Culture Watch

Is the Super Bowl Un-American? Too Bad We Can't Ask TR

What would TR think of the Super Bowl? He'd hardly be expected to say it de-lighted him! As a father he tried to discourage his sons from playing college football. As a public commentator he denounced professional sports, as he did in this essay published in the North American Review in 1890, a decade before he was elected to national office. In America the difference between a

Rejoinder to Daniel Pipes: Fighting for Freedom of Speech

by Eric Foner and Glenda Gilmore

"Why do American academics so often despise their own country while finding excuses for repressive and dangerous regimes?" So asks Daniel Pipes, self-appointed arbiter of acceptable speech and founder of Campus Watch, "a project to monitor, assess, and improve Middle East Studies in America." Pipes recently included us in a list of six "Professors who Hate America." His column, published online at

Peace on Earth? Why Not?

by Ruth Rosen

EVER SINCE I was a little girl, I've wondered what it would take to end war. It's probably why I became a historian: I wanted to understand what drives truly profound social change. As a child growing up in the shadow of the atomic bomb, I used to pray every night, "Let there be no war," but no one seemed to be listening. No surprise, then, that I spent a decade peacefully protesting the Vietnam War. But I'm not a pacifist; I do believe in (the rare) just war and

TR: Man for All Seasons

by HNN Staff

Six times last week Teddy Roosevelt was mentioned in the New York Times, three times on the op ed page. An odd coincidence? Hardly. We may be entering a period of reform, which naturally plays to Teddy's strengths, though he wasn't actually as fervent a supporter of campaign finance reform as people imagine, as pointed out in these pages some time ago (see Media Watch: The NYT Falls for the TR Myth ). But what we th

Since the End of Communism the U.S. Has Moved to the Right: The Reason Why

by Michael Parenti

For years U.S. political and economic leaders saw themselves in mortal combat with communist nations for the allegiance of peoples at home and abroad. The pressure of being in competition with an alternative economic system set limits on how thoroughly Western leaders dared to mistreat their own working populations. Indeed, pains were taken to demonstrate how much finer life was for workers under capitalism. Time and again, the argument was made that U.S. workers

Medical: Breast Cancer Prevention ... History of a Mistaken Approach

by Reimert Thorolf Ravenholt, MD MPH

Breast cancer has remained the foremost cause of cancerous death of U.S. women during the past century for those not smoking, despite much-publicized early detection campaigns with aggressive surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and anti-hormone therapy. Unfortunately, the early detection and aggressive treatment of breast cancers has failed to achieve progressive reduction in national breast cancer death rates. By contrast, prevention of fatal u

Books: Max Boot's The Savage Wars of Peace

by Victor Davis Hanson

WHEN WE THINK of our wars, what come naturally to mind are the great conflicts, the landmark battles, and the intrepid names: the Revolutionary War and World War II, Gettysburg and Iwo Jima, Grant and Sherman, Pershing and Patton. Less well known is an entire parallel universe of conflict that was just as pivotal in protecting American interests and lives. Our"small" wars involved equal courage and risks, and saw soldiers every bit as bold and competent as a Stonewall Jackson or Matthew Ridg

The West: George Catlin and Native Americans in the West: An Apologist for Their Way of Life

by Keith Miller

The revisionist, sometimes disaffected, historians of the late twentieth century, especially of the American West, have sadly misinterpreted, if not disparaged outright, the paintings of many, probably most, artists of the nineteenth-century's trans-Mississippi frontier. That narrow-minded assessment, which in many ways culminated in The West as America exhibit at the National Museum of American Art in 1991, portrayed such laborers on canvas as George Catlin (1796-1872) as not much mo

Ezra Pound --- Traitor/Poet

by Derek Alger

As John Walker, the so-called Taliban Yank, fades from the front pages, and Hanoi Jane of Fonda family fame becomes a footnote superseded by celebrity, the controversy over Ezra Pound and his actions during World War Two remains frozen in time -- was he a great poet or a traitor to his country?A patriotic debate over a poetry prize, one that was awarded in 1949 with the blessings of a literary panel appointed by the Library of Congress? Sounds hard to believe, but in its tim

The West: The Cave-in-Rock on the Ohio River

by Keith Miller

From early in the nineteenth century boaters traveling downstream between Shawneetown (Gallatin County) and Golconda (Pope County) were fascinated by Cave-in-Rock (Hardin County), known in those early days as Rock and Cave, or in more colorful language, as the"House of Nature." This cave from a bluff on the north side of the Ohio, as it had Native Americans for centuries before, beckoned those who sought a brief respite and/or temporary shelter from the elements in

America's Three Million Muslims: Who Are They?

by Daniel Pipes and Khalid Durán

Our respective bookshelves groan under the weight of books bearing titles like Islam and the West, The Future of Islam and the West, and The Islamic World and the West. What is striking about these books - all quite recently written and published - is the anachronism of their geographic premise. With millions of Muslims now living in the West, especially in North America and Western Europe, the old dichotomy of Islam and the West exists no more. This presence of Muslims in the West has profound

