Roundup: Talking About History

August 6, 2004

A.N.Wilson: Why I Turn to Poets to Understand History

A.N. Wilson, in the Daily Telegraph (London) (Augus 2, 2004):... Having done not much else for years except read historical books about the 20th century, I am in awe at the scholarship and industry of the many authors I have read, but, in general, I am less impressed by their sense of perspective, by their take on events. Neither the dons nor the popular historians weighing in at 700 pages know much about distillation. Even clever writers seem to be terribl

August 6, 2004

The 90th Anniversary of World War I Provokes a New Interpretation in Germany

Charles Hawley, in the Christian Science Monitor (Aug. 2, 2004):In 1961, historian Fritz Fischer shocked Germany with his book, "Germany's Grasp for World Power," which asserted that Kaiser Wilhelm II was largely responsible for the outbreak of World War I. To a population that had grown up viewing the war as defensive, Mr. Fischer's book was widely rejected. Now, public opinion

August 6, 2004

Colin White: Trafalgar Myths

Colin White, in the London Independent (July 29, 2004):[Colin White is one of Britain's leading experts on Nelson. He is director of Trafalgar 200 for the National Maritime Museum and will be publishing two books in 2005, Nelson: The New Letters' and Nelson: The Admiral']Where is Trafalgar? When visitors to the Royal Naval Museum's Tra- falgar Experience' in Ports-mouth are confronted with this question in a multi-choice computer quiz, a surprising numbe

August 6, 2004

Christopher Geist: The Myth of the Militia in the Revolutionary War

Christopher Geist, in the journal of Colonial Williamsburg (Autumn 2004): Before the nineteenth century was more than a couple of decades old, certainly by the fiftieth anniversary of 1776, the United States had come to regard the veterans of its revolution with a sort of wistful romanticism. An emerging American popular culture developed a vision of the common soldier of that war which more or less ref

August 4, 2004

Nicholas Kristof: As Scholars Begin to Subject the Koran to Critical Scrutiny, Some Howl

Nicholas D. Kristof, in the NYT (Aug. 4, 2004): "The virgins are calling you," Mohamed Atta wrote reassuringly to his fellow hijackers just before 9/11.It has long been a staple of Islam that Muslim martyrs will go to paradise and marry 72 black-eyed virgins. But a growing body of rigorous scholarship on the Koran points to a less sensual paradise - and, more important,

August 4, 2004

The Convention that Changed the Democratic Party Forever ... 1964

Joshua Zeitz, in American Heritage (June/July 2004): Earlier this year Sen. John Kerry caused a stir by saying that the Democratic party “always makes the mistake of looking South… . Al Gore proved he could have been President of the United States without winning one Southern state, including his own.” Kerry was lamenting the party’s perennial efforts to woo back the Southern s

August 3, 2004

Japan Is Finally Facing the Issue of Slave Labor in World War II

Minami Norio, in Japan Focus (July 2004)As many as 72 wartime forced labor compensation lawsuits were filed between the 1990s and January 1, 2004). In March the Niigata District Court returned a landmark judgment, for the first time ordering the Japanese state to pay compensation in a case concerning the draconian conditions of World War II forced laborersThis is a very busy year for the still unresolved issue of postwar compensatio

August 3, 2004

CRS Study: The History of US Efforts to Improve Intelligence

Richard A. Best, Jr., Specialist in National Defense, Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division, in a new report by the Congressional Research Service (July 29, 2004):Proposals for the reorganization of the United States Intelligence Community have repeatedly emerged from commissions and committees created by either the executive or legislative branches. The heretofore limited authority of Directors of Central Intelligence a

August 3, 2004

J. Edgar Hoover's War on Writers

Richard Byrne and Richard Monastersky, in the Chronicle of Higher Education (Aug. 3, 2004): It is rare that literary research begins at a rock-music show, but Claire A. Culleton's work on the FBI and its interest in prominent literary figures began at a concert by David Baerwald, a Los Angeles musician whose 1986 album, Boomtown (made with David Ricketts under the name David and David), is a cult classic in ro

August 2, 2004

How the Media First Missed the Story of DNA's Discovery

Dennis Overbye, NYT News Service (August 2, 2004): Just exactly when the readers of The New York Times first heard about the double helix is a mystery, and there is a lesson in that. If journalism is the first draft of history, as the saying goes, then it’s often a terrible draft. A case in point happened in 1953, when Francis Crick, a graduate student at Cambridge University, and D

