Roundup: Talking About History

J. Stanley Lemons: Preposterous attack on Providence’s founder

[J. Stanley Lemons is a professor emeritus of history at Rhode Island College.] IT IS AN INTERESTING TURN in the argument over the name of our state when the proponents of dropping “Providence Plantations” think that they have to trash and defame the founder of Providence (“ ‘Plantations’ evokes R.I.’s history of slavery,” by Julianne Jennings, Oct. 15, Commentary). Of course, Roger Williams was no stranger to such attacks from opponents in his own time after he founded

Marylynne Pitz: In 1809, a bizarre burial for a 'mad' general

As American colonists battled for independence, Gen. "Mad" Anthony Wayne captured a British fort in New York at midnight, earning a reputation as a brilliant strategist in the chaos of battle. George Washington rode on horseback to congratulate him in person. Soldiers who noticed his reckless bravery gave him his nickname. Later, the fiery leader trained a fearsome army outside of Pittsburgh in 1792, conquered the Indians and negotiated a treaty with them so t

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship: Texas, the Eyes of Justice Are Upon You

[Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program, "Bill Moyers Journal," which airs Friday nights on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers] On October 13, we lost a resolute champion of the law, a man who left his impact on the lives of untold numbers of Americans. His very name made his life's work almost inevitable, a m

Joan Walsh: When Tim Russert mocked Bill Clinton -- in song

After a week of traveling, I finally finished "The Clinton Tapes," Taylor Branch's book of interviews with Bill Clinton. So better late than never, I hope, I'm going to wrap up my experiment with the blog-review. Tell me if it worked in comments, below. I had a nagging question about whether I should write about the book again, though, and it wasn't laziness; it's that most everything I found remarkable in the second half of the book closely matched my first two blog posts

Lars Brownworth: A Soap Dish That Changed History

[Lars Brownworth is the author of 'Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization.'] This fall marks the 1,341st anniversary of a watershed moment in history—though not likely one you've heard about before. It began with an event that would have been comical if not for the fact that a murder was involved. Even to those living through it, it must have seemed more farcical than ground-breaking. The unlikely instigator was a disgruntled

Ron Chernow: Everyman's Financial Meltdown

[Ron Chernow is the author of “The House of Morgan” and “Alexander Hamilton.”] FOR connoisseurs of financial mayhem, the stock market crash of October 1929, which started 80 years ago this week, still holds pride of place. Like a tautly directed drama, it unfolded with graphic horror at the corner of Broad and Wall Streets, captured in grainy black-and-white newsreels. It capped a stylish era in which well-tailored men and chic flappers set a racy tone for stock investing. To the de

Errol Morris: The Case of the Inappropriate Alarm Clock (Part 1)

[Errol Morris is a filmmaker whose movie "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara" won the Academy Award for best documentary feature in 2004. He has also directed "Gates of Heaven," "The Thin Blue Line," "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control," "A Brief History of Time" and "Standard Operating Procedure."] Republican editors throughout the land were soon rubbing their hands over a dispatch which

Errol Morris: The Case of the Inappropriate Alarm Clock (Part 2)

[Errol Morris is a filmmaker whose movie "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara" won the Academy Award for best documentary feature in 2004. He has also directed "Gates of Heaven," "The Thin Blue Line," "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control," "A Brief History of Time" and "Standard Operating Procedure."] James Curtis, a professor emeritus at the University of Delaware, in 1991 published a revisionist

Joshua B. Freeman Q and A About New York's Working Class

[Following is the third and final set of answers from Joshua B. Freeman, a historian and the author of “Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II.” This week, he has responded to readers’ questions about the history of the city’s unions, labor politics and changing work force.] To what extent was the so-called “hard hat” reaction to Vietnam antiwar protesters spontaneous and to what extent was it the product of a deal worked out between Nixon administration operati

Marlowe Hood: How Galileo and his spyglass turned the world on its head

Galileo's "optick tube" had a meagre 9x magnification and was not even conceived for astronomy. Indeed, when the gadget was first demonstrated, Venetian senators were so smitten with its military potential that they doubled Galileo's salary and awarded him a life tenure in the city-state's most prestigious university. But when, in late October 1609, the 45-year-old Italian mathematician pointed his new-fangled instrument - essentially two lenses aligned in a

