As the conservative polemicist Pat Buchanan prepared last fall for the release of his book “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?,” some friends who worked with him at MSNBC were worried. The book, they told him, would provoke controversy and threaten his professional well-being.

Undeterred, Mr. Buchanan began his book tour, but his friends were right. He stopped being asked to appear on shows on MSNBC, the cable news channel where he had been employed for nearly 10 years. On Feb. 16, the channel said in a brief statement: “We’ve parted ways with Pat Buchanan. We wish him well.”...

Timothy Stanley, a British historian whose biography of Mr. Buchanan, “The Crusader,” was released two weeks ago, said he thought the departure was a “marketing decision” by MSNBC, a unit of Comcast. “They took an opportunity to get rid of someone who was doing damage to their liberal brand.”...

Mr. Stanley said that “Buchanan is very clever and careful at not saying whether the end of white America is a good or bad thing.”...

New York, NY, February 16, 2012 —Louise Mirrer, president and CEO of the New-York Historical Society, announced today that historian John Lewis Gaddis, recipient of the National Humanities Medal in 2005, will receive New-York Historical’s seventh annual American History Book Prize for George F. Kennan: An American Life(Penguin Press, 2011). He will be presented with a $50,000 cash award, an engraved medal and the title of American Historian Laureate on April 13, 2012, during the Weekend with History event of the New-York Historical's Chairman's Council.

Roger Hertog, Chairman of the New-York Historical Society's Board of Trustees, stated: “A master historian vividly tells the story of the grand strategist who shaped foreign policy over the last sixty years.”

George F. Kennan was an eminent diplomat whose writings were key to establishing the containment strategy that defined U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union for forty years.  In writing this biography, John Lewis Gaddis drew from exclusive access to Kennan’s archives and extensive interviews with Kennan himself over thirty years.

Considered one of the most important biographies of the year by a Prize Committee comprised of historians and New-York Historical leadership, George F. Kennan: An American Lifewas selected from a field of 120 submissions. The American History Book Prize was previously awarded to Doris Kearns Goodwin for Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln; David Nasaw for Andrew Carnegie; Daniel Walker Howe for What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848; Drew Gilpin Faust for This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War; Gordon S. Wood for Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815; andRon Chernow for George Washington: A Life.

John Lewis Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of History and Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale University, where he teaches courses on Cold War history, grand strategy, biography, and historical methods. Educated at the University of Texas in Austin, he has also taught at Ohio University, the United States Naval War College, the University of Helsinki, Princeton University, and Oxford University.  His most recent books include The Landscape of History:  How Historians Map the Past (2002); Surprise, Security, and the American Experience (2004); The Cold War:  A New History (2005); and a new edition of Strategies of Containment:  A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (2005). 

 “No organization has been more successful than the New-York Historical Society in finding new ways to encourage the study of American history.  I am honored, therefore, to have received its 2012 American History Book Prize, and to find myself in the company of so distinguished a group of previous winners.  George F. Kennan was himself a prize-winning historian, and I know he would have been pleased.”

Pam Schafler, Vice Chair of the New-York Historical board and Chair of the Chairman's Council, noted:  “John Lewis Gaddis is a deeply respected teacher who has inspired countless students of history through his books about the Cold War and International Relations.  Members of the Chairman’s Council will comprise the fortunate audience when Professor Gaddis makes remarks upon receiving this year’s New-York Historical Society American History Book Prize.” 

Now in its seventh year, the Weekend with History is organized by the Chairman's Council of New-York Historical and features two days of informal conversations and presentations by leading scholars and cultural figures.

The Chairman's Council is comprised of New-York Historical's most committed supporters. Individuals may be invited to join the Council by New-York Historical Trustees and senior staff and by existing members of the Council. Annual dues are $5,000 (Member), $10,000 (Vice Chair), and $25,000 (Co-Chair). For more information on Weekend with History or the Chairman's Council, please contact Alyssa Venere at (212) 485-9221 or alyssa.venere @nyhistory.org.

