Roundup: Talking About History

Alastair Harper: A popular history of history

[Alastair Harper is a freelance journalist.] Over the last couple of months there have been a spate of arguments about the state of today's history books. Popular history has, we are told, been dumbed down, rendered into porridgey pabulum for the lowest common denominator. Funnily enough, it's the popular historians that are complaining. Andrew Roberts has called for a regulatory authority (Ofhist, apparently) to cordon off the works of opinionated amateurs from genuine pieces of sc

Jonathan Alter: Reflections on darker Democratic days

Forty years ago, the Democrats met in Chicago, their most disastrous convention ever. Denver obviously won't be a repeat, but Democrats face some similar dangers if they don't pull the party together. I know this from personal, if youthful, experience. In 1968, I was a 10-year-old Chicagoan, fascinated by politics, determined to hang out at the convention. My mother was working for Vice President Hubert Humphrey and my father for Sen. Eugene McCarthy, both of whom had their conventi

Harry Middleton: LBJ ... A century ago, a leader was born

[Mr. Middleton served as an LBJ aide in the White House.] Lyndon Johnson counted on history to make the final assessment. "I hope it may be said," Johnson told Congress as he departed Washington in 1969, "that we helped to make this country more just. That's what I hope. But I believe that at least it will be said that we tried." The century mark Johnson set for evaluation is still a long way off. But this year affords another opportunit

Ted Van Dyk: How the Election of 1968 Reshaped the Democratic Party

[Mr. Van Dyk's memoir, "Heroes, Hacks and Fools," was published earlier this year by University of Washington Press. He advised Democratic presidents and presidential candidates from the early 1960s to 1992.] It was 40 years ago that the most disastrous modern-day national political convention convened in Chicago. The 1968 Democratic convention contributed to Richard Nixon's victory that fall and, in turn, the prolongation of the Vietnam War. It also set the Democratic Par

Klaus Wiegrefe: Western Spies Were Out in the Cold

[Klaus Wiegrefe writes for Spiegel Online.] Forty years ago this Thursday, the Soviet Union ended the so-called Prague Spring with a massive invasion of troops and tanks. Intelligence files from that era show that the largest military operation in Europe since 1945 took the West by surprise. When it was over, Western officers, awkwardly, seemed surprised. Against their will they had to admit the camouflage hiding the march of Warsaw Pact troops into Prague had been &quo

Ted Van Dyk: How the Election of 1968 Reshaped the Democratic Party

[Mr. Van Dyk's memoir, "Heroes, Hacks and Fools," was published earlier this year by University of Washington Press. He advised Democratic presidents and presidential candidates from the early 1960s to 1992.] It was 40 years ago that the most disastrous modern-day national political convention convened in Chicago. The 1968 Democratic convention contributed to Richard Nixon's victory that fall and, in turn, the prolongation of the Vietnam War. It also set the Democratic Par

Roger Maynard: The legacy of Krakatoa

[Roger Maynard has written articles published in The Independent.] One hundred and twenty-five years ago this Wednesday occurred the biggest bang the inhabited world has ever known. Indonesia's Krakatoa volcano erupted. It did so with the force of 13,000 Hiroshima atom bombs, propelled a trillion cubic feet of rock, pumice and ash into the air, and made a noise loud enough to be heard 1,930 miles away in Perth. The explosions, fallout and resulting tidal wave (130 feet high in plac

AA Gill: Towton, the bloodbath that changed the course of our history

[Adrian Anthony Gill is a British newspaper columnist and writer, using the byline A. A. Gill. He is currently employed by the Sunday Times as their restaurant reviewer and television critic.] Get onto the B1217 – the Ferrybridge-to-Tadcaster road – just after the M1 joins the A1M, and you’ve crossed that unmapped line where the north stops being grim and begins to be bracing. Go through Saxton, past the Crooked Billet pub, and on your left you’ll see rising farmland, green corn and

Sean O'Hagan: 40 years on ... the exile comes home to Prague

[Sean O'Hagan is a journalist and writes for the Guardian.] In 1969, a year after Russian tanks rolled into Prague, Josef Koudelka visited London with a Czech theatre group. One Sunday morning he was walking out of his hotel near the Aldwych Theatre when he saw some members of the theatre group perusing a copy of the Sunday Times magazine. As he passed, he saw to his surprise that they were looking at his own extraordinary photographs of that Russian invasion and the spontaneous str

