Roundup: Talking About History

February 20, 2004

Diane Ravitch: The Language Police

Diane Ravitch, in the WSJ (Feb. 13, 2004): While writing"The Language Police," I could not figure out why New York State had gone so far beyond other states in punctiliously carving out almost all references to race, gender, age and ethnicity, including even weight and height. In June 2002, the state was mightily embarrassed when reports appeared about its routine bowdlerizing on its exams of writers such as Fran

February 20, 2004

Diane Ravitch: States Should Drop Textbook Reviews

Diane Ravitch, in the Austin-American Statesman (Feb. 18, 2004): The nation has come to expect a lot of laughs and outrage whenever Texas is engaged in the regular process of deciding which textbooks to buy (or"adopt") for public schools across the state. In fact, schoolchildren in Texas and throughout the nation would be far better served if Texa

February 19, 2004

Special Issue: US News & World Report Devoted to the History of Exploration

Samantha Levine, in a Special Issue of US News devoted to the history of exploration (Feb. 23, 2004):There's the Magellan spacecraft, the first to thoroughly map Venus. There's a Magellan mutual fund, a Magellan healthcare insurance company, and dozens of other businesses and products all named in honor of the Portuguese explorer known as the first man to circumnavigate

February 19, 2004

The History Channel's Standards Are too Loose

Dorothy Rabinowitz, in the WSJ (Feb. 19, 2004):Can there be a way to prepare one's mind for the spectacle now before us, in which the History Channel explains its worthy reasons for airing a film back in November -- part of the 40th anniversary of JFK's assassination -- identifying Lyndon B. Johnson as the criminal responsible for John Kennedy's murder? We c

February 17, 2004

The Vinland Map ... And the Debate Goes On

Guy Gugliotta, in the Wash Post (Feb. 16, 2004): When it surfaced in 1957, it was too good to be true: a purported 15th-century world map depicting an island to the far west labeled Vinilandia Insula -- the fabled Vinland -- proof positive, it seemed, that Norse explorers had reached North America long before Columbus.

February 17, 2004

Harriet Tubman's Star Is Rising

Drew Gilpin Faust, in the NYT (Feb. 15, 2004): The Post Office has issued not one but two Harriet Tubman stamps; the National Standards for United States History have named Tubman as a figure who should be familiar to students by the fifth grade; Google lists more than 90,000 entries under her name; Amazon.com offers more than 1,200 results in

February 17, 2004

The Professor Who Insists John Wilkes Booth Got Away

Bill McCleery, in the Indiannapolis Star (Feb. 16, 2004): Twelve days after killing President Abraham Lincoln, assassin John Wilkes Booth was gunned down inside a Virginia barn. Or was he? Inspired by a coded message written in the late 1860s, a retired Indiana State University professor has spent decades searching for information about Lincoln's assassination. For Ray Neff, that o

February 17, 2004

Lost History: Slavery in California

Deborah Kong, for the Associated Press (Feb. 15, 2004): Californians like to think of their state as a freewheeling, tolerant place, one that entered the Union back in 1850 unbesmirched by the stain of slavery. But Joe Moore says there's just one problem with that sunny vision of the past - it isn't true. Though it was admitted to the Union as a ``free state,'' slavery still exi

February 16, 2004

NYT: History Channel Documentary Implicating LBJ in JFK's Death Was "Harebrained"

Editorial in the NYT (Feb. 13, 2004): The History Channel, an entertainment outlet with a serious name to live up to, has finally agreed to reconsider its"documentary" charging that Lyndon Johnson conspired to have President John Kennedy assassinated. It's about time. The channel initially promoted the show and its ludicrous accusation by darkly announcing that"the roots of the crime lie buried deep

February 13, 2004

The Soviet Union Planned on Going to Mars, too

Steven Aftergood, in Secrecy News, the newsletter of the Federation of American Scientists (Feb. 13, 2004):   Life will be discovered on Mars, the CIA predicted. Unfortunately, it will be communist!   As late as 1989, the CIA estimated that it was "likely" that the soon-to-collapse Soviet Union would undertake a manned mission to Mars. "We believe the Soviets are planning for a manned Mars landing mission some time after the year 2000,"

