Roundup: Talking About History

Jeff Wasserstrom: Should historians ignore blogs?

[Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is a professor of history at University of California at Irvine, who blogs regularly for The China Beat (http://thechinabeat.blogspot.com/) and the Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com/), and has published in various academic journals and general interest periodicals, ranging from the TLS to Newsweek. ] To some readers of this newsmagazine, the word “blog”—a term derived from “web log” that’s now used to refer to all sorts of sites—probably conjures up images of

Don McNay: We Need Business Leaders Who Know About History

[Don McNay, CLU, ChFC, MSFS, CSSC is the founder of McNay Settlement Group in Richmond, Kentucky.] If we are going to break out of this economic crisis, we don't need business leaders trained in business schools. We need leaders who know and understand history. About 20 years ago, I was asked to speak to a college business class. I told the class they should stop studying business and study history and English instead. I was never invited back.

Nikki Gloudeman: 2,000-plus years of Afghanistan conquest, from Alexander the Great to Barack

328 BC—Alexander the Great forms Hellenistic state in portions of what is now Afghanistan. 400 AD—White Huns invade region, dominate for two centuries. 642—After sacking Persia, Arab armies invade and attempt to introduce Islam. 870—Dawn of the Saffarid dynasty, whose expansive empire competes with two others for control of the wider region. 998—Turkic dynasty cements Islamic era. 1219—Genghis Khan leads Mongol invasion.

Matthias Schulz: The Bloody Sack of Rome

[Matthias Schulz writes for Spiegel Online.] It was something that people across Europe could not quite believe had happened. Brutish intruders with wheel-lock pistols and long spears had been allowed to capture the Eternal City. Rome's Aurelian Walls had failed. The air in the city was filled with the prayers of desperate citizens, beseeching God to prevent a German victory. But heaven did not intervene when, on the morning of May 6, 1527, an army of mercenaries fighti

Scott McLemee: The resurrection of a pioneering cultural journalist

Book reviewers for newspapers write the first draft of cultural history. Or so we tell ourselves, at times, to lift our spirits. Of late this is not so easy. All signs now point to a future in which the news hole for cultural coverage will be budgeted strictly for updates on celebrity pregnancies. Authors are going to keep on writing books, of course, but exposure will involve coordinating the efforts of a publicist and a fertility expert. To some of us, it seems obvious that newspa

Max Boot: What to Read on Pirates

[MAX BOOT is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.] Recent attacks off the Horn of Africa have revived interest in piracy. There is a rich literature on the subject focusing primarily on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Today's piracy problems share enough characteristics with their historical precursors to make an understanding of the earlier experiences useful as well as fun. A General History of

Seumas Milne: Thatcher's legacy is in ruins, but Britain is still in its thrall

[Seumas Milne is a Guardian columnist and associate editor.] For the shrinking band of true believers, the ­anniversary of Margaret Thatcher's 1979 election couldn't have come at a worse time. After years in which the political and media establishment could be relied on to parrot the tale that the former Tory leader did what had to be done – however painful – to put Britain back on track, her reputation is now in ruins. It's barely 18 months since Gordon Brown felt it necessary to h

Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, Alexander Vassiliev: "I.F. Stone, Soviet Agent—Case Closed"

[John Earl Haynes is a historian at the Library of Congress. Harvey Klehr is Andrew W. Mellon professor of politics and history at Emory University. Alexander Vassiliev is a journalist living in London. In somewhat different form, this article appears in their new book, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, out this month from Yale. Copyright © 2009 by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev. Excerpted by permission of Yale University Press.] ... The first report

Lawrence Rothfield: The Rape of Mesopotamia ... Behind the Looting of the Iraq Museum

An excerpt from: The Rape of Mesopotamia Behind the Looting of the Iraq Museum Lawrence Rothfield “Nobody Thought of Culture” War-Related Heritage Protection in the Early Prewar Period Much has been written about the U.S. military’s failure to prepare adequately for the post-combat phase of the 2003 war and about the disastrous impact such shortsightedness had on virtually every sector of Iraqi society. The failure to take steps to prevent the looting of the National Muse

Robert Barro & Jose Ursua: History shows the swine flu could take an economic toll

[Mr. Barro is a professor of economics at Harvard University and a senior fellow of Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Mr. Ursua is a Ph.D. student in economics at Harvard.] Here we are, struggling to find a way out of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, when along comes the possibility of a global influenza epidemic. Though the first concern about the new strain of A/H1N1 virus involves health, we also have to worry that a full-blown flu pandemic would intensify the

