Roundup: Talking About History

Kirkpatrick Sale: From Jamestown to us

[KIRKPATRICK SALE is the author of 12 books, including "After Eden: The Evolution of Human Domination."] AS WILLIAM STRACHEY, later secretary to the little colony of Jamestown, put it in his account of the settlement, "Captain [Christopher] Newport … had sight of an extended plaine & spot of earth, which thrust out into the depth, & middle of the channel…. The Trumpets sounding the admiral stoke saile, and … the Colony disembarked, and every man brought his pa

Karen Ordahl Kupperman: America's Founding Fictions (Jamestown vs. Plymouth)

[Karen Ordahl Kupperman is a professor of history at New York University and the author of "The Jamestown Project."] The colonists landed, short of food and supplies, after a long and harrowing transatlantic voyage. The initial exploring party stole a large quantity of corn that the Indians had carefully stored away for the hard winter. They then dug up some graves, looted items that had been buried with the dead and ransacked Indian houses. Furious fighting with the nativ

Martin A. Davis Jr.: More people cared about the queen's visit than about the event she was celebrating ... Jamestown's 400th birthday

[Martin A. Davis Jr. is senior writer and editor at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.] In a battle of celebrity versus substance, substance almost always loses. Such was the case this past week in D.C. and Virginia, where the Queen Mother set hearts a-flutter. Wherever she went, people clamored for tickets to see her, fretted about protocol should they actually meet her, and gleefully endured traffic snarls and cool weather to greet her. The principal reason for her visit, how

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom: China's changing views of its past

[Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom's latest book, "China's Brave New World – And Other Tales for Global Times," will be published in June. He's a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine.] It is obvious that China is a radically different place than it was 20 years ago. But it is equally clear that not everything about the country has been transformed. The tricky part is figuring out which things deserve to be put in the "dramatically altered" category a

Christopher Shea: New scholarship on the origins of 'total war,' from the French Revolution to World War II, helps explain the war on terror

[Mr. Shea is a Boston Globe columnist.] ... Two scholars have just published studies -- one on Napoleon's Europe, the other on the annihilation from the air, by German bombers, of the Basque city of Guernica in 1937 -- that trace the roots of total war. These works, and others, argue that total wars have been, in part, a product of modern technology (poison gas, bombs, etc.) and the modern economies that can produce these weapons on a mass scale. But, this burgeoning work suggests,

Steven Plaut: The Khazar Myth and the New Anti-Semitism

[Steven Plaut, a frequent contributor to The Jewish Press and the new Jewish Press Blog (www.thejewishpress.blogspot.com), is a professor at the University of Haifa. His book "The Scout" is available at Amazon.com. He can be contacted at steveneplaut@yahoo.com.]

Diane Ravitch: History’s Struggle to Survive in the Schools

History has a story unlike that of any other school subject. It entered the high school curriculum in the late nineteenth century as a so-called “modern” subject, along with science; then it enjoyed four decades of solid growth and esteem. But in the second and third decades of the twentieth century, the study of history became the target of relentless—and unfortunately successful—efforts to diminish its place in the elementary and secondary curriculum. Historians did little or nothing to save

William Gaines and Max Holland: Deep Throat 3.0

[William Gaines won two Pulitzer Prizes, in 1976 and 1988, for investigative reporting during a 27-year career with the Chicago Tribune. Since 1999, he has held the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Chair in Investigative & Enterprise Reporting at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. In June, CQ Press will publish his latest book, Investigative Journalism: Strategies for Reporting the Story. Max Holland is the editor of Washington DeCoded.] June 17, 2007 will mark

David Brooks: What drove Blair?

... [Tony] Blair’s decision to support the invasion of Iraq grew out of the essence of who he is. Over the past decade, he has emerged as the world’s leading anti-Huntingtonian. He has become one pole in a big debate. On one side are those, represented by Samuel Huntington of Harvard, who believe humanity is riven by deep cultural divides and we should be careful about interfering in one another’s business. On the other are those like Blair, who believe the process of globalization compels us to

Daniel Gross: Why bubbles are great for the economy

[Daniel Gross (www.danielgross.net) writes Slate's "Moneybox" column. You can e-mail him at moneybox@slate.com. He is the author of Pop! Why Bubbles Are Great for the Economy.] In my new book, Pop! Why Bubbles Are Great for the Economy, I explain why Americans have misunderstood the frenzies, manias, and stampedes that periodically seize us. ... ... once you gain a little histor

Daniel McCarthy: Was the 40th president (Reagan) a peace-loving moderate?

