Roundup: Talking About History

NYT: What people around the world think about Lincoln

Americans know what they think about Abraham Lincoln. But what does the world think about him? To mark Presidents’ Day, and Lincoln’s 200th birthday, which took place last week, the Op-Ed editors asked four writers from around the world to describe how Lincoln has influenced their countries. Undivided Loyalty By JÖRG NAGLER Germans admire Lincoln for his success in uniting a country. AT least two dozen Lincoln biographies have been published in Germany. Stre

Cynthia Haven: Antebellum artists protested slavery

What does one do when confronting the biggest social evil of one's time? In the case of a few artists in the decades prior to the Civil War, they lifted their pens and paintbrushes. They sketched black slaves being bonded, branded, whipped and auctioned. Rhonda Goodman, a Stanford doctoral student in art and art history and a Geballe Dissertation Prize Fellow at the Humanities Center, has studied the little-known artwork for messages that reveal the social and political

John Taylor: The Reagan Myth?

If you have iTunes, download this conversation between"Fresh Air" host Terry Gross and Will Bunch, who argues in a new book, Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future

Spiegel Interview: The Logic Behind the Destruction of Dresden (Frederick Taylor)

For years, the anniversary of the World War II bombing of Dresden has been a rallying point for neo-Nazis eager to accuse the Allies of war crimes. But, British historian Frederick Taylor explains, there was a clear military rationale behind the attack. SPIEGEL ONLINE: Every year, thousands of peole show up to the demonstrations marking the anniversary of the Feb. 13, 1945 Allied destruction of Dresden. But it wasn't the only German city obliterated by Allied bombs. Indeed, the deat

Gregory McNamee: Darwin and Robert Fitzroy (Captain of HMS Beagle & a Forgotten Pioneer of Science)

This year marks two great moments in the history of science: the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his Origin of Species. Throughout 2009, I will be posting here and there on Darwinian topics. It may seem counterintuitive, but the first of them is an appreciation of the man under whose command he sailed on the five-year voyage of HMS Beagle, Robert Fitzroy (also spelled FitzRoy), who has often figured as the villain of the piece.

Frank Gannon: Nixon and Lincoln and the NYT

On The Caucus blog in today’s New York Times, political reporter Katharine Q. Seelye has an interesting post about President Obama’s intense feeling of connection with Abraham Lincoln and the ways in which he is expressing it publicly.The piece begins with a general set up:Barack Obama is not the first president to feel a kinship with Abraham Lincoln. Nixo

Julian Zelizer: Building a New Deal Liberalism

[Julian E. Zelizer is professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He is the co-editor of "Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s" (Harvard University Press) and is completing a book on the history of national security politics since World War II that will be published by Basic Books. For more information, see www.julianzelizer.com] Public works frequently get a bad ra

David Blight: Lincoln and the former slave

[David W. Blight teaches at Yale University, and is author of "A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation."] TODAY, on Lincoln's birthday, I will be in Cohasset - 98 percent white and mostly affluent - to honor the life of one of its own who was neither. John Washington was a former slave who settled in Cohasset long after the Civil War, and is buried in Woodside Cemetery. We might never have known who John Washington was we

James Oliver Horton: Lincoln's remarkable tie to former slave

[James Oliver Horton is Benjamin Banneker professor emeritus at George Washington University and a professor at the University of Hawaii. He is a member of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and author of "Landmarks of African American History."] Few relationships in American history have been more remarkable than that between President Abraham Lincoln and black abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass. Lincoln was born a Southerner 200 years

5 Questions for Adam Gopnik on Lincoln, Darwin, and Their Age

Adam Gopnik (right), who wrote the

Justin Ewers: How the Civil War president came to abolish slavery

... When he took office, Lincoln had gone about as far as he thought he could go on the issue of slavery. He'd approved a policy that designated runaway slaves "contraband" of war and even eliminated slavery in Washington, D.C., which was under the direct control of the federal government. Lincoln had rescinded an order, though, by the general overseeing Missouri in 1861 that would have liberated all the slaves in the state. "I think there is a great danger," Lin

