Roundup: Talking About History

Carl Mirra: The Battle over Radical History, Part 2

[Carl Mirra is Associate Professor of Social Studies in the Ruth S. Ammon School of Education at Adelphi University. He is author of The Admirable Radical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent with a foreword by Howard Zinn (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2010).] I am the author of the biography, The Admirable Radical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent, 1945-1970, that was nominally reviewed by John H. Summers in “What Politics Does to History” (TNR online July 19, 2010). T

Jesse Lemisch: The Final Word on Radical History

Editor's Note: This letter was submitted to New Republic 7/20 but not published [Jesse Lemisch is Professor Emeritus of History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York.] As another historian of the Left, I have had my disagreements with Staughton Lynd about issues around scholarship and activism for more than forty years."Who Will Write a Left History of Art While We Are All Putting our Balls on the Line?" I inquired of Lynd

Stephen Schwartz: History Corrupted in Islamic Textbook

[Stephen Schwartz is the author of The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Saud from Tradition to Terror and The Other Islam: Sufism and the Road to Global Harmony.] The state of California, a major player in the American textbook market, introduces its students to Islam in the seventh grade. For this purpose, the California State Board of Education has recommended the use of, among others, a world history textbook entitled History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, issued by the Te

Warren Kozak: A Hiroshima Apology?

[Mr. Kozak is the author of "LeMay: The Life and Wars of General Curtis LeMay" (Regnery, 2009).] For the first time since the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Japan 65 years ago, today the U.S. ambassador to Japan will attend the official commemoration ceremony at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. The U.S. ambassador has always declined the annual invitation, but this year is different. President Barack Obama decided to acknowledge the event with the presence of a high

Daniel Bruno Sanz: Sixty-five years after Hiroshima, the nightmare of nuclear war haunts us still

[Daniel Bruno Sanz is a journalist and author of Why the Democrats Will Win in 2008: The Road to an Obama White House.] A spectre is haunting the United States: the spectre of nuclear attack without nuclear war. Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Iran, Pakistan and North Korea, capable state and shadowy non-state actors contemplate flattening an American city with a device smuggled into the United States at one hundred possible ports of entry. It would have no return address. The scenarios o

Bruce McQuain: I Have Little Sympathy for the Japanese on this Subject

[Bruce McQuain is a retired infantry officer with 28 years service who blogs regularly at QandO.net on politics and BlackFive.net on military affairs.] It is the annual Hiroshima remembrance in Japan and the usual cries of "outrage" and demands for an “apology” fill the air. My father fought against the Japanese in WWII on Saipan, Leyte and Okinawa. I have studied the war in detail. I’ve been particularly interested in the planned invasion of Japan.

Jane Braxton: Coming of Age with Hiroshima's Mourning

[After teaching at Wakayama University, Jane Braxton Little earned a Harvard M.A. in Japanese cultural history.] ...I might not have noticed the woman with the cropped hair and ill-fitting gray silk dress if a cameraman hadn't zoomed in on her. She was stooped, seated in a cobblestone courtyard on folded legs before a black-and-white family photograph flanked by vases of golden chrysanthemums. In my eyes she looked old but she could have been middle-aged, a young mother on Aug. 6, 1

The Economist: Life of the Party

THE Chinese Communist Party, having celebrated 60 years in power last year, is gearing up for another big jamboree. On July 1st 2011, it will turn 90 years old. Details of the festivities are beginning to trickle out. John Woo, a Hong Kong director of action films such as “Mission: Impossible II” (starring Tom Cruise), is said to have a hand in a blockbuster being shot to mark the occasion. The makers, knowing how to pull the crowds (and please the party), are calling it, “The Great Exploit of B

Greg Mitchell: U.S. Sends Envoy to Hiroshima for First Time -- But Use of Bomb, Then and Now, Still Defended

[Greg Mitchell writes the popular Media Fix blog at The Nation, where this first appeared this week. He is co-author with Robert Jay Lifton of "Hiroshima in America."] Sixty-five years after the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the bomb is still very much with us, and controversy continues to swirl over the decision to obliterate the two Japanese cities -- sparked this time by President Obama's decision to send a U.S. envoy to Hiroshima, for the first time, for th