By the time of Ronald Reagan’s death in June 2004, even Saddam Hussein felt a little nostalgic for the former leader. “I wish things were like when Ronald Reagan was still president,” the jailed dictator reportedly told one of his American guards. When word of the president’s death reached the British pop star Morrissey, performing on stage in Dublin, the man who’d once sung the anti-Thatcher tune “Margaret on the Guillotine” delivered backhanded condolences of his own, telling the audience that

Martin Wainwright: History is in the telling by ordinary folk

Famously, everyone has a story to tell, but it is thanks to a poem and a letter in the New Statesman that we know how brilliantly "ordinary" people can turn into historians. Seventy years ago, contributions to Kingsley Martin's magazine by Tom Harrisson (the poem) and Charles Madge and Humphrey Jennings (the joint letter) started the enormous "people's chronicle" called Mass Observation (MO). It was comical to begin with, as London intellectuals eavesdropped in

Tony Platt: Northern Ireland's past has a future

[ TONY PLATT was a visiting professor at the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Queen's University, Belfast, in March. He is author, with Cecilia O'Leary, of "Bloodlines: Recovering Hitler's Nuremberg Laws, From Patton's Trophy to Public Memorial."] TUESDAY MARKED the historic restoration of power-sharing between Catholics and Protestants, Irish republicans and British loyalists in Northern Ireland — and the beginning of a new set of difficult challenges, inclu

Alexander Hamilton and the Creation of the United States (Online Exhibit)

Alexander Hamilton has been enjoying a renaissance. Indeed, Americans in the twenty-first century may admire Hamilton more than any generation since the founders themselves. An immigrant from the Caribbean, a disadvantaged orphan who became a war hero, a self-made man who rose to become a framer of the Constitution and architect of the American financial system, and ahead of his time in his opposition to slavery, Hamilton offers the modern reader much to admire. This exhibition was

David Brooks: Where History Reigns

... Britain is a nation with the soul of a historian. Its society is studded with institutions that keep the past alive, of which the monarchy is only the most famous. Its press is filled with commemorations, anniversaries and famously eloquent obituaries. Britain has always produced politically engaged celebrity historians, from Gibbon, Macaulay and Trevelyan down to Simon Schama, John Keegan, Andrew Roberts and Niall Ferguson today. In short, Brits live with the constant presence

Evan Thomas: In a new book, Robert Dallek details the deeply weird relationship between Nixon and Kissinger

Richard Nixon was nearing the end. It was Aug. 7, 1974, and the president had just told congressional leaders he planned to resign. Shortly after 6 p.m., Nixon's secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, found the chief executive sitting in the Oval Office, staring into the Rose Garden. The relationship between the men was, to say the least, ambivalent. As Kissinger was well aware, Nixon suspected him of self-aggrandizement. Kissinger, for his part, told reporters (privately, of course) that Nixon wa

Humberto Fontova: The Che Guevara Farce

[Humberto Fontova is the author of "Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him."] His writings revealed a severely troubled young man. "My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemy that falls in my hands! With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!"

Amy Dockser Marcus: Jerusalem Before Israel

Editor's note: The roots of Arab-Israeli enmity are usually traced to Palestine's administration as a British Mandate (1920-48). But in "Jerusalem 1913," Wall Street Journal reporter Amy Dockser Marcus--the paper's former Middle East correspondent (1991-98) and the winner of a Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for her coverage of improving cancer-survival rates--finds that the conflict's origins lie deeper in the past, in the Ottoman Empire before World War I. She begins by noting a long period o

Gary J. Bass: Why people who favor human rights often wantr to spread them around the world by force

Although Hunt's book is not really about the deliberate export of human rights, her examples are telling. The prime case is France in its wars after the Revolution. This meant the temporary abolition of torture in Switzerland and Spain, which fell apart after Napoleon was toppled, and the equally transient emancipation of Jews in small German and Italian states. The rights of man followed the French flag, in advance and in retreat. The few lasting successes--such as Jewish rights in Holland--wer

John C. Kornblum: Reagan’s Brandenburg Concerto ("Tear down this wall ...")

[John C. Kornblum is chairman of Lazard Germany. He served as an American diplomat for more than 35 years, concluding his career in 2001 as U.S. Ambassador in Berlin.] Twenty years ago this June, President Ronald Reagan mounted a podium in front of the ugly concrete barrier separating the Brandenburg Gate from West Berlin and delivered a speech that included a simple plea: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” It seems hard to believe now that, barely two years before t