Roundup: Talking About History

Ian Fletcher: In Praise of Mercantilism (or Why Economic History Isn't Boring)

[Ian Fletcher is Senior Economist of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a nationwide grass-roots organization dedicated to fixing America’s trade policies and comprising representatives from business, agriculture, and labor.]Does economic history hold a giant clue for getting America out of its present trade mess? Yes, because it debunks the idea that free trade is how nations become prosperous. Instead, it shows that nations win at international trade by playing a 400-year-old

Jon M. Sweeney: Happy 400th, King James Bible!

[Jon M. Sweeney is a writer and book publisher living in Vermont. His book, Verily, Verily: The KJV--400 Years of Influence and Beauty was just published (March 1, 2011) by Zondervan.]You may have heard that 2011 marks the 400th anniversary since the original publication of the King James Bible. So what? The KJV (King James Version) is not simply a Bible, it is the Bible that has influenced the English-speaking world more than any other. There are, however, several popular, m

Dr. Howard Markel: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Vaccines

[Dr. Howard Markel, a professor of the history of medicine at the University of Michigan, is the author of “An Anatomy of Addiction,” to be published in July.] As a pediatrician, I was baffled by scientifically baseless attacks on the substances that have tamed smallpox, polio and a host of other deadly and disfiguring diseases, at least in the developed world. But as a historian, I found it even more bewildering to hear speakers claim that government-sponsored vaccines

Lilia Shevtsova: Gorbachev: History Will Be a Fairer Judge

[One of the most respected Russian political analysts. A former director of the Center of Political Studies in Moscow, and currently senior associate in the Carnegie Endowment's Russian Program, she has authored six books, including "Yeltsin's Russia."] Mikhail Gorbachev will turn eighty next week. It is an occasion to look back and ask ourselves questions not only about his own contribution, but also about what happened to us after he left the Kremlin. The an

Stanley Meisler: True to the Peace Corps

[Stanley Meisler, a former LA Times staff writer, was deputy director of the Peace Corps office of evaluation and research. His latest book is "When the World Calls: The Inside Story of the Peace Corps and Its First Fifty Years."] In some ways, the Peace Corps, which celebrates its 50th anniversary Tuesday, is a shadow of what it once was. It had so much pizzazz in the early days that newspapers proclaimed the names of new volunteers as if they had just won Gu

John Yemma: What the Last Doughboy Wanted for Other Veterans

[John Yemma is the editor of the Christian Science Monitor.] One of the last things that Frank Buckles, the last surviving American soldier of World War I, asked was that other veterans not be forgotten when they arrive home. Mr. Buckles, who died Sunday at his home in Charles Town, W. Va., at age 110 survived both World War I (known at the time as "the war to end war") and being held prisoner by Japan during the even worse war that followed it. Too quickly, h

Arthur Herman: Debunking the myths of Desert Storm

[Arthur Herman is the author, most recently, of Gandhi and Churchill. His recent articles for COMMENTARY include "The 35-Year War on the CIA" (December 2009) and "The Gitmo Myth and the Torture Canard" (June 2009).] Twenty years ago today, ground op erations in Operation Desert Storm came to a halt. American arms had won their most dazzling success in two generations, perhaps ever. After five weeks of round-the-clock air strikes, forces under Gen. No

Thomas de Waal: Mikhail Gorbachev ... Three Cheers for the Man Who Did Nothing

[Thomas de Waal is a senior associate for the Caucasus with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His book, The Caucasus: An Introduction, will be published this fall by Oxford University Press.] Sometimes history should recognize the magnificence of politicians who, confronted with a difficult situation, decide to do nothing. The best exponent of this monumental restraint is Mikhail Gorbachev. The achievements of Gorbachev, who turns 80 on March 2, look grea

John H. McWhorter: Do We Really Need Black History Month?

[John H. McWhorter is a City Journal contributing editor.] To feel that something is tired in the idea of Black History Month isn’t, despite what one might hear from some quarters, racist. When Carter G. Woodson founded Negro History Week in 1926, he hoped that the need for such a celebration would gradually recede. For the week to morph into a month did not exactly bear out his wishes, and today, even black people brandish an array of objections to Black History Month. Actor Morgan

Arnold M. Eisen: Presidents and Providence

[Arnold M. Eisen, one of the world’s foremost experts on American Judaism, is the seventh chancellor of The Jewish Theological Seminary. Since his inauguration in 2007, Chancellor Eisen has met with world leaders, engaged in prominent interdenominational and interfaith dialogues, and championed a transformation in the education of the next generation of Conservative leadership.] Presidents' Day coincides this year with the Torah reading that recounts the building and destruction of

