the NYT Mag (2-27-05):
Methodical by nature, disciplined in what he eats, William J. Shapiro is a measured man. He keeps his affairs ordered, his body trim. His airy house, built upon retirement from a career as an obstetrician, is set beside a Florida golf course, and every now and again a ball comes through a screen. But there are few other disturbances. He and his wife, Betty, live in one of the gated communities that fan out across the flatness of Florida. The streets are quiet and secure. In the garages, electric golf carts flank sports utility vehicles with global positioning systems.
The old strive to stay active. At dawn and at dusk, when the heat is not overwhelming, pale figures may be seen trundling in their golf carts through the streets bordered by lawns of prickly Bermuda grass and hibiscus trees. The journey to this air-conditioned existence beneath the palms and beside the fairways has been long: from the tenements of New York...
It is quite ironic: only a decade or so after the idea of the United States as an imperial power came to be accepted by both right and left, and people were actually able to talk openly about an American empire, it is showing multiple signs of its inability to continue. And indeed it is now possible to contemplate, and openly speculate about, its collapse.
The neocons in power in Washington these days, those who were delighted to talk about America as the sole empire in the world following the Soviet disintegration, will of course refuse to believe in any such collapse, just as they ignore the realities of the imperial war in Iraq. But I think it behooves us to examine seriously the ways in which the U.S. system is so drastically imperiling itself that it will cause not only the collapse of its worldwide empire but drastically alter the nation itself on the domestic...
William Rivers Pitt, at Truthout.org (3-1-05):
[William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books - 'War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know' and 'The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.' ]
There have been three stages of American empire since the creation of this nation. Each has fed the other, and each has been established and fortified by war. More importantly, each has been fortified by the vast profits derived by the few in...
Nouritza Matossian, in the Guardian (2-27-05):
There is a Turkish saying: 'A sword won't cut without inspiration from the
pen.'
Orhan Pamuk, wielder of Turkey's finest pen, has spoken and cut a swath through
his country's conscience. His most recent novel Snow was set in Kars and peppered
with references to the Armenian culture of that formerly Armenian city. Brilliant
novelist, translated in 20 languages, winner of international prizes, he has
become a hate figure.
His crime was one sentence in an interview with the Swiss newspaper Tagesanzeiger this month. 'Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in Turkey. Almost no one dares speak but me, and the nationalists hate me for that.' All hell broke loose. The press attacked him for dishonouring the Turkish state and incitement to racial violence. He has been called a liar, '...
Clifford Coonan, in the London Times (2-28-05):
SIX HUNDRED years after Admiral Zheng He, the intrepid naval explorer, took to the high seas, a modern-day Admiral Zheng has embarked on a mission to retrace seven voyages that reached as far as the east coast of Africa.
The original Zheng He, who was known as the "Three Jewelled Eunuch", sailed to South East Asia, India, the Gulf and the Red Sea. Some historians claim that he even made it to America.
Now Rear-Admiral Zheng Ming, retired, of the People's Liberation Army navy, is building a replica of one of Zheng He's "treasure ships" and plans to follow his routes across the world.
"Zheng He's route is the Silk Road of the sea," said the admiral, who is a member of a group devoted to studying Zheng He's achievements.
In 1405 Emperor Yongle, the first ruler of the Ming Dynasty, wanted to show China's naval power and commissioned Admiral Zheng...
David Kirkpatrick, in the NYT (2-22-05):
On a recent evening, David Barton, a leading conservative Christian advocate for emphasizing religion in American history, stood barefoot on a bench in the rotunda of the United States Capitol Building with a congressman by his side and about a hundred students from Oral Roberts University at his feet.
"Isn't it interesting that we have all been trained to recognize the two least religious founding fathers?" Mr. Barton asked, pointing to Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin in a painting on the wall. "And compared to today's secularists these two guys look like a couple of Bible-thumping evangelicals!" Even Jefferson signed letters "in the year of Our Lord Christ," Mr. Barton told the group. "What would happen if George Bush did that? They'd rip his head off!"
Mr. Barton, who is also the vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party, is a point man in a growing movement to...
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