Roundup: Talking About History

July 23, 2004

Garry Wills: Bill Clinton's Memoir ... His Tragedy Revealed

Garry Wills, in the NY Review of Books (August 12, 2004): So far, most readers of President Clinton's book seem to like the opening pages best, and no wonder. Scenes of childhood glow from many memoirs —by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Henry Adams, John Ruskin, John Henry Newman, and others. It is hard to dislike people when they are still vulnerable, before they have put on the armor of whatever career or catastrophe lies bef

July 22, 2004

Joseph Ellis: The State of Biography Today

Joseph Ellis, in Historically Speaking, the bulletin of the Historical Society (June 2004): What is the current status of biography within the historical profession? I would say it is a bastard, or perhaps an orphan periodically adopted as a welfare case by history or English departments. The hegemonic power within the historical profession for the last thirty

July 22, 2004

Michael C.C. Adams: The Necessary Historian, or Why Academics Should Engage with Popular Culture

Michael C. C. Adams, in Historically Speaking, the bulletin of the Historical Society (June 2004): ... Some would say that the late Stephen A. Ambrose is the finest model of a historian writing for the public at large. Ambrose did fine work but, toward the end, his books had difficulties (beyond plagiarism). First, he came gravely close to ancestor worship, a pro b l e m also coloring the work of some baby boomers who, emb

July 21, 2004

David Beito & Charles Nuckolls: What's Wrong with the Southern Heritage Movement

David Beito and Charles W. Nuckolls, in Reason (July 19, 2004): During the last decade, the League of the South and other"southern heritage" groups have fought to preserve the state flags of Georgia and Mississippi. Some members of the League have demanded that universities hire Southern-born professors. Others have promoted antebellum style dances. Nearly al

July 20, 2004

A Scholar Comes to the Defense of Wahhabism ... Claims It's Pro-Women

Michael Ybarra, in the WSJ (July 20, 2004): In the 18th century, Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab and an army of 600 troops showed up at a tomb in the Arabian Desert, where one of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad was buried under an elaborate dome. On his deathbed the prophet had cursed Jews and Christians for turning the graves of their apostles into places of worship. Yet over the 11 centuries since Muhammad founded Islam, Muslims had come to do just that, making the tombs

July 16, 2004

Stanley Kutler: Bill Clinton's Book Is Better than Critics Are Letting on

Stanley Kutler, in the Nation (August 2, 2004):Former Presidents have a difficult, even awkward, role. They cope in different ways, but if the past half-century is any guide, we can be certain of one thing: They write their memoirs. Usually, these are variants of campaign biographies, only now their campaign is for History. Ex-Presidents battle to define their legacy, and their memoir

July 16, 2004

What Howard Zinn Said at the Debut of the WW II Memorial

Howard Zinn, in the Progressive (August 2004):As I write this, the sounds of the World War II Memorial celebration in Washington, D.C., are still in my head. I was invited by the Smithsonian Institution to be on one of the panels, and the person who called to invite me said that the theme would be "War Stories." I told him that I would come, but not to tell "war stories," ra

July 16, 2004

Behind the Australian History Wars ... Middle-Class Careerism?

Michael Connor, in the Australian (July 9, 2004):[Michael Connor is an honorary research associate in the school of history and classics at the University of Tasmania.]JUST now, the Australian past is a dangerous place to be. I pointed out in The Bulletin (August 26, 2003) that there is an error in the historiography of terra nullius (a supposed rationale for settlement without indigenous compensation) -- and I've been made out as a racist right-winger.

July 16, 2004

Is a New Zealand Tribunal Giving the Public a Fictional History?

Diana McCurdy, in the New Zealand Herald (July 10, 2004):Every week, 19 researchers and historians at the Waitangi Tribunal painstakingly unearth new information about New Zealand's disappearing past. As they investigate Maori claims against the Crown, the researchers document aspects of history never before recorded on paper.In an improbable twist, the tribunal - one of New Zealand's more controversial institutions - has become a nursery for the rew

July 16, 2004

Age 87, She Remembers Her Friends' July 20 Plot to Kill Hitler

David Smith and Walter Harris, in the Guardian (July 11, 2004):INGA HAAG vividly remembers shaking the hand of Adolf Hitler - and spending the next five years plotting to kill him. Men close to her were executed after the failed plan to assassinate the Fuhrer 60 years ago next week. But Inga survived and, now nearing 86 and a grande dame of London embassy gatherings, is virtually alone in having memories of the botched attempt to decapitate the Third Reich.

