Roundup: Talking About History

Olivia Judson: Why the calendar is the way it is

Some years ago, the evolutionist and atheist Richard Dawkins pointed out to me that Sir Isaac Newton, the founder of modern physics and mathematics, and arguably the greatest scientist of all time, was born on Christmas Day, and that therefore Newton’s Birthday could be an alternative, if somewhat nerdy, excuse for a winter holiday. Think of the merchandise! Newton is said to have discovered the phenomenon of gravity by watching apples fall in an orchard. (His insight came after pon

Kazuhiko Togo: Japan’s Historical Memory ... Reconciliation with Asia

[Kazuhiko Togo is the author of Rekishi to Gaiko: Yasukuni-Ajia-Tokyosaiban (History and Foreign Policy: Yasukuni-Asia-The Tokyo Tribunal) (Kodansha 2008). He retired from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2002.] ... [C]an Japan continue to seek harmonization of its own memory with history, while achieving reconciliation with Asia simultaneously? This is again a very difficult question about which I do not have a definite answer. But I can outline the relevant circumstances and ind

Peter Steinfels: New Book Reaffirms Depth of Change Wrought by Vatican II

Was the Second Vatican Council, as the cultural historian the Rev. John W. O’Malley proposes, “quite possibly the biggest meeting in the history of the world”? Obviously the council did not draw the sheer numbers who gather for the Olympics or political conventions. But consider that for two and a half months each fall from 1962 to 1965, 2,400 Roman Catholic bishops from 116 nations, assisted by thousands of aides, theological advisers and other Christian and non-Christian leaders,

Oliver Kamm: Was Patton assassinated on government orders?

For a few years I played a minuscule supporting role in Martin Bell's parliamentary representation for the Tatton constituency in Cheshire, where the MP is now George Osborne. One point I recall well is the prominence in local history of General George Patton. Patton and the American Third Army were based in and around the town of Knutsford in 1944. Patton is still referred to by the residents - after the beautiful nearby house of Tatton Park - as Patton of Tatton. Well, the

David Stokes: The Spy Who Really Came in From the Cold

[Mr. Stokes is the senior pastor of Fair Oaks Church in Fairfax, VA.] Several years ago, David Cornwell (better known by his nom de plume, John Le Carré) told an interviewer that, “espionage was not really something exclusive and clandestine. It was actually the currency of the Cold War. Spies were the poor bloody infantry of the Cold War.” They still are – though these days we are in a different war and battling another pernicious ideology. Cold War spy

Hugh Miles: Lockerbie ... was it Iran? Syria? All I know is, it wasn't the man in prison

[Hugh Miles is the author of 'Playing Cards in Cairo'.] Last week saw more than its share of stories about miscarriages of justice. But spare a thought this Christmas for the victim of the biggest miscarriage of justice in Scottish legal history, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the man convicted of blowing up Pan Am flight 103 en route from London to New York, 20 years ago today. For many years, it looked as if there would be no trial over Lockerbie. British and US g

Jane Merrick: Jane Haining, Scotland's Schindler

[Jane Merrick is the Political Editor of The Independent on Sunday.] A British woman who sacrificed her life by refusing to leave Jewish orphans in her care is being hailed as one of the forgotten heroes of the Holocaust. Jane Haining's story of personal sacrifice and bravery is emerging only now, nearly 65 years after her death. She is among a list of British people whose selfless heroism during the Second World War should be recognised posthumously in the honours list

Timothy Noah: Deep Throat was not a good man. It didn't matte

Mark Felt, who died at 95 on Dec. 18, was ashamed of being Deep Throat. I know this because he told me so six years before he revealed his secret in Vanity Fair. In July 1999, David Daley of the Hartford Courant tracked Felt down in Santa Rosa, Calif. Felt, the former second-ranking official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had long seemed—to me and many others—the most logical candidate for Deep Throat, Bob Woodward's unnamed garage-dwelling source, made famous in All the Pr

Greg Mitchell: The Other Side of 'Deep Throat': He Bugged My Friends!

Journalists and many others (rightly) lionizing the late W. Mark Felt, the former FBI official, for his contribution as "Deep Throat" in helping to bring down Richard Nixon, should not overlook the fact that Felt was one of the architects of the bureau's notorious COINTELPRO domestic spying-and-burglary campaign. He was convicted in 1980 of authorizing nine illegal entries in New Jersey in 1972 and 1973 -- the very period during which he was famously meeting Bob Woodward

Daniel Willingham: “Study Skills” Ought to Include an Understanding of Memory

[The author is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, where he's taught since 1992. Until about 2000, his research focused solely on the brain basis of learning and memory. Today his research concerns the application of cognitive psychology to K-12 education. He writes the “Ask the Cognitive Scientist” column for American Educator magazine and is the author of Why Don't Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for

