Roundup: Talking About History

Selections From an Interview With Du Daozheng

Related Article: Party Elder Still Jousts With China's CensorsOn the making of Zhao Ziyang’s memoir: The English title is ‘Prisoner of the State.’ I wrote the preface for the Chinese version...The book was written based on the narration recorded by Zhao. It involved two parts, first was recording his remarks, the second was taking transcription from the tape. I was not familiar

Steven Lubet: Remembering the roots of a real Civil War

[Steven Lubet is a professor of law at Northwestern University. His most recent book is "The Importance of Being Honest: How Lying, Secrecy and Hypocrisy Collide with Truth in Law" (NYU Press 2008).] American political discourse has gotten increasingly nasty over the past 10 months, with brutal rhetoric spilling from talk radio to town hall meetings to the very halls of Congress. When anti-government protesters openly carry loaded weapons at rallies and Texas Gov. Rick Pe

Edwin Black: Iraq--The Cradle of Civilization was Actually the Cradle of Commerce

[Edwin Black is the author of Banking on Baghdad--Inside Iraq's 7,000-year History of War, Profit, and Conflict (Dialog 2008), from this article was excerpted.] When the last Ice Age receded, some 10,000 years ago, some peoples migrated to the marshy plain between the Tigris and the Euphrates. This land, later known as Mesopotamia—or “the land between the two rivers”—is now modern Iraq. It became precious to the world as “the cradle of civilization.” Of course, the very

Matt Welch: 1989 ... Ignoring the Most Liberating Moment in History

[Matt Welch is editor in chief of reason.] On August 23, 1989, officials from the newly reformed and soon-to-be-renamed Communist Party of Hungary ceased policing the country’s militarized border with Austria. Some 13,000 East Germans, many of whom had been vacationing at nearby Lake Balaton, fled across the frontier to the free world. It was the largest breach of the Iron Curtain in a generation, and it kicked off a remarkable chain of events that ended 11 weeks later with the righ

Tze M. Loo: Shuri Castle's Other History: Architecture and Empire in Okinawa

by Tze M. Loo

[Tze M. Loo is assistant professor of history at the University of Richmond. She wrote this article for The Asia-Pacific Journal.] The Ryūkyū Kingdom Festival (Ryūkyū ōchō matsuri), organized and sponsored by the Shuri Promotion Association (Shuri shinkōkai), is a fixture on Okinawa Prefecture’s cultural and tourist calendar.    

Antony Beevor: Hitler's Jaws of Death

[Antony Beevor is the author of “D-Day: The Battle for Normandy” and “The Fall of Berlin 1945.”] THE assertion by American researchers that Hitler might have escaped from Berlin because a skull fragment in a Moscow archive was not his but a young woman’s is rich in paradox. Stalin went to great lengths in 1945 to conceal the fact that Hitler’s body had been identified by pathologists working for Smersh, the Soviet military counterintelligence agency. Stalin even misled his own comma

Ben Johnson: Bring Back the Duels?

For weeks, the Left has lectured conservatives on the importance of decorum and civility, warning of mythical incitements that could lead to assassination. But this week a writer for the chief publication of the Left, Nation magazine, went on TV to tell Congressional leftists it was OK to equate opponents’ positions with the Holocaust and offered as normative the murder of Alexander Hamilton. Ed Schultz, host of MSNBC’s “The Ed Show,” asked John Nichols of Nation and Jonathan Alter

His Soul Goes Marching On: The Life And Legacy Of John Brown

In 1860, John Brown was at one and the same time the most despised and deified man in the United States. Born in the small New England town of Torrington, Connecticut, mere months after the birth of a new century in 1800, he died on the gallows in Charles Town, (West) Virginia in 1859, on the eve of civil war. In four short years, he went from being a little known sheep farmer and wool dealer to one of the most famous (or infamous) men in the country. John Brown became a household n

Svetlana Savranskaya and Thomas Blanton: A Different October Revolution: Dismantling the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe

[Thomas S. Blanton is Director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University in Washington D.C. Dr. Svetlana Savranskaya serves as the Archive's director for its cooperative projects with Russian archives and institutes and editor of the Russian and East Bloc Archival Documents Database.] Twenty years ago today, crowds of East German demonstrators took to the streets in Leipzig starting their own October revolution that would bring down the Berlin Wall a month lat

David Rogers: The lost Senate

[David Rogers is Senior Congressional Reporter for Politico] Thirty years ago this fall, Ted Kennedy was running for president, Robert Byrd ruled the Senate floor as majority leader and a boyish Max Baucus had already jumped ahead of his freshman class by securing a seat on the powerful Finance Committee. At West Point, Army Capt. Jack Reed resigned his commission to enter Harvard Law School. In Brooklyn, state Assemblyman Chuck Schumer, Flatbush’s version of a young Ly

