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: Moscow Times (11-15-10)
[Sarah E. Mendelson is deputy assistant administrator in the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Theodore P. Gerber is professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This comment appeared in Vedomosti.]
On Oct. 30, Russia commemorated the victims of political repression, including tens of millions of innocent Soviet citizens arrested, brutalized, sent to labor camps or executed under Stalin. Until recently, the date has passed with scant notice outside small groups of dedicated human rights activists. The lack of fanfare symbolizes a larger reluctance of contemporary Russia to come to terms with the horrors of the Soviet period. Russia is hardly an exception. Many societies have trouble acknowledging unpleasant aspects of their recent histories, substituting uncomfortable silence or outright denial for frank and painful discussion.
At the same time, however, the process of...
On Oct. 30, Russia commemorated the victims of political repression, including tens of millions of innocent Soviet citizens arrested, brutalized, sent to labor camps or executed under Stalin. Until recently, the date has passed with scant notice outside small groups of dedicated human rights activists. The lack of fanfare symbolizes a larger reluctance of contemporary Russia to come to terms with the horrors of the Soviet period. Russia is hardly an exception. Many societies have trouble acknowledging unpleasant aspects of their recent histories, substituting uncomfortable silence or outright denial for frank and painful discussion.
At the same time, however, the process of...
Wednesday, November 17, 2010 - 08:42
Comments
SOURCE: Project Syndicate (11-16-10)
[Timothy Snyder is Professor of History at Yale University. His most recent book is Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.]
NEW HAVEN – Eighty years ago, in the autumn of 1930, Joseph Stalin enforced a policy that changed the course of history, and led to tens of millions of deaths across the decades and around the world. In a violent and massive campaign of “collectivization,” he brought Soviet agriculture under state control.
Stalin pursued collectivization despite the massive resistance that had followed when Soviet authorities first tried to introduce the policy the previous spring. The Soviet leadership had relied then upon shootings and deportations to the Gulag to preempt opposition. Yet Soviet citizens resisted in large numbers; Kazakh nomads fled to China, Ukrainian farmers to Poland.
In the autumn, the shootings and deportations resumed, complemented by economic coercion. Individual farmers were taxed until they entered the...
NEW HAVEN – Eighty years ago, in the autumn of 1930, Joseph Stalin enforced a policy that changed the course of history, and led to tens of millions of deaths across the decades and around the world. In a violent and massive campaign of “collectivization,” he brought Soviet agriculture under state control.
Stalin pursued collectivization despite the massive resistance that had followed when Soviet authorities first tried to introduce the policy the previous spring. The Soviet leadership had relied then upon shootings and deportations to the Gulag to preempt opposition. Yet Soviet citizens resisted in large numbers; Kazakh nomads fled to China, Ukrainian farmers to Poland.
In the autumn, the shootings and deportations resumed, complemented by economic coercion. Individual farmers were taxed until they entered the...
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - 18:48
SOURCE: Guardian (UK) (11-16-10)
[James Vernon is professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, and author, most recently, of Hunger, A Modern History (2007).]
Michael Gove's appointment of Simon Schama to restructure history teaching in schools offers a little reassurance that it is now acknowledged there is some public value to the teaching of history, despite the removal of funding for it at university level. Nonetheless, it remains an announcement that tells us more about the contradictions of government thinking and its reductive view of the humanities and social sciences than it does about the state of history teaching in our schools.
How did we get here? In May 2009, Gove picked up on a report by the Historical Association that lamented the marginalisation of history at secondary level – with just over 31% of students now taking a GCSE in history. Their research found that 20% of schools offered no form of history teaching beyond age 14, with a further 10% folding the...
Michael Gove's appointment of Simon Schama to restructure history teaching in schools offers a little reassurance that it is now acknowledged there is some public value to the teaching of history, despite the removal of funding for it at university level. Nonetheless, it remains an announcement that tells us more about the contradictions of government thinking and its reductive view of the humanities and social sciences than it does about the state of history teaching in our schools.
How did we get here? In May 2009, Gove picked up on a report by the Historical Association that lamented the marginalisation of history at secondary level – with just over 31% of students now taking a GCSE in history. Their research found that 20% of schools offered no form of history teaching beyond age 14, with a further 10% folding the...