July 30, 2004

The Germans' Infatuation with Cowboys and Indians

Allan Hall, in the London Times (July 30, 2004): IT IS hardly the Wild West -in fact the site used to be a part of the East and the only natural sand comes from a gravel pit 30 miles away. But tomorrow Silver Lake City will be inaugurated as a place where Germans can feel at home on the range. Nowhere in the Western world, outside of America itself, is the cult of the cowboy so firmly entrenched as it is in Germany. Doctors, lawyers, car mechanics, t

July 30, 2004

In Berlin They're Dusting Off Nazi Relics People Were Afraid to Show

Philip Blenkinsop, in the Australian Advertiser (July 31, 2004):LONG considered an ugly Nazi relic, a half-destroyed concrete fortress in Berlin has become an unlikely addition to the German capital's tourist map. Since April, regular guided tours have taken curious visitors into the vast World War II structure to see the turret interiors and the effect of two failed attempts to blow it up after the war. It is a part of a growing trend in Germany to show a

July 30, 2004

Roger W. Smith: Teaching About Genocide

Roger W. Smith, in the Chronicle of Higher Education (July 30, 2004):[Roger W. Smith is a professor emeritus of government at the College of William & Mary and a former president of the Association of Genocide Scholars.]For 20 years, I taught a course on genocide: What is "genocide," why does it happen, who is responsible for it, a

July 28, 2004

The Dramatic Turn in Physics After the End of the Cold War

Dennis Overbye, in the NYT (July 27, 2004): When I was a young man, no two dates could have seemed more distant and unconnected than July 16, 1945, and July 20, 1969. The first, marking the day the initial atomic explosion shattered the dawn at Alamogordo, N.M., belonged to World War II, a conflict so ancient that it might as well have been fought by a previous race. The second date,

July 28, 2004

How Economists Are Measuring Body Parts and Rewriting the History of Man

From the Chronicle of Higher Education (July 28, 2004): A glance at the summer issue of "Social Science History": Taking the measure of ourselves If you think economics has become hopelessly abstract and disconnected from human experience, you may not know that some scholars in the field spend their time measuring dusty, 900-year-old femurs. Dozens of economic historians are eng

July 25, 2004

Historians as TV Celebrities ... The New Sex?

Jan Dalley, in the (London) Financial Times, writing about a new book, History and the Media, ed. by David Cannadine (July 10, 2004):History is the "new rock 'n' roll". It is the "new gardening". It is even, according to Dawn Airey when leaving her job as chief executive of channel five, the "new sex". Taylor Downing, an independent television producer and one of the contributors to this collection of essays from some of Britain's

July 23, 2004

The Fight Over India's History Textbooks Could Become a Political Issue

Scott Baldauf, in the Christian Science Monitor (July 16, 2004): ...Last week, the allies of the newly elected Congress government, the Communist Party of India, called for yet another rewrite of Indian history, this time with a broader view of India's many cultures instead of focusing on the religion of the majority. The root of this historical conflict runs deep into the very definition of India itself. Is India essentially a secular country, where many relig

July 23, 2004

The Demise of Letter Writing ... And Its Consequences

Historian Tristram Hunt, in the Sunday Times (London) (July 18, 2004): Following the Sotheby's auction of James Joyce's delightfully filthy mailings to Nora Barnacle ("My sweet little whorish Nora, I did as you told me, you dirty little girl..."), academics have warned that the current generation's love letters are in danger of being lost to technological advance. With so much personal information stored on electronic devices and with e mails and te

July 23, 2004

A New Television Technique Recreates Scenes from History that Were Never Filmed ... But Look As If They Were

Jamie Wilson, in the Guardian (July 19, 2004): Adolf Hitler bends down to look at the map laid out before him on the oak table. His piercing eyes stare intently as a general points a black-gloved hand to show troop movements on the eastern front. As the camera pans and the Fuhrer leans on his right arm to get a better view there is a blinding orange flash followed by a ball of smoke as the picture blurs. It is the documentary-maker's ultimate fantasy: never-before-se

July 23, 2004

There's More to Boston Politics than Kennedy or Kerry

Noel C. Paul, in the Christian Science Monitor (July 22, 2004): There's more to Boston politics than John Kerry and the Kennedys. Now, as the city becomes America's political center for a brief moment next week, historians and others are digging through the past to glean insights into a nation's birth. What they're finding is forcing a reassessment of how the city shaped US politics - and how the past may echo in pronouncements from the podium next