Roundup: Talking About History

January 6, 2005

Larry Elder: Bush, Like Reagan, Will Be Remembered as a Transformative President

Larry Elder, in his column published by townhall (12-30-05): ... Bush assuredly takes comfort that the critics of another visionary -- President Ronald Reagan -- also called him a simple-minded warmonger. While Democratic contender John Kerry gave a phony salute to Reagan during one of the presidential debates, in 1988, Sen. Kerry condemned the "moral darkness of the Reagan-Bush administration." W

January 6, 2005

AP: Q & A on the History of Presidential Inaugurations

Donna Cassata, for the Associated Press (1-2-05): At noon on Jan. 20, in the shadow of the Capitol, George W. Bush will raise his right hand, place the other on the Bible and swear to faithfully execute the office of president and preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. It will be the 55th quadrennial presidential inauguration, an event steeped in history and marked by all the pomp a

January 6, 2005

Commentary On Britain's New Freedom Of Information Act

Magnus Linklater, The Times (London), 1/05/05 I want some red-hot government secrets, and I want them now. Using the new Freedom of Information Act I intend to wrench open filing cabinets that have been locked for decades, expose the briefing notes we were never meant to see, nail the rumours that will make or break the reputations of the highest in the land. If the law means what it says, then this is a new dawn for journalists. For the first time, we have the legal right to

January 6, 2005

Vatican Reels From New Revelation About Pope John XXIII

John Hooper, The Guardian (London), 1/06/05 In 1940, after Nazi troops marched into France, the future Pope John XXIII, darling of liberal Roman Catholics, took up his pen to comment. Did he, as one might expect, warn of the dark shadow of the jackboot spreading over Europe? Did he fret over the fate of the Jews who had just fallen into Hitler's grasp? No. What he wrote was that German society was made up of"alert, strong" men, who fully deserved their victory over a"worn-out

January 6, 2005

Revisionist History Of Cleopatra's Death

Richard Girling, Courier Mail (Queensland, Australia), 1/06/05 The death of Cleopatra from an asp bite is one of history's greatest romantic tragedies. But, asks Richard Girling, can the verdict of suicide, accepted for 2000 years, stand up to a modern-day investigation by a forensic expert? For 2000 years, the death of Queen Cleopatra VII has worked like a mind-altering drug in the bloodstreams of painters, poets, playwrights and historians. Tragedy and romance

January 2, 2005

Jared Diamond: How Civilizations End (How We Can Escape the Fate of those that Died)

Jared Diamond, in th NYT (1-1-05) [Jared Diamond, who won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction for "Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies," is the author of the forthcoming "Collapse: How Societies Choose or Fail to Succeed."]NEW Year's weekend traditionally is a time for us to reflect, and to make resolutions based on our reflections. In this fresh year, with the United States seemingly at the height of its power and at the st

January 1, 2005

Timothy Noah: We Still Don't Have a Name for the first Decade of the 21st Century

Timothy Noah, in the Ottawa Citizen (12-30-04): The precise midpoint of the 21st century's first decade will arrive on Saturday. You'd think by now the English-speaking world would have given this decade a name. Back in the early 1980s, The New York Times tried to pre-empt all future uncertainty by pronouncing it the "ohs." But nobody bit. Robert Thompson, president of the Popular Culture Association, told Harry Wessel of the Orlando Sentinel that a consensu

December 30, 2004

Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson: Kwanzaa -- "Racist Holiday from Hell"

Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson, at frontpagemag.com (12-29-04):[Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson is the Founder and President of BOND (the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny). He is also the author of the book “SCAM: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America.”]While public officials, schools, and the ACLU worked overtime this year to ban every vestige of Christmas from the public square, the recently invented holiday known as Kwanzaa is gaini

December 28, 2004

Are the Rich Nations Rich Because of Their Christian Heritage?

John Kay, in the London Financial Times (12-28-04):'Do they know it's Christmas?', the charity record from Band Aid, reminds us that the rich of the world have been celebrating and the poor have not. This is not because Christmas is a festival of the rich but because it is a Christian festival. The affluent Japanese are the main exception to the general rule that rich countries have a Christian tradition and poor countries mostly do not. The Japanese have n

December 27, 2004

The Christmas Truce of World War I

David Brown, in the Washington Post (12-25-04):Nobody knows where the Christmas Truce of 1914 began. Nor is it certain, even today, whether the truce began in one spot and spread, or broke out simultaneously in many places, the convergent evolution of numberless human hearts.What is known is that 90 years ago today -- four months into what would eventually be called World War I -- th

December 27, 2004

Steven Mintz: The History of Childhood

An interview with historian Steven Mintz, author of a new book, Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood; in the Houston Chronicle (12-25-04):. Fritz Lanham We normally think of childhood as being a stage in the history of an individual. What does it mean to say that childhood itself has a history? Steven Mintz We assume that human being

December 25, 2004

William B. Waits: How the Celebration of Christmas Has Changed

William B. Waits, in the NYT (12-23-04): [William B. Waits is the author of"The Modern Christmas in America: A Cultural History of Gift Giving."]FINDING the perfect gift has long been a national pastime. But the celebration of Christmas, and the culture of gift giving that accompanies the holiday, have changed significantly in America over the years. Economic and social pressures have transformed how, and with whom, we celebrate Christmas, altering it from a ho

December 24, 2004

James Kurth: The British Roots of America Are Real

James Kurth, in the introduction to the winter 2005 issue of Orbis: A hundred years ago, at the beginning of the twentieth century, it was a commonplace among the political, social, and intellectual elites of the United States that America had been decisively shaped by its British origins. The British settlers in North America, the place of the American colonies within the British empire, and the revolution of those colonies against that empire had created a distinctive people

December 22, 2004

Iraq's Library Struggles To Piece Together National History

Rory McCarthy, The Guardian (London), 12/21/04 From the outside it is an unpromising sight. The brickwork of the three-storey building is scarred with black scorch marks from last year's looting, and the cold concrete wall and floors are still bare where the furniture and fittings were stripped away. Only the sign above the entrance was spared, a blue-tiled mosaic announcing to the few who still visit: The House of Books and Documents. This had been one of Iraq's greatest treasu

December 22, 2004

Iran Unveils Historical Maps To Prove Name Of Persian Gult

Unsigned, The New Zealand Herald, 12/21/04 Last month, Iran banned the sale of National Geographic Society publications to protest against the"Arabian Gulf" inclusion. The issue has also caused widespread protests by Iranian intellectuals, historians, students and expatriate Iranians. Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, who inaugurated the exhibition of ancient and historical maps, said the name of the Persian Gulf could not be changed."Presenting historical evidences here is merely for

December 22, 2004

An Historical Look At The Holiday Of Christmas

James Carroll, The Boston Globe, 12/21/04 The single most important fact about the birth of Jesus, as recounted in the gospels, in one that receives almost no emphasis in the American festival of Christmas. The child who was born in Bethlehem represented a drastic political challenge to the imperial power of Rome. The nativity story is told to make the point that Rome is the enemy of God, and in Jesus, Rome's day is over. The Gospel of Matthew builds its nativi

December 22, 2004

Historic Hastings Assessed

Ben Hoyle, The Times (London), 12/20/04 Long before Hastings, Bannockburn and Waterloo, another battle shaped England's national destiny -but its location has been a mystery for more than 800 years. The bloodbath at Brunanburh in AD937 is often cited as the moment when Englishness was born, as the main Saxon tribes united for the first time to defeat an invasion force of Scottish, Welsh and Norwegian Vikings from Dublin. Now research suggests that t

December 22, 2004

Criticism For London's Maritime Museum

Will Bennett, THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON), 12/20/04 Naval historians fear that valuable records at the National Maritime Museum in London could be thrown away and lost to future researchers during a major reorganisation of its huge collection of documents and artefacts. The world-famous museum in Greenwich has received more than pounds 1million funding in extra Government to help modernise its archive and in many cases digital records will replace traditional car

December 22, 2004

Edward Rothstein: Should Tribes or Museums Tell the History Presented at Museums?

Edward Rothstein, in the NYT (12-21-04): Museums always make use of the past for the sake of the present. They collect it, shape it, insist on its significance. When that past is also prehistoric, when its objects come to the present without written history and with jumbled oral traditions, a museum can even become the past's primary voice. But what if that prehistoric past is also claimed by some as a living heritage? Then disagreements about interpretation develop in

December 22, 2004

Victor Davis Hanson: Why Oliver Stone's Movie About Alexander the Great Is a Bore

Victor Hanson, in National Review (12-18-04): The consensus about Oliver Stone's Alexander is that the film's splashy gay motifs could not overcome the stilted dialogue, ludicrous Irish-brogue and Count Dracula accents, and excruciating minutes of dead screen time devoted to model-like poses, secretive eye contact, and soap-opera double entendres. Stone's apparent hope was that he could garner media hype by overt h