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - 18:35
SOURCE: Slate (11-9-10)
Jane Addams.Jane AddamsThe Chicago social reformer Jane Addams is safely ensconced in the pantheon of liberal heroes, and for good reason. She had a hand in almost every early-20th century progressive cause, from suffrage to the labor movement. She co-founded the ACLU and the NAACP, helped lead the Progressive Party, and became the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. As every schoolchild once knew, she also founded Hull House, one of the most influential social-service organizations in American history. When Addams died, the Chicago City Council issued a proclamation declaring her "the greatest woman who ever lived." The British labor leader John Burns went so far as to call Addams the first saint America had produced.
Saints often fade into history because their legacies are settled. But Addams' image as a pro forma progressive belies a more complicated reality. In connection with a burst of attention that coincides with the 150th anniversary of...
Saints often fade into history because their legacies are settled. But Addams' image as a pro forma progressive belies a more complicated reality. In connection with a burst of attention that coincides with the 150th anniversary of...
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - 15:43
SOURCE: Guardian (UK) (11-15-10)
[Antony Beevor is a best-selling historian. His latest book is "D-Day: The Battle for Normandy."]
Is history as good as finished? Our school system seems to think so. Often it seems that the teaching of history is treated by the educational establishment as the rough equivalent of the teaching of dead languages: an unnecessary luxury of a bygone age, and something the modern world no longer requires. In the most recent debates about the national curriculum, history has been granted the status of an "inessential subject". This is a grave and myopic mistake.
At a purely practical level, history is important because it provides the basic skills needed for students to go further in sociology, politics, international relations and economics. History is also an ideal discipline for almost all careers in the law, the civil service and the private sector. This is because the history essay teaches students to research and assess material, to marshal...
Is history as good as finished? Our school system seems to think so. Often it seems that the teaching of history is treated by the educational establishment as the rough equivalent of the teaching of dead languages: an unnecessary luxury of a bygone age, and something the modern world no longer requires. In the most recent debates about the national curriculum, history has been granted the status of an "inessential subject". This is a grave and myopic mistake.
At a purely practical level, history is important because it provides the basic skills needed for students to go further in sociology, politics, international relations and economics. History is also an ideal discipline for almost all careers in the law, the civil service and the private sector. This is because the history essay teaches students to research and assess material, to marshal...
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - 15:39
SOURCE: American Interest (12-1-10)
[Adam Garfinkle is the editor in chief of American Interest.]
If, as Winston Churchill declared on 1 October, 1939, Russia is “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”, then the foreign policy of the Obama administration is an ambivalence wrapped in a mentality inside a perplexity. The latter is not as inclined to malignity as was the former in Joseph Stalin’s time, but it is just as difficult to decipher as we approach its first term halfway mark.
The fact that it is hard to speak coherently about that which turns out to be incoherent may help to account for the fact that virtually no one has offered a full-scale synthesis of the subject. Shorter sketches on discrete issues there are. Partisan op-ed length potshots and (usually) mercifully brief blog posts written by the standard assortment of fans, fanatics and fantasists both abound. But, quite uncharacteristically, little big-picture analysis has been published. Doubtless there are several reasons...
If, as Winston Churchill declared on 1 October, 1939, Russia is “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”, then the foreign policy of the Obama administration is an ambivalence wrapped in a mentality inside a perplexity. The latter is not as inclined to malignity as was the former in Joseph Stalin’s time, but it is just as difficult to decipher as we approach its first term halfway mark.
The fact that it is hard to speak coherently about that which turns out to be incoherent may help to account for the fact that virtually no one has offered a full-scale synthesis of the subject. Shorter sketches on discrete issues there are. Partisan op-ed length potshots and (usually) mercifully brief blog posts written by the standard assortment of fans, fanatics and fantasists both abound. But, quite uncharacteristically, little big-picture analysis has been published. Doubtless there are several reasons...
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - 12:05
SOURCE: Moscow Times (11-15-10)
[Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.]
A recent radio feature by Anne Garrells, a U.S. correspondent with National Public Radio in Moscow, quoted a Russian engineer who described the Moscow-Volga canal: “The Moscow River, which often dried up, could not supply the capital’s growing needs. Now, 90 percent of water for this city of 10 million comes from the Volga. Many died building this canal. I have no love for Stalin. But there was no other way to do it, given the conditions of the time.”
This view of Stalin is typical in Russia, both at the official level and among ordinary people. Stalin was brutal, they say, but he had to be to achieve economic development, industrialization and progress. He mobilized Russia, transforming it into an industrial power in a couple of decades. He fashioned its military into an efficient machine that defeated Hitler. Brutality was necessary, and those who deny the achievements of the people under his...
