Roundup: Talking About History

December 3, 2004

Steven Gates' Case Could Affect Work Of Historians

Maura Dolan, Los Angeles Times, 11-29-04 Steven Gates figured his criminal past was so far behind him that his friends and colleagues would never learn of it. He was married, lived in a prestigious neighborhood in San Bernardino County, attended church regularly, had built a successful career in sales and owned a business with his wife. Then came the breathless phone call from his mother one night: You are on the Discovery Channel, she told him. Gate

December 3, 2004

A Romanian Looks at Her Secret File (Why Few Do)

Oana Lungescu, in the London Daily Telegraph (12-2-04): It was in early 1983, on an anonymous street corner in central Bucharest, that I first met the man from the secret police. On the phone, he said he wanted to discuss a translation job and I was naive enough to meet him in the street. In his thirties, with an instantly forgettable face, he politely invited me across the road to a row of big metal doors, which looked like garages. But when he took out a key from his pocke

December 2, 2004

How a Vietnam Vet Teaches the History of the Vietnam War

From the Chronicle of Higher Ed (12-2-04): A glance at the fall issue of the "Michigan Quarterly Review": How a veteran learned to teach about Vietnam Keith W. Taylor, a professor of Vietnamese cultural studies at Cornell University, writes about his 30-year journey from fighting in the Vietnam War to teaching about it.Within a year of returning from a tour of duty in Vietnam, in 1972, Mr. Taylor began graduate study in Vietnamese history

December 2, 2004

The Imperial History We Try to Overlook (Try Finding It on the Mall in DC--You Can't)

Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton, in the Chronicle of Higher Ed (12-3-04): [Anderson and Cayton are the authors of a new master narrative of American history. This essay is adapted from the book, The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500-2000, to be published next month by Viking.]... The rhetoric that justified the founding of the United States made inescapable connections between em

December 2, 2004

Napoleon: The Self-Promoter Par Excellent!

From AFP (11-28-04): Napoleon Bonaparte whose coronation in France 200 years ago is being marked this week left behind the formidable weapon of mass propaganda for future generations. Experts believe the diminutive emperor whose legacy still provokes unease and fascination in France was probably the first person in history to u

December 1, 2004

Alexander the Great: The Ancient Boy Wonder

Frank L. Holt, in the Chronicle of Higher Ed (12-3-04) (subscribers only): [Frank L. Holt is a professor of history at the University of Houston and author of Alexander the Great and the Mystery of the Elephant Medallions (University of California Press, 2003).]This year fortune favors the old. The earliest war in Western civilization came roaring back in a Greek revival that pitched Brad Pitt into Bronz

November 30, 2004

Kinsey: The Man Had His Secrets ... Just Like the Rest of Us

James H. Jones, in the LAT (11-28-04):[ James H. Jones is the author of"Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life and"Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment."]What I admire most about the new movie"Kinsey" is its re-creation of a world in which Victorian attitudes enshroud human sexuality in taboos, ignorance and rep

November 30, 2004

Blair Should Just Have Apologied for Bloody Sunday ... The Endless Investigation of the Facts Is Fruitless

Kevin Toolis, in the London Times (11-27-04): How many words does it take to say sorry? In 1998, as the newly-born Irish peace process began, Tony Blair bowed to Irish republican demands and ordered a new investigation into the events of Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in January 1972, when British paratroops shot dead 13 protesters during a civil rights march. At the time I supported the creation of such an inquiry. Naively, it seemed to be the right thing to

November 30, 2004

Did Reagan End the Cold War?

Edmund Levin, in the Weekly Standard (11-15-04): Re: Ending the Cold War: Interpretations, Causation and the Study of International Relations edited by Richard K. Herrmann and Richard Ned Lebow Palgrave Macmillan, 256 pp., $24.95 IT CAN'T BE SAID that Ronald Reagan ever had many fans in American academia. After he declared the Soviet Union an "evil empire," Henry Steele Commager sneered: "The worst presidential speech in American history,

November 26, 2004

Robert J. Samuelson: So You Think Times Are Changing Fast Now?

Robert J. Samuelson, in Newsweek (Nov. 29, 2004): Picture yourself in the mid-1840s. It's an exciting time. Fifteen years earlier, railroads barely existed. In 1830 there were only 23 miles of track. By 1840, there were 2,818; by 1850, 9,021. Steamboats ply major rivers—another recent development. In 1844 Samuel Morse had introduced the telegraph by sending this message from Washington to Baltimore:

November 25, 2004

David Gelernter: Thanksgiving Is a Religious Holiday All Americans Can Celebrate

David Gelernter, in the WSJ (Nov. 24, 2004): The First Thanksgiving is one of those heartwarming stories that every child used to know, and some up-to-date teachers take special delight in suppressing. Many teachers approach children nowadays with the absurd presumption that they are triumphalist little bigots who must be taken down a notch and made to grasp that their country has made mistakes. In fact they are little ignoramuses who leave high school believing that their co

November 24, 2004

Oskar Schlindler's Legend Explored In Recent Biography

Dinitia, Smith, The New York Times, 24 Nov. 2004 An authoritative new biography of Oskar Schindler, the German businessman who saved more than 1,000 Jews from the Nazis, clashes sharply with his idealized portrayal in the Oscar-winning 1993 Steven Spielberg movie ''Schindler's List'' and the 1982 historical novel by Thomas Keneally that inspired it. The Schindler who emerges in this latest account -- based on interviews with Holocaust survivors and newly discovered papers, in

November 24, 2004

Retracing The Steps Of Black Civil War Soldiers

Bob Thompson, The Washington Post, 23 Nov. 2004 [Editor's Note: The original article is much longer.] It's not something you see every day on a Civil War tour: Two guys with deep southern roots, one black, one white, gazing side by side into their shared, violent past. Then again, this isn't actually a Civil War tour -- yet. Asa Gordon and Robert Freis are just starting to put one together. They're looking to tell the underreported tale of the African Ame

November 24, 2004

Hong Kong Evangelists Join List Of Noah's Ark 'Discoverers'

Winnie Yeung, South China Morning Post, 23 Nov. 2004 Two Hong Kong evangelists have become the latest in a long line of explorers claiming to have discovered the remains of Noah's Ark. Andrew Yuen Man-fai and Pastor Boaz Li Chi-kwong said they found parts of the biblical vessel embedded in ice at the top of Mount Ararat in Turkey. But they claimed a"mysterious force" made their video camera malfunction, so they were able to bring back only blurred images and no s

November 24, 2004

Tests Offer 'Final Proof' Napoleon Poisoned

Carsten Knox, Ottawa Citizen, 23 Nov. 2004 The theory that Napoleon was murdered in a conspiracy orchestrated by his British captors in collusion with French monarchists just refuses to die. Ben Weider, the Montreal- based millionaire, fitness guru and longtime Napoleonic historian, says he has the final proof of Napoleon's"assassination." New tests carried out by European toxicologists, including Pascal Kintz, president of the French society of anal

November 24, 2004

Biblical 10th Plague Researched

Charles M Sennott, The Boston Globe, 23 Nov. 2004 Egypt - Out of the blinding light of a fall morning here in the Valley of the Kings, American archeologist Kent Weeks led the way down a narrow, stone passageway and into the entrance of a tomb. Weeks peered his flashlight into the enveloping darkness of"the hidden tomb," as he calls it, and pressed on through the damp, winding passages toward what may be his archeological team's most significant find after years

November 24, 2004

When Scientists Speculate on the Cause of Death of Famous People

Stephen Pincock, in the London Financial Times (Nov. 20, 2004): The idea that Napoleon died after being given one too many enemas is a mental image too far for me. But for Dr Steven Karch, an American forensic pathologist, coming up earlier this year with a new theory on the strange death of the emperor represented his chance to take a turn playing a kind of scientific parlour game. The caper involves assigning causes of death to historical figures on the basis of som

November 22, 2004

Mike Wallace: What's Wrong with the Hamilton Exhibit at the N-Y Historical Society

Mike Wallace, at the website of the Gotham Center (Nov. 2004): I think Edward Rothstein's New York Times review of the Alexander Hamilton exhibition at the New-York Historical Society is right on target: the show is seriously flawed and deeply condescending.1 But I'm not convinced it's correct to lay the lion's share of responsibility for the exhibition's failings at designer Ralph Applebaum's door. App

November 19, 2004

Can the Public Be Trusted to Say Who Among Us Is Great?

From the Guardian (Nov. 18, 2004): How dull the list of greatest Britons looks now. Churchill top, followed by Brunel, Princess Diana, Darwin, Shakespeare . . . What a conventional view of "greatness" - winning battles, making scientific advances, writing King Lear. Princess Diana and John Lennon added a welcome touch of lunacy to the poll that started a worldwide trend in searching for the "nation's greatest" back in November 2002, but where were King Joh

November 19, 2004

The Legacy of William Lyon Mackenzie King In Canada

J.D.M. Stewart, Ottawa Citizen, 17 Nov. 2004 When the Bank of Canada unveiled its new $50 bill last month, it seemed that the so-called Famous Five got all of the attention. Today, as the bill finally goes into circulation, perhaps it is the person on the front of the bill who we should be noticing: William Lyon Mackenzie King. When most Canadians think of Mackenzie King -- if they do at all -- it is usually about his crystal balls, his obsession with his mother,