Roundup: Talking About History

Interview with Susan Seitel: A Historical Perspective On Work-Family

[Susan Seitel is WFC Resources president and founder. One of the nation's leading pioneers in the field, she has been helping companies, organizations and governments transform their culture since 1984.]Casey: When did you first become involved with the work-family or work-life field? At that time, what was the work-family landscape? How about the predominant work-family issues?Seitel: I started back in 1990 tracking work-life on paper every month for our W

Thad Carhart: Imagining the Past in Paris

[Author of Across the Endless River.] To walk in Paris is to walk through multiple layers of the past, more than 900 years of built history that awai

Adam Kirsch: book review, "A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel" doesn't hold up

[Adam Kirsch is a senior editor at The New Republic.] In 1949, a year after the state of Israel was created, its Chief Rabbi visited President Harry Truman in Washington. Isaac Halevi Herzog told Truman that his role in helping the Jewish state achieve its independence was not just a matter of politics and diplomacy; it was a divine mission. "When the President was still in his mother’s womb," Herzog said, "the Lord had bestowed upon him the mission of helping his Cho

Max Blumenthal: The history of modern conservatism starts with R.J. Rushdoony

Max Blumenthal launched his journalistic career with an award-winning exposé of the deaths of hundreds of young women in the Mexican border city of Juárez. More recently, he has specialized in studying and reporting on the religious right and their relationship with the Republican Party. His newly released best-selling book,Republican Gomorrah,is a thorough study of the figures who populate the religious right and who have developed its

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich: Taking issue with Carl Becker's essay, "Everyman His Own Historian"

At the AHA annual meeting in 1931, Carl Becker got a standing ovation for his presidential address, “Everyman His Own Historian.” It remains the most quoted speech in the AHA archive, and it is well worth reading today.1 But it is also a period piece marking the distance between Becker’s world and our own. It begins with a seemingly simple argument: “the essence of history is the memory of things said and done,” and since the memory of things said and done is “essential to the performance

Robert Spencer: The Qur'an: Israel Is Not for the Jews

[Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch, a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (Regnery, 2005) and The Truth About Muhammad (Regnery, 2006).] Editors' preface: Who has rights to the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River? Zionists cite biblical passages in which God awarded them Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, in perpetuity in his covenant with the children of Israel

Vyacheslav Nikonov: Western WWII Amnesia: It Was USSR that 'Saved Humanity'

[Vyacheslav Nikonov is President of Russia's Polity Foundation] Translated By Yekaterina Blinova What a remarkable thing: the more time passes since the Second World War, the more we [Russians] have to explain ourselves. The years have washed away historical memory, substituting it with versions more favorable to others. Now it is said that the USSR unleashed the war and acted as Hitler’s ally, and it's no longer clear who won it. And why is there this idea that Septemb

Nicholas Thompson: Did Henry Kissinger Really Plan ‘An Accident’ for Bud Zumwalt?

Tomorrow, I’ll publish a new book, “The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War.” And on Saturday, the New York Times ran a very nice story about some of the most interesting scoops and pieces of news in the book. I’ve been getting questions about one passage that stuck out for readers: "Mr. Thompson also turned up evidence that suggested that Henry A. Kissinger had an agent follow the daughter of a political rival, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt Jr.

Stephen Hess: America's Top Dynasty?

[Stephen Hess, a senior fellow emeritus at the Brookings Institution, was on the Eisenhower and Nixon White House staffs and advised Presidents Ford and Carter. He is the author of "America's Political Dynasties" and his most recent book is "What Do We Do Now? A Workbook for the President-Elect." ] American public life is saturated with them. Kennedys. Bushes. Clintons. Powerful individuals connected to one another by blood or by marriage who, deservedly or not,

Michael Meyer: The picnic that brought down the Berlin Wall

[Michael Meyer, Newsweek's bureau chief for Germany and Eastern Europe in 1989, is the author of "The Year That Changed the World."] Twenty years ago, on Sept. 11, 1989, the plug was pulled on the bathtub of Soviet empire. At the stroke of midnight, tiny communist Hungary threw open the gates to freedom and the West. Tens of thousands of people surged across the suddenly unguarded border. Scenes of jubilation, of families reunited after decades of captivity i

Boris Johnson: Dr Johnson was a slobbering, sexist xenophobe who understood human nature

[Boris Johnson is Mayor of London.] You know what, I doubt whether he'd even get a column in today's newspapers. No one would dare hire him. If Dr Johnson were writing in modern Fleet Street, his views would be denounced as utterly outrageous. Foreign ambassadors would be constantly on the Today programme, demanding apologies for the insult done to their country. Polly Toynbee would be in a state of permanent apoplexy. Any newspaper that dared to print his views would f

Andrew Roberts: Was Margaret Thatcher right to fear a united Germany?

