Roundup: Talking About History

August 8, 2005

Africans Played a Major Role in the Slave Trade

From NPRs Morning Edition (April 12, 2004):BOB EDWARDS: During the 400 years of the trans-Atlantic slave trade from 1450 to 1850, some 11 to 12 million Africans were brought to the New World. Americans are still struggling to come to terms with the nation's history of slavery. Some West Africans also are trying to reconcile the complicity of African rulers and slave merchants. In this National Geographic Radio Expedition, NPR's John Burnett traveled to Benin,

August 8, 2005

A Seminary Professor Defends the Truthfulness of the New Testament

From the Baptist Press News (March 31, 2004):Should the Bible be categorized with fads and fallacies? Or, is the Bible the inerrant Word of God? Robert Stewart, assistant professor of philosophy and theology at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, defended Scripture’s reliability March 22 during an event at the University of New Orleans.Jointly sponsored by the Baptist Collegiate Mi

August 8, 2005

Alan Wolfe: The Nazi Thinker Who Is a Source for Ideas on Both the Left and the Right

Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life and professor of political science at Boston College, in an article about the pro-Nazi German thinker Carl Schmitt, a source of ideas for both the left and the right in America today. In the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscribers only) (April 1, 2004):... [T]here are, I venture to say, no seminars on [C

August 8, 2005

What New Books Are Saying About the Impact of the Brown Decision

From the Chronicle of Higher Education (April 2, 2004) (subscribers only): On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling Brown v. Board of Education. In a unanimous decision written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the court famously declared:"We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." Combining cases in five states and the Di

August 8, 2005

Alamo Myths (No, Pee Wee Fans, There's No Basement )

T.A. Badger, in the Miami Herald (April 5, 2004):The Alamo: An 18th-century Roman Catholic mission that became a 19th-century makeshift fort that became a 20th-century household name. Its history is large, but nowhere near as large as the legends it has perpetuated. First there's Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier, who according to the tall tales of his time, "

August 8, 2005

The Roots of the Rwanda Genocide Go Back 40 Years

Sudarsan Raghavan, in the Kansas City Star (April 2, 2004): The origins of the massacre of more than three-quarters of a million people in Rwanda, most of them members of the Tutsi tribe, date back more than 40 years. In 1959, the Hutus came to power in a bloodless revolution. For the next 35 years, the Tutsis were depicted as a despotic tribe

August 8, 2005

WSJ: Rewriting the History of Korea's President Park Chung Hee

Editorial in the WSJ (April 6, 2004):Americans stationed in Seoul years ago used to joke that Koreans reacted to anything from rising prices to marital infidelity by marching on the U.S. Embassy. A look at the work of a commission probing the assassination of a former president makes us wonder how much things have really changed. President Park Chung Hee was assassina

August 8, 2005

William Safire on a New Book About JFK & Jackie

William Safire, in the NYT (April 21, 2004):A stunning new history coming in May about the relationship between Jacqueline and John F. Kennedy came floating into my office. I immediately flipped though "Grace and Power: The Private World of the Kennedy White House" by Sally Bedell Smith to see if it included "the lunch" of March 22, 1962.On that afternoon, F.B.I. Directo

August 8, 2005

CRS Report: The War Powers Act, 30 Years Later

From "The War Powers Resolution: After Thirty Years," prepared by the Congressional Research Service. Click here to read the full report, which appeared March 11, 2004 and has now been posted on the Internet: This report discusses and assesses the War Powers Resolution, its application since enactment in 1973, providing detailed background on a variety of cases where it was utilized, or issues of its applicabil

August 8, 2005

Matin Kramer: Even Alan Dershowitz Was Confused by the Misleading Attacks on H.R. 3077, the Bill to Establish an Advisory Review Board for Middle East Studies

Martin Kramer, on his blog (March 2, 2004): On Monday of last week, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs plenum met in Faneuil Hall in Boston to honor Alan Dershowitz, renowned Harvard law professor. The JCPA is an umbrella for the nation's Jewish organizations. Dershowitz is highly regarded in the Jewish community, especially for his book The Case for Israel . He came to Faneuil Hall to accept the

August 8, 2005

The Hungarian Town Where the Women Decided to Murder Their Husbands by the Dozens After World War I