ALBANY, N.Y. — Feb. 27 is an important date in Harold Holzer's life for a couple of reasons, not the least of which it's his wedding anniversary.

The other is linked to Abraham Lincoln, the subject of numerous Holzer books, essays, lectures and television appearances over the years. It was on that date in 1860 when the tall, gaunt lawyer from Illinois gave a political speech at Manhattan's Cooper Union, an address Holzer and other historians credit with setting Lincoln on the path to the White House in that year's presidential election.

Feb. 27 serves as another milestone for Holzer when his 42nd book — "Emancipating Lincoln: The Proclamation in Text, Context, and Memory," is published Monday by Harvard University Press.

The book's release is timed to the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which the nation's 16th president spent months contemplating, discussing and rewriting in 1862 before issuing it in September of that year, just days after Union forces turned back Gen. Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army at the bloody Battle of Antietam in Maryland....

Edwin Black has announced that after 1.2 million copies of IBM and the Holocaust have sold worldwide, the book is completely out of print. However, on the anniversary of the book's original publication in 2001, a new “Expanded Edition” will be released which will include some 32 pages of never-before-published internal IBM correspondence, State and Justice Department memos and concentration camp documents that will graphically chronicle exactly what IBM did and what they knew during the twelve-year Hitler regime. IBM has never denied any of the information in the book and for years has claimed that it has no information about its Hitler-era activities involving the Third Reich.

The new edition will be released on February 26, 2011, 3 PM at a special Live Global Streaming Event at Yeshiva University’s Furst Hall in New York. The event is sponsored by the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, and co-sponsored by Yeshiva University’s Office of Pre-Law Advisement, Jacob Hecht Pre-Law Society, Beren and Wilf campuses, in partnership with StandWithUs, and in association with NAHOS--National Association of Jewish Child Holocaust Survivors, Generations of the Shoah International, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, the State of California Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, Human Rights and Tolerance, The Auto Channel, History Network News, The Cutting Edge News, Spero Forum, the Jewish Virtual Library, and many other groups.

Among the newly-released documents and archival materials are the secret 1941 correspondence setting up Dutch subsidiary of IBM to work in tandem with the Nazis that would result in the extermination of the majority of Dutch Jews, company President Thomas Watson's personal approval for the 1939 release of special IBM alphabetizing machines to help organize the rape of Poland and the deportation of Polish Jews, as well as the IBM Camp Codes including the code for Gas Chambers. Among the newly published punch cards, are the cards developed for the SS Race Office, and the IBM card developed for the statistician who reported directly to Himmler and Eichmann.

“The world will now be able to see some of the actual correspondence, Justice Department memos, State Department cables and concentration camp documents,” said author Edwin Black. The newly-published documents constitute a fraction of the author's 20,000 documents on this topic. At least a dozen organizations cooperated in the effort to provide high-quality reproductions, including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Dutch National Archives, the Dachau Bavarian police, and many others.

At the Live Global Streaming Launch for the IBM and the Holocaust Expanded Edition, the author will take questions for an international audience that has both submitted them in advance or will submit them live during the event. The Event can be seen at www.ibmandtheholocaust.com and right here.

Like most professions, presidents vary in quality. There are the good, the bad and the forgettable. But who is the best? The worst? And just how does Pennsylvania’s James Buchanan stack up?

Professors at colleges around the midstate shared their opinions. While the majority of history professors named Lincoln as the best overall, when it came to judging for economic, homeland security or international issues, his name is absent from the “best” or “worst” slot.

Here are the verdicts of the professors interviewed.

The best

Abraham Lincoln

“Most scholars would say he faced the most awesome challenges and handled them in a way that was as good as it can possibly get. Lincoln’s ability to manage a war to a successful conclusion, a very complex and bloody war, and to redefine the meaning of America — that’s pretty good stuff.” — Michael J. Birkner, professor of history at Gettysburg College.

