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.
SOURCE: NYT (12-20-05)
In an effort to describe President Ronald Reagan, reporters and biographers have resorted to all sorts of metaphors and images. Garry Wills called him "the perfect Scout," a "Doctor Feelgood," "the demagogue as rabble-soother." Lou Cannon wrote that both conservatives and pragmatists in the Reagan White House treated him "as if he were a child monarch in need of constant protection" - "they paid homage to him, but gave him no respect." Others have described him as a visionary cowboy, a masterly illusionist, "an authentic phony," an "idiot savant," an "amiable dunce," an "ancient king" and the ultimate actor who confused "real life" with "reel life."
Reagan's official biographer, Edmund Morris, was so flummoxed by this man he described as both "a great president" and "an apparent airhead" that he abandoned his efforts to write a serious life of...
Reagan's official biographer, Edmund Morris, was so flummoxed by this man he described as both "a great president" and "an apparent airhead" that he abandoned his efforts to write a serious life of...
Tuesday, December 20, 2005 - 14:56
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SOURCE: NYT (12-19-05)
ON Nov. 30, 1967, I traveled to Washington for The Saturday Evening Post to cover a speech by Senator Eugene McCarthy. McCarthy, who died this month at 89, was planning to announce that he was going to take on President Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic nomination for the presidency....
Where most campaigns open with trumpets, Eugene McCarthy's began with civility. He felt, he would tell me later, that the Kennedy style and what went with it, the troops of publicists, the hired cheering claques, the wheeling, the big-money dealing, demeaned the democratic process. He believed in the intelligence of the voters.
After the speech, the telephones in McCarthy's office rang all afternoon and supportive telegrams began to arrive. But no senator, not even so-called doves like Albert Gore Sr., J. William Fulbright and Wayne Morse, moved to his side. There were 248 Democratic members of the House. Only one, Don Edwards of California, spoke up immediately in favor of...
Where most campaigns open with trumpets, Eugene McCarthy's began with civility. He felt, he would tell me later, that the Kennedy style and what went with it, the troops of publicists, the hired cheering claques, the wheeling, the big-money dealing, demeaned the democratic process. He believed in the intelligence of the voters.
After the speech, the telephones in McCarthy's office rang all afternoon and supportive telegrams began to arrive. But no senator, not even so-called doves like Albert Gore Sr., J. William Fulbright and Wayne Morse, moved to his side. There were 248 Democratic members of the House. Only one, Don Edwards of California, spoke up immediately in favor of...
Tuesday, December 20, 2005 - 14:48
SOURCE: Website of the University of Chicago Press ()
[Robert Bruegmann is the author of Sprawl: A Compact History (U. of Chicago Press).]
One of the most important facts about cities from the beginning of recorded history until the fairly recent past was the sharp distinction between urban and rural ways of life. Within the city wall of most early cities, a visitor would see a dense mass of buildings, congested streets, and a rich and highly dynamic urban life offering many choices, at least for those able to afford them. A few miles outside the walls, however, the same visitor might see nothing but croplands and rural villages. The pace of daily activities would be slower, the environment less quick to change, and social and political life completely different.
In almost every era in urban history, however, there was a transitional zone between the two, a region just outside the city that housed activities and individuals that were still intimately connected with the social and economic life of the city but that couldn’t...
In almost every era in urban history, however, there was a transitional zone between the two, a region just outside the city that housed activities and individuals that were still intimately connected with the social and economic life of the city but that couldn’t...
Tuesday, December 20, 2005 - 12:36
SOURCE: Brent Staples (12-15-05)
Americans typically grow up believing that slavery was confined to the cotton fields of the South and that the North was always made up of free states. The fact that slavery was practiced all over the early United States often comes as a shock to people in places like New York, where the myth of the free North has been surprisingly durable. The truth is that New York was at one time a center of the slave trade, with more black people enslaved than any other city in the country, with the possible exception of Charleston, S.C.
The New-York Historical Society in Manhattan has set out to make all this clear in its pathbreaking "Slavery in New York," which ends in March. It is being described as the first exhibition by a major museum that focuses on the long-neglected issue of slavery in the North.
New York's central position in the slave trade was partially exposed back in 1991, when workers excavating for an office tower in Lower Manhattan uncovered a...
The New-York Historical Society in Manhattan has set out to make all this clear in its pathbreaking "Slavery in New York," which ends in March. It is being described as the first exhibition by a major museum that focuses on the long-neglected issue of slavery in the North.
New York's central position in the slave trade was partially exposed back in 1991, when workers excavating for an office tower in Lower Manhattan uncovered a...
