Roundup: Talking About History

Walter A. McDougall: The Space Age That Never Arrived ... A Meditation on the 50th Anniversary of Sputnik 1

[Walter A. McDougall is co-chair, with David Eisenhower, of FPRI’s History Institute for Teachers and, with James Kurth, of FPRI’s Center for the Study of America and the West. He is also the Alloy-Ansin Professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age, which won a Pulitzer Prize; Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776; Let the Sea Make a Noise: A Hist

John H. Summers: The Academic Who Claimed to Honor C. Wright Mills Betrayed Him

[John H. Summers is editor of"The Politics of Truth: Selected Writings of C. Wright Mills," to be published in 2008 by Oxford University Press. He lives in Andover, Massachusetts.] [HNN Editor: Irving Louis Horowitz claimed to be the protector of the legacy of C. Wright Mills and wrote or edited numerous books about him. In this piece Mr. Summers argues that Horowitz mangled Mills's ideas and in places committed egregious scholarly mistakes.] ... From the first, Ho

Greg Grandin: Kissinger and Bush Neocons ... two peas in a pod

[Greg Grandin teaches history at New York University. He is the author of The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War.] After Nixon’s resignation, Reagan set his bid to steal the 1976 Republican nomination from Gerald Ford. He attacked Kissinger for bargaining away US interests in the Panama Canal and betraying friends in southern Africa and Taiwan. At the same time, Donald Rumsfeld, Ford’s secretary of defense, and Dick Cheney, the White House chief of staff, joined f

Bill Moyers: FDR, in memory

Bill Moyers gave the following remarks at the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute's twentieth-anniversary Four Freedoms ceremony, where he received the Freedom of Speech award. --The Editors Thank you for this recognition and the spirit of the evening. Thanks especially for giving me the chance to sit here awhile thinking about my father. Henry Moyers was an ordinary man who dropped out of the fourth grade because his family needed him to pick cotton to help make ends meet. T

Isabella Thomas: Rape: A History from 1860 to the Present by Joanna Bourke

Rape, says Joanna Bourke, used to be understood as the act of sex with a woman who does not “belong” to the perpetrator. In the 19th century it was widely thought that an unwilling woman could not be raped because “merely by vibrating”, a vagina “could ward off attack”. A victim of rape was, therefore, a contradiction in terms. Some thought that if the woman had experienced orgasm in the act, or had finally succumbed, then she could not claim to have been raped. The belief that women were prone

Lou Cannon: Reagan’s Southern Stumble

[Lou Cannon is the author of five books on Ronald Reagan and a co-author of the forthcoming “Reagan’s Disciple: George W. Bush’s Troubled Quest for a Presidential Legacy.”] POLITICAL mythologies endure. One myth that is enjoying a revival in a year when Republican presidential candidates are comparing themselves to Ronald Reagan, their iconic hero, is the notion that Mr. Reagan defeated President Jimmy Carter in 1980 by a coded appeal to white-supremacist voters. The co

Joan Walsh: Stop the New York Times Op-Ed food fight! (Re: Reagan and racism)

Paging Clark Hoyt. Is the New York Times public editor paying attention to the brawl that's broken out on the page next to his? For the last few weeks we've semi-enjoyed the spectacle of liberals Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert battling with conservative David Brooks and Ronald Reagan biographer Lou Cannon over the meaning of Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign stop in Philadelphia, Miss. The home of the Neshoba County Fair is infamous as the site where three young civil rights workers, Andrew Good

Max Boot: The Seventh-Best World War II Novel (Re: Norman Mailer)

Roger Kimball, one of our finest critics, has delivered a devastating dissection of Norman Mailer’s overrated career, which consisted of political posturing and juvenile behavior interspersed with the production of mediocre novels—at best. (Kimball’s critique may be found here.) I have very little to add beyond a few thoughts on the book that launched Mailer’s career—The Naked and

Will Fitzhugh: The NEA's indifference to the muse of history

[Mr. Fitzhugh is the founder of the Concord Review.] The National Endowment for the Arts has released a new study of studies of the decline of reading in the United States. Some kinds of reading were apparently not considered. Zeus and Mnemosyne [Memory] were the parents of the nine Muses. Calliope was the muse of epic poetry, Clio was the muse of history, Erato was the muse of love poetry, Euterpe was the muse of music, Melpomene was the muse of tragedy, Polyhym

Heather Gray: Another Look at W.E.B. DuBois

[Heather Gray produces "Just Peace" on WRFG-Atlanta 89.3 FM covering local, regional, national and international news. She can be reached at hmcgray@earthlink.net ] In a recent article posted on Counterpunch entitled "When Capitalists Get a Free Ride " (November 3-4, 2007) I made reference to W.E.B. Du Bois having joined and left the Communist Party in the mid-20th century due to his frustration over the lack of inclusio

John Dean: Can Democrats Stop Bush and Cheney From Depriving The Library of The Papers They Wish to Keep Secret?

