Roundup: Talking About History

Fergus Bordewich: Hamilton's deal placing the capitol in the South boded ill for abolitionism

[Mr. Bordewich is author of "Washington: The Making of the American Capital," published in May by Amistad.] Last month, workmen jacked up a 206-year-old yellow clapboard house, levered it onto a set of remote-controlled dollies, and trundled it two blocks to a new site in St. Nicholas Park, overlooking East Harlem in New York City. The Grange, as it is called, was the home of Alexander Hamilton, best known as co-author of the Federalist papers and America's fi

John Fund: Jesse Helms ... An uncompromisingly defiant conservative who rescued Reagan's political career

If Ronald Reagan was the sunny and optimistic face of modern conservatism, the uncompromisingly defiant exemplar of it was Jesse Helms, who died yesterday at age 86. While Reagan has undergone a revisionist makeover by many historians who now recognize his accomplishments, Helms is still the conservative liberals most love to hate. But while they still disdain his views, many liberal groups are now using their own forms of the rhetorical and campaign techniques that Helms honed to p

Roy Edroso: Rightbloggers Shade Helms' Civil Rights History

In 2002, when blogs were young, Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said former Senator and racist icon Strom Thurmond should have been President of the United States. Some rightbloggers denounced Lott's comments, and congratulated themselves for it. Lott's subsequent fall, said John Podhoretz at National Review Online, showed that "the party of personal responsibility... has just cleaned its own house with record speed." This remains a rightblogger point of pride: as recently

John J. McKay: A Century of Tunguska

One hundred years ago today, something exploded over Siberia.The weather in central Siberia on June 30, 1908, a Tuesday, was warm and mostly clear. Ten days after the summer solstice, the days are not appreciably shorter than they are on that longest day. In Siberia, that means the days are very long. North of the Arctic Circle the sun does not go down at all. Instead, it approaches the south and rolls along the horizon for a few minutes at midnight before beginning to rise again. Fi

Roy Blount: Mark Twain ... Our Original Superstar

[Roy Blount has written introductions for six editions of Twain's work. His next book, Alphabet Juice, will be published in October by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.] What, if anything, about this benighted moment of American life will anyone in the future look back on with nostalgia? Well, those of us who have cable are experiencing a golden age of sarcasm (from the Greek sarkazein, "to chew the lips in rage"). Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher and Keith Olbermann ar

Damon Linker: George Bush's other legacy

[Damon Linker, author of The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege, is a senior writing fellow in the Center for Critical Writing at the University of Pennsylvania.] With George Bush set to leave office in just over six months, critical evaluations of his presidency have begun. A particularly scathing indictment was delivered this week by scholar Andrew Bacevich, in an op-ed for the Boston Globe. In Bacevich's view, the Bush administration's most pernicious legacy will follow from i

Ted Widmer: Which document is the Declaration of Independence?

[Ted Widmer, director of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, is the author of “Ark of the Liberties: America and the World.”] ACCORDING to the film “National Treasure,” the Declaration of Independence is a document of such far-seeing sagacity that it has secret codes and treasure maps hidden in the parchment. You just have to know how to look for them. But that poses the question: which document, precisely, is the Declaration of Independence? Most of us w

Robert Parry: How Reagan Made It Possible for Bush To Attack Iraq ... Iran-Contra's 'Lost Chapter'

[Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.] As his

David Hackett Fischer: One New World, Two Big Ideas

[David Hackett Fischer, who teaches history at Brandeis University, is the author of “Washington’s Crossing” and the forthcoming “Champlain’s Dream.”] THIS week, we the people of North America are staging two celebrations. The Fourth of July is the 232nd birthday of the United States, and it will be observed as John Adams prescribed in 1776: a “day of deliverance” in more ways than one, with “solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty ... pomp and parade ... shows, games, sports, guns,

Jonah Goldberg: Unintended Consequences of an Obama Presidency

[Jonah Goldberg is the author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.] Breaking news! The ultimate White House insider plans a tell-all book about the Bush years. Boasting unprecedented access to the president’s thinking, it will run counter to almost everything we’ve been told about Bush’s radical presidency. Who will be the latest to break the code of silence after former White House Press Secretary Scott