Ian Kershaw: The Crises of 1938

[Ian Kershaw's Hitler is published by Allen Lane.] Seventy years ago, Europe was plunged into the deepest crisis experienced since the end of the first world war, paving the way for the rapid descent into a new, even more terrible, world conflict. Few historical developments have been more extensively researched and reassessed than the critical events of 1938, and there have been fierce debates, in particular, about Hitler's aims. Did he have a clear ideological programme, a bluepri

Clare Coulson: 50 years of the peace symbol

[Clare Coulson has been The Daily Telegraph's Fashion Editor since January 2005, after three years as Fashion Writer. She has written a guide to stylish living, House Rules, and is working on a second book.] The British artist Gerald Holtom, creator of the CND sign, penned a solemn note to Hugh Brock, editor of Peace News, before its first public outing on a London peace march in 1958. "I was in despair," he wrote, explaining how the symbol came about. "Deep despair.

Martin Kettle: 40 years on, the left is yet to grasp the eclipse of socialism

[Martin Kettle writes for the Guardian on British, European and American politics, as well as the media, law and music.] Looking back through August 2008 eyes, many commentators now seem to treat the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia 40 years ago this week as a primarily geopolitical event. The coincidence of Russia's invasion of Georgia and the anniversary of the Czech invasion of 1968 perhaps makes it understandable that some should colour their thinking about the crushing of

Humberto Fontova: Rush is Wrong (on JFK)

[Humberto Fontova is the author of four books including Exposing the Real Che Guevara.Visit www.hfontova.com.] As a muscular counterpoint to Obama's weasel-words in Berlin last month, the Rush Limbaugh show featured excerpts from JFK's famous Berlin speech from 1963: “And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin....Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.“ “At the Branden

President Madison and his VPs

As the debate continues this week concerning the vice presidential nominees, please consider President James Madison and his election 200 years ago in 1808. • The 1804 election was the first time electors had to name specifically a president and a vice-president (12th amendment). Prior to 1804, the two top vote-getters determined the president and the vice president. • Madison's supporters in the Congress moved the caucus from February to January, thus helping Madis

Edward Luttwak: A Truman for our times

[Edward Luttwak's The Middle of Nowhere: Why the West Should Get Out of the Middle East (Atlantic) is forthcoming.] That George W Bush's foreign policy has been a total failure is now taken for granted by so many people that one usually hears it stated as a simple truth that need not be argued at all. It has happened before. When President Harry S Truman said in March 1952 that he would not seek re-election, most Americans could agree on one thing: that his foreign pol

Humberto Fontova: New Books Perpetuate Castroite Lies

[Humberto Fontova is the author of: Exposing the Real Che Guevara. visit http://www.hfontova.com .] "How the Mob Owned Cuba, and Lost it to the Revolution," is the bestselling book's title. T.J. English is the author. Several facts get in the way of the books title and thesis. To wit: Cuba's Gross Domestic product in 1957 was $2.7 billion. Cuba's foreign receipts in 1957 were about $750 million--of which tourism made up o

W. Taylor Fain: Britain's misunderstood role in the Persian Gulf

[ W. Taylor Fain is an assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. His new book is American Ascendance and British Retreat in the Persian Gulf Region.] During the United States’ first war against Saddam Hussein in 1991, I was a Department of State historian in Washington. The Office of the Historian was charged with providing historical background information on the Gulf crisis to Department policy makers, and one of the tasks I was given was to w

Oliver Kamm: Did peace groups help usher in peaceful anti-nuke policies in the UK?

On the invaluable History News Network, Lawrence Wittner, a SUNY historian, writes of an organisation that "did have the satisfaction of turning British public opinion against the nuclear arms race, thereby pushing Britain and other nuclear-armed nations toward nuclear arms control and disarmament measures and helping to prevent nuclear war". Readers in the UK will be surprised to learn that Professor Wittner is talking about the C

Joseph Loconte: American Presidents and the American Creed

[Joseph Loconte is a senior fellow at Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy, where he writes widely about the role of religion in promoting democracy, human rights, and social justice. He is the editor of "The End of Illusions: Religious Leaders Confront Hitler's Gathering Storm."] The American presidency has been described as the most powerful political office in the world. Perhaps in no other Western democracy does the position of president occupy the singularl

Max Holland: The Ford Files

Gerald R. Ford’s FBI files, released under the Freedom of Information Act this month, will not force an instant reappraisal of America’s 38th president some 20 months after his death.[1] Unlike John F. Kennedy’s bureau file, which documented JFK’s trysts in the 1960s with Judith Campbell (a Mafia moll) and Ellen Rometsch (a suspected East German spy), the FBI files on Ford hold no information about any dangerous liaisons. The files do contain information, though, on