Roundup: Historians' Take

Walter Russell Mead: Bad Man Down

Walter Russell Mead is professor of foreign affairs and the humanities at Bard College and editor-at-large of The American Interest.President Obama has been able to announce the news that Americans have longed to hear for the last ten years:  Osama bin Laden is dead, his corpse flung into the sea.Better, he is dead at America’s hands.

Niall Ferguson: Sticker Shock

Niall Ferguson is a Harvard professor and columnist for Newsweek.“I can’t eat an iPad.” This could go down in history as the line that launched the great inflation of the 2010s.

Victor Davis Hanson: Bin Laden Fallout

NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.

Sean Wilentz: Could Osama bin Laden’s Demise Loosen the Grip Paranoid Politics Has on America?

Sean Wilentz is a contributing editor at The New Republic, and the author of Bob Dylan in America (Doubleday).

Andrew J. Bacevich: Arab Uprising: The U.S. Must Take a Nonviolent Stance

Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University and the author of Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War.

Jonathan Zimmerman: Celebrating Osama bin Laden's Death is Anti-American ... and Not Very Biblical

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author, most recently, of Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory.“Do not rejoice when your enemies fall, and do not let your heart be glad when they stumble.”So says Proverbs 24:17, in a book that millions of Americans hold sacred. The Bible also says that you should love your enemy as yourself, and that vengeance is the Lord’s alone.

Andrew J. Bacevich: Osama bin Laden is Gone, but U.S. War in the Middle East is Here to Stay

Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His most recent book, Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War, is just out in paperback.

Fouad Ajami: Osama Bin Laden, Weak Horse

Mr. Ajami is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is co-chair of the Hoover Working Group on Islamism and the International Order.

Daniel Pipes: Thoughts on the Killing of Osama bin Laden

Bin Laden was just a part of Al-Qaeda which is just a part of the Islamic terrorist effort which is just a part of the Islamist movement, so the announcement of his death today by the U.S. government makes little operational difference. The war on terror has not fundamentally changed, much less been won.

Mark Moyar: The Kings We Crown

UNTIL very recently, no one would have predicted that Barack Obama would be forcing foreign leaders from power with greater regularity than George W. Bush. The president maintains that the United States is not playing kingmaker, but is merely enabling people to choose their leaders. But history indicates that the president’s choice of a provisional leader may have a much greater impact on a country’s political future than the desires of its people.

David Greenberg: A Fitting Resolution to the Story of 9/11

David Greenberg, a contributing editor to The New Republic, teaches history at Rutgers University. Give President Obama credit. As he promised in a bit of florid campaign rhetoric, he followed Osama bin Laden to the cave where he lives—in this case a high-walled compound of steel and concrete not far from the capital of Pakistan.

Jim Sleeper: Osama Bin Dustbin?

Jim Sleeper is a lecturer in politics at Yale University. There's something valid in "great man" versions of history, including those focusing on the diabolically great: Without Adolph Hitler, it's unlikely that German racism, especially anti-Semitism, would have become as shattering and unspeakable as it did. Without Osama bin Laden, Islamicist terrorism probably wouldn't have become as maniacally effective and widespread as it has.

Simon Schama: Dynastic lessons from the familiar Windsor flourish

Simon Schama is an FT contributing editor.A century ago, in 1911, a betting man would not have put much money on the endurance of dynastic autocracies. The most venerable of them all, the Manchu empire in China, had just fallen to revolution and been succeeded by the prosaic republican nationalism of Sun Yat-sen.

Philip Zelikow: America Must Regain the Initiative Abroad

The writer is a professor of history at the University of Virginia. From 2005 to 2007 he was the counsellor of the US Department of State

John J. Pitney, Jr.: FDR's Birthers

John J. Pitney, Jr. is Crocker Professor of Politics at Claremont McKenna College.President Obama is not the first chief executive who has had to deal with rumors about his ancestry. In the 1930s, there were stories that President Franklin Roosevelt was Jewish.

Darrin McMahon: A History of Happiness

David Nash: Royal Pomp and Middle Class Circumstance

David Nash is Professor of History at Oxford Brookes University, specialising in nineteenth and twentieth century Britain.  He is a member of the History & Policy network and is also a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Walter Russell Mead: Falling Between Two Stools

Walter Russell Mead is professor of foreign affairs and the humanities at Bard College and editor-at-large of The American Interest.

Niall Ferguson: Copper Is King

Niall Ferguson is a Harvard professor and Newsweek columnist.Copperfinger doesn’t have the same ring as Goldfinger. Nor would you be very impressed by a man with a copper gun. Copper isn’t glamorous. Unlike gold, it is not likely to be recommended as an investment by Glenn Beck. Yet, before and after the financial crisis, copper has been one of the world economy’s star performers.

Timothy Garton Ash: Royal Wedding: Save the Throne

Timothy Garton Ash, a contributing editor to Opinion, is professor of European studies at Oxford University, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of "Facts are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade Without a Name."