Roundup: Talking About History

Clifford D. May: You Must Remember This ... Constantinople fell just 555 years ago

[Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.] There’s an anniversary this week we might do well to recall. On May 29, 1453 — just 555 short years ago — troops led by Mehmed II broke through the walls of the ancient Christian capital of Constantinople. Mehmed the Conqueror — as he would be known from that day forward — rode triumphantly into the city o

Roger Cohen: 1968 ... The Year That Changed the World

There are many strands to the annus mirabilis of 1968 — the Prague Spring, the Paris barricades, Flower Power — but all involved an uprising against a stifling postwar order. In what the author Paul Berman has called “an incoherent fraternity,” idealism provided what coherence there was. Roger Cohen Go to Columnist Page » Blog: Passages “It’s forbidden to forbid,” proclaimed Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the French-born German Jew who led the May ’68 Paris uprising.

Adam Hochschild: Practicing History without a License

[HNN Editor: This article has prompted an astonishing variety of responses from Joseph Ellis to John Demos and others. Click on the SOURCE link to read their responses as well as the full version of Hochschild's piece.] Being asked to write for the readers of Historically Speaking feels a bit like being a plumber who, by accident, has been invited to speak to a conference of heart surgeons. For I’ve had no graduate training, in history or anything else. And sometimes I encounter an

Edward G. Lengel: We've neglected WW I. We shouldn't.

[Edward G. Lengel is an associate professor at the University of Virginia and the author, most recently, of "To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918."] The last known surviving U.S. veteran of what was once called the Great War, Cpl. Frank Buckles of Charles Town, W.Va., recently toured the World War I memorial in Washington. Accompanied by his daughter and an aide, the wheelchair-bound 107-year-old rolled around the small, temple-like structure, stopping occasionally to

Mackubin Thomas Owens: Mystic Chords of Memory ... The purpose of Memorial Day

[Mackubin Thomas Owens is an associate dean of academics and professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College in Newport, and is the editor of Orbis. He is a Marine infantry veteran of Vietnam.] This weekend, we mark the 140th anniversary of the first official observation of the holiday we now call Memorial Day, as established by General John A. Logan’s"General Order No. 11" of the Grand Army of the Republic dated 5 May, 1868. This order reads i

Stephen Mihm: Everyone's a historian now

[Stephen Mihm is a history professor at the University of Georgia and author of "A Nation of Counterfeiters" (Harvard, 2008)] UNTIL RECENTLY, IF you were a historian and you wanted to write a fresh account of, say, the Battle of Leyte Gulf in World War II, research was a pretty straightforward business. You would pack your bags and head to the National Archives, and spend months looking for something new in the official combat reports. Today, however, you migh

Chris Hedges: Daniel Berrigan ... Forty Years After Catonsville

[Chris Hedges, former Middle East bureau chief for the New York Times and a senior fellow at The Nation Institute, is the author, most recently, of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (Free Press).] Forty years ago this month, Father Daniel Berrigan walked into a draft board in Catonsville, Maryland, with eight other activists, including his brother, Father Philip Berrigan, and removed draft files of young men who were about to be sent to Vietnam. The group

Mark Moyar: Vietnam ... Historians at War

[Mark Moyar holds the Kim T. Adamson Chair of Insurgency and Terrorism at the U.S. Marine Corps University, Quantico, VA 22134; moyars@mindspring.com. ] By the early 1990s, when I began studying the Vietnam War, the American public had largely lost interest in the history of that conflict. The Civil War and World War II were the wars that historians were advised to cover if they wanted to reach the public. Among government officials, milit

Anne Applebaum: Leave Hitler Out of It

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals. … We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared, 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' "—George W. Bush, May 2008 "Moreover, in our time, these threats are not diminishing … [and] in these new threats, as during the time of the Third Reich, are the same contempt for human life

Korean Editorial: Teaching a Proper View of History

As he presided over the first meeting of a presidential committee planning for the country’s future, President Lee Myung-bak said Korean society was wasting too many resources fighting with its past, and that this was costing us the future of our country. Chung Ok-ja, the head of the National Institute of Korean History, said the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations viewed Korea’s history in a disparaging way from a leftwing perspective. She added that we can move on to the future by ta