July 16, 2004

Why It Took Germany So Long to Face the Truth About Hitler

Steve Crawshaw, in the (London) Independent (July 13, 2004):For 60 years, Germany has been feeling worried. Worried by its own criminal history, worried by the judgement of others - and worried that the lure of Adolf Hitler is not yet dead. Few Germans would seriously argue that modern German democracy is endangered. None the less, the just- in-case taboos remain in place, above all when it comes to the dictator himself. Elsewhere in Europe, it is easy to

July 16, 2004

It's Time to Teach British Kids About the Wonders of the British Empire

Andrew Cunningham, in the Daily Telegraph (July 14, 2004):[Dr. Andrew Cunningham teaches at Charterhouse.] Fifty years ago, their names tripped off the tongue: Clive of India, Wolfe of Quebec, Captain Cook, Mungo Park, Livingstone and Stanley, Baden-Powell of Mafeking, Kitchener of Khartoum. Every schoolchild grew up knowing these imperial greats. On the wall of most classrooms was a map of the world, one-third coloured pink, as a reminder. Now,

July 15, 2004

The Historian Who Decided to Photograph California Farmworkers

Richard Steven Street, in the Chronicle of Higher Ed (July 16, 2004): [Richard Steven Street is a journalist and historian. This article is adapted from his book Photographing Farmworkers in California, just published by Stanford University Press. He is also the author of Beasts of the Field: A Narrative History of California Farmworkers, 1769-1913 (Stanford University Press, 2004).]

July 15, 2004

Antonio Burr: My Famous Ancestor Was No Villain

Antonio Burr, in the Los Angeles Times (July 11 2004): In 1826, my great-great-grandfather, Robert Dimsdall Burr of Philadelphia, left the United States and traveled to Chile, where he settled on a remote southern island to make his fortune. But even though I was born and grew up in South America, I knew from a very young age that I was part of an extremely old North American family

July 15, 2004

It's too Soon to Say That Reagan Brought Down the Soviet Union

Bill O'Brien, an attorney in Oklahoma City, in the McAlester News-Capital (July 13, 2004): When the Chinese Premier Chou en Lai was asked what were the long term effects of the French Revolution of 1789, he replied that"it is to soon to tell." A similar caution may be in order when one considers efforts to determine what was responsible for the American victory in the Cold War with the Soviet Union, a conflic

July 10, 2004

'Traditionalism's' Anti-Democratic and Fascistic Origins

From the New York Times (July 10 2004): The Western world is decadent. Its emphasis on individualism is corrupt. Its materialism is dangerous. Its vision of modernity reflects not progress but regress. The West will destroy itself. But if it doesn't, its destruction should be helped along. True salvation can be found only by returning to ancient disciplines and beliefs. Such views may not seem totally unfami

July 9, 2004

History (and Historians) in the Hands of a Screenwriter

From the Los Angeles Times (calendarlive.com edition) July 9 2004: On a recent bright, muggy morning in Manhattan, the screenwriter David Franzoni was reclining in a low-slung chair in the tapestry-strewn barroom at the Ritz-Carlton hotel, across from Central Park, talking about history. Franzoni, who writes big clanging period pictures like"Gladiator" and"Amistad," was wearing jeans, an open-collared shirt and a loose jacket, and waving about a mop of thick black-gray hair (the las

July 9, 2004

Students for Academic Freedom Issue Year-End Report

From studentsforacademicfreedom.org (July 9 2004): In its first academic year of operations, Students for Academic Freedom has become a nationwide campus movement dedicated to promoting intellectual diversity and to removing political partisanship from the classroom. SAF has inspired legislators in at least ten states and the U.S. Congress to take up the Academic Bill of Rights. Its websit

July 5, 2004

Vice-President Cheney's Remarks at D-Day Museum

From the Federal News Service (July 1 2004): VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Thank you. (Applause.) Thank you all very much. Thank you for that warm welcome. And, General, thank you very much for that introduction. It's always great to see General Kelley, a man who has given so many years of dedicated service to America. Of course, now he's retired from active duty. But you don't want to make the mistake of calling him an ex-Marine - - there is no such thing. And, of course, P. X. is s

July 5, 2004

Catholic Church Historians Face Dilemma

From the Los Angeles Times (July 5 2004): When beloved priests are revealed to be child molesters, Roman Catholic parishes, schools and dioceses face an uncomfortable choice: to remove existing tributes to the clerics and erase glowing references in local histories -- or explain to victims and critics why they continue to honor men who also were pedophiles. This issue"taps into something that is very difficult for we humans to understand -- the tension that lies between the