Ian Kershaw: Ghosts of Fascists Past

[Ian Kershaw is a historian of twentieth-century Germany. His most recent book is Hitler: A Biography (W. W. Norton & Company, 2010).] A prominent British government minister, Baroness Warsi, herself a Muslim, claimed just recently that Islamophobia has “passed the dinner-table test” in Britain and is seen by many as normal and uncontroversial. She warned of growing intolerance, prejudice and bigotry toward the Muslim faith and its adherents. In reply, some religious and social

Deborah E. Lipstadt: Genocide's Toxic Legacy

[Deborah E. Lipstadt is a professor of modern Jewish history and Holocaust studies at Emory University. This essay is adapted from her book, The Eichmann Trial, to be published next month by Schocken Books.] ...Deep-seated hatreds, whether inculcated from youth or adopted later in life, can lead a seemingly normal person to commit horrendously abnormal acts. The trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the "chief operating officers" of the Holocaust, laid out in full graphic relief

James MacGregor Burns: The Naked Truth of Battle

[Fresh from Williams College’s history program, the author entered World War II as a 24-year-old combat historian, earning four combat medals and a Bronze Star. He would go on to become a leading presidential historian, writing a two-volume biography of FDR, the second book of which won both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. He has also written notable books on John F. Kennedy and the subject of leadership.] Early in July 1944, I joined American forces on the tiny island o

Richard Conniff: What the Luddites Really Fought Against

[Richard Conniff, a frequent contributor to Smithsonian, is the author, most recently, of The Species Seekers.] In an essay in 1984—at the dawn of the personal computer era—the novelist Thomas Pynchon wondered if it was “O.K. to be a Luddite,” meaning someone who opposes technological progress. A better question today is whether it’s even possible. Technology is everywhere, and a recent headline at an Internet hu-mor site perfectly captured how difficult it is to resist: “Luddite in

Daniel J. Sharfstein: A Hero of African American History Whose Story is Forgotten Because His Descendants Decided They Were White

[Daniel J. Sharfstein is an associate professor of law at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White.] His very name hovered on the line between slavery and freedom: Orindatus Simon Bolivar Wall. Orindatus was a slave's name, through and through. It had a Latinate grandiosity that many masters favored for their chattel when Wall was born on a North Carolina plantation in the 1820s, the son of his

Sami Moubayed: Gaddafi ... Mad Dog of the Middle East

[Sami Moubayed is editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine in Syria.] Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was new to the scene when he marched into the Arab summit in Cairo in September 1970, exactly one year after he had staged a successful coup in Libya, at the young age of 27, ousting his predecessor, the ailing King Idriss, aged 80. Dressed in military uniform with a revolver strapped around his belt, the flamboyant young man wanted to come across as an "Arab Che Guevara"

Alvin S. Felzenberg: It’s Not ‘Presidents Day’ ’

[Alvin S. Felzenberg is the author of The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn’t): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game.] We are once again celebrating the nation’s most nondescript holiday. Its legal name remains “Washington’s Birthday.” You would not know that from the ads hawking cars and linen, and from public responses to surveys asking which American president was the greatest. (In a recent Gallup poll, Kennedy, Clinton, and Reagan all placed ahead of Washington in the “h

Clinton Godart: Japan is Right to be Angry at QI Atom Bomb Joke

[Clinton Godart teaches Japanese history at the University of Cambridge. He specializes in modern Japanese intellectual history, philosophy, and history of science. He is currently working on a book on the reception of Darwin in Japan.] Stephen Fry and the BBC seemed to have been caught off guard by a wave of outrage among Japanese people since it featured Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a survivor of both nuclear attacks in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in panel show QI last December. In the programm

Gregory M. Lamb: For President's Day: A new look at Lincoln and slavery

[Gregory M. Lamb is a contributor to the CS Monitor.] Exactly 150 years ago this weekend Abraham Lincoln was slowly making his way to Washington D.C. from his home in Springfield, Ill. Near the end of the trip his train would have to sneak through Baltimore because of fears that Southern sympathizers there might try to assassinate him before he could take office as president. He escaped martyrdom that day, but couldn't avoid John Wilkes Booth's bullet four years later,

Ronald Radosh: The Left and the Rosenberg Case: Historian Staughton Lynd Inadvertently Reveals Their Real Concern

[Ronald Radosh is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at The Hudson Institute, and a Prof. Emeritus of History at the City University of New York.]First, a note about Staughton Lynd for younger readers. In the late 1960’s and early 70’s, Lynd was somewhat of a household name. Life magazine, then the nation’s leading popular newsweekly, had a cover photo of Lynd and the radical activist Dave Dellinger being pelted with fake blood and egg