“Lincoln was both the greatest communicator and also the best decision-maker. He was responsible for saving the union more than any other individual. He created a series of speeches and letters that explain American civic life more than anyone else has ever done.” — Matthew Pinsker, professor of history at Dickinson College.

“Lincoln is the best. The Civil War — that’s the crisis in American history. And the more you study him, the more you realize he could have let the nation fall apart.” — Peter Levy, professor of history at York College.

“I would put him No. 1 in the sense that there are probably other people who could have gotten the country off on the right foot the way Washington did. But it’s hard to imagine anybody as capable as Lincoln in the Civil War.” — James Broussard, professor of history at Lebanon Valley College....

A New York Times op-ed, "The M.R.S. and the Ph.D" sparked a conversation among The Daily Circuit team last week about educated women today and their prospects for marriage. For more than a century, women were often forced to choose between an education and a husband. We were wondering: Is this still the case? Does marriage suit educated women?

Kerri Miller will be speaking with Stephanie Coontz, professor of history and family studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. She is the author of the op-ed that spurred this in-depth segment....

Dr. Lee Benson, professor emeritus of history and a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Netter Center for Community Partnerships, died on February 10 from complications after a fall. He was 90 years of age.

He was co-founder of the Netter Center’s university-assisted community school program that has, since its inception in 1985, been seen as a national model of university civic engagement. Dr. Benson continued to be fully engaged with the Netter Center, serving on its Faculty Advisory Board, writing and co-teaching with the Center’s director an undergraduate seminar on “Urban University-Community Relations” until his death. He was co-executive editor of the Netter Center’s Universities and Community Schools journal, co-author of Dewey’s Dream (2007), and was the author or co-author of dozens of articles and chapters on university civic engagement and the role of higher education in educating students for democratic citizenship.

Dr. Ira Harkavy, director of the Netter Center called his colleague, “a distinguished scholar, inspiring and beloved teacher, and active citizen, who devoted his life to working to change the world for the better. Lee’s pioneering work, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy, introduced the application of social science theory and methodology to the discipline of history.”

Dr. Benson also authored numerous books, chapters and articles pertaining to history. He also received many grants and honors throughout his academic career.

Prior to coming to Penn in 1964, Dr. Benson held positions of research associate, instructor and lecturer at the Bureau of Applied Social Research, Columbia University from 1952-1960, and professor of history at Wayne State University from 1960-1964. In 1976, he served as the first president of the Social Science History Association. He became a professor emeritus at Penn in 1990....

Ronald Fraser, an English oral historian known for his deftness at collecting and presenting ordinary people’s experiences during momentous events like the Spanish Civil War, died on Feb. 10 in Valencia, Spain. He was 81.

Tariq Ali, a friend and colleague, announced the death. He gave no cause.

Mr. Fraser used transcriptions of interviews, the oral historian’s principal tool, to write books chronicling working-class life, the ways of a Spanish village, the 1968 student uprisings in the United States and Europe, and even his own life.

His most influential book was “Blood of Spain: An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War,” a 628-page work published in 1979 that Paul Preston, a historian of the Spanish Civil War, said in The New York Times Book Review would “take its place among the dozen or so truly important books about the Spanish conflict.”...

A real historian, who knows a few facts about what really happened during the Haymarket riots, has crossed swords with Wikipedia editors who are insisting on pushing a fantasy history on the great unwashed.

Writing in the Chronicle, Timothy Messer-Kruse is a professor in the School of Cultural and Critical Studies at Bowling Green State University and has been studying the Haymarket riot and trial of 1886. He has also written two books on the subject.

When a bomb was thrown during an anarchist rally in Chicago, America had its first Red Scare. There was a high-profile show trial and a worldwide clemency movement for the seven men executed.

Messer-Kruse decided to experiment with editing one particularly misleading assertion on Wikipedia that the prosecution, led by Julius Grinnell, did not offer evidence connecting any of the defendants with the bombing.

His quest to find out what really happened began after he read an identically worded statement in a history text book and one of his students pointed out that if the trial went on for six weeks and no evidence was presented, the question was what they talked about.