Jim Fish, in BBC News (March 29, 2004): A two-hour drive south-east of Budapest, the village of Nagyrev is like countless others dotted across the Danubian plain. Modest single-storey homes line its few muddy streets. But beneath its pastoral exterior, Nagyrev nurses a dark secret. Nearly a century ago, with World War I raging, the womenfolk here began to poison their husbands. Now aged 83, Maria Gunya wa

August 8, 2005

Sean Wilentz: Garry Wills's Howlers

Sean Wilentz, in a cover story in the New Republic (March 29, 2004), commenting on Garry Wills's new book, "Negro President": Jefferson and the Slave Power:[Garry Wills's] main argument is the old Federalist canard that the three-fifths clause was the only reason that Thomas Jefferson was elected president and that the Democratic-Republicans won control of Congress. With that control, the Democratic-Republicans, led by slaveholders and with their

August 8, 2005

Does VS Naipaul Fail to Recognize Islam's contribution to India?

William Dalrymple, in the Guardian (March 20, 2004):Few would dispute Naipaul's status as probably the greatest living writer of Indian origin; indeed some would go further and argue that he is the greatest living writer of English prose. For good reason his views are taken very seriously. He is a writer whose fiction and non-fiction written over half a century forms a body of work of great brilliance, something the Nobel committee recognised in 2001

August 8, 2005

George Washington's Evolving Views About Slavery

From the CBS News show, "Sunday Morning" (Feb. 15, 2004):Announcer: It's SUNDAY MORNING on CBS, and here again is Charles Osgood. CHARLES OSGOOD, host:George Washington was famously first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen. But it is his own Change of Heart that attracts our attention this morning. Martha Teichner has the story of a momentous decision he made just before he died.(Footage of

August 8, 2005

A Cartoonist Takes on the Myth of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"

Steven Lee Beeber, in the NYT (Feb. 23, 2004): What do you do 25 years after creating a new artistic genre? If you are Will Eisner, you do the same thing again in your late 80's. "A Contract With God," set in the tenements of his Bronx youth and published in 1978, established Mr. Eisner as the father of the graphic novel. Now he has taken the adult comic-book format a step further, with a graphic his

August 8, 2005

Jesus in America

Richard Wightman Fox, professor of history at the University of Southern California, in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscribers only) (Feb. 20, 2004): ... the broad features of Christ's identity were passed along from one culture to another. At different times greater or lesser weight was assigned to his roles as divine king, sacrificial redeemer, holy child, apocalyptic p

August 8, 2005

Garry Wills: About the First Negro President

An interview with Garry Wills on NPR conducted by Tavis Smiley (Feb. 16, 2004):While we have recent memories of an especially tight presidential election in 2000 and, who knows, potentially a tight election this November, history tells the story of how in 1800, Thomas Jefferson won a close election on the strength of slave representation. Slaves did not vote, of course, but the original Constitution mandated that slaves be considered three-fifths o

August 8, 2005

The Enslaved Freedwoman Who Sued for Her Freedom--And Won It

Wendell Edwards, on KHOU.com (Feb. 11, 2004):An incredible story of freedom and justice unfolded more than a century ago inside a Harris County courtroom. One hundred and fifty-six years ago Emeline Thompson, a free woman of color, came to Texas only to be enslaved again. But that is not the end of her story -- it's just the beginning. A remarkable

August 8, 2005

The Museum that Is Devoted to Dentistry

Goldie Blumenstyk, writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscribers only) (Feb. 4, 2004):It takes only a few minutes of peering into the felt-lined drawers filled with heavy, iron tooth-extraction keys, examining the collections of pearl- and ebony-handled probes, and staring up at the museum display cases brimming with tiny sets of false teeth before the feeling overwhelms:

August 8, 2005

Che Guevara--Still Popular as a Handy Symbol of Cool

Brett Sokol, in miaminewtimes.com (Feb. 5, 2004):While it's certainly true that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter , with Che Guevara that maxim has become downright surreal. Today the revolutionary icon's writings are simultaneously admired by teenage Howard Dean volunteers in Burlington and Taliban leaders in the Afghan countryside; they are parsed f