Jesse Lemisch: Benjamin Franklin WAS a "distant... spouse"

Alan Houston, a Political Science professor at the University of California – San Diego has uncovered some Franklin materials, including a letter from Franklin to his wife, Deborah. (This and the following concerning Houston appeared on the Chronicle of Higher Education website, April 24: http://chronicle.com.) In this letter, Franklin addresses Deborah as “My dear child,” and concludes, “Write me by every Opportunity, I long to be with

John Blundell: Margaret Thatcher's revolution

[John Blundell's "Margaret Thatcher - A Portrait of the Iron Lady" was published by Algora late last year to explain Thatcherism to Americans. He is director general and Ralph Harris Fellow at London's Institute of Economic Affairs.] The previous few months had been called the "Winter of Discontent," as per Shakespeare's "Richard III" - and it was grim, very grim indeed. There were pickets at ports, oil refineries and manufacturers of esse

Bruce Anderson: Cometh the hour, cometh the woman ... Thatcher 30 years on

[Bruce Anderson is a UK conservative political columnist.] Margaret Thatcher was not a Whistler etching. She did not do shades of grey. Nor do most of those who write about about her. She is either the best of Prime Ministers or the worst of Prime Ministers: the woman who saved the country or the woman who destroyed it. No one could claim that she was an insignificant figure. No one doubts that historians yet unborn will be discussing her legacy; that she will continue to ride the s

National Security Archive: A Moment in Cold War History when the Fundamentals of the U.S. Nuclear Posture Were at Stake

President Obama's recent call for a "world without nuclear weapons" immediately raised questions of how do you get there, what does deterrence actually require before you get there, and how many nuclear weapons would that involve at each step. Exactly these questions of "how much is enough" were fifty years ago in secret debate within the U.S. government, when Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Arleigh Burke argued that a small force of mainly nuclear missile-launching Polaris

David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies: "New Evidence" on FDR/Holocaust? Not New, Not Evidence

Leading Holocaust scholars have refuted a new book’s claim that there is new evidence President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to help Jewish refugees from Nazism in the 1930s. The book, Refugees and Rescue: The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald 1933-1945, authored by Richard Breitman, Severin Hochberg, and Barbara McDonald Stewart, was published this week by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Indiana University Press, The book claims to “reveal” FDR’s interest in

Ron Radosh: Israel’s Plight ... 1948 and Today

The interview with historian Benny Morris that appears in today’s Foreign Policy website raises interesting questions. Morris, as interviewer Evan R. Goldstein points out, was once a hero of the academic Left, and a leading advocate of the rights of Palestinians. But reality has over the years forced Morris to reconsider much of his early assumptions.Now, he has, like the majority of his countrymen

Nigel Lawson: Mrs Thatcher’s Lasting Legacy

[Nigel Lawson is a British Conservative politician and journalist who was Chancellor of the Exchequer between June 1983 and October 1989.] It is hard, even for those old enough to remember, to recall the nature of Britain when the Conservatives led by Margaret Thatcher came to power 30 years ago, and to recollect just how bad were the circumstances and how great the challenges. To put it into perspective, it is generally agreed that the government to be formed after nex

Phillip Butehorn: It's Thomas Jefferson's birthday and nobody cares?

[Mr. Butehorn is an intern at HNN and one of our Breaking News Editors.] Last week was Thomas Jefferson’s birthday. He turned two hundred and sixty-six. I did not find this information in an article on CNN or Fox News, but actually discovered this fact in a headline on MSN titled “Facts about Thomas Jefferson.” Those facts are not good enough. This man was apart of the founding fathers trinity, the band of brothers, and he deserves a little more than having people being told facts a

Larry Kramer: Yale's Conspiracy of Silence

[Twelve years after Yale rejected a $7 million endowment for a gay student center, the school's Gay and Lesbian Association invited legendary playwright and gay-rights activist Larry Kramer back to campus to receive its first Lifetime Achievement Award. The following is his speech.] I have come here to apologize to you. It took a long time for Yale to accept Kramer money. After a number of years of trying to get Yale to accept mine for gay professorships or to let me ra

BBC: The Little Ice Age and Scotland

Astronomers have reported that the Sun is at its dimmest for almost a century. Some scientists believe a similar "quiet spell" is connected to a cooling of temperatures in a period of time called the Maunder Minimum. Also known as the Little Ice Age, it lasted 70 years from 1645 to 1715 and featured The Great Frost which froze the River Thames in London for days. Interestingly, this period coincided with some of the most dramatic events in Scotlan