Alessandro Rebucci: Mozambique's debt burden in historical perspective

[Alessandro Rebucci is no longer at the IMF. He was a Senior Economist in the World Economic Studies Division of the IMF Research Department till August 2008. Previously he was an economist in the Modeling Division of the Research Department and the Stand-by Operation Division of the Policy and Development and Review Department.] In relation to the approaching Mozambican completion of the enhanced Initiative for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC), Alessandro Rebucci of the Inter

Matthew Whittle: Gov. Charles B. Aycock historical perspective

[Matthew Whittle is assistant news editor for the Goldboro News-Argus] Gov. Charles B. Aycock was a segregationist. On that point there seems to be little debate. However, that's not all the Wayne County native was. He was also North Carolina's education governor -- a fact that Moore seemed to ignore in his attack on Aycock's legacy. "I personally do not approve of some of the things I have read about Gov. Aycock or some other state and fe

Stan Katz: Woody Woo's Princeton

I spent the last couple of days at a Princeton conference organized by Jim Axtell and John Cooper on “new approaches to the educational legacy of Woodrow Wilson.” That will sound to some as a pretty unpromising topic for a conference, but in fact it was quite lively and altogether relevant for anyone concerned with the state of undergraduate education in this country. The conference dealt frankly with problems that confounded Wilson, such as race and gender, two of the challenges

BBC: Exactly 125 years after the Greenwich Meridian line was drawn, how and why did Britain become the centre of time?

At longitude 0° 0' 00", the arbitrary stroke on our maps that passes from pole to pole and bisects the UK, France, Spain, Algeria, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana divides the Earth into east and west, just as the Equator splits it into north and south. This imaginary line now known as the Greenwich Prime Meridian not only allows us to navigate the globe but also keeps the world ticking to the same symbolic 24-hour clock. But it has not always been so. Until th

Richard Lourie: Ghosts of Soviet Past Haunt Russia

[Richard Lourie is the author of “The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin” and “Sakharov: A Biography.”] The Germans lucked out with Hitler. He was so evil, so destructive and so unsuccessful that it was easy to reject him completely. But the Russians were not so “lucky” with Stalin. Tomes have been written comparing the two great dictators, but in the end what matters most are their differences. The main difference was that in World War II, Hitler lost and Stalin won. That

Robert McHenry: John Brown's Body

[Robert McHenry is a former editor-in-chief of Encyclopaedia Britannica and author of How to Know.] We’ve just passed another of those anniversaries that I am wont to write about, this one rather more somber than many. On October 16, 1859, a strange man by the name of John Brown and 18 or 20 followers occupied the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). Their idea was to seize arms for a proposed guerrilla base in the mountains from which freed slaves and the

Joe Nocera: The View From Inside a Depression

[Joe Nocera writes the Talking Business column for The New York Times each Saturday. ] “Dow at 10,000 as Crisis Ebbs” — Wall Street Journal headline on Thursday In January 1931, a lawyer named Benjamin Roth, 38 years old, solidly Republican, a solo practitioner in Youngstown, Ohio, decided to start a diary. Realizing that he was “living through an historic thing that will long be remembered” — as he put it in one early entry — he wanted to keep a record for post

Bob Woodward and Gordon M. Goldstein: The Anguish of Decision ... Lessons of Vietnam

[Bob Woodward is an associate editor of The Washington Post and the author of 14 books, most recently "The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008." Gordon M. Goldstein is the author of "Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam."] Robert McNamara, the former secretary of defense and an architect of the Vietnam War, said it all could have been different if McGeorge Bundy, President Lyndon Johnson's national security adviser, h

Ben Johnson: MLK Was No "Conservative"

[Ben Johnson is Managing Editor of FrontPage Magazine] As much as I hate to take issue with my colleagues here, it is hyperbolic to call Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a “conservative.” It is true King was no New Left radical. He had little use for Malcolm X and in his “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” he famously denounced “the hatre

Kathryn Hadley: The Collapse of Communism in Europe: A Re-examination 20 Years After

Why did communist systems in Europe collapse twenty years ago? A big question. A question that has been repeatedly asked and a question that has been tentatively answered time and time again. It was the question that a panel of six speakers sought to answer yesterday evening at The British Academy. All speakers were present and involved in various ways in the events and through each of their presentations they sought to both recapture the spirit and views of the time and to assess t