Roundup: Talking About History

Christopher Hitchens: The Woman who made Iraq

[Review of Gertrude Bell Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations by Georgina Howell.] ... The new colonial authorities borrowed a term—Al Iraq, or “the Iraq,” from the verb meaning “to be deeply rooted”—that Arabs had formerly used to describe the southern portion of the territory. Much else about their rule was provisional and improvised. Bell saw the truth of a Baghdad newspaper’s observation that London had promised an Arab government with British advisers, but had imposed

Edwin Black: Why we shouldn't be celebrating the propsect that the Bad Arolsen archives may be sent to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum

[Edwin Black is The New York Times' best-selling author of the award-winning"IBM and the Holocaust" and is responsible for a series of investigations revealing the contents of the ITS archives at Bad Arolsen. His stories on the subject can be viewed at http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com.] The International Tracing Service's secret Holocaust archive at Bad Arolsen, Germany, is preparing to transfer millions of images of

Lee Kaplan: ISM Brings Fake “Holocaust Survivor” to UC Irvine

[Lee Kaplan is an undercover investigative journalist and a contributor to Front Page Magazine. He is also a regular columnist for the Israel National News and Canada Free Press and a senior intelligence analyst and communications director for the Northeast Intelligence Network.] The International Solidarity Movement never misses a beat when it comes to propaganda against Israel on US college campuses. In December of 2003, I attended their third national conference where one seminar

David Wise: A fundamental change in the agency means more intelligence officers are spilling the beans, but the CIA still gets the last word

[David Wise writes frequently about intelligence and espionage. He is the author of "Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America."] WHEN "The Invisible Government," the book about U.S. intelligence I coauthored with Thomas B. Ross, was published in 1964, the CIA considered buying up all the copies to keep them out of bookstores. The book upset the agency because it was the first serious study of the CIA's activities, about which the pub

Nicolas Shump: Time editors practice bad history

[Nicolas Shump is a doctoral student in American studies at The University of Kansas. ] When I received my copy of the May 7, 2007, issue of Time magazine, I found myself both angered and amused by the cover. It reads, “America at 400: How Jamestown colony made us who we are.” Doing the quick math, I realized this particular origin myth places the beginning of America at the founding of the Jamestown colony in 1607. Although I doubt this is their intention, the Time edi

William Dalrypmple: Mutiny! The uprising that shook the world

[William Dalrymple's The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857, which won the 2007 Duff Cooper Prize for History and Biography, has just been published in paperback by Bloomsbury (£8.99)] On the evening of Sunday 10 May 1857, 150 years ago next week, 300 mutinous sepoys from Meerut rose up against their officers. They shot as many as they could, then rode through the night to the old Mughal capital of Delhi, where there they massacred every Christian man, woman and child, a

John Brown: Subtlety is one of the paradoxes of propaganda

[John Brown is a former diplomat who compiles the Public Diplomacy Press Review, available free upon request at www.uscpublicdiplomacy.org/pdpr] When I give my course, "Propaganda and U.S. Foreign Policy" -- a historical overview of the subject -- I like to invite the class for a modest buffet dinner chez moi. The last time this get-together took place, it included a screening of Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the W

Daniel Cornwall: Army History Center Author Says Domestic Spying Unproductive

One of the great things about living in a country that still has a significant commitment to government openness are publications which admit past mistakes on the government.A case in point is the book The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders, 1945-1992 by Paul J. Scheips and published by the Army's Center of Military History's Army Historical Series.

Charles Krauthammer: Yeltsin's Mixed Legacy

Credit for the fall of Communism usually is given to two sets of actors. On the one side, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and John Paul II, whose relentless pressure caused a hollowed-out system to collapse. On the other side, conventional mythology credits Mikhail Gorbachev. This is quite wrong. True, Gorbachev inadvertently caused the collapse of Communism. But his intention was always to save it. To the very end, Gorbachev believed in it. His mission was to reform Communism in

Alan Dershowitz: Finkelstein's Bigotry

In her 1951 best seller, "The Groves of Academe," Mary McCarthy fictionalized a failed academic who, realizing he wouldn't get tenure, became a communist so that he could claim that he was being denied tenure because he was a Red rather than a lousy scholar. A version of that ploy is being used today. Norman Finkelstein brags that "never has one of [his] articles been published in a scientific magazine." By his own account he has been fired by "every school

Jon Wiener: Norman Finkelstein, the Holocaust, and Alan Dershowitz

[Jon Wiener started writing for The Nation in 1984. Since then he’s written more than 100 stories and reviews for the magazine, many about American history, university politics, and California life. He’s also professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, and a Los Angeles radio host.] Alan Dershowitz is at it again: First he tried to get California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to stop the University of California Press (UCP) from publishing a book highly critical of him,

Thomas Mallon: The most exhaustive book yet written about the Kennedy assassination should lay the conspiracy theories to rest once and for all—but it won’t.

[Thomas Mallon is the author of many books including Stolen Words.] Vincent Bugliosi, the assistant district attorney who put Charles Manson away and later produced the most merciless book on O. J. Simpson (Outrage), has in one way or another been working on Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy for 21 years, ever since he acted as the prosecutor in an elaborate mock trial of Oswald that was filmed in London and inc

Renato Redentor Constantino: On the Fortuitous Poverty of Memory (Re: Iran)

[Renato Redentor Constantino is a writer and painter based in Quezon City in the Philippines. He is the author of The Poverty of Memory: Essays on History and Empire. He can be reached via his website.] An opening benediction: Hallowed Homeland, great Fatherland, Bless the star-spangled armada massing today in the Persian Gulf. Bless the gallant, nuclear-powered cavalry. They have come once m

Robert Townsend: Google Books ... What's not to like?

[Mr. Townsend is a graduate student in history at George Mason University.] The Google Books project promises to open up a vast amount of older literature, but a closer look at the material on the site raises real worries about how well it can fulfill that promise and what its real objectives might be. Over the past three months I spent a fair amount of time on the site as part of a research project on the early history of the profession, and from a researcher’s point

Edward Rothstein: Remembering the Alamo Is Easier When You Know Its Many-Sided History

With apologies to all Texians — as they were once called — before visiting San Antonio, I really didn’t remember the Alamo. I retained a vague impression from youth in which heroism, independence and Davy Crockett were major elements, and Mexicans were the bad guys, but that was about it. It was like a childhood fairy tale, barely recalled. That’s fine for myths: they are not really meant to survive with photographic realism. That is one way they have such a broad effect on the mind

Daniel Sokatch and David N. Myers: Several American Jewish groups abandon their anti-genocide zeal when it comes to Turkey's massacre of Armenians

[Daniel Sokatch is executive director of the Progressive Jewish Alliance. David N. Myers teaches Jewish history at UCLA. ] THIS YEAR, Congress established April 15 as Holocaust Memorial Day, commemorating the Nazi genocide of European Jewry. Just nine days later, on April 24, Armenians throughout the world observed the commemoration of their great tragedy: the massacre of as many as 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Turks that began in 1915. In many ways, it wa

Ilan Stavans: PBS and its latest sins of omission

[Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His latest book is "The Disappearance." His meditation "On Love" will be published in the fall. ] IS PBS REALLY a network for and by the people? A 14-hour miniseries by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick devoted to World War II is scheduled for this fall. Almost no one has seen trailers of it but it has already been causing controversy. Apparently, Burns,

Joshua Muravchik: Our Worst Ex-President (Jimmy Carter)

[Joshua Muravchik is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a veteran contributor to Commentary.] ... Few men who are called to politics suffer defeat gladly, and Carter was certainly not one of the exceptions. The last election he had lost was his first run for governor of Georgia, and it deeply shook him; as he would later relate, it was in the course of struggling to right his mood afterward that he experienced the epiphany of being born again. The loss this

John Updike: The life of Aimee Semple McPherson

The name of Aimee Semple McPherson resonates faintly now— rather comical run of syllables compounded of a first name bestowe by a rapt young mother, Minnie Kennedy, in an Ontario farmhouse i 1890, and the last names of Aimee’s first two husbands, Robert Sempl and Harold McPherson. Yet in the nineteen-twenties and thirties she wa one of the most famous women in America—for a time, the most famous according to one biographer. After running away from her secon husband, in 1915, she became a

Richard Brookhiser: Inventing America

The Virginia colony had John Smith, Pocahontas, slavery, famine, battles and a great Indian chief. So how come Plymouth Rock gets all the press? An in-depth look at the place where our nation began to take shape They thought they were lost. The Susan Constant, the Godspeed and the Discovery had sailed from London on Dec. 20, 1606, carrying 144 passengers and crew, bound for Virginia. Howling winds pinned them to the coast of England for six weeks. After crossing the Atlantic by a southerly route