A recent radio feature by Anne Garrells, a U.S. correspondent with National Public Radio in Moscow, quoted a Russian engineer who described the Moscow-Volga canal: “The Moscow River, which often dried up, could not supply the capital’s growing needs. Now, 90 percent of water for this city of 10 million comes from the Volga. Many died building this canal. I have no love for Stalin. But there was no other way to do it, given the conditions of the time.”
This view of Stalin is typical in Russia, both at the official level and among ordinary people. Stalin was brutal, they say, but he had to be to achieve economic development, industrialization and progress. He mobilized Russia, transforming it into an industrial power in a couple of decades. He fashioned its military into an efficient machine that defeated Hitler. Brutality was necessary, and those who deny the achievements of the people under his...
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - 08:36
SOURCE: Washington Times (11-10-10)
[James S. Robbins is senior editorial writer for foreign affairs at The Washington Times and author of "This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive" (Encounter Books, 2010).]
The 50th-anniversary commemoration of the Vietnam War should be a time of reflection and redemption, when a grateful country pays a long-standing debt to veterans who nobly fought in the conflict but came home to scorn and spit. But if a Pentagon bureaucrat has his way, the Viet vets will be denied their rightful honors once again.
In 2008, Congress authorized the secretary of defense to "conduct a program to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War" to "thank and honor veterans of the Vietnam War," "pay tribute to the contributions made on the home front," highlight technological advances during the war and "recognize the contributions and sacrifices" of U.S. allies. The Defense Department also was charged with coordinating,...
The 50th-anniversary commemoration of the Vietnam War should be a time of reflection and redemption, when a grateful country pays a long-standing debt to veterans who nobly fought in the conflict but came home to scorn and spit. But if a Pentagon bureaucrat has his way, the Viet vets will be denied their rightful honors once again.
In 2008, Congress authorized the secretary of defense to "conduct a program to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War" to "thank and honor veterans of the Vietnam War," "pay tribute to the contributions made on the home front," highlight technological advances during the war and "recognize the contributions and sacrifices" of U.S. allies. The Defense Department also was charged with coordinating,...
Monday, November 15, 2010 - 17:16
SOURCE: The Atlantic (11-12-10)
[Jennifer Lind is Assistant Professor of Government at Dartmouth College and the author of Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics. She has worked as a consultant for RAND and for the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Defense; lived and worked in Japan; and written previously for The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy.]
Ever since this past August when Ambassador to Japan John Roos became the first U.S. diplomat to attend Hiroshima's annual memorial ceremony, there have been high hopes in both countries that Barack Obama would follow as the first sitting U.S. president to visit the site of the 1945 atomic bombing. A gathering of Nobel Peace Prize laureates on Nov. 12 to 14, in the midst of Obama's ongoing Asia trip, provided the perfect opportunity. But a White House announcement that the President would not visit Hiroshima during his stay in Japan has disappointed observers hoping for a reconciliation with the past, and suggests that the...
Ever since this past August when Ambassador to Japan John Roos became the first U.S. diplomat to attend Hiroshima's annual memorial ceremony, there have been high hopes in both countries that Barack Obama would follow as the first sitting U.S. president to visit the site of the 1945 atomic bombing. A gathering of Nobel Peace Prize laureates on Nov. 12 to 14, in the midst of Obama's ongoing Asia trip, provided the perfect opportunity. But a White House announcement that the President would not visit Hiroshima during his stay in Japan has disappointed observers hoping for a reconciliation with the past, and suggests that the...
Monday, November 15, 2010 - 12:16
SOURCE: Reason (11-12-10)
[Greg Beato is contributing editor to Reason magazine.]
Fifty years ago this month, in the pages of Sports Illustrated, president-elect John F. Kennedy told the country that its “growing softness” and “increasing lack of fitness” were a “menace” to U.S. security. “Our struggles against aggressors throughout our history have been won on the playgrounds and corner lots and fields of America,” Kennedy exclaimed. But a 15-year research study showed that Austrian, Swiss, and Italian schoolchildren had outperformed their American counterparts in a series of strength and flexibility tests by a huge margin.
Perhaps envisioning an invasion of wiry Swiss tots against which we would have no defense except a vast stockpile of 20,000 nuclear warheads and 2.5 million tubby soldiers, sailors, and airmen, Kennedy vowed to make push-ups and jumping jacks a federal priority. “This is a national problem, and requires national action,” he wrote. “The federal government can make a...