Ramzy Baroud: 60 Years of Denial

[-Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London).] Don't ask for what you never had,' is the underlying message made by supporters of Israel when they claim Palestine was never a state to begin with. The contentio

Walter McDougall: Throes of Democracy ... The American Civil War Era, 1829 – 1877

[Walter McDougall is co-chair, with David Eisenhower, of FPRI’s History Institute for Teachers. He is also the Alloy-Ansin Professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania. His most recent book is Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era, 1829-1877. This essay is based on his presentation atthe FPRI Wachman Center’s May 17-18, 2008 history institute on America in the Civil War Era, held at and co-sponsored by Carthage College, Wisconsin. See

Elias Khoury: For Israelis, an Anniversary. For Palestinians, a Nakba.

[Elias Khoury, the editor of the literary supplement of the Beirut daily An Nahar and a professor at New York University, is the author of the novels “Gate of the Sun” and “Yalo.” This essay was translated from Arabic by Michael Scott.] ... No one wishes to hear the Palestinian story. Their history has been written by the victors: Israel has thus succeeded in blotting out its “original sin,” as the French author Dominique Vidal referred to the situation. Were it not for the courageo

Michael Gerson: King's Radical Belief

[Gerson was the former chief speechwriter for President Bush.] Washington is debating the design of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial, to be built on four quiet acres among the cherry trees along the Tidal Basin. The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts -- the final arbiter of memorial aesthetics -- recently judged a proposed, 2 1/2 -story granite sculpture of King too "confrontational," comparing it to toppled statues of Lenin. Whatever the artistic merit

Jim Lindgren: Was Woodrow Wilson a plagiarist?

Tonight I was reading Frederick Jackson Turner’s"The Significance of the Frontier in American History." The first footnote just jumped off the page:A paper read at the meeting of the American Historical Association in Chicago, July 12, 1893. It first appeared in the Proceedings of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, December 14, 1893, with the following note:"The foundation of this paper is my article entitled 'Pr

Mel Ayton: Still Guilty After All These Years ... Sirhan B. Sirhan

[Mel Ayton is the author of books and articles on the JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinations. His latest book, The Forgotten Terrorist: Sirhan Sirhan and the Murder of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was published by Potomac Books in 2007 and will be issued in paperback this month.] It has often been said that lurid theories about the Lincoln and JFK assassinations have thrived because neither John Wilkes Booth nor Lee Harvey Oswald received their day in court. The concept

Noam Chomsky: On 1968

Nineteen sixty-eight was one exciting moment in a much larger movement. It spawned a whole range of movements. There wouldn't have been an international global solidarity movement, for instance, without the events of 1968. It was enormous, in terms of human rights, ethnic rights, a concern for the environment, too. The Pentagon Papers (the 7,000-page, top-secret US government report into the Vietnam War) are proof of this: right after the Tet Offensive, the business world turned aga

Barry Rubin: Life in Israel

[Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. ] I’m sitting in Israel’s Independence Hall, a 10-minute walk from my home, a small, relatively bare room that was Tel Aviv’s first city hall. Sixty years ago today, it was the place where Israel was declared a country. It was given that honor back on May 14, 1948, because of its thick walls and small win

Conservative complains the media are ignoring evidence Ted Kennedy helped KGB improve USSR image at height of the Cold War

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Paul Kengor, the author of the New York Times extended-list bestseller God and Ronald Reagan as well as God and George W. Bush and The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism. He is also the author of the first spiritual biography of the former first lady, God and Hillary Clinton: A Spiritual Life. He is a professor of political science and director of the Center for Vision and Values at Grove City College. FP: Paul Kengor, welcome back

Ross Douthat: How history might come to view Bush favorably

The idea that history might rehabilitate George W. Bush seems too ludicrous to be seriously entertained. His approval ratings have been so low for so long, it’s hard to remember that he was ever popular. The Iraq War, his signal endeavor, has lasted for more years than America’s involvement in the Second World War and seems likely to last longer; a fragile truce in a wrecked, misgoverned country is the best the next president can hope for. Even many of the president’s ideological al