Roundup: Talking About History

William Underwood: Wartime forced labor and the future of Japan-China-Korea Relations

[William Underwood, a Japan Focus coordinator, is an independent researcher of reparations for forced labor in wartime Japan. He can be reached at kyushubill@yahoo.com.]HNN note: The following is the introduction to "Assessing the Nishimatsu Corporate Approach to Redressing Chinese Forced Labor in Wartime Japan", Kang Jian, Arimitsu Ken and William UnderwoodThe Nishimatsu Settlement Controversy

Jonathan Tremblay: From Jesus' Foreskin to Mussolini's brain: History's Relics

[Jonathan Tremblay is a historian and is currently an intern for the History News Network] Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of the Italian dictator and “former showgirl turned MP” as the BBC describes her, has claimed that some blood and parts of her grandfather’s brain have been stolen to be sold over the Internet. It was allegedly heisted from Milan’s Policlinico Hospital where Mussolini was autopsied 65 years ago. Somewhat out of outrage but mostly out of violent curiosity, wo

Walter Isaacson: How Einstein Divided America's Jews

[Walter Isaacson is the president and chief executive officer of the Aspen Institute and the author of Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007).] Albert Einstein’s first tour of America was an extravaganza unique in the history of science, and indeed would have been remarkable for any realm: a grand two-month processional in the spring of 1921 that evoked the sort of mass frenzy and press adulation that would thrill a touring rock star. Einstein had recently burst into global stardom

Randall Stephens: Rebunking the pilgrims

[Randall Stephens is an associate professor and department chair of History at the James R. Cameron center for History, Law and Government in Massachusettes] As Americans prepare to stuff their faces with turkey, pie, turkey pie, and all manner of bread-related foods, and clock in millions of hours of TV football viewing, it’s worth considering the Pilgrims, originators of America's holiday. (I was just thinking that a Martian would have a very hard time understanding how football a

W. Barksdale Maynard: Mr. Wilson's University

[W. Barksdale Maynard has served as a lecturer at the Environmental Institute at Princeton University. His fourth book is Woodrow Wilson: Princeton to the Presidency (Yale University Press, 2008).] One drizzly weekend last month, a conference convened at Princeton University to consider "The Educational Legacy of Woodrow Wilson." Up front sat the organizers, the historian of higher education James Axtell—an emeritus professor at the College of William and Mary and visiting

Barron H. Lerner: Did cancer kill FDR?

Is it conceivable that Franklin D. Roosevelt's doctors knew he had widespread cancer in 1944 and still let him run for his fourth term as president? New research makes this astounding argument—and claims that the physician who supposedly told the truth about Roosevelt's death in 1970 was in fact continuing the deception he had helped create. FDR may have died more than 60 years ago, but these questions still matter. Not only does presidential health—and the public's right to know ab

Praveen Swami: One year after the Mumbai bomb attacks, the threat is as great as ever

[Praveen Swami is a journalist based in New Delhi.] "I have been warning Pakistan," announced Palaniappan Chidambaram, the Indian minister of home affairs, this month, "not to play games with us. If terrorists from Pakistan try to carry out any attacks in India, they will not only be defeated, but will be retaliated against very strongly." In the spectacular attacks in Mumbai a year ago tomorrow, 10 terrorists despatched by Lashkar-e-Taiba, an extre

Jessica B. Harris: You Say Potato, I Say Yam

[Jessica B. Harris, an English professor at Queens College and a contributing writer for the Web site Zester Daily, is the author of the forthcoming “High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey From Africa to America.”] ON Oct. 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln declared the final Thursday of November to be a national holiday of Thanksgiving. That came just over a year after Lincoln made another more historic proclamation, one that directly concerned my family and their future: the Emancipa

Mark Bauerlein: Who (or What) Killed JFK?

[Mark Bauerlein is professor of English at Emory University. His books include Literary Criticism: An Autopsy (1997) and Negrophobia: A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906 (2001).] My father heard the news from a guy in the next office. He was a graduate student in math at Berkeley, and his neighbor stepped inside the door and said, "Well, that's it -- that's the second one they've killled for pushing civil rights." The assassination had just happened, information was

Pearl Duncan: Ancestors-Pirates Had Bloodthirsty Treasure Adventures

[ The writer is completing a nonfiction book about using genealogy and DNA to find and confirm specific ancestors in the American Colonies, medieval Europe and medieval Africa. She is also finishing a novel about ancestors in the Indies.] We are fascinated by narratives that aid in understanding who we are. From literary works such as Charles Frazier’s “Cold Mountain” inspired by his ancestor who walked home from the Civil War, to popular genres and entertainments

Barron H. Lerner: Did Franklin D. Roosevelt actually die from cancer?