Fifty years ago this month, in the pages of Sports Illustrated, president-elect John F. Kennedy told the country that its “growing softness” and “increasing lack of fitness” were a “menace” to U.S. security. “Our struggles against aggressors throughout our history have been won on the playgrounds and corner lots and fields of America,” Kennedy exclaimed. But a 15-year research study showed that Austrian, Swiss, and Italian schoolchildren had outperformed their American counterparts in a series of strength and flexibility tests by a huge margin.
Perhaps envisioning an invasion of wiry Swiss tots against which we would have no defense except a vast stockpile of 20,000 nuclear warheads and 2.5 million tubby soldiers, sailors, and airmen, Kennedy vowed to make push-ups and jumping jacks a federal priority. “This is a national problem, and requires national action,” he wrote. “The federal government can make a...
Monday, November 15, 2010 - 12:12
SOURCE: National Review (11-15-10)
[Michael Barone is senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner.]
George W. Bush is sitting on a hotel sofa in front of a south-facing window on a sunny November morning. His presidential memoir, Decision Points, is No. 1 on Amazon and is expected to be No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. “I’ve got a very comfortable life,” he says.
Decision Points, as the title suggests, does not purport to be the full story of Bush’s life or his administration. It “provides data points for future historians.”
Contrary to stereotype, Bush admits some serious errors up front. He failed to see the “house of cards” in the financial sector that led to the crisis of September 2008. He should have addressed the immigration issues rather than the Social Security issue when he had political capital from his 2004 reelection victory. He should have stayed in Baton Rouge or returned to Washington rather than fly over New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and...
George W. Bush is sitting on a hotel sofa in front of a south-facing window on a sunny November morning. His presidential memoir, Decision Points, is No. 1 on Amazon and is expected to be No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. “I’ve got a very comfortable life,” he says.
Decision Points, as the title suggests, does not purport to be the full story of Bush’s life or his administration. It “provides data points for future historians.”
Contrary to stereotype, Bush admits some serious errors up front. He failed to see the “house of cards” in the financial sector that led to the crisis of September 2008. He should have addressed the immigration issues rather than the Social Security issue when he had political capital from his 2004 reelection victory. He should have stayed in Baton Rouge or returned to Washington rather than fly over New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and...
Monday, November 15, 2010 - 12:02
SOURCE: openDemocracy (11-14-10)
[Dan Todman is senior lecturer in history at Queen Mary College, University of London. He is the author of The Great War: Myth and Memory (Hambledon, 2005).]
The annual commemoration of the fallen in the world wars and small wars Britain has been involved in takes place on the nearest Sunday to "Remembrance Day", 11 November. On that day in 1918, at 11 o'clock in the morning, the guns fell silent on the western front for the first time since August 1914. The fact that this year is the ninetieth anniversary of that event means that it is being marked with especial intensity. But in Britain at least, there is also something of the routine about the way that the first world war has become the principal focus of the "festival of remembrance". It can seem even that the British are obsessed by this conflict above all others.
Dan Todman is senior lecturer in history at Queen Mary College, University of London. He is the author of The Great War:...
The annual commemoration of the fallen in the world wars and small wars Britain has been involved in takes place on the nearest Sunday to "Remembrance Day", 11 November. On that day in 1918, at 11 o'clock in the morning, the guns fell silent on the western front for the first time since August 1914. The fact that this year is the ninetieth anniversary of that event means that it is being marked with especial intensity. But in Britain at least, there is also something of the routine about the way that the first world war has become the principal focus of the "festival of remembrance". It can seem even that the British are obsessed by this conflict above all others.
Dan Todman is senior lecturer in history at Queen Mary College, University of London. He is the author of The Great War:...
Monday, November 15, 2010 - 11:58
SOURCE: WaPo (11-12-10)
[Ruby Bridges lives in New Orleans and runs the Ruby Bridges Foundation, dedicated to educating children on social justice issues.]
On the morning of my first day of first grade at a new school, 50 years ago Sunday, U.S. marshals knocked on my family's door. They had been sent by the president of the United States, they said, to take me to school. I was 6 years old, and I had no idea who these men in uniform were. Nor did I know what would happen that day as I became the first black student to attend William Frantz Public School in New Orleans - and one of the first to integrate an elementary school in the South.