Kenzaburo Oe: Hiroshima and the Art of Outrage

[Kenzaburo Oe, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994, is the author, most recently, of “The Changeling.” This article was translated by Deborah Boehm from the Japanese.] ...At the annual Hiroshima Peace Ceremony on Friday, this year marking the 65th anniversary of the dropping of the atom bomb, representatives from Britain, France and the United States planned to be in attendance, for the first time. This is a public event at which government leaders give speeches, but

Jonathan Tobin: Hiroshima, Obama, and Truman

[Jonathan Tobin is executive editor of COMMENTARY.]Today’s ceremony commemorating the 65th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima had something new: the presence of the U.S. ambassador to Japan. Never before had America sent an official participant in the annual memorial to those killed in the world’s first atomic attack. That this should occur during the administration of Barack Obama is no surprise. No previous American president has been at such pains to apologize for what

Stanley Kutler: 65 Years After Hiroshima: Truman’s Choices

[Stanley Kutler is the author The Wars of Watergate (Norton), Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes (Free Press), The American Inquisition: Cold War Political Trials (Hill & Wang), and numerous other books and articles.] “Stuff happens,” Donald Rumsfeld infamously said to explain why some of his plans in Iraq went awry. But it does not just happen by chance—rather, stuff happens because of conscious, deliberately executed decisions. And sometimes it happens when a decision is made

Stan Katz: Get Right With History

[Stan Katz directs the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School.] My historian friend Morty Horwitz of the Harvard Law School faculty is fond of saying that those who abuse history by using it selectively to prove a point, are "looking for their friends in history." This sort of instrumental use of history is common, especially when it is by nations to falsify their pasts. This is why so many countries try to control the

Jeffrey Wasserstrom: Stalking Charlie Chan

[Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, the Editor of the Journal of Asian Studies, and the author, most recently, of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know(published in April by Oxford University Press). A co-founder and regular contributor to

Michael A. Bellesiles: Teaching Military History in a Time of War

Editor's Note: The Chronicle, in response to questions raised in the blogosphere, launched an investigation of this article and determined that the student had"fabricated several details in the story" and that"Mr. Bellesiles said he was saddened that his student had altered the details of a personal tragedy and that he regretted that he had unknowingly passed on a story that was not accurate." [Michael A. Bellesiles is a historian and adjunct lecturer in hi

Robert B. Townsend: What Do We Know about History in the Schools?

[Robert B. Townsend is Assistant Director, Research and Publications of the American Historical Association.] A colleague recently asked what, if any, information is available about history at the K–12 level. The sad answer is—not much. But there a few resources that provide helpful clues. The Department of Education is the primary source of information, particularly through their occasional analyses of the transcripts of graduating high school seniors. The most recent

Chris Hedges: Why the Feds Fear Thinkers Like Howard Zinn

[Chris Hedges, whose column is published Mondays on Truthdig, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.] On Monday I will teach my final American history class of the semester to prison inmates. W

Daniel Walker Howe: Missouri, Slave or Free?

[Daniel Walker Howe, winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America 1815–1848 (Oxford 2007), is the Rhodes Professor of American History Emeritus at Oxford University and Professor of History Emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles.] On February 13, 1819, 35-year-old Congressman William Cobb unfolded his six-foot frame from his chair in the chamber of the Old Brick Capitol building in Washington, D.C., and locked his gray eye

Bruce Fein: The Myths That Made an Empire

[Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer and international consultant with Bruce Fein & Associates and The Lichfield Group. This essay is adapted from American Empire: Before the Fall, published by Campaign for Liberty.] From the late 1940s to the end of the Cold War, U.S. presidents interceded everywhere in the world in an effort to contain or to defeat the USSR. No country was too small for the United States to believe its alignment with the Soviet Union would be pivotal to Amer

Stan Katz: Walter F. Murphy, a Hero of War, and of Scholarship

[Stan Katz directs the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School.] Adria and I traveled to Washington the night before last so that we could make it to the Administration Building of Arlington National Cemetery by 8:30 a.m. yesterday morning for the interment of the ashes of our friend Col. Walter F. Murphy, USMC ret. As any of you who have visited Arlington will recognize, the Cemetery is an awesome place, with its row upon row of