Roundup: Talking About History

September 24, 2004

When Presidents Became the Punch Line for Comedy

Ronald G. Shaffer, in the WSJ (Sept. 24, 2004):Times have changed when it comes to the mocking of presidential candidates. During the 1960 election, Art Buchwald found himself on the same podium with then-Vice President Richard Nixon and proceeded to poke fun at the Republican presidential candidate. Later the humor columnist received an irate phone call from his father.

September 24, 2004

Red Baron Brought Down By A Shot Fired The Previous Year

Roger Highfield, THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON), 22 Sept. 2004A HEAD wound suffered by the Red Baron the year before his death was the underlying reason he was eventually shot down, according to a study by neuroscientists. There has been endless speculation over who killed the 25-year-old First World War flying ace but the new study suggests that more credit is due to the British airman who grazed his skull in 1917 than to the Australian gunner who eventually brought him down in 191

September 24, 2004

World War II In The West's Political Imagination

Christopher Caldwell, Financial Times (London, England), 18 Sept. 2004 For two weeks, German newspapers have been charting an approaching storm. Earlier this month, the ruling Social Democratic party saw its vote collapse to 31 per cent in regional elections in the Saarland, where scarcely a decade ago it was winning absolute majorities. More ominous still, the far-right German National party (NPD), which had won no measurable allegiance there since the late 1960s, narrowly missed win

September 24, 2004

Archeologist Naguib Kanawati Profiled For History Detective Work

Brad Clifton, The Daily Telegraph (Sydney, Australia), 18 Sept. 2004 Indiana Jones he's not, but Sydney's Naguib Kanawati knows his stuff. BRAD CLIFTON reports He carries a felt pen and a folder instead of a bull whip and there is no weathered fedora covering his neatly-styled mop of silver hair. He spends most of his time in the library or analysing data on his office computer and has never once needed to dodge a poisoned dart or outrun a rolling boulder. But there

September 24, 2004

Scotland Yard Alleged To Have Killed Rasputin

Karyn Miller, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH(LONDON), 19 Sept. 2004 Rasputin, the Russian monk who became the confidant of Alexandra, the Tsarina, and her husband, Tsar Nicholas II, was killed by a British agent, according to a documentary to be broadcast next month. An investigation into his death in 1916 has concluded that he was murdered not as had been supposed by disaffected Russian aristocrats but by Oswald Rayner, a member of the Secret Intelligence Bureau who was working at the Russia

September 24, 2004

Japan Rewrites Its Manchuria Story

Howard W. French, The New York Times, 19 Sept. 2004 The Japanese-era buildings, built to last in red brick, still peek out, stolid and fastidious, from the shadows of the new Shenyang that is soaring up all about them. ructures like the train station and old post office here are the only physical traces that remain of the imperial period in the 1930 and 40's, when Japan envisioned Manchuria as the springboard for a conquest of all of Asia -- a model colony in an all or nothing

September 24, 2004

"Flip-flopping" In Presidential Elections

Damien Cave, The New York Times, 19 Sept.2004 RICHARD M. Nixon flip-flopped on China. George W. Bush embraced protectionism for the steel industry after preaching free-market principles on the campaign trail. Ronald Reagan failed to remain consistent. In the 1960's he promised not to raise taxes, adding, ''I am in concrete'' for emphasis. Then, when he became the governor of California in 1970, he raised the tax rate and genially laughed it off. ''That sound you hear,'' he told

September 24, 2004

Winston Churchill's Role In The Middle East And Iraq

John Lukacs, The Boston Globe, 19 Sept. 2004 Winston Churchill had a very long political career. Until the 65th year of his life (1939) he had few successes and many failures. Some of these failures were of his own doing, byproducts of his temperament, one feature of which was his rather un-British inclination to impatience. Others were the results of bad luck and/or of his being mistrusted by others. Within the now veritable library of books about Churchill one of the best is"Churchi

September 24, 2004

Picts Wrongly Painted As A Race Of Barbarians

Stephen Stewart, The Herald (Glasgow), 20 Sept. 2004 The Picts, who have been depicted as archetypal barbarians for centuries, were actually a highly sophisticated people with an intimate knowledge of the Bible and Roman classical literature, according to new research. Since they were first described by the Romans, the ancient inhabitants of Scotland have been depicted as illiterate, uncivilised, scantily-clad, promiscuous heathens. However, work by world-renowned art hist

September 23, 2004

Why China and Japan Can't Agree Who Owns the Diaoyu/ Senkaku Islands

Koji Taira, at Japan Focus (Sept. 2004):Which country should the islands called Diaoyu by the Chinese and Senkaku by the Japanese belong to, China or Japan? Currently, these islands are under Japanese control, but China also claims sovereignty over them. When signing the 1978 Sino-Japanese Treaty of Peace and Friendship, then Vice-Premier Deng Xiaoping said: "Our generation is not wise enough to find common language on

September 23, 2004

After Lewis & Clark, the Thousands of Years of Indian History Were Collapsed into a Simple Narrative

Colin Calloway, in the High Country News (Sept. 22, 2004):[Colin Calloway is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News in Paonia, Colorado (hcn.org). He is professor of history and chair of Native American Studies at Dartmouth College.] If American history west of the Mississippi be

September 21, 2004

Why Japan's Invasion of Manchuria Is More Controversial Today than It Has Been in Decades

Howard W. French, in the NYT (Sept. 19, 2004): The Japanese-era buildings, built to last in red brick, still peek out, stolid and fastidious, from the shadows of the new Shenyang that is soaring up all about them.Structures like the train station and old post office here are the only physical traces that remain of the imperial period in the 1930 and 40's, when Japan envisioned

September 17, 2004

Steamer That Triggered Klondike Gold Rush Found Off Alaska's Coast

Randy Boswell, The Gazette (Montreal), 11 Sept. 2004 The ship that triggered the Klondike Gold Rush when it arrived laden with tons of Yukon nuggets at the Seattle dockyards in July 1897 has been discovered off the coast of Alaska. It's being hailed as the state's greatest shipwreck find ever, but this country's history buffs will be equally thrilled about the discovery of the S.S. Portland, the steamer that put a young Canada on the map for much of the world and became a ship o

September 17, 2004

War Of 1812 Seems To Be The Truly Forgotten Conflict

Ted Mahar, The Oregonian, 10 Sept. 2004 The Korean War is justly called a forgotten conflict, partly because the process of forgetting coincided with the war itself. But for a truly forgotten conflict, the War of 1812 seems the one to beat. Do you know who started it? Do you know why? Can you name two heroes from it? Do you know when it was fought? The History Channel documentary"First Invasion: The War of 1812" answers these questions, insofar as straightforward ans

September 17, 2004

DNA Research Links Scots, Irish And Welsh To North-western Spain

Brian Donnelly, The Herald (Glasgow), 10 Sept. 2004 Celtic nations such as Scotland and Ireland have more in common with the Portuguese and Spanish than with the Celts of central Europe, according to a new academic report. Historians have long believed that the British Isles were swamped by a massive invasion of Iron Age Celts from central Europe around 500BC. However, geneticists at Trinity College in Dublin now claim that the Scots and Irish have more in common with the

September 16, 2004

Robin Lane Fox: Interview About his Role as Advisor to the New Oliver Stone Movie, Alexander

An interview with Robin Lane Fox in Archaeology Magazine (Sept. 14, 2004):At the University of Oxford's New College, Robin Lane Fox teaches Greek and Latin literature, Greek and Roman history, and early Islamic history. He is perhaps best known for his books The Search for Alexander and Alexander the Great: A Biography.

September 16, 2004

David Talbot: The Warren Commission Report 40 Years Later (The Story the Elites Never Believed)

David Talbot, founder of Salon, at Salon.com (Sept. 15, 2004): Forty years after the Warren Report, the official verdict on the Kennedy assassination, we now know the country's high and mighty were secretly among its biggest critics. Once again, we find ourselves in the season of the official report: the 9/11 Commission Report, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report, the S

September 15, 2004

David Horowitz: Bias in the California University System

David Horowitz, at FrontPageMag.com (Sept. 14, 200): A study conducted in 2002 by the American Enterprise Magazine at the request of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture showed that of 394 faculty members whose party registrations could be identified at four University of California campuses (Berkeley, UCLA, San Diego and Santa Barbara), 371 were registered Democrats or Greens, as compared to only 23 Repu

September 12, 2004

The Over-Hyped Parallels Between the War of 1812 and 9-11

Jeff Z. Klein, in the NYT (Sept. 11, 200):. The War of 1812 has lain mostly dormant in the American imagination for generations, its memory invoked only rarely, as in Johnny Horton's 1959 hit version of"The Battle of New Orleans" ("we fired once more, and the British kept a-comin'") or in periodic retellings of the story of"The Star-Spangled Banner." Otherwise, the war remains an

September 10, 2004

The Meeting Point Between History and Hope

Victoria Safford, in the Nation (Sept. 2004):In his book On the Rez, Ian Frazier tells a story about South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation. In the fall of 1988 the Pine Ridge girls' basketball team played an away game in Lead, South Dakota. It was one of those times when the host gym was dense with