Monday, December 19, 2005 - 20:00
SOURCE: Newsday (12-18-05)
[Sara Bader is the author of "Strange Red Cow: And Other Curious Classified Ads from the Past."]
Google's latest venture, Google Base, offers free space on the Internet to anyone with information to upload. Google will happily post family recipes, camp photographs, homeopathic remedies, poems you wrote to your girlfriend in high school - and classified ads about almost anything.
Analysts predict that, with its finely tuned search engine, Google's new service will draw significant revenue from online classified listing sites that charge a fee, as well as newspaper classified columns.
This has me worried. But not for the same reason that the newspaper industry is on edge. I'm worried about the fate of these digital messages: Will they be stored so future generations can read them?
You see, I'm obsessed with the classifieds. These small, simple notices leave behind a trail of overlooked history, a chronicle of our needs and wants...
Google's latest venture, Google Base, offers free space on the Internet to anyone with information to upload. Google will happily post family recipes, camp photographs, homeopathic remedies, poems you wrote to your girlfriend in high school - and classified ads about almost anything.
Analysts predict that, with its finely tuned search engine, Google's new service will draw significant revenue from online classified listing sites that charge a fee, as well as newspaper classified columns.
This has me worried. But not for the same reason that the newspaper industry is on edge. I'm worried about the fate of these digital messages: Will they be stored so future generations can read them?
You see, I'm obsessed with the classifieds. These small, simple notices leave behind a trail of overlooked history, a chronicle of our needs and wants...
Sunday, December 18, 2005 - 18:54
SOURCE: WSJ (12-16-05)
It was the week before Christmas and all through the house the pundits were hanging each other with flair.
It had to happen. The universal holiday of Clement Clarke Moore's "Night Before Christmas" has been displaced this year by the "war on Christmas."
On one snow-blown hilltop stand the Sons and Daughters of Christmas Past, who believe the phrase "Have a happy holiday" is quashing Christmas. Across this pond of frozen opinions one finds gentlefolk who believe the word "Christmas" offends non-Christian sensibilities.
The Boston Globe's liberal columnist Ellen Goodman threw soot on much of the pro-"Christmas" brigade: "Fox News's John Gibson has killed who knows how many trees to print 'The War on Christmas.' The combined forces of the Catholic League, the American Family Association and Bill O'Reilly have accused Target and others of banning Christmas by wishing their customers a 'Happy...
It had to happen. The universal holiday of Clement Clarke Moore's "Night Before Christmas" has been displaced this year by the "war on Christmas."
On one snow-blown hilltop stand the Sons and Daughters of Christmas Past, who believe the phrase "Have a happy holiday" is quashing Christmas. Across this pond of frozen opinions one finds gentlefolk who believe the word "Christmas" offends non-Christian sensibilities.
The Boston Globe's liberal columnist Ellen Goodman threw soot on much of the pro-"Christmas" brigade: "Fox News's John Gibson has killed who knows how many trees to print 'The War on Christmas.' The combined forces of the Catholic League, the American Family Association and Bill O'Reilly have accused Target and others of banning Christmas by wishing their customers a 'Happy...
Friday, December 16, 2005 - 20:04
SOURCE: Website of the University of Chicago Press ()
Mr. Clark is the author of Worst Cases: Terror and Catastrophe in the Popular Imagination (University of Chicago Press, 2005).
Tenerife
9/11
This has to be on anyone’s list. It’s on mine for its cultural and political significance. We can call up, at will, the...
Tenerife
9/11
This has to be on anyone’s list. It’s on mine for its cultural and political significance. We can call up, at will, the...
Friday, December 16, 2005 - 15:09
SOURCE: Boston Globe (12-15-05)
The "Bencentennial" the 300th anniversary of Franklin's birth on Jan. 17, here, on Milk Street approacheth, and Frankophiles complain that Boston Latin School's most distinguished graduate isn't feeling any love from his hometown.
Philadelphia, predictably, is going bonkers. Today, for instance, a 4 1/2-month-long exhibit, "Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World," opens at the National Constitution Center on the Independence Mall. From there it will travel to St. Louis, Houston, Denver, Atlanta, and Franklin's old stomping grounds: Paris. It is the capstone of a five-year, $10 million campaign funded mainly by private foundations (e.g. Pew, Annenberg, Templeton) to honor the inventor, writer, and diplomat. "We're not stealing him," says Rosalind Remer, executive director of the Franklin Tercentenary. "We spend a lot of time talking about Franklin's roots. We have him in his Boston context."
Perhaps. But in area...