"A Few Pebbles Picked up Along the Ocean Shore:" Some Stones I Have Gathered

by Keith Miller

Leo Lesquereux (1806-1889), the greatest paleobotanist of the nineteenth century, if not in Europe, then certainly in America, to which he had emigrated from Switzerland in 1848, held to the tenets of Lutheranism all his life. Humble, as one should be before God and man, Lesquereux has left to us a modest assessment of his remarkable accomplishments, especially concerning the study of fossils from the Carboniferous coal measures of Pennsylvania, but from the coal seams of several othe

The Color Line: Remembering Paul Robeson

by George Beres

During my 40 years in college athletics, I learned how pervasive prejudice against athletes who were black once was. Because of the prodigious talents Paul Robeson brought to areas of American life beyond sports, his story should be remembered today, when black athletes have come to be dominant and honored figures in sports that once demeaned their race.Robeson, remembered by many as a great musician on stage and in film, first became football's greatest player as a lineman f

The West: "With a Draw From Either Hand" ... Gunslingers of the Old West

by Keith Miller

To this day my favorite motion picture remains the western classic Shane (1953), directed by George Stevens, with a fine cast, including Alan Ladd in the title role, as the gunfighter, who comes in the end to defend the homestead rights of the small farmers in a scenic Wyoming setting, against Jack Wilson, as played so well too by Jack Palance, dressed all in black and wearing two guns. Opposed by Shane in the climactic gunfight in the rustic-looking saloon toward the m

Books: Sam Roberts's The Brother: The Untold Story of Atomic Spy David Greenglass and How He Sent His Sister, Ethel Rosenberg, to the Electric Chair

by Barron H. Lerner

As an aficionado of the Rosenberg case, I greatly enjoyed Sam Roberts's new book, The Brother: The Untold Story of Atomic Spy David Greenglass and How He Sent His Sister, Ethel Rosenberg, to the Electric Chair. As a historian, I was intrigued by how he chose to tell his story and document his research. Others might have structured the book differently, but perhaps less compellingly.The Brother is the latest word on the infamous trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenb

How to Become a Patriot in Three Easy Lessons

by Matthew Dennis

On October 26, President George W. Bush signed into law an anti-terrorism bill, dubbed by Congress"The U.S.A. Patriot Act of 2001." Why such a name? What is"patriotic" about it? What is American patriotism, anyway? What does it mean to be a patriot?The term, patriot -- one who unselfishly promotes the well-being of his country -- was rare in the English language before 1680. At the time it was used especially to designate one who supported the rights of his country against

Books: Bill Ayers's Fugitive Days: A Memoir and Ronald Radosh's Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left, and the Leftover Left

by Kenneth Heineman

In August 2001 Beacon Press's publicity machine geared up for the release of Bill Ayers's memoir, Fugitive Days."Gonzo [anti-] Journalist" Hunter S. Thompson heralded the arrival of"A wild and painful ride in the savage years of the late sixties. A very good book about a terrifying time in America." Oral historian and radio fixture Studs Terkel said of Ayers's tome,"A memoir that is, in effect, a deeply moving elegy to all those young dreamers who tried to live decently in an i

Books: David McCullough's John Adams

by Edith Gelles

Editor's Note: The following review first appeared November 6 on H-Shear, a list serve run by the University of Michigan under the general name, H-Net.In addition to being a great athlete, my swim coach Cindy is one of the smartest women I know. About ten years ago, Cindy talked me into running with her on alternate mornings--cross training is important, she said--so three mornings a week, Cindy and I hoof it together for about an ho

The West: From the Mighty Mississippi to the California Gravel: With Emigrants Across the Great West

by Keith Miller

The inspiration for this essay comes from June Carter Cash's Press On, compact disc of Risk Record Group/Small Hairy Dog (1999) with beautiful renditions of such greats as"Diamonds in the Rough," written by A. P. Carter,"Gatsby's Restaurant," by June herself and Rosie Carter, and"I Used to Be Somebody," composed by June alone. June, who married Johnny Cash in 1968, is one of three daughters of Mother Maybelle (Addington) Carter. The latter, who died in 1978, was one of a talent

The West: Buffalo Hunting on the Great Plains: Promoting One Society While Supplanting Another

by Keith Miller

The Buffalo Bill Historical Center at Cody, Wyoming, displays an-oil-on canvas painting (ca. 1888) by the great Albert Bierstadt, which he titled almost prophetically"The Last of the Buffalo." The painting depicts a solitary Indian spearing a buffalo with a lance from the back of a rearing white horse."Almost prophetically" is the right choice of words too, because by the date of that painting, the slaughter of the bison (perhaps the better word for the buffalