Roundup: Talking About History

Humberto Fontova: Che, Fidel's Executioner

In August of 1960, a year and a half after Che Guevara entered Havana ahead of his "column" of "guerrillas," Time magazine featured the revolutionary comandante on its cover and crowned him the "Brains of the Cuban Revolution." (Fidel Castro was "the heart" and Raul Castro "the fist.") "Wearing a smile of melancholy sweetness that many women find devastating," read the Time article, "Che guides Cuba with icy calculati

Eric J. Sundquist: Blacks and Jews: From Afro-Zionism to Anti-Zionism

[Eric J. Sundquist is a professor of English at the University of California at Los Angeles. This essay is adapted from Strangers in the Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America, to be published next month by Harvard University Press. Copyright © by the president and fellows of Harvard College.] ...Ralph Ellison once remarked, "All of us old-fashioned Negroes are Jews." The alliance between the two groups [Jews and blacks] reached its peak in the aftermath o

Interview: Steven Hayward compares Reagan and Churchill

In his new book, Greatness: Reagan, Churchill, and the making of Extraordinary Leaders, Steven F. Hayward — a familiar name to National Review Online readers — compares, as the title suggests, Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill. NRO Editor Kathryn Lopez recently talked to him about those guys and making such assessments. National Review Online: What made you first think of Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill in the same sentence — and enough sentences to fill a book? S

Jane Lampman: Boston's People's Baptist Church Celebrates 200 Years

As the morning light streams gently through stained glass windows, the congregation lifts its hands and hearts in praise to God, singing "bless the Rock of my salvation." Moments later, attendees move around the pews, greeting each other with hugs and handshakes. In this first of two Sunday services, members of the Peoples Baptist Church in Boston celebrate their faith and commitment to community. The Rev. Wesley Roberts is preaching on "Why We Need Each Other,"

David Eimer: Mao Hyped As Hero For Tourists

The Chairman's image is dangling from the mirror of the taxi that takes me to Mao's childhood home in Shaoshan in southern China. 'He's my good luck charm,' grins the driver. However surprising this may seem, it certainly appears to be working. Since China's State Council designated this year as the year of Red Tourism, an initiative designed to re-kindle faith in the present-day Communist Party (CCP), a booming Shaoshan has become an unlikely must- see on the tourist trail.

Michael Nelson: How the GOP Conquered the South

[Michael Nelson is a professor of political science at Rhodes College. His book The Politics of Gambling: State Policy Innovation in the American South, written with John Lyman Mason, is scheduled to be published by Louisiana State University Press in 2007.] The greatest change in American national politics of the past 60 years has been the transformation of the South from the most solidly Democratic to the most solidly Republican region of the country. In the 1930s and 1940s, Democ

Maria Puente: Getty Facing Controversy Over Upcoming Exhibit

The largest treasure in the J.Paul Getty Museum's collection, a replica of an ancient Roman villa buried by Mount Vesuvius, is just months from reopening, but already it's being covered by a poisonous ash of bad publicity. And some of it might drift over other museums, too. The Getty Villa in Malibu, which has undergone a six-year, $275 million renovation, will showcase the museum's collection of more than 40,000 antiquities from classical Greece and Rome. But the top Getty official

Australia Reflects On Past Women In Parliament

At first there was a slow trickle: Irene Longman (1929), Annabelle Rankin (1947), Vi Jordan (1966), Kathy Sullivan, Vicky Kippin and Rosemary Kyburz (1974). However, these women paved the way for the flow of Queensland women into the state and federal parliaments in the 1980s and 1990s which, by the new century, had become a torrent. Irene Longman (Progressive National, 1929-32) was the first woman to stand for, and the first to be elected to, the Queensland Parliament,

Eric Hobsbawm: Benefits of Diaspora

[Eric Hobsbawm has taught history and written in Britain, the US and elsewhere. His most recent book is an autobiography, Interesting Times: A 20th-Century Life. He is president of Birkbeck College.] Most work in the field of Jewish history deals with the almost invariably vast impact of the outside world on the Jews, who are almost invariably a small minority of the population. My concern is with the impact of the Jews on the rest of humanity. And, in particular, with the explosive

Ottawa Citizen Reporter Tries To Convince Teenagers Of History's Importance

The skinny arm at the back of the room is in the air again, but this time it scoots back down before I can react. "You wanted to ask something?" The serious-looking 15-year-old shakes her mane of black hair. "Never mind," she says. "It was a stupid question." "No such thing," I say, hoping it's true. "Well, these guys," she begins,"they're all dead, right?" And there it is, the essence, the nub of

Melvin Laird: Iraq ... Learning the Lessons of Vietnam

Summary: During Richard Nixon's first term, when I served as secretary of defense, we withdrew most U.S. forces from Vietnam while building up the South's ability to defend itself. The result was a success -- until Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by cutting off funding for our ally in 1975. Washington should follow a similar strategy now, but this time finish the job properly.Richard Nixon was elected in 1968 on the assumption that he had a plan to end the Vietn

Sudi Pigott: London Cook Recooks Old Recipes

It all started as a schoolboy prank to escape the vagaries of the British weather," recalls Ivan Day. "Caught in a dramatic downpour one exeat afternoon (when boarding- school children are allowed off the premises), a school chum and I took refuge in an antiquarian bookshop and happened on a battered volume of archaically phrased 18th-century recipes. The idea of roasting a sucking pig, which sounded really rude, and making a 54-egg pudding had us tittering in pure Monty Python mirth.

Jenny Attiyeh: Cupola Project Seeks To Reclaim Italy's Santa Maria del Fiore Archives

In the early morning of Nov. 4, 1966, while Florence slept, the Arno River, overwhelmed by unprecedented rains, suddenly overflowed its banks and unleashed a lethal mixture of water, mud and debris. The city never had a chance. Its narrow streets served as perfect conduits, leading the river into the heart of Florence. At 9: 45 a.m., a wall of water six metres high reached the Piazza del Duomo, home to the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, the city's most distinctive landmark. It

Alan Hustak: Quebec Fears Potential Loss Of Heritage Buildings

Walk along any street in Montreal and you can't help but be confounded by the number of churches, convents, chapels, monasteries, shrines and other religious properties in need of repair. Faced with declining congregations and stuck with parishes on shaky financial ground, the Quebec government is looking for creative ways to preserve what is left of the province's religious heritage and at the same time deal with the overwhelming number of aging buildings that religious denominatio

Martin Patience: Professors Seek To Expose Opposing Histories To Israeli, Paestinian Students

The year 1948 resonates with Israelis just as 1776 does with Americans -- as the year their nation was born in blood during a war for independence against all odds. For Palestinians, 1948 means something very different. It marks the defeat of the Arab armies, the failure of Palestinians to establish their own state and the beginning of exile. It was the year 750,000 Palestinians became refugees in neighboring Arab countries -- the start of a period they call "The Catastrophe,&q

Ellen Whyte: Malaysian Paper Advises On Studying History

Studying history is like being a detective; you have to sift through different stories and make up your mind as to what actually happened. Take for example the eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius in Italy in 79AD. The disaster buried the towns of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Stabiae and Torre Annunziata. For many centuries, the eruption was largely forgotten. But in the late 1600s, an architect called Domenico Fontana discovered the buried ruins at Pompeii. Tod

Susan Carpenter: LA School Uses Sacred Tongva Site To Celebrate Columbus Day

Long before Christopher Columbus sailed to the so-called New World in 1492, there was already a civilization in Southern California, an established world with its own life and landscape. Indeed, long before Los Angeles Basin was transformed into a smog-filled, celebrity-obsessed metropolis, it was home to the Native American Gabrielino/Tongva nation, some of whom lived in a place called Kuruvungna. To Indians, Kuruvungna is a sacred site; in the Tongva language, the name means "

Ross Wehner: Telecom Industry's History Evident In Man-Hole Covers

Denver's manhole covers get no respect. The discs, like iron waffles smushed into the street, are spat upon, smeared with street muck and - worst of all - completely ignored. But downtown Denver's thousand-odd manhole covers - and, more specifically, the few hundred laid by telecommunications companies - are like rare dinosaur bones. Taken together, they tell the story of a relentless stream of acquisitions, mergers and bankruptcies in America's communicati

Jerry Brown: Cruise Ship Cruises Lewis And Clark Expedition Route For Anniversary

The 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, a two-year national celebration culminating in November, has focused public attention on the Columbia River, at whose mouth the historic trek ended in the winter of 1805. Following in the footsteps - or the wake - of those intrepid explorers, as I did recently on Cruise West's small ship Spirit of '98, on a round-trip cruise from Portland, brought life and color to a tale that I had heard before, but which I had pretty much marginalized.

Jack Malvern: T.E. Lawrence Drew Up Plans For Arabs

Lawrence of Arabia's vision for the Middle East has been revealed in a map he created after World War I. T.E.Lawrence, the British colonel whose wartime collaboration with the Arabs against the Turks was immortalised in the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia, attempted to reward Britain's Arab allies by dividing territory between them. His sympathy for the cause of Arab self-determination is well known, but the details contained in the map eluded historians because it was fil