[Andrew Roberts is a Trustee of the Margaret Thatcher Archive Trust. His latest book is 'The Storm of War'.] "We do not want a united Germany," Margaret Thatcher told President Gorbachev at a lunch meeting in the Kremlin in September 1989, two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall. "This would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the whole international situation and could endanger our security.&

Harold Meyerson: In Wal-Mart's Image

[Harold Meyerson is the editor-at-large at The American Prospect and a columnist for The Washington Post.] The story isn't part of the official Wal-Mart creation epic, but it tells us almost all we need to know about the company's approach to the interests of its employees and the laws of the nation. Around the time that the young Sam Walton opened his first stores, John Kennedy redeemed a presidential campaign promise by persuading Congress to extend the minimum wage to retail work

Richard J. Evans: Why Hitler's grand plan during the second world war collapsed

[Richard J. Evans is a regius professor of modern history at Cambridge University] Two years into the war, in September 1941, German arms seemed to be carrying all before them. Western Europe had been decisively conquered, and there were few signs of any serious resistance to German rule. The failure of the Italians to establish Mussolini's much-vaunted new Roman empire in the Mediterranean had been made good by German intervention. German forces had overrun Greece, and subjugated Y

Rodolfo Jose Bendana Castrillo: Sham American President 'Stains' Nicaraguan History

[Rodolfo Jose Bendana Castrillo is a civil engineer.] We know that the filibuster, William Walker, was a foreigner who trampled upon our sacred homeland, and who came accompanied by mercenary soldiers to conquer this badly-beaten country. It is also known and historically documented that the filibuster William Walker was financed by foreign interests, and that in addition to providing funds for provisioning and transporting them across the ocean to our Central American coast, he cou

Dmitriy Orlov: Truman and Churchill No Better Than Stalin

[Dmitriy Orlov is director general of Russia's Agency of Political and Economic Communications.] Translated By Yekaterina Blinova Everyone knows why on August 6, the bells toll in Japan. This day marks the anniversary of the American atomic bombing of Hiroshima. According to conservative estimates, it killed nearly 150,000 people - civilians. But why do the bells toll in Germany every year - on February 13, at exactly 10:10am? In the victorious spring of '

Jeff Kisseloff: Was Hiss guilty?

"Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America" marks the sixth collaboration between John Earl Haynes, a historian in the Library of Congress's Manuscript Division, and Harvey Klehr, a professor of politics and history at Emory University. All six books examine the influence of the Communist movement in America, mostly by drawing on newly released intelligence files from the former Soviet Union. Their general conclusion is that available Soviet files support certain postwar contentio

Edwin Black: The Holocaust 'Industry' Is More About Money than Memory

[Edwin Black is the award-winning bestselling author of IBM and the Holocaust, and his first book, The Transfer Agreement, now re-released in a 25th Anniversary edition (Dialog Press). He can be reached at www.edwinblack.com. ]

Benjamin Schwarz: Life In (and After) Our Great Recession

[Benjamin Schwarz is The Atlantic’s literary editor and national editor.] Not to be faux-populist about it, but although such matters as the electoral turmoil in Iran, the Bernanke/Lewis he said/he said, and the bloating of the list of Oscar finalists (to take the week of June 21) constitute what Charlie Rose and his knowing ilk like to think of as the national discussion, I suspect that an altogether different set of concerns haunts the commuter driving home, is fumbled over on t

William Rivers Pitt: Eight Years Ago

Does anyone even remember the first eight months of the George W. Bush administration? It was an unmitigated train wreck. One of the last nails in our current economic coffin got hammered in when he gave away the Clinton surplus to his one-percenter buddies with a massive tax cut we couldn't afford and they didn't need. Chinese fighters swatted some of our airmen out of the sky, and George made sure they had Bibles. He laid siege to the separation between church and state with a dead-on-arriva