Anjana Ahuja: A forgotten hero ... Darwin's co-discoverer

[Anjana Ahuja is a British Indian science journalist and columnist for The Times.] In the 1850s, a bearded Victorian naturalist set sail for exotic shores, determined to discover the origin of species. He returned to England laden with once-living bounty - mostly birds, beetles and butterflies - which he dispersed, for modest sums, to museums and cultured gentlemen. He retained specimens for himself, the study of which furnished such papers as On the Law that has regulated the Intro

Afi-Odelia E. Scruggs: Black History Month remains important, especially for white people.

[Afi-Odelia E. Scruggs, a journalist and teaching artist in Ohio, is a regular contributor to The Root.] Black History Month has barely begun, but some columnists are calling for an end. It's time, they say, to abolish the month-long observance because of—you guessed it—the election of Barack Obama. His presidency proves that African Americans are fully intertwined into the American experience. So why relegate our history to a month of “rote and repetitious rituals?” Mi

Fred Kaplan: There are too many Lincoln books. Which are indispensable?

... Americans have reason to be proud of their Lincoln literary cadre, especially of scholars like Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, who created the most valuable source of information on Lincoln, Herndon's Informants (1997). It's a painstaking compilation of the work of William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner, who spent 25 years after the president's death interviewing and corresponding with people who had known Lincoln. But it's not a book for the general reader, and not all of the informa

Carl Safina: Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live

[Carl Safina is a MacArthur fellow, an adjunct professor at Stony Brook University and the president of the Blue Ocean Institute. His books include “Song for the Blue Ocean,” “Eye of the Albatross” and “Voyage of the Turtle.”] “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat-catching,” Robert Darwin told his son, “and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.” Yet the feckless boy is everywhere. Charles Darwin gets so much credit, we can’t distinguish evolution from hi

Anna Maria Gillis: Lincoln’s Centennial

At eight o’clock in the morning on February 12, 1909, the forts around New York Harbor, the battleships in port, and the National Guard field batteries fired a salute in honor of Abraham Lincoln’s centenary. At noon the Gettysburg Address was read in New York City’s public schools. Booker T. Washington marked the day with a speech to the Republican Club at the Waldorf-Astoria. Boston’s celebrations included U.S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge addressing a joint session of the Massachusetts House and

Christopher de Bellaigue: Anniversary blues in Iran

[Christopher de Bellaigue is the correspondent for the Economist in Tehran.] For most of this decade, as the price of hydrocarbons broke record after record and the big oil exporters watched their revenues soar, Iran seemed capable of riding out all the shocks that international politics, and George W Bush in particular, could throw at it. Bush included the country in his 2002 “axis of evil” speech; he invaded its neighbours to the east and west; and in 2006 the UN security council,

James K. Glassman: Stimulus ... A History of Folly

[James K. Glassman is the former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.] Before he was sworn in as President, Barack Obama began to lay out his plans for reviving an American economy that, it would later be discovered, had declined 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, its worst performance in 26 years. About the first part of his project, “stimulating” businesses to invest and consumers to consume through government spending and tax remittances, he w

Fred Kaplan: The urgent need to fix federal archiving policies

President Barack Obama's decision last week to revive the Freedom of Information Act was a good first step toward fulfilling his campaign pledge for a"new era of open government." Here's an idea for a good second step: Force the federal agencies to file and maintain all the records they're creating now, so that in the future when citizens file FOIA requests to declassify documents, they won't receive a form letter that reads,"Sorry, no such documents exist." A 2005 report by

Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Was Lincoln a Racist?

[Henry Louis Gates Jr. is an Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is the editor-in-chief of the Root magazine. ] The Great Emancipator was far more complicated than the mythical hero we have come to revere. I first encountered Abraham Lincoln in Piedmont, W.Va. When I was growing up, his picture was in nearly every black home I can recall, the only w