3 leading Einstein experts rebut claims that his wife was the true genius

Albert Einstein's legacy as one of the greatest academic minds the world has ever known is deservedly earned. His groundbreaking work in the early part of the twentieth century fundamentally changed the way scientists look at the universe. To this day, his formulation of the General Theory of Relativity is considered one of the greatest intellectual achievements in modern history.While researching yesterday's

Manisha Sinha: How slavery and race are treated in Daniel Walker Howe's magnum opus

[Manisha Sinha, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.] Daniel Walker Howe's magnum opus is more than a sum of its parts. This review, focused only on how the author deals with the issues of slavery and race, might not quite do justice to his achievements. However, most historians recognize the centrality of slavery to nineteenth-century American history and one of the main themes of this book, a critique of Jacksonian Democracy, is based on its proslavery and white supremacist polit

Tania Branigan: 30-year journey from Mao to the market

[Tania Branigan is China correspondent for the Guardian.] Zheng Shiqing lives and works in a small room with an earth floor, in the tiny village of Zhuanshanzi, high up a twisting mountain road. The padded curtain in place of a door does little to keep the winter at bay, and his breath curls white through the air. He has heart problems and should retire but cannot - medical treatment has eaten away his meagre savings. His sons are unemployed and his family of five largely depends on

Heather Pringle: Forensic archaeologists uncover evidence of a secret massacre—and help convict Saddam Hussein of crimes against humanity

[Heather Pringle is a contributing editor at ARCHAEOLOGY. Visit her blog Beyond Stone and Bone.] In May 1988, a prison guard checked Taymour Abdullah Ahmad's name off a list and directed him to a bus idling in the Popular Army camp in Topzawa, southwest of Kirkuk. The camp was one of Iraq's grimmest prisons. During his month-long internment there, the 12-year-old Kurdish boy watched guards beating male prisoners senseless with lengths of coaxial cable. He had seen four children weak

Arseny Roginsky: The Embrace of Stalinism

[Arseny Roginsky is a founder and Chairman of Memorial, Russia's largest human rights organization. He is a historian and ex-inmate of the Soviet prison camps.] The memory of Stalinism in contemporary Russia raises problems which are painful and sensitive. There is a vast amount of pro-Stalinist literature on the bookstalls: fiction, journalism and pseudo-history. In sociological

Elizabeth Tandy Shermer: Barry Goldwater's Early Senate Career and the De-legitimization of Organized Labor

In the spring of 1960, a slim 123-page pamphlet grabbed the attention of audiences across the nation with a powerful restatement of the conservative world view: "the radical, or Liberal, approach has not worked and is not working." With this declaration, Senator Barry Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative climbed to the top of best-seller lists across the country. Inside were ideas drawn from a decade's worth of the senator's speeches and writings and the research of the Arizonan's

Simon Tisdall: Is George W Bush the worst ever US president?

[Simon Tisdall is an assistant editor of the Guardian and a foreign affairs columnist.] The Baghdad journalist who sent George Bush a "goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people" by flinging shoes at his head probably spoke for many people in the Arab world, where the American leader is widely disliked. The extraordinary incident gave added point to a broader question increasingly asked as he nears the end of his eight-year term in office: was George Bush the worst ever US preside

Anthony Grafton: Inside Hitler's Library ... What The Books He Read Say About The Man He Was

Few buildings on Capitol Hill are grander than the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress, with its great stairway, pillared façade, and magnificent domed reading room. And few rooms in that building seem more ordinary, even banal, than the rare book storage area where 1,200 books from the collection of Adolf Hitler stand tightly packed on steel shelves. Along with another eighty items in the Brown University Library and scattered texts elsewhere, these are the modest remains of the more

Tony Perrottet: The Pervert's Grand Tour

[Tony Perrottet's new book, Napoleon's Privates: 2,500 Years of History Unzipped, is a literary version of a Cabinet of Curiosities (HarperCollins, July, 2008; napoleonsprivates.com). He is also the author of Pagan Holiday: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists and The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games.] Sex has always been the unspoken inspiration for travel. In Homer's Odyssey, the first travel book in history, Ulysses, the hero, spends more time in

Charles W. Hayford: Ashes of the American Raj in China ... John Leighton Stuart, Pearl S. Buck, and Edgar Snow

[Charles W. Hayford is Visiting Professor, Department of History, Northwestern University. Among his works are “The Storm over the Peasant: Orientalism, Rhetoric and Representation in Modern China,” in Shelton Stromquist and Jeffrey Cox, ed., Contesting the Master Narrative: Essays in Social History (University of Iowa Press, 1998): 150-172.] In a minor skirmish in the history wars, or what might be called “ashes diplomacy,” Chinese authorities finally allowed the ashes of America’s