Our friends, family and neighbors had been at the house that morning, helping my mother get me ready. I was wearing a white dress with white bows. Many people who have never met me or who didn't see me that day might remember that outfit, too: It's in Norman Rockwell's painting "The Problem We All Live With," in which I am perpetually the 6-...
On the morning of my first day of first grade at a new school, 50 years ago Sunday, U.S. marshals knocked on my family's door. They had been sent by the president of the United States, they said, to take me to school. I was 6 years old, and I had no idea who these men in uniform were. Nor did I know what would happen that day as I became the first black student to attend William Frantz Public School in New Orleans - and one of the first to integrate an elementary school in the South.
Our friends, family and neighbors had been at the house that morning, helping my mother get me ready. I was wearing a white dress with white bows. Many people who have never met me or who didn't see me that day might remember that outfit, too: It's in Norman Rockwell's painting "The Problem We All Live With," in which I am perpetually the 6-...
Monday, November 15, 2010 - 11:53
SOURCE: LA Times (11-11-10)
[Doyle McManus, Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times, has reported on national and international issues from Washington for more than 25 years. His weekly Op-Ed column delivers original reporting and analysis on a wide range of national issues.]
Spare a moment of sympathy, if you can, for George W. Bush.
The former president has spent much of his life assuming an air of frat-boy insouciance, as if he didn't much care what people said about him.
But it turns out that was largely a pose. Like almost every other modern president, Bush went straight from the White House to the writing desk to turn out a memoir that would — as they always say — "set the record straight."
The book he produced doesn't engage with the political debates of the moment. Rather, as the former president explained in a television interview this week, he's focused on "how history will judge the decisions I made."...
Spare a moment of sympathy, if you can, for George W. Bush.
The former president has spent much of his life assuming an air of frat-boy insouciance, as if he didn't much care what people said about him.
But it turns out that was largely a pose. Like almost every other modern president, Bush went straight from the White House to the writing desk to turn out a memoir that would — as they always say — "set the record straight."
The book he produced doesn't engage with the political debates of the moment. Rather, as the former president explained in a television interview this week, he's focused on "how history will judge the decisions I made."...
Sunday, November 14, 2010 - 10:33
SOURCE: Brendan Nyhan's Blog (11-10-10)
[Brendan Nyhan is a political scientist currently serving as a RWJ Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan]
It's boring to point out that divided government is bad for President Obama, so journalists and commentators have been trying to make silly up-is-down arguments about why GOP control of Congress might help him politically.
These pundits frequently invoke the examples of Bill Clinton and Harry Truman, who both campaigned against an opposition Congress and won re-election. But as I've shown, Clinton's win was primarily driven by the booming economy, not his political maneuvering against the GOP Congress of 1995-1996....
Unfortunately, the dramatic narrative of Truman's victory and what it tells us about "the American character" doesn't hold up to scrutiny. As James Campbell pointed out in 2004..., Truman's comeback was fueled by "sizzling" economic growth...
It's boring to point out that divided government is bad for President Obama, so journalists and commentators have been trying to make silly up-is-down arguments about why GOP control of Congress might help him politically.
These pundits frequently invoke the examples of Bill Clinton and Harry Truman, who both campaigned against an opposition Congress and won re-election. But as I've shown, Clinton's win was primarily driven by the booming economy, not his political maneuvering against the GOP Congress of 1995-1996....
Unfortunately, the dramatic narrative of Truman's victory and what it tells us about "the American character" doesn't hold up to scrutiny. As James Campbell pointed out in 2004..., Truman's comeback was fueled by "sizzling" economic growth...
Friday, November 12, 2010 - 11:33
SOURCE: The Root (11-5-10)
[John McWhorter is a regular contributor to The Root. He is the author of Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English.]
The main message from The Grace of Silence, the new memoir from Michele Norris of NPR, is that all of us can be black historians -- and that we need to hop to it with all deliberate speed. The takeaway points in the book are memorable in themselves -- but even more interesting in where they point us....
...Norris' father was shot by a policeman in Birmingham, Ala., who didn't feel like letting him take an elevator to a party. But what strikes Norris is that neither Grandma Ione nor her father had any interest in talking about these things. It was the past; life was what you made of it -- namely, life was now....
Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 14:29
SOURCE: Counterpunch (11-11-10)
[Peter Linebaugh teaches history at the University of Toledo. The London Hanged and (with Marcus Rediker) The Many-Headed Hydra: the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. His essay on the history of May Day is included in Serpents in the Garden. His latest book is the Magna Carta Manifesto. He can be reached at: plineba@yahoo.com]
On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month the Great Powers of the World signed the armistice laying down arms after four years of the bloodiest war in history. That was 1918.