Amid a slow, low-boiling, and mostly Texas-based controversy regarding the potential location of a future George W. Bush Presidential Library, a significant issue regarding such a future institution is being completely overlooked: Should there be federal support of the Bush Presidential Library, in light of the fact that President Bush has refused to comply with the 1978 Presidential Records Act? Presidential libraries and records are on my mind because I attended a conference spons

David Corn: Nixon on Tape: Reagan Was "Shallow" and of "Limited Mental Capacity"

Richard Nixon, say what you will of this criminally minded president, was a keen observer of politics. But he seems to have underestimated fellow Republican Ronald Reagan (or the American public). On the morning of November 17, 1971, Nixon, while meeting with National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office, shared a few sharp--and negative--comments about California Governor Ronald Reagan, who had recently told Kissinger that Nixon had a "real problem" with conservatives w

Dwight T. Pitcaithley: The National Park Service Begins Explaining the Causes of Our Wars

[HNN Editor: The focus of this article is on the Civil War.] ... Between 1933, when Franklin D. Roosevelt transferred the Civil War battlefields from the War Department to the Department of the Interior, and the late 1990s, the NPS avoided all mention of the causes of the war in its exhibits, films, and publications. Eighty years after the 50th reunion at Gettysburg in 1913, the agency still adhered to Governor William Mann's admonition that "we came here, I say, not to discus

W. Thomas Smith Jr.: The invaluable narratives of our veterans should not be lost

... “One minute I saw young men who looked like us — just wearing different uniforms — walking across a quiet field,” [my Uncle Romney, a veteran at Normandy] told me before he died a few years ago. “The next minute, they were running and screaming and being ripped apart and burned.” My uncles’ stories are similar to those of so many other World War II-era veterans (now numbering less than three million). But each story is also unique — a special narrative-expansion of recorded his

Allen Esterson: Einstein’s Wife ... PBS continues to fail the test of integrity

[Allen Esterson is the author of Seductive Mirage: An Exploration of the Work of Sigmund Freud.] The story so far: In 2003 the US Public Broadcasting Service first broadcast the documentary “Einstein’s Wife” (co-sponsored by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation), which purports to present evidence that Einstein’s first wife, Mileva Marić, was a brilliant mathematician and scientist who co-authored his epoch-making 1905 papers, and whose major contributions to his work had been ca

Roy Medvedev: Let History Judge Russia's Revolutions

[Roy Medvedev, a historian and former Soviet dissident, is the author of "The October Revolution" and "Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism."] A plethora of anniversaries is arriving in Russia. This month commemorates the 90th anniversary of the October Revolution and the 25th anniversary of the death of Leonid Brezhnev. Next month will see the 16th anniversary of the Soviet Union's disintegration. Only by understanding that first event, h

William J. Bennett: Do you know our heroes?

These are tough times for, and in, America. We are at war, and we find that war highly controversial. Many of our political leaders have record-low approval ratings and too many are held in ignominy. Washington — our nation’s capital — is held in contempt, as a laugh line by comedians. But perhaps a greater tragedy than all of this is that we seem to no longer have any kind of reference point. For indeed, we are not living in the toughest of times, we are not living in the worst of times, nor ar

Steven F. Hayward: Reagan and the Historians

The Reagan book industry is shifting into high gear these days with several important new perspectives on our 40th president and his statecraft. Midge Decter wrote in 1991 that "[i]t will, one day, take a truly gifted writer, perhaps a novelist, to solve the puzzle of such a man." Edmund Morris essentially tried this approach, and made a fool of himself. The new passel of books adds fuel to the debates over Reagan, though it may be wondered whether the best guide to the man isn't still

Daniel McCarthy: Goldwater has many claimants to his legacy, but most lack his rebellious spirit

In the years leading up to Barry Goldwater's death, conservatives wondered what had happened to their hero. They had wondered for some time, actually—since at least 1976, when Goldwater endorsed moderate incumbent Gerald Ford over insurgent conservative Ronald Reagan for the Republican presidential nomination. Back then, conservative activist John Lofton suggested Goldwater must not be in his right mind,"still in an ether fog" from recent hip replacement surgery:"Possessed of all his facul

Myron Magnet: What Jefferson’s fabled home reveals about the Founding Father’s mind and heart

[Myron Magnet is the author of The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties’ Legacy to the Underclass. He is City Journal’s editor-at-large and was its editor from 1994 through 2006. ] In the summer of 1786, still mourning his beloved wife’s death four years earlier and soon to begin sleeping with her 15-year-old half-sister, his slave Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson fell in love with a beautiful English painter named Maria Cosway. Head over heels in love: for the 43-year-old minister