Philadelphia, predictably, is going bonkers. Today, for instance, a 4 1/2-month-long exhibit, "Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World," opens at the National Constitution Center on the Independence Mall. From there it will travel to St. Louis, Houston, Denver, Atlanta, and Franklin's old stomping grounds: Paris. It is the capstone of a five-year, $10 million campaign funded mainly by private foundations (e.g. Pew, Annenberg, Templeton) to honor the inventor, writer, and diplomat. "We're not stealing him," says Rosalind Remer, executive director of the Franklin Tercentenary. "We spend a lot of time talking about Franklin's roots. We have him in his Boston context."
Perhaps. But in area...
Friday, December 16, 2005 - 02:54
SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed (12-5-05)
For years, the Greek government has tried to get the British Museum to return to Athens various antiquities — most famously the Elgin Marbles — that Greece and others believe were inappropriately removed in the early 19th century. And this year, two of the most prominent museums in the United States — the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum — find themselves in increasingly messy debates over whether some priceless items in their collections were once stolen from collections in Italy.
With less public attention, three universities are enmeshed in international disputes over significant holdings in their collections. Italian authorities maintain that two ancient Greek vases at the Princeton University Art Museum were illegally taken from Italy. Peru is threatening to sue Yale University for the recovery of artifacts from Machu Picchu. And a group of terrorism victims who have been suing Iran for damages are now trying to obtain ownership of invaluable...
With less public attention, three universities are enmeshed in international disputes over significant holdings in their collections. Italian authorities maintain that two ancient Greek vases at the Princeton University Art Museum were illegally taken from Italy. Peru is threatening to sue Yale University for the recovery of artifacts from Machu Picchu. And a group of terrorism victims who have been suing Iran for damages are now trying to obtain ownership of invaluable...
Thursday, December 15, 2005 - 22:52
SOURCE: Speech celebrating the 20th anniversary of the National Security Archive (12-9-05)
... It's always a fight to find out what the government doesn't want us to know. And no one in this town has done more to fight for open democracy or done more to see that the Freedom of Information Act fulfills its promise than the Archive. The fight goes back a long way. You'll find a fine account of it in Herbert Foerstel's book, Freedom of Information and the Right to Know: The Origins and Application of the Freedom of Information Act (Greenwood Press, 1999). Foerstel tells us that although every other 18th century democratic constitution includes the public's right to information, there were two exceptions: Sweden and the United States.
But in 1955 the American Society of Newspaper Editors decided to battle government secrecy. The Washington Post's James Russell Wiggins and Representative John Moss of California teamed up to spearhead that fight. President Kennedy subsequently resisted their efforts. When he asked reporters to censor themselves on the grounds that these...
But in 1955 the American Society of Newspaper Editors decided to battle government secrecy. The Washington Post's James Russell Wiggins and Representative John Moss of California teamed up to spearhead that fight. President Kennedy subsequently resisted their efforts. When he asked reporters to censor themselves on the grounds that these...
Thursday, December 15, 2005 - 22:46
SOURCE: Nation (12-15-05)
Gene McCarthy was a pure original. No other senator had the combination
of endowments Gene possessed: He was a philosopher, a skilled 6' 4"
baseball and hockey player, a visionary statesman, a moralist, an
eloquent orator and graceful poet with a mastery of English diction and
a wit equal to Shaw's that had no match in the Senate.
He, of course, was a human being with his own trademark faults. At times he seemed to retire to his lair rather than engage in battles on the Senate floor or in committee. Sometimes his wit inflicted needless pain on those less well endowed in brain or tongue. Once when I expressed admiration for the courage of a Republican colleague, Gene snorted:"He has the kind of courage of a soldier who observes the battlefield from a hill and then rides down to shoot the enemy's wounded men."
When I was elected to the House of Representatives in 1956, Gene had already been there for eight years. He accepted me as one of his freshman...
Thursday, December 15, 2005 - 22:28
SOURCE: Campus Watch (12-15-05)
[Alexander H. Joffe is director of Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.]
The news that Prince Alaweed bin Talal has given $20 million each to Georgetown and Harvard should come as no surprise. The prince, reputed to be the world's fifth wealthiest man, is a smart shopper. He is best known in the U.S., however, for a rare misstep, a gift of $10 million to the Twin Towers Fund after 9/11 that was refused by then Mayor Rudy Guiliani after the prince's ill-timed call for America to"re-...
