Roundup: Talking About History

February 14, 2005

Stephanie Coontz: Valentine's Day (It Wasn't Intended for Love)

Stephanie Coontz, in the NYT (2-14-05):Stephanie Coontz, a history professor at Evergreen State College, is the author of the forthcoming "Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage. " ... For thousands of years, love, passion and marriage were considered a rare and usually undesirable combination. Valentine's Day was

February 12, 2005

Brent Staples: Essie Mae Washington-Williams Has Her Say

Brent Staples, in the NYT (2-6-05):Imagine yourself a 13-year-old girl living contentedly with people you believe to be your parents. An exotic woman introduced as your aunt visits your house - and blurts out,"I am your mother," while making chicken salad. She explains that you were born out of wedlock when she was 16 and given away to be raised as her sister's child.T

February 11, 2005

Jacob Laskin: Ward Churchill--The Radical Who's Now Running Away from His Own Record

Jacob Laskin, at FrontPageMag.com (2-10-05):Thanks in large measure to the impassioned public outcry prompted by his invitation to speak at Hamilton College, some of the disquieting aspects of Ward Churchill’s career are now common knowledge. He is, infamously, the tenured professor of “Ethnic Studies” at the University of Colorado who waxed rhapsodic about the September 11 terrorist atta

February 11, 2005

Scott Smallwood: Why Did the Ward Churchill Controversy Break Now When He Made the Comment Years Ago?

Scott Smallwood, in the Chronicle of Higher Education (2-10-05): Hours after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Ward Churchill compared the victims to the Nazis. A professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, he wrote in an essay that those killed at the World Trade Center were not innocent civilians but "little Eichmanns." The analogy is so outrageous, one

February 11, 2005

Mark Selden: Living With the Bomb ... The Atomic Bomb in Japanese Consciousness

Mark Selden, in Japan Focus (1-26-05): [Mark Selden is a coordinator of Japan Focus. Kyoko and Mark Selden are the editors of The Atomic Bomb: Voices From Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Translations in this article by Kyoko Selden.] Until the last six months of World War Two, the home islands of Japan were virtually untouched by the ravages of war. That changed definitively on the night of March 9 1945, as the full fury of U.S. fi

February 11, 2005

So Was the Wizard of Oz an Allegory for Populism?

Quentin P. Taylor, in the Independent Review (Feb. 2005): [Quentin P. Taylor is an assistant professor of history and political science at Rogers State University, Claremore, Oklahoma.]“The story of ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ was written solely to pleasure children of today” (Dighe 2002, 42). So wrote L. Frank Baum in the introduction to his popular c

February 9, 2005

A.N.Wilson: When It Finally Occurred to Me that Disraeli Was a Racist

A.N. Wilson, in the London Daily Telegraph (2-7-05): ... One of the delights of writing my book The Victorians was to revisit the novels of Disraeli. I had read Coningsby and Tancred in my youth, but Lothair, a very funny one, was a discovery for me. I enjoyed them as examples of high camp, with their extravagant descriptions of dinners, clothes, great houses. I also enjoyed the many good jokes, and in Lothair the amusing caricature of Cardinal Manning. The "ideas"

February 9, 2005

Gary Lemke: The Obituary of Max Schmeling ... Nazi Icon?

Gary Lemke, in the London Independent (2-6-05): ... He was buried in Hollenstedt, in his home state of Lower Saxony on Friday. A funeral service in Hamburg is planned. Schmeling, born on 28 September 1905, was a strapping white athlete who once dined with Hitler. An autographed picture of der Fuhrer even hung in his study.In truth he was not a supporter of the Nazi party. On 9 November 1938, when Nazi gangs destroyed 191 synagogues and murdered 91 Jews, Schmeling sheltered two J

February 9, 2005

Robert Fisk: The Problem with Email

Robert Fisk, in the Independent (2-5-05): The laptop has done bad things to us. I've spent the past year writing a history of the Middle East which has proved to me - quite apart from the folly of man - that the computer has not necessarily helped our writing or our research into the sins of our fathers. As a journalist who still refuses to use e-mail - forcing people to write real letters cuts down the amount of ungrammatical and often abusive messages we receive -

February 9, 2005

Alexander Chancellor: Should Holocaust Denial Be Made a Crime?