[Barron H. Lerner, M.D., Ph.D., and professor of medicine and public health at Columbia University, is the author, most recently, of When Illness Goes Public: Celebrity Patients and How We Look at Medicine.] Is it conceivable that Franklin D. Roosevelt's doctors knew he had widespread cancer in 1944 and still let him run for his fourth term as president? New research makes this astounding argument—and claims that the physician who supposedly told the truth about Roosevelt's death in

David R. Stokes: This Thanksgiving, Please Pass The Brisket

[David R. Stokes is a minister, columnist, author, and broadcaster. He lives in Fairfax, Virginia.] Ever hear of Gershom Mendes Seixas? Well, he might just be the forgotten hero of Thanksgiving. Our national Thanksgiving narrative is rich with stories about proclamations, gatherings, meals, traditions, football, and of course, the obligatory pardoning of a turkey by the president of the United States. Schoolchildren rehearse that day long ago when the Plymouth pilgrims

TNR Slideshow: Famous Filibusters

The first filibuster occurred in 1790, when senators from Virginia and South Carolina tried to prevent the U.S. capital from relocating to Philadelphia. The blocking measure didn't last long, and Congress was moved from New York to Philadelphia, temporarily, while a new federal city was constructed on the Potomac River.

Jeffrey Herf: Hate Radio, a Review of 'Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11'

[Jeffrey Herf is a professor of modern European and German history at the University of Maryland at College Park and author of The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust (Harvard University Press, 2006). His latest book is Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, published this month by Yale University Press.] Between 1939 and 1945, shortwave radio transmitters near Berlin broadcast Nazi propaganda in many languages around the world, including Arabic througho

David P. Colley: How World War II Wasn’t Won

[David P. Colley is the author of “Decision at Strasbourg: Ike’s Strategic Mistake to Halt the Sixth Army Group at the Rhine in 1944.”] SIXTY-FIVE years ago, in November 1944, the war in Europe was at a stalemate. A resurgent Wehrmacht had halted the Allied armies along Germany’s borders after its headlong retreat across northern France following D-Day. From Holland to France, the front was static — yet thousands of Allied soldiers continued to die in futile battles to reach the Rhi

Michael Hiltzik: The world still can learn from Keynesian economics

[Michael Hiltzik's column appears in the paper on Mondays and Thursdays.] Great crises have a way of reminding us that acting as though we know perfectly well what the future holds almost always leads to disaster. That's especially true in economics, which tends to underscore the murkiness of the real world by dealing out surprises one after another -- booms, crashes, bubbles, you name it. It's fitting, therefore, that the recent economic meltdown has beg

Warren Breckman: A Man of Parts: Jeremy Bentham and dead bodies

[Warren Breckman teaches modern European intellectual history at the University of Pennsylvania.] Colin Dickey’s recent Roundtable offers a fascinating glimpse into the politics of human dissection in early modern Europe through unique situation in nineteenth-century Vienna. There, dissection was not only allowed but increasingly supported by the medical establishment and the state. At Vienna’s General Hospital, the poor could receive health care free of charge, but only on conditio

Simon Schama: China's on-off American romance

[The writer is an FT contributing editor] Finding something American to sell to the Chinese, whether democracy or widgets, has always been a problem. The first merchant vessel to sail from New York to Canton in 1784 was on a tea-buying voyage, but the cargo it had to exchange was ginseng. American ginseng was consumed by the Chinese for its yin: the female properties of cool, while the native product was thought more yang-heavy. A population explosion may have made it difficult for

Frank Gannon: US-Japanese relations 1969

[Frank Gannon won a White House Fellowship and served in the Nixon White House 1971-4. He accompanied RN to San Clemente aboard Air Force One on August 9th and organized the researching and writing of the President’s memoirs, RN.] Forty years ago, on 19 November 1969, RN welcomed Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Sato to the White House at the beginning of what would be a significant few days in the history of US-Japanese relations. Typically, the meeting was the result of long plannin

Andreas Umland: Understanding the Orange Revolution: Ukraine's Democratization in the Russian Mirror

[Dr Andreas Umland is a lecturer in contemporary East European history at The Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt in Upper Bavaria, general editor of the book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society”, and co-editor of the German-Russian journal "Forum for the Ideas and History of Contemporary Eastern Europe".] On November 21st, 2009, Ukrainian democrats will be celebrating the fifth anniversary of the start of demonstrations in Kyiv which led to larger