David Rogers of Politico interviewing Bob Dole

[David Rogers is Senior Congressional Reporter for Politico] Former Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) spent five terms in the Senate, serving from 1969 to 1996, including more than 10 years as majority or minority leader. He sat down with POLITICO’s David Rogers to discuss the chamber. Here are edited excerpts.Senate temperament When I first came, it was more subdued: A member didn’t rush out on the floor the first day and make some flaming speech or get up and

Jon Talton: Tales of Two Cities: What Chicago and Charlotte Say About the Future of America

[Jon Talton is a journalist and author living in Seattle. He writes the “On the Economy” column for the Seattle Times and is proprietor of the blog Rogue Columnist.] Sometimes disparate events bring portents (and sometimes not). I read the news about Chicago failing in its bid for the 2016 Olympics and the management malpractice at Bank of America and reached one conclusion: America will build no more great cities. Chicago became a great city despite barriers that would

Christian Davenport and Allan C. Stam: What Really Happened in Rwanda?

[Christian Davenport is a professor of peace studies, political science and sociology at the University of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute, as well as director of the Radical Information Project and Stop Our States. Allan C. Stam is a professor of political science at the University of Michigan. He is the recipient of the 2004 Karl Deutsch award, given annually by the International Studies Association to the scholar under the age of 40 who has made the greatest contribution to the study of internat

David Neiwert: 'Is Conservatism Brain Dead?' If Jonah and Glenn are the best they've got, the answer is yes

[David Neiwert is a freelance journalist.] Steven Hayward asked a key question this weekend: "Is Conservatism Brain Dead?" The key paragraph was this: About the only recent successful title that harkens back to the older intellectual style is Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism," which argues that modern liberalism has much more in common with European fascism than conservatism has ever had. But because it deployed the incendiary f-word, the boo

Sam Wineburg & Jack Schneider: Why Benjamin Bloom Got it Wrong When it Comes to History

The magic of Bloom’s Taxonomy, that familiar classification system for levels of thinking (and hence learning objectives), was that teachers could close their eyes and picture it. And with a little help from entrepreneurial consultants, they didn’t need to close their eyes at all—posters of color-coded pyramids became a standard part of classroom decor. The taxonomy was lean and intuitive, but the image of the pyramid gave it staying power. “Knowledge” formed the wide and stable base. “Evaluatio

U.S. Unemployment: A Historical View (Interactive Graphic)

[Click here to be directed to interactive graphic] Track the national unemployment rate since 1948 -- the first year in which the government provides data that can reliably be compared with the current rate. Numbers are seasonally adjusted.

Nadeem F. Paracha: A more investigative look at Islam's early history needed?

[Nadeem F. Paracha is a cultural critic and senior columnist for Dawn Newspaper and Dawn.com.] There is an informative debate show on a local private channel called Alif. The show is mostly about the various philosophies of Islam and their place in Pakistan and rest of the Muslim world. A moderator usually invites up to four intellectuals every week, with two of them usually being ‘moderate’ in outlook while the other two guests hold a more conservative view on the discussed topic.

Doug Ireland: Tepid Apology to Gay Genius

[Doug Ireland is a veteran political reporter covering both sides of the Atlantic. He is currently the U.S. correspondent and columnist for the French political‑investigative weekly Bakchich, and international affairs editor for Gay City News, New York City's largest LGBT weekly newspaper.] Gay mathematical genius Alan Turing, considered the father of modern computers and a national hero in Britain for breaking the Nazis’ Enigma code and other German military ciphers and thu

Heidi Tagliavini: Lessons of the Georgia Conflict

[Heidi Tagliavini, a Swiss diplomat, led the E.U. investigation into the 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia.] A year ago, the European Union helped mediate an end to a war that left 850 Georgians (including South Ossetians) and Russians dead and 138,000 displaced. Then, for the first time in its history, the E.U. created an independent fact-finding commission to determine what went so badly wrong and how to avoid a repetition. I was honored to be chos

Joan Walsh: Reading "The Clinton Tapes," thinking about Obama

[Joan Walsh joined Salon in 1998 to become their first full-time news editor, and succeeded the irreplaceable David Talbot as editor in chief in February 2005.] I need a break from the rhetorical outrage beat. I was going to write about the Newsmax columnist who all but advocated a military coup to bring down Obama, then I was pondering a post about Rep. Alan Grayson's claim that the GOP health reform plan amounts to if you get sick, "die quickly." But I'm tired of overhea