February 13, 2004

Lewis & Clark ... and Sex

From NPR's Day to Day (Feb. 11, 2004):The journals of Lewis and Clark record that on this day in 1805, the Shoshone woman Sacagawea, who, with her French-Canadian husband, was helping guide the expedition--she gave birth. Officially, the only birth noted by the Corps of Discovery, though some Native Americans have claimed that some of the explorers, including the leaders, fathered other children with tribal women. Historians don't know. But w

February 13, 2004

Franco-American Rivalry Also Extends to Inventions

Edward Tenner, senior research associate of the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian Institution, in US News & World Report (Feb. 16, 2004):A hundred years after the Wright brothers' triumph at Kitty Hawk, the European consortium Airbus announced a milestone of its own--surpassing the American aviation giant Boeing in the number of airliners delivered in 2003. Airbus, based in Toulouse, France,

February 13, 2004

Who Killed Jesus?

Jon Meacham, on MSNBC.com (Feb. It is night, in a quiet, nearly deserted garden in Jerusalem. A figure is praying; his friends sleep a short distance away. We are in the last hours of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, in the spring of roughly the year 30, at the time of the Jewish feast of Passover. The country—first-century Judea, the early 21st's Israel—is part of the Roman Empire. The prefect, Pontius Pilate, is Caesar's ra

February 12, 2004

New Documentary Asks Why Auschwitz Wasn't Bombed

Paul B. Miller, assistant professor of history at McDaniel College, in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscribers only) (Feb. 13, 2004):When does a research project transcend the limits of what the academic establishment considers "legitimate" scholarship? At what point do tenure committees decide that a particular undertaking is "unacceptable"? As an ass

February 12, 2004

Did Slaves Use Quilts to Help Escape Through the Underground Railroad?

Sarah Ives, in National Geographic News (Feb. 5, 2004): Two historians say African American slaves may have used a quilt code to navigate the Underground Railroad. Quilts with patterns named"wagon wheel,""tumbling blocks," and"bear's paw" appear to have contained secret messages that helped direct slaves to freedom, the pair claim. Jacqueline Tobin and Raymond Dobard first posit

February 9, 2004

Jacquelyn Dowd Hall: Do the Surveys Which Show Americans Are Ignorant About History Revealing?

OAH President Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, in the OAH Newsletter (Feb. 2004): In a recent article in the Phi Delta Kappan , education researcher Richard J. Paxton skewers the “pop quizzes” that periodically inspire a round of hand-wringing about “historical illiteracy” among pundits, parents, professors, and politicians alike. College seniors in a 2000 survey, for instance, scored an average of 53 pe

February 9, 2004

Why Americans Still Love Churchill

Elizabeth Olson, writing in the NYT (Feb. 7, 2004): While on a trip to New York in 1895, Winston Churchill, then 21, wrote to his brother that the United States"is a very great country, my dear Jack," adding,"Not pretty or romantic but great and utilitarian." His relationship with Americans, beginning with his Brooklyn-born mother, Jenny Jerome Churchill, was cultivated over visits spanning most of h

February 9, 2004

Nat Turner's Ever-Evolving Image

Felicia R. Lee, writing in the NYT (Feb. 7, 2004): On Nov. 11, 1831, the slave Nat Turner was hanged in Jerusalem, Southampton County, Va., for leading a shocking revolt against slavery. The body count included at least 55 whites, mostly women and children, and was the bloodiest slave rebellion in American history. Dozens of blacks were killed in official or unofficial retaliation. At the time, t

February 7, 2004

The Banality of People Who Are Guilty of Torture

Dan Gardner, writing in the Ottawa Citizen (Feb. 2, 2004):Torture is the most intimate of crimes. The torturer always gets close to his victim, physically and psychologically, sitting with him, like doctor and patient, sometimes drawing so near he can feel the heat of the victim's gasps. The torturer talks with his victim for hours and days. Even for weeks and months. He seeks to know the victim, to find his weaknesses and fears, to

February 7, 2004

It's Religion that Drives Some Countries to Succeed and Others to Fail

Felicia R. Lee, wrting in the NYT (Jan. 31, 2004):Forget investment and savings rates, worker productivity and wage scales to determine which countries will become richer or poorer. What really stimulates economic growth is whether you believe in an afterlife — especially hell. At least that's what two Harvar