Roundup: Talking About History

Globe and Mail (Canada): Six Victorian Inheritances We Should Cherish

Canada officially celebrates Monday the birthday of Queen Victoria, a figure who casts a large shadow (not only metaphorically) over the origins of our country. The statutory holiday is our oldest secular observance, established by the Legislature of the Province of Canada in 1845. During Victoria's reign, the idea of Canada took shape, and a nation from sea to sea was established in 1867, with Confederation. There's a good reason Victoria is the most common place name in Canada that is derived from a person's name.

Peter Kornbluh and Marc Cooper: Chile's Buried Secrets

Peter Kornbluh is a senior analyst at the National Security Archive and the author of "The Pinochet File." Marc Cooper is a journalism professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism; in 1973 he was a translator for President Salvador Allende, and lived through the military coup.

Carlin Romano: Here There Is a Why: Primo Levi, Humanist

Carlin Romano, critic at large for The Chronicle Review, is a professor of philosophy and humanities at Ursinus College.

Jonathan Steele: Andrei Sakharov's birthday celebrations are also a Soviet history lesson

Jonathan Steele is a Guardian columnist, roving correspondent and author. 

Simon Akam: Why Don’t the British Teach Their Students About Imperial History?

Simon Akam is Reuters’ correspondent in Sierra Leone. You can find him at www.simonakam.com

Bernard Lafayette Jr.: The Siege of the Freedom Riders

Bernard Lafayette Jr. is a distinguished senior scholar in residence at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.

Yousef Munayyer: Could There Ever Be a Palestinian Gandhi?

Yousef Munayyer is executive director of the Palestine Center. Last weekend, as tens of thousands of unarmed refugees marched toward Israel from all sides in a symbolic effort to reclaim their right of return, the world suddenly discovered the power of Palestinian nonviolence.

John Fea: All Historians Are Revisionists

John Fea chairs the History Department at Messiah College in Grantham, PA, and is the author of Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? A Historical Introduction (Westminster John Knox Press, 2011). He blogs daily at philipvickersfithian.com.

Karl Giberson: The Anointed Leaders of the Religious Right

Karl Giberson, Ph.D, is Vice-President of the BioLogos Foundation (www.biologos.org), founded by Francis Collins to promote harmony between science and faith.

Paul Kengor: Reagan at Notre Dame

Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College. His books include The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism and the newly released Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.

Burt Solomon: Before the McCourts, There was Another Dodgers Divorce

Burt Solomon, an editor at the Atlantic and National Journal, is the author of "Where They Ain't: The Fabled Life and Untimely Death of the Original Baltimore Orioles, the Team That Gave Birth to Modern Baseball."

H. Jackson Knight’s Confederate Invention Unearths Forgotten History of Confederacy

 The formation of the Confederate States of America involved more than an attempt to create a new, sovereign nation—it inspired a flurry of creativity and entrepreneurialism in the South that fiercely matched Union ingenuity. H. Jackson Knight’s Confederate Invention brings to light the forgotten history of the Confederacy’s industrious inventors and its active patent office.

Christopher Hitchens: Red Rosa

Christopher Hitchens is an Atlantic contributing editor and a Vanity Fair columnist.The generally accepted verdict on 20th-century ideology—that its “totalitarian” character eclipses any of the ostensible differences between its “left” and “right” versions—is one that few wish to dispute.

Dominic Sandbrook: President Windsor

Dominic Sandbrook is a British historian and a contributing writer for the New Statesman.

Adam Kirsch: How the Hollywood sign became an American icon

On Sept. 18, 1932, a 24-year-old actress named Peg Entwistle jumped to her death from the "H" in the Hollywood sign.

Bruce S. Thornton: The Wages of Appeasement

Bruce S. Thornton is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He received his BA in Latin in 1975 and his PhD in comparative literature–Greek, Latin, and English–in 1983, both from the University of California, Los Angeles. Thornton is currently a professor of classics and humanities at California State University in Fresno, California.

Glenn W. LaFantasie: The foolishness of Civil War reenactors

Glenn W. LaFantasie is the Richard Frockt Family Professor of Civil War History at Western Kentucky University. He is working on a book about Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant.

Anthony Grafton and Jim Grossman: The Imperative of Public Participation

Anthony Grafton (Princeton Univ.) is the president of the AHA. Jim Grossman is the executive director of the AHA.

Paul R. Pillar: The Forgotten History of the U.S. and Bin Ladin

Paul R. Pillar is director of graduate studies at Georgetown University's Security Studies Program and a former national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia. He is a contributing editor to The National Interest where he writes a daily blog.

Glenn W. LaFantasie: The Foolishness of Civil War Reenactors

Glenn W. LaFantasie is the Richard Frockt Family Professor of Civil War History at Western Kentucky University. He is working on a book about Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant.Last month, the Civil War sesquicentennial began with a bang with a "living history" event in Charleston, S.C., that commemorated the firing on Fort Sumter, the momentous act of violence that started the war.