Now, we call it Veteran's Day.
What caused the armistice was the refusal of soldiers to fight. They refused 'to go over the top' anymore. In Russia, France, England, Italy they refused to participate in the slaughter which had begun in 1914.
What we learn from Armistice Day is that the soldier is the front line of the peace movement....
On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month the Great Powers of the World signed the armistice laying down arms after four years of the bloodiest war in history. That was 1918.
Now, we call it Veteran's Day.
What caused the armistice was the refusal of soldiers to fight. They refused 'to go over the top' anymore. In Russia, France, England, Italy they refused to participate in the slaughter which had begun in 1914.
What we learn from Armistice Day is that the soldier is the front line of the peace movement....
Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 13:45
SOURCE: WaPo (11-10-10)
[Patrick Logan, a freelance writer in New Hampshire, is writing a book about his relationship with his father.]
The third conditional in English grammar is used to imagine a hypothetical past. It's a structure I've thought about a lot recently while reading the letters my father sent my mother during World War II.
Italian King Victor Emmanuel III handed over power to Mussolini on Oct. 28, 1922, one week after my father was born. Two decades later he and the men of his generation were on transport ships bound for destinations from which many would not return. Had they been born just a few years later, their experience of the war probably would have been limited to newsreels.
In 1943, three years after completing a barbering course, my father found himself in boot camp. He wrote to my mother, boasting of his good fortune: "I don't know whether they recognized me as lazy or what, but I certainly got a snap job. No gun, no equipment, nothing. I cut...
The third conditional in English grammar is used to imagine a hypothetical past. It's a structure I've thought about a lot recently while reading the letters my father sent my mother during World War II.
Italian King Victor Emmanuel III handed over power to Mussolini on Oct. 28, 1922, one week after my father was born. Two decades later he and the men of his generation were on transport ships bound for destinations from which many would not return. Had they been born just a few years later, their experience of the war probably would have been limited to newsreels.
In 1943, three years after completing a barbering course, my father found himself in boot camp. He wrote to my mother, boasting of his good fortune: "I don't know whether they recognized me as lazy or what, but I certainly got a snap job. No gun, no equipment, nothing. I cut...
Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 11:54
SOURCE: The China Beat (Blog) (11-10-10)
[Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is a professor of history and department chair at University of California Irvine and the author, most recently, of “China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know,” published this year by Oxford University Press.]“Wouldn’t it make more sense to focus on Japan?”
Odd as it seems in 2010, several people asked me a variation of this question in 1982, after I mentioned planning to focus on modern Chinese history in graduate school. And I wouldn’t be surprised if some Americans of my generation who announced their intention to study India encountered the same thing. For back then, Japan’s was the surging Asian economy whose rise was generating the most interest—and concern—in the United States. Books like “Japan as Number One” (1979) got the sort of attention then that...
Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - 13:48
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (11-10-10)
[Anne Applebaum is a weekly columnist for The Post, writing on foreign affairs.]
To hear George W. Bush tell it, he isn't bothered whether we like him or not. He doesn't care that he was hailed as the least popular American president in history, and he doesn't read opinion polls anyway. "I really don't care about perceptions at this point," he declared during a television interview this week, the first he has given since leaving office. "I served, I gave it my all and I'm a content man."
It was an odd thing to say at the start of a publicity campaign that is surely unprecedented in the history of the US presidency. That first interview – with Matt Lauer of NBC, one of the top American television journalists – was only one of many to come. Over the next days and weeks, the ex-president is going to talk to everyone from Oprah to Rush Limbaugh. He will be interviewed by at least three pundits on Fox News. He will attend the ground-breaking...
To hear George W. Bush tell it, he isn't bothered whether we like him or not. He doesn't care that he was hailed as the least popular American president in history, and he doesn't read opinion polls anyway. "I really don't care about perceptions at this point," he declared during a television interview this week, the first he has given since leaving office. "I served, I gave it my all and I'm a content man."
It was an odd thing to say at the start of a publicity campaign that is surely unprecedented in the history of the US presidency. That first interview – with Matt Lauer of NBC, one of the top American television journalists – was only one of many to come. Over the next days and weeks, the ex-president is going to talk to everyone from Oprah to Rush Limbaugh. He will be interviewed by at least three pundits on Fox News. He will attend the ground-breaking...
Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - 08:13