In fact, 118 witnesses were called to testify, many of them unindicted co-conspirators who detailed secret meetings where plans to attack police stations were mapped out, coded messages were placed in radical newspapers, and bombs were assembled in one of the defendants' rooms....

One thing Barack Obama and Mitt Romney seem to have in common these days is an appreciation for the neoconservative historian Robert Kagan.

The Romney campaign has retained Mr. Kagan as a foreign-policy adviser, and according to news reports, President Obama has read and been influenced by a recent Kagan essay in The New Republic, which addresses “the myth of American decline” and underscores the importance of the United States’ maintaining its “global responsibilities.”

That essay was based on Mr. Kagan’s new book, “The World America Made,” a book that turns out to be a much more scattershot affair than the magazine article, a book that undermines its more potent arguments with fuzzy generalizations, debatable assertions and self-important declarations of the obvious (“It is premature for us to conclude, after ten thousand years of war, that a few decades and some technological innovations would change the nature of man and the nature of international relations.”)

The book does make a strong case for the notion that “the most important features of today’s world — the great spread of democracy, the prosperity, the prolonged great-power peace — have depended directly and indirectly on power and influence exercised by the United States,” and suggests that “when American power declines, the institutions and norms American power supports will decline too.”...

Week seven of Melissa Harris-Perry’s introductory course in African-American studies at Tulane University includes a lecture about “the hollow prize” — a theory that African-Americans tend to be elected as mayor only after a city has tipped into economic decline.

One day last summer, when Ms. Harris-Perry was filling in for Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, she recast the class lecture as a television segment, invoking Detroit; her adopted home, New Orleans; President Obama; and tax policy.

“I’ve given that lecture a million times — a million times,” Ms. Harris-Perry said in a recent interview. “But I do it once on Rachel’s show, and it was everywhere the next day. It was up on Web sites, people were e-mailing me — that, for me, was a really clear indication of how powerful television is.”

Now, MSNBC is about to introduce a progressive talk show called “Melissa Harris-Perry” on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Ms. Harris-Perry will be the only tenured professor in the United States — and one of a very small number of African-American women — who serves as a cable news host....

When Marine investigators learned last November that a scout sniper platoon in Afghanistan was using a Nazi "SS" flag as its standard, it wasn't a member of the unit who told them. It was Iraq war veteran Waitman Beorn, a visiting history professor at Loyola University New Orleans, also a Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowship recipient who teaches at the National Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Dr. Beorn's research on Nazis and genocide is informed by his military background: He is a West Point graduate and former officer who served as a scout platoon leader in Iraq from 2003-2004. Through his work he seeks to teach "ethical decision-making in a military context using the Holocaust as a vehicle." 

Shortly after I first wrote about the flag controversy last week, Beorn got in touch to explain how and why he chose to report the incident to the Marine Corps' inspector general. (Though Beorn contacted military authorities, he didn't play a part in the incident's recent unearthing by the media.) For one, he had learned through military contacts that the use of the 'SS' flag was not an isolated incident. He hoped that exposing it could lead to an important "teachable moment" that might help alleviate what he considers to be a serious issue. In an email interview, he shared with Mother Jones details of how the Marine Corps responded to him, and how the Corps has since addressed this moral education issue with the troops. He said he was disappointed with the emerging media narrative that the military had responded poorly. "I was surprised by the speed with which they acted and the seriousness with which they appeared to take it," he wrote.

But he also emphasized: "I think our public needs to realize that this is not a case of the 'liberal media' going after our brave men and women in uniform. Symbols are important. They send messages. These messages are important." He explained his special interest in the SS incident with regard to military training, and what he thought would be the appropriate punishment for the service members in question—especially during wartime. In a follow-up email he wrote: "My focus is on the importance of positive unit cultures, and that the use of this image highlights a problem. For example, I was just informed that a Marine posted on a blog that he had had the tattoo for 17 years, which seems to highlight this point for me."...