Roundup: Talking About History

Max Boot: Was the military stabbed in the back in Vietnam?

In the Washington Post today, I [1] point out some of the problems with retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez’s new memoir, Wiser in Battle. But even a 1,000-word review is insufficient space to deconstruct all of the myths, misunderstandings, and false impressions that Sanchez tries to peddle. On his own blog, Phil Carter offers [2] trenchant thoughts on what else Sanchez got wrong. I was particularly struck by Phil’s comments on what Sanchez has to say about the lessons of Vietnam. As P

Cinnamon Stillwell: Middle East Studies in Fiction

[Cinnamon Stillwell is the Northern California Representative for Campus Watch. She can be reached atstillwell@meforum.org.] It isn't often that characters based on the field of Middle East studies show up in current fiction, but the novels of author Daniel Silva are an exception. The last three novels of his series featuring Israeli secret agent/art restorer Gabriel Allo

Jeffrey Goldberg: Prophesying Palestine

[Jeffrey Goldberg, an Atlantic national correspondent, is the author of Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror, published this year in paperback.] It’s usually best for journalists to stay out of the prophecy business. There’s just no percentage in it. It’s particularly important to suppress the prophetic impulse in matters concerning the Middle East (see: Iraq, Iran, etc.). It has often been said that the only constant in the Middle East is abrupt and dramatic change, a phenom

Brent Staples: The story behind the story of Loving v. Virginia

Americans born in the 21st century will shake their heads in disbelief on learning that 40 states once had laws prohibiting interracial marriage. The Supreme Court struck down the last of these statutes in the 1967 case of Mildred and Richard Loving, a black woman and a white man who were arrested and banished from Virginia for the crime of being married.... But the story was more complicated [than people think].... Like many rural areas in the Jim Crow South, Caroline County was go

Louis Bayard: Why Ronald Reagan didn't completely suck

Between Ronald Reagan's last year of presidential office in 1989 and his death in 2004, a strange transformation took place within the Washington Post. I only noticed when, in a fit of masochism, I began to plow through the paper's coverage of Reagan's state funeral. As expected, there were the usual encomiums from Krauthammer and Will and Novak -- no different in kind than what they'd been churning out for a quarter-century -- but where was the other side? After decades of antagonism to Republi

Rich Lowry: The Taint of '68

[Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review.] 'WHY don't we just vote to strike tonight - and we'll decide to morrow what we're striking for?" Those were the words of a student protester thoughtfully deliberating at Yale University, as recounted by Roger Kimball in his book on the left, "The Long March." It was a question that captured much of the heedless spirit of the student demonstrations of the 1960s, for which "May 1968" is shorthand.

Avi Shlaim: A Somber Anniversary

[Avi Shlaim, a professor of international relations at Oxford University and a fellow of the British Academy, is the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World and Lion of Jordan: King Hussein’s Life in War and Peace.] Israelis approach the sixtieth anniversary of the establishment of their state in a subdued and somber mood. Israeli society is deeply divided, and there is no consensus on how to mark the milestone. On the one hand, Israel can boast some stunning successes: a

Robert McHenry: Whig History and Whig Biography

[Robert McHenry is a former editor-in-chief of Encyclopaedia Britannica and author of How to Know.] I’ve been reading A History of Histories by the British historian John Burrow. It’s a survey of how the writing of history has changed – dare I say evolved? – over the millennia since Herodotus set down much of what we know of the ancient world. In a nutshell, our id

Tom Stanley-Becker: I'm an AP Dropout

[Tom Stanley-Becker is a Junior at the University of Chicago’s University High School and an editor on his school paper, The Midway.] I’M AN AP DROPOUT. When classmates in my Advanced Placement U.S. history course take the AP exam Friday, I won’t be with them. When they pick up their pencils and start filling in those little bubbles, I’ll be reading the words of George Kennan, Lillian Hellman, Harry Truman and Paul Robeson—for a paper I’m writing on the Cold War. The

Scott Saul: MLK ... Badass and more

[Scott Saul, an associate professor of English and American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of Freedom Is, Freedom Ain’t: Jazz and the Making of the Sixties. He is writing a critical biography of Richard Pryor.] During his life Martin Luther King Jr. was, in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "'buked and scorned"--and by a quite diverse cast of enemies and associates. Segregationists called him "Martin Luther Coon" and "Ma