Thursday, December 15, 2005 - 21:36
SOURCE: Nation (12-19-05)
Eventually, nearly every discussion of the Jews, pro or con, sympathetic or hostile, gets around to their alleged singularity. Twelve or thirteen centuries ago, when everyone from the Indus to the Atlantic was choosing sides between the crescent and the cross, the Jews were sticking to a path all their own, studying their own books, formulating their own laws and rejecting everyone else's. They were stubborn, clannish and standoffish, and even when they stopped wearing those funny clothes in the modern era and tried to blend in--especially when they tried to blend in--something about them remained at odds with the larger society. ...
Fitzgerald and Hemingway made more or less the same point, so there had to be something to it. All agreed that the Jews were out of place wherever they went. They were nowhere at home because nowhere was their home. They were different.
... In The Jewish Century ... Yuri Slezkine, a Russian-Jewish historian now ensconced at...
Thursday, December 15, 2005 - 21:16
SOURCE: Salon (12-14-05)
One more reason to believe in God is the hope for the ultimate judgment when someday Someone will pronounce the final truth and we'll be done with all these small mean anecdotes that pass for history. Meanwhile, they constitute most of what we know about politics, stories told by men with a grudge. This is discouraging to the older person. This is all I will ever know about George W. Bush, a series of disparaging observations by people who've met him. Thanks to his own need for secrecy and comfort, nobody will be able to make an informed judgment of the man until you and I are dead and gone. One more reason young people pride themselves on being ill-informed: It don't matter because nobody else knows either.
The Nixon tapes were a lightning bolt of illumination, but historians are only starting to unearth the truth about events that dominated the news when I was a young man, and others, such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy, we've almost given up hope of ever...
The Nixon tapes were a lightning bolt of illumination, but historians are only starting to unearth the truth about events that dominated the news when I was a young man, and others, such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy, we've almost given up hope of ever...
Thursday, December 15, 2005 - 21:11
SOURCE: NYT (12-15-05)
What explains success? What forces drive some nations and individuals to move forward and grow rich while others stagnate? These happen to be the most important questions in the social sciences today.
In the scholarly arena, you see an array of academic gladiators wielding big books and offering theories.
Over here are the material determinists. Jared Diamond, with his million-selling "Guns, Germs, and Steel," says the West grew rich not because of any innate superiority, but because Europeans happened to have the right kinds of plants. Felipe Fernández-Armesto, with his tome, "Civilizations," argues that success is determined by climate and geography.
Over there are the cultural determinists. Thomas Sowell argues that ethnic groups develop their own skills and values and thrive or suffer as they compete, conquer and migrate. In his great opus, "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations," David Landes shows how cultural mores...
In the scholarly arena, you see an array of academic gladiators wielding big books and offering theories.
Over here are the material determinists. Jared Diamond, with his million-selling "Guns, Germs, and Steel," says the West grew rich not because of any innate superiority, but because Europeans happened to have the right kinds of plants. Felipe Fernández-Armesto, with his tome, "Civilizations," argues that success is determined by climate and geography.
Over there are the cultural determinists. Thomas Sowell argues that ethnic groups develop their own skills and values and thrive or suffer as they compete, conquer and migrate. In his great opus, "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations," David Landes shows how cultural mores...
Thursday, December 15, 2005 - 21:11
SOURCE: HIstory Now (12-14-05)
The current issue of HISTORY NOW looks at Abraham Lincoln. Allen Guelzo examines the strategy that shaped the writing of the Emancipation Proclamation; Harold Holzer unravels the myth surrounding Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech; George Rable looks at the controversies surrounding the president’s religious views; David Reynolds explores Walt Whitman's admiration for Lincoln; and Douglas Wilson considers slavery as a political as well as a moral dilemma for the president.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - 21:11
SOURCE: WSJ (12-13-05)
Eugene McCarthy's death Saturday at age 89 has offered antiwar liberals an opportunity to relive the glory days of 1968, when then-Senator McCarthy embarrassed President Lyndon B. Johnson out of the race with an insurgent run on an anti-Vietnam line.
We hate to interrupt the self-reverie, but it's worth noting that Gene McCarthy's achievement in driving his own party's sitting President out the primary campaign is unlikely to be repeated any time soon. And the reason is campaign-finance reform.
McCarthy took pleasure in being a maverick politician; he endorsed Ronald Reagan in 1980 because, he said, "anyone would be better" than Jimmy Carter. And party mavericks are just the sort of people that party machines love to keep down, or out. McCarthy himself could never have mounted his last-ditch campaign against Johnson without the backing of industrialist Stewart Mott and banker Jack Dreyfus. But it was not self-interest that motivated McCarthy's long...