Alexander Chancellor, in the Guardian (2-5-05): ...You would have thought that, by now, because of the overwhelming evidence, everyone would have accepted that the Nazis tried to exterminate the Jews and came terrifyingly close to achieving their purpose. Yet the Holocaust deniers still cling so tenaciously to their belief that nothing much happened, and that Hitler, poor dear, was just a victim of malicious propaganda by the victorious allies, that eight European countries,

February 8, 2005

Oleg Preusner: Columbia University's One-Sided Conference About Israel

Oleg Preusner, at Campus-Watch.org (2-7-05): [Oleg Preusner is a New York writer. This analysis was prepared at the request of Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum, to monitor, critique and review Middle East Studies in North America.]Columbia University's panel"One State or Two: Alternative Proposals for Middle East Peace" presented a biased, tendentious Israel-bashing program on Monday, January 31, that provided more heat than light. The very title was a

February 7, 2005

David Hackett Fischer: The Evolving Meaning of Freedom and Liberty

David Hackett Fischer, in the NYT (2-7-05): IN Baghdad's Fardus Square, where Iraqi civilians and American marines so famously pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein in the spring of 2003, Iraqi artists have raised a new sculpture on the same pedestal. It is a monument to liberty and freedom, and unlike any other in the world. In Europe and America, the favorite symbols of liberty and freedom are individual figures like Marianne or the Statue of Liberty. This

February 6, 2005

Francis Scott Key's Shameful Role in the "Snow Riot"--Washington DC's First Race Riot

The"Snow Riot" of 1835 began when young Arthur Bowen, a slave, who had gotten drunk one summer night, appeared at the door of his master, Anna Maria Thornton, one of the leading ladies in Washington DC, carrying an ax. On February 6, 2005, the Washington Post featured a long article about the riot written by Jefferson Morley. The subhead: "When a young slave rattled his chains, a nation's hypocrisy was revealed -- and Washington discovered that the man who wrote the national anthem had

February 5, 2005

Andrew Roberts: Why Did Napoleon Lose the Battle of Waterloo? Finally, an Answer!

Andrew Roberts, in the London Sunday Telegraph (1-30-05):Why did Napoleon lose the battle of Waterloo? It is a question that has intrigued the keenest historians for the past 190 years. He had a larger army than the Anglo-Allied one that faced him across the undulating slopes of Mont St Jean on the morning of Sunday June 18, 1815. His troops were the hardened veterans of many campaigns, unlike the untried soldiers under his opponent, the Duke of Wellington.

February 5, 2005

Deborah Lipstadt: Holocaust Denial Is Alive and Well in the Middle East

Deborah Lipstadt, in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (1-30-05):... Many people worry that when the voice of the witness is lost, Holocaust deniers will find it easier to spread their lies. This fear suggests that without the survivors, there will not be enough evidence to "prove" what happened at Auschwitz. Though a survivor can speak with the unique voice of the eyewitness, this fear is unfounded.... [But o]ther forms of denial --- declaring

February 5, 2005

Was Sirhan Sirhan Framed? (Los Angeles Times)

John Hiscock, in the LAT (1-31-05):Ever since he was seized with a .22-caliber revolver in his hand in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in June 1968, Sirhan Sirhan has maintained he was hypnotized into shooting Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. The contention was discounted by the jury, which, after deliberating for 16 1/2 hours, found him "alone and not in concert with anyone else" guilty of murder in the first degree. Almost everyone who studied the

February 5, 2005

Do the Tories Just Want Sanitized History?

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, in the London Independent (1-31-05):The Tories want history to be made compulsory in schools. Who can disagree with that? Kenneth Baker's educational reforms in the 1980s pushed history into the wilderness and many parents have long argued that the subject should be made mandatory again. Careful now. This latest idea tossed out by Tim Collins the Conservative education spokesman comes at a time when a nervous, possibly manic conditi

February 3, 2005

Anna Bernasek: Is America's Empire Fated to Fall?

Anna Bernasek, in the NYT (1-30-05): In 1897, Britain celebrated Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee with grand ceremonies, lavish parties and parades that stretched for miles. It was all in tribute to a monarch who had reigned for 60 years, but it was also a celebration of Britain's unrivaled world power and success. Never before had an empire been as wealthy or as vast, spanning a quarter of the world's population and land mass. Yet within 50 years, the British Empire would v

February 3, 2005

Cathy Young: Response Thus Far to the "Lincoln Was Gay" Book

Cathy Young, in the Boston Globe (1-31-05):[Cathy Young is a contributing editor at Reason magazine. Her column appears regularly in the Globe.]WAS ABRAHAM LINCOLN gay? And does it matter? These questions have been the subject of heated debate in the past few weeks, thanks to a new posthumous book by the late sex researcher C.A.

January 29, 2005

Mark Levene: The Political Misuse of Holocaust Memorial Day

Mark Levene, in the London Independent (1-25-05): [The writer is Reader in Comparative History at Southampton University. The first two volumes of his Genocide in the Age of the Nation-State' (I B Tauris) is published this summer.] There has always been something rather odd about Holocaust Memorial Day. Its main purpose, so runs the mantra, is to increase public awareness of "the ideals of peace, justice and community for all", and in the words of David