Lawrence Velvel: The other lesson of Munich

[Lawrence R. Velvel is the Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, which educates the working class, mid-life people, minorities and immigrants.] It is perhaps ironic that last week, while I was in Germany, and spent a day in Munich, I read a book showing that there are other lessons to be drawn from Munich than the one favoring military action that has been drawn -- often wrongly -- for the last 60 or 70 years. The other lessons are more widely applicable: they apply to much

Terese Svoboda: Rape, Murder, and Execution in Occupied Japan

[Terese Svoboda is the author of ten books of prose and poetry, most recently the memoir Black Glasses Like Clark Kent: A GIs Secret from Postwar Japan, winner of the 2007 Graywolf Nonfiction Prize. Its website is http://blackglasseslikeclarkkent.com/. Her second novel, A Drink Called Paradise, concerns the effects of US atomic tests in the Pacific islands.] “Why do you want the records of all these horrible criminals?” asks the clerk at the National Personnel Records Center. I don’t beli

Ahmad H. Sa’di and Lila Abu-Lughod: The Sixtieth Anniversary of the Nakba

[Ahmad H. Sa’di and Lila Abu-Lughod are the editors of Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory.] Across the world, people are marking the sixtieth anniversary of the Palestinian’s “nakba” (catastrophe). The Palestine/ Israel conflict has occupied center stage in internati

Paul Hockenos: The 1968 debate in Germany

There's no place like Germany for wrenching, introspective public debates over national history and collective memory. This phenomenon itself is one of the legacies of the 1967-69 student movement, known in shorthand in today's Bundesrepublik as "'68", and today the subject of bitter dispute.Paul Hockenos is an American writer living in Berlin. He is the

Mary Madigan: Columbia's Catastrophic "Nakba" Conference

[Mary Madigan, publisher of the Exit Zero blog, wrote this article for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.] As Israelis look towards the future in their celebration of the nation's 60th birthday, some Palestinians cling to the past by commemorating what they call the"Nakba" or"the catastrophe." A faculty panel discussion held at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) last month and titled,"

Steve Weinberg: Biography, the Bastard Child of Academe

[Steve Weinberg's books include Taking on the Trust: The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller (W.W. Norton, 2008). He teaches journalism at the University of Missouri at Columbia.] Meryle Secrest recently wrote a book called Shoot the Widow: Adventures of a Biographer in Search of Her Subject (Knopf, 2007). The title is darkly humorous. Secrest does not literally plan homicide. But, like many biographers, she resents the widows (and widowers) who block access to docume

Richard Holbrooke: Washington's Battle Over Israel's Birth

[Richard Holbrooke writes a monthly column for The Post. He co-authored Clark Clifford's "Counsel to the President: A Memoir."] In the celebrations next week surrounding Israel's 60th anniversary, it should not be forgotten that there was an epic struggle in Washington over how to respond to Israel's declaration of independence on May 14, 1948. It led to the most serious disagreement President Harry Truman ever had with his revered secretary of state, George C. Marshall --

William Hogeland: Pete Seeger, William F. Buckley, Jr., and public history

[William Hogeland is author of The Whiskey Rebellion: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and the Frontier Rebels Who Challenged America's Newfound Sovereignty.] The eighty-nine-year-old musician and activist Pete Seeger, who is largely responsible for connecting folk music to the American left, joined the Communist Party in his twenties. Seeger has been candid, if at times self-serving, about his early support for Stalin, but the recent PBS “American Masters” documentary on Seeg

Tony McClean: Why The Negro Leagues Still Matter

[Tony McClean is the editor-in-chief for the Black Athlete Sports Network.] Just a few years ago, FoxSports.com ran a column by noted sports historian Elliott Kalb ranking the greatest catchers in baseball history. We here at BASN were delighted to see Hall of Famer and Negro League great Josh Gibson sit atop the list over such greats as Johnny Bench, Yogi Berra and another ex-Negro Leaguer, Roy Campanella. To no surprise however, there were some that had a

Johann Hari: Israel is suppressing a secret it must face

When you hit your 60th birthday, most of you will guzzle down your hormone replacement therapy with a glass of champagne and wonder if you have become everything you dreamed of in your youth. In a few weeks, the state of Israel is going to have that hangover. She will look in the mirror and think – I have a sore back, rickety knees and a gun at my waist, but I'm still standing. Yet somewhere, she will know she is suppressing an old secret she has to face. I would love to be able to