We hate to interrupt the self-reverie, but it's worth noting that Gene McCarthy's achievement in driving his own party's sitting President out the primary campaign is unlikely to be repeated any time soon. And the reason is campaign-finance reform.
McCarthy took pleasure in being a maverick politician; he endorsed Ronald Reagan in 1980 because, he said, "anyone would be better" than Jimmy Carter. And party mavericks are just the sort of people that party machines love to keep down, or out. McCarthy himself could never have mounted his last-ditch campaign against Johnson without the backing of industrialist Stewart Mott and banker Jack Dreyfus. But it was not self-interest that motivated McCarthy's long...
Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - 17:45
SOURCE: Baltimore Sun (12-12-05)
... many of the Christmas traditions that Western Christians have adopted do not hark back to the birth of Christ; indeed, some of them trace their origins to pagan rituals.
Take the "Christmas" tree. Anthropologists and historians have followed a trail of dried-out fir needles all the way back to ancient cultures, which used evergreens as reminders of the spring that would return after long and barren winters. Ancient Egyptians decorated their homes with green date palm leaves for the winter solstice. In what is now Great Britain, Druids also used evergreens in solstice rites.
But modern-day Christmas festivities probably draw much from Roman pagans, who celebrated the winter solstice with a festival they called Saturnalia, decorating their houses with evergreens and lights and exchanging gifts.
Explaining the calendar of the Christian church, the Encyclopedia Britannica notes that the early church established the celebration of Christ's...
Take the "Christmas" tree. Anthropologists and historians have followed a trail of dried-out fir needles all the way back to ancient cultures, which used evergreens as reminders of the spring that would return after long and barren winters. Ancient Egyptians decorated their homes with green date palm leaves for the winter solstice. In what is now Great Britain, Druids also used evergreens in solstice rites.
But modern-day Christmas festivities probably draw much from Roman pagans, who celebrated the winter solstice with a festival they called Saturnalia, decorating their houses with evergreens and lights and exchanging gifts.
Explaining the calendar of the Christian church, the Encyclopedia Britannica notes that the early church established the celebration of Christ's...
Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - 02:51
SOURCE: NYT (12-11-05)
THE French, the historian Danielle Domergue-Cloarec says, "have always had problems with their history." She should know. She specializes in French colonial history, which her compatriots can't decide whether to love or hate. They feel the same about Napoleon, and this month both problems have been on vivid display.
Colonial history figured in a raucous legislative debate over how French history itself should be taught.
Last February, in an effort to please veterans and former colonists, the Socialists and conservatives in Parliament together passed a law that included this passage: "The positive role of the French presence abroad, particularly in North Africa, should be especially recognized."
But after the recent riots in North African neighborhoods, many of the French began to wonder what has gone wrong among their immigrants. For some on the left, French colonial history loomed as a culprit, and they set out to change the...
Colonial history figured in a raucous legislative debate over how French history itself should be taught.
Last February, in an effort to please veterans and former colonists, the Socialists and conservatives in Parliament together passed a law that included this passage: "The positive role of the French presence abroad, particularly in North Africa, should be especially recognized."
But after the recent riots in North African neighborhoods, many of the French began to wonder what has gone wrong among their immigrants. For some on the left, French colonial history loomed as a culprit, and they set out to change the...
Sunday, December 11, 2005 - 23:53
SOURCE: NYT (12-11-05)
Every generation of Americans casts Israel in its own morality tale. For a time, Israel was the plucky underdog fighting for survival against larger foes. Now, as Steven Spielberg rolls out the publicity campaign for his new movie, "Munich," we see the crystallization of a different fable. In this story, the Israelis and the Palestinians are parallel peoples victimized by history and trapped in a cycle of violence.
In his rollout interview in Time, Spielberg spoke of the Middle East's endless killings and counterkillings. "A response to a response doesn't really solve anything. It just creates a perpetual motion machine," Spielberg said. "There's been a quagmire of blood for blood for many decades in that region. Where does it end?"
The main problem, he concluded, is intransigence itself. "The only thing that's going to solve this is rational minds, a lot of sitting down and talking until you're blue in the gills."...
In his rollout interview in Time, Spielberg spoke of the Middle East's endless killings and counterkillings. "A response to a response doesn't really solve anything. It just creates a perpetual motion machine," Spielberg said. "There's been a quagmire of blood for blood for many decades in that region. Where does it end?"
The main problem, he concluded, is intransigence itself. "The only thing that's going to solve this is rational minds, a lot of sitting down and talking until you're blue in the gills."...
Sunday, December 11, 2005 - 23:48