Pearl Duncan: How DNA is rewriting history

[The author is completing a book,"DNA Blood: World's Shared Roots of Strong Mothers and Determined Fathers" about DNA and Ancestry.] In this presidential election year, in print, the Internet and on TV, we hear and see much talk about uniting the country, and being unified. We hear much about patriotism and behaving as Americans. On this 4th of July, few things make us feel as American as a connection to the Founding Fathers. Americans feel and express their connection to the Founding

Jeet Heer: Challenging the cult of Churchill

[Jeet Heer is writing a doctoral thesis on the cultural politics of Little Orphan Annie at York University in Toronto.] The cult of Winston Churchill, although strong among Anglo-American conservatives since the end of the second world war, flourished as never before in the United States after the attacks of 9/11. To show his resolve in the war on terror, President Bush asked the British embassy to supply him with a bronze bust of Churchill, which now comforts the commander-in-chief

James Cuno: Archaeology must be shielded from nationalistic laws and politics

[James Cuno is president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a former director of the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Harvard University Art Museums. This essay is adapted from Who Owns Antiquity: Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage, published in May by Princeton University Press.] ... Laws intended to retain antiquities within the jurisdiction of the modern nation-state concentrate the risk to antiquities by keeping them in one place. Were we to distri

Malcolm Jones: Who Was More Important ... Lincoln or Darwin?

[Malcolm Jones is a columnist at Newsweek.] How's this for a coincidence? Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born in the same year, on the same day: Feb. 12, 1809. As historical facts go, it amounts to little more than a footnote. Still, while it's just a coincidence, it's a coincidence that's guaranteed to make you do a double take the first time you run across it. Everybody knows Darwin and Lincoln were near-mythic figures in the 19th century. But who ever thinks of them in t

Tim Pears: Otto the strange ... The champion who defied the Nazis

Otto Peltzer was a German track hero in the Twenties, was vilified and jailed for his sexuality in the Thirties, survived a death camp in the Forties, then found a remarkable new life in the Sixties. Tim Pears tells the unknown story of the world-record holder who stayed true to the amateur ideal. ### In 1962 the male athletes of East and West Germany toured Asia. At the Rome Olympics two years earlier the united team had won six track medals, including gold in the 4

Neil Clark: The decline of Britain's cosmopolitan culture

[Neil Clark is a UK-based journalist, blogger and writer.] We've already read a lot on Comment is free about 1968 - the year of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the Paris riots and the invasion of Czechoslovakia. But there's one interesting aspect of that most tumultuous of years - and of the late 1960s in general - that has so far escaped attention. Namely, just how open we were in Britain to European culture. It might seem paradoxical, but the more Brit

Tom Baldwin: The go-it-alone President who changed tack in search of a legacy

[Tom Baldwin is a journalist at The Times.] President Bush receives scant credit for the transformation of his foreign policy in the past four years. In contrast to the go-it-alone president who in his first term rode roughshod over international sensibilities when he took the US to war in Iraq, Mr Bush now seeks the legacy of a leader who sought diplomatic solutions. He told The Times recently that he wanted to “leave behind a series of structures that make it easier

Derrick P. Alridge: The Limits of Master Narratives in History Textbooks: An Analysis of Representations of Martin Luther King, Jr.

In this study, I argue that American history textbooks present discrete, heroic, one-dimensional, and neatly packaged master narratives that deny students a complex, realistic, and rich understanding of people and events in American history. In making this argument, I examine the master narratives of Martin Luther King, Jr., in high school history textbooks and show how textbooks present prescribed, oversimplified, and uncontroversial narratives of King that obscure important elements in King's

Alex Heard: How an obscure FBI rule is ensuring the destruction of irreplaceable historical records

[Alex Heard is the editorial director of Outside magazine.] I got bad news from the FBI a few months ago. A file I'd requested under the Freedom of Information Act wasn't going to be available. Ever. And not for one of the reasons I already knew to expect—that the material was classified, that the file concerned a living person, or that no file existed to begin with. Judging by the FBI's final response letter, there might have been a file on my subject, a long-deceased Missis

Charles Johnson: The End of the Black American Narrative

[Charles Johnson is the S. Wilson and Grace M. Pollock Professor for Excellence in English at the University of Washington (Seattle). A MacArthur fellow, he is author of the National Book Award-winning novel Middle Passage and many other works.] ... To put this another way, we can say that 40 years after the epic battles for specific civil rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma, after two monumental and historic legislative triumphs—the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting R