Roundup: Talking About History

October 18, 2004

The Mad Mad World of Textbook Adoption

Chester Finn and Diane Ravitch, at the website of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (Sept. 29, 2004): Statewide textbook adoption, the process by which 21 states dictate the textbooks that schools and districts can use, is fundamentally flawed. Textbook adoption distorts the market, entices extremist groups to hijack the curriculum, enriches the textbook cartel, and papers the land with mediocre instructional materials that cannot fulfill their important education mission. The

October 16, 2004

It's Hard to Believe the Losses the Iraq National Library Sustained

Howard LaFranchi, in the Christian Science Monitor (Oct. 14, 2004): It's taken months of removing soot, tackling water damage, and reorganizing, but readers and researchers are back at Iraq's National Library.Nearly a year and a half after one of Iraq's chief repositories of historical record was looted and burned, surviving archives and manuscripts are being cleaned and catalogued - while the direct

October 16, 2004

When Bad Nazi Doctors Prescribed Good Healthy Remedies

Tim Radford, in the Guardian (Oct. 14, 2004):[What has medicine learned from the Nazis?] In the 1920s, German scientists correctly picked up on x-rays as a possible source of genetic damage. In the same decade they also launched a huge campaign against tobacco, condemning it as a "plague" and "lung masturbation", according to Robert N Proctor, the historian, in his book The Nazi War on Cancer. The catch is that these scientists were euge

October 15, 2004

A Historian Complains that People Don't Take His History of Beer Seriously

Peter Monaghan, in the Chronicle of Higher Ed (Oct. 15, 2004):... contemporary attitudes toward inebriation mean that "it's hard for people to take the study of alcohol consumption seriously," says Richard W. Unger, a professor of history at the University of British Columbia and the author of Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (University of Pennsylvania Press).Mr. Unger says such attitudes stem

October 13, 2004

Discovery Channel Series To Explore Decisions From The Oval Office

Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times, 12 Oct. 2004 President Bush says the presidency is hard work and that the most important decisions are often not politically popular. Sen. John F. Kerry replies that the president is devious and stubborn, most notably and tragically when he is wrong. Both combatants should find comfort in"Decisions That Shook the World," a three-part Discovery Channel series that, starting tonight, dissects presidential decision-making at its most crucial and

October 13, 2004

U.S. Government's Undemocratic Elements, Rooted In History, Plague Politics Today

Christopher Reed, The Business Times Singapore, 12 Oct. 2004 The United States is always urging other nations to embrace its form of government. But although it is the world's oldest constitutional democracy - formed more than 200 years ago when some important countries of today did not even exist - not one foreign state has ever adopted the American system. The reasons for this are simple, though they require a knowledge of history. Because the US form of democracy was decided

October 13, 2004

Past Presidential Ballots With Two Attorneys

Tony Mauro, USA TODAY, 11 Oct. 2004 It probably should have come as no surprise that Democratic candidates John Kerry and John Edwards would more than hold their own in the recent debates against President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Kerry and Edwards are both lawyers, and the thrust and parry of debating, challenging, questioning and defending should be second nature to them. Yes, among the stark differences between the two tickets in the election of 2004, here is one you might n

October 13, 2004

Section Of Berlin Wall Reconstructed For Tourists

Unsigned, The Irish Times, 11 Oct. 2004 Germany: The Berlin Wall returned to the German capital last week like a bad sequel. Berliners watched in disbelief as the wall rose from the dead before their eyes, days before they celebrate the 15th anniversary of its demise writes Derek Scally in Berlin. A 200-metre stretch of the wall has been reinstated at the notorious former border crossing, Checkpoint Charlie - this time for the tourists. "We want to remember the victims of t

October 13, 2004

Dutch War Record In Spotlight Over Anne Frank

Ian Bickerton, Financial Times (London, England), 11 Oct. 2004 The Netherlands has been plunged into a painful re-examination of its past following calls to award Dutch citizenship posthumously to Anne Frank, the teenager whose war-time diary is the most widely read document to emerge from the Holocaust. Politicians, historians and the media are struggling to address the issue following her nomination for a television vote next month to decide the greatest Dutch person of all ti

October 13, 2004

Michelangelo's David Measures Up

Unsigned, The Australian, 11 Oct. 2004 Rome: An anatomy professor yesterday gave Michelangelo an A-plus for his masterpiece David, despite one small flaw: a missing muscle in the statue's back. University of Florence anatomy professor Massimo Gulisano, working with haematology professor Pietro Bernabei, said their measurements of the statue also debunked long-held notions that the 4.1m-high hunk of marble was out of proportion. "Some say the feet, the hands are out of propo

October 13, 2004

Cromwell's Brother-In-Law Designed Space Chariot

Steve Connor, Independent on Sunday (London), 10 Oct. 2004 More than 300 years before the Soviet Union launched its Sputnik satellites and American astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped on to the Moon, England had its own ambitious space programme. It came in the shape of a 17th-century clergyman who drew up plans for a spaceship powered by wings, springs and gunpowder, a leading science historian will reveal this week. According to Professor Allan Chapman of Oxford University, it wa

October 13, 2004

Mark Carnes: Making History Come Alive

Mark Carnes, in the Chronicle of Higher Ed (subscribers only) (Oct. 8, 2004):Teachers often forget successful classes but find their failures indelibly imprinted in their minds. I clearly recall one first-year seminar from nine years ago, on masterpieces of the human imagination."What," I asked,"are we to make of Plato's attempts to define justice?" A chill descended. Noses burrowed into The

October 9, 2004

Juan Cole: What's Wrong with David Horowitz's Demand for Ideological Diversity at Universities

Juan Cole, at his blog (Oct. 4, 2004): Graham Larkin of Stanford has penned an important article arguing against David Horowitz's sinister proto-Stalinist social engineering project of"balancing" universities ideologically. See also my "Are Professors Too Liberal?". Larkin's essay is especially good in pointing out that there are no obvious evaluation mechanisms fo

October 8, 2004

Spain Seeks Answers In Its Arab Past

David Sharrock, The Times (London), 06 Oct. 2004 The eyes of Abdul Aziz al-Babtain filled with tears as he walked beneath the horseshoe arches of the Mezquita, one of Islam's greatest architectural jewels, and said:"When the West consider the Arabs, they should think of this." Six months after the Madrid bombs, when Islamist extremists murdered 191 train passengers, Spain is reopening the debate over its rich Moorish history in a search for answers to why it became a target.

October 8, 2004

Peasant's Life Saved By Medieval Brain Surgery

Nigel Hawkes, The Times (London), 06 Oct. 2004 A skull reveals how sophisticated early medicine could be, says Nigel Hawkes A PEASANT on the wrong end of a violent assault 1,000 years ago had his brain surgeon to thank for his survival. The skull, unearthed from a medieval cemetery at Wharram Percy, near Malton in North Yorkshire, shows unexpected sophistication in cranial surgery in Anglo-Saxon times. Simon Mays, skeletal biologist at English Heritage's Centre for Archaeo

October 8, 2004

Victorian-Era Time Capsules Discovered In Scotland

Angie Brown, The Scotsman, 06 Oct. 2004 Three Victorian time capsules holding secrets about John Knox's House in Edinburgh were found yesterday in the foundations of a neighbouring church. The bottles, which have been sealed since the 1850s and hold dozens of scrolls, were discovered in a stone chamber by workmen building in the foundations of Murray Knox Church at the site of the former Netherbow Centre in the Royal Mile. Although the large glass jars are yet to be opened

October 8, 2004

Who Killed Alexander The Great?

Steve Connor, The Independent (London), 04 Oct. 2004 He Conquered most of the known world and created the biggest empire in ancient history. Yet Alexander the Great's sudden death at the age of 32 has been a mystery for centuries. Some experts say he died of malaria, others suggest a bout of typhoid caused by tainted food, or chronic liver poisoning brought on by his bacchanalia. But the latest theory suggests he was the victim of a plot by his wife, Roxane. She is said to have

October 8, 2004

Abortion's Connection With Idea Of Evil In History

Edward J. Richard, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri), 03 Oct. 2004 The leadership of the Catholic Church knows that abortion has always been around, just as there has always been adultery and murder. But, society's approach to abortion is always a matter of grave concern, and it has become more so with every passing day as the number of abortions grows upward of 40 million. Catholics are concerned about the damage such evil does to mothers, to others and to the societies of the world

October 8, 2004

King's Nobel Left Atlanta Ambivalent

Jum Auchmutey, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 03 Oct. 2004 [Editor's Note: This year the Journal-Constitution is examining the evolution of civil rights in the South over the past six decades. This week's story is one part of that series. Perhaps this excerpt will pique further exploration by specialists or general readers .] The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was half-asleep in a hospital bed when he found out he'd won the Nobel Peace Prize. Exhausted by a heavy speaki

October 8, 2004

British Secretly Kept In Post-World War II, French Camps

Jon Henley, The Guardian (London), 04 Oct. 2004 The government of Charles de Gaulle held hundreds of foreigners, including at least three Britons, in an internment camp near Toulouse for up to four years after the second world war, according to secret documents. The papers, part of a cache of 12,000 photocopied illegally by an Austrian-born Jew, reveal the extent to which French officials collaborated with their fleeing Nazi occupiers even as their country was being liberated. T