Roundup: Talking About History

March 10, 2004

The Greatest Tragedy of Human History Was that We Christians Used the Story of Jesus to Hurt Jews

Roy Peter Clark, senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, in the St. Petersburg Times (March 7, 2004)::To me, the greatest tragedy of human history is not the crucifixion of Jesus. (His death, after all, is a Divine Comedy for us believers.) The tragedy lies in how we Christians have used the story of Jesus to hurt the Jews. This injustice will be visited upon our Jewish brothers and sisters with each viewing of The Passion of the Chris

March 10, 2004

The History Channel Assassinates the Memory of LBJ

David Shaw, writing for the Los Angeles Times (March 7, 2004)Early in my career, I had a city editor -- an otherwise reasonable man, a talented journalist and a good friend -- who nonetheless spun the most astonishingly farfetched conspiracy theories about the assassination of President Kennedy. In one of his more fevered imaginings -- spun over his desk at work and over bourbon and poker in his home -- my friend told a conspirac

March 10, 2004

The Incredible Story of the Bayeux Tapestry

Andrew Bridgeford, author of the new book, 1066: The Hidden History of the Bayeux Tapestry (Fourth Estate); in the London Times (March 6, 2004):For almost a thousand years the Bayeux Tapestry has survived wars, revolution, theft and neglect. Today, it is seen by thousands of visitors every year -a strip of connecting linen panels almost the length of a football pitch that tell in exquisite detail the story of the Norman Conquest. It is one

March 10, 2004

Harry Blackmun Papers: How the Court Handled the Abortion Hot Potato in 1991

Charles Lane, in theWash Post(March 5, 2004):The reputation of the Supreme Court of the United States depends heavily on the public's belief that it is not only an independent branch of government, but almost a world apart -- where, unlike Congress or the presidency, the law, not politics or personality, holds sway. Yet, from the inside, that is not exactly h

March 10, 2004

The Worst British Government of the 20th Century

Daniel Finkelstein, in the London Times (March 5, 2004):Today is the 30th anniversary of Harold Wilson's return to 10 Downing Street for his final two years as Prime Minister. He may have thought it little more than a footnote to his six-year stretch in the 1960s. But his 1974-76 Government deserves a chapter of its own. For it was the worst British Government of the 20th century. In order to appreciate just how bad it was, it is not

March 10, 2004

Why It's Important to Quickly Publish Soviet Archives Related to Stalin's Crimes

Jonathan Brent, in the Chronicle of Higher Education (March 10, 2004):You cannot compromise with revanchists," Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev tells me as we sit and talk in his office at the International Democracy Foundation, in a renovated mansion located on Malaya Gruzinskaya Street in Moscow, not far from the city center. Yakovlev is 80; his gray hair is swept neatly b

March 10, 2004

Women's History Month ... How Women's History Has Been Neglected

Leslie Lindenauer, assistant professor of history and women's studies at the University of Hartford and executive director of the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame, in the Hartford Courant (March 7, 2004): 1872 was seven years after the close of the Civil War, a war that had forced Americans to confront slavery and ponder the meaning of lib

March 10, 2004

William Rehnquist, Historian

From the NYT (March 7, 2004): Twice members of the Supreme Court have played a decisive role in choosing an American president. In the 2000 Bush-Gore race a vote by five justices, including Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, halted a recount of Florida's popular vote, giving the presidency to George W. Bush. The other, lesser-known race was the 1876 contest between Rutherford

March 10, 2004

Have Women Been Written Out of Australia's History by Editors?

Connie Levett, in smh.com.au (March 8, 2004): An instruction to"up the mateship and increase the larrikinism" in an account of Australians in World War I came at the cost of the role women played in the war, says a Sydney historian, Caroline Viera Jones. Likewise, she says, a Henry Lawson poem was tweaked by an editor to endorse mateship at the cost of a woman's reputation. Ms Jones, a

March 10, 2004

Pope Pius XII Didn't Speak Out Against Nazi Treatment of Poland Either

Tracy Early, in the Catholic News Service (March 8, 2004): Pope Pius XII, who was elected to the papacy in 1939 after service as a Vatican diplomat and then secretary of state, should be evaluated in the context of the international situation in which he worked, a Catholic historian said in a lecture March 4. Jesuit Father Gerald P. Fogarty, professor of religious studies and history at th

March 9, 2004

Why Do Dems Lose in the South? Don't Blame Civil Rights

James Taranto, editor of OpinionJournal.com and co-editor of Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House, to be published in June by Wall Street Journal Books; in WSJ (March 8, 2004):Upon signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Lyndon Johnson is said to have told aide Bill Moyers, "I think we have just delivered the South to the Republican P

March 9, 2004

Michael Kammen: Why the Four Seasons Matter So Much to Americans

Michael Kammen, on the subject of his forthcoming book, A Time to Every Purpose: The Four Seasons in American Culture; in the Chronicle of Higher Education(March 8, 2004):...The four-seasons motif arrived in America in the 17th century. Before industrialization, it remained largely derivative from European perce

March 6, 2004

What Gibson Neglects: Jesus' Jewishness

Jay Tolson; Linda Kulman, in US News & World Report (March 8, 2004): ... since the Reformation, a growing number of clerics, theologians, and scholars have worked hard to recover the historical Jesus. To Protestants, this effort was part of the struggle to throw off the "corrupted" misreadings of the Roman Catholic Church and return to the real Jesus. Yet even in the midst of such attempts, a combination of church politics, deeply ingrained prejudic

March 5, 2004

The End of the High School History Term Paper?

Michael Winerip, in the NYT (March 3, 2004): IN 1987, Will Fitzhugh started The Concord Review, a scholarly publication that printed the best high school history research papers in America. His intent was simple: to recognize students who produced high-quality research, to show teachers and students what could be done, and to thereby raise the standard for high school writi

March 5, 2004

Vietnam Vets: The Number Suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Was Exaggerated

Sally Satel, a psychiatrist and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and co-author of the forthcoming One Nation Under Therapy, in the NYT (March 5, 2004): ... just as the press has spent a year comparing the invasion of Iraq to Vietnam, it has begun drawing parallels between today's troops and Vietnam veterans, who are believed to suffer from a high rate of war-related psychiatric disor

March 5, 2004

Are the National Book Awards Biased in Favor of Liberals?

George Shadroui, in FrontPageMag.com (March 5, 2004):Until the mid 1960s, it could be argued, the National Book Awards, a much heralded and sought after honor, was a fair recognition of great writing across different perspectives and genres – poetry, fiction, non-fiction, history, etc. But increasingly since the 1960s, the awards have been an exercise in political

March 5, 2004

Did Marco Polo Actually Visit China?

Yong Tiam Kui, in the New Straits Times (Malaysia) (March 3, 2004):IN his famous travelogue Description of the World, Italian traveller and explorer Marco Polo claimed that he reached China with his father and uncle in 1275, met Kublai Khan and impressed him so much that the Mongol emperor made him a special emissary. He said he was sent on missions throughout China and governed the city of Yangzhou for three years before returning to Venic

March 5, 2004

China's Historical Claim to the Warrior Kingdom of Koguryo Unites Koreans

Khang Hyun-sung, in the South China Morning Post (March 2, 2004):Contradictory historical claims by China and South Korea over an ancient kingdom that ceased to exist 1,300 years ago has led to an unlikely alliance between the two Koreas, with important implications for a future reunified Korea. The warrior kingdom of Koguryo, which for almost a century straddled most of the Korean peninsula and a considerable part of what today is n

March 4, 2004

Why Did Sadat Throw the Soviets Out of Egypt?

Craig A. Daigle, in the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA)(March 2004): The decision by Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat to remove the Soviet military presence from his country during the summer of 1972 has often been viewed as the first step on the road to the October War the following year. By removing the Soviet presence, it has been argued, Sadat was also removing the major obstacle preventing him from engaging in another

March 3, 2004

Were We Patriots or Consumers in 1776?

Emily Eakin, in the NYT (Feb. 28, 2004): In February 1766, taken aback by the violent reaction to the Stamp Act, its latest attempt to impose taxes on the restive American colonies, Britain summoned Benjamin Franklin to Parliament in London. The interview, which lasted several hours, was less than friendly. The Americans, Franklin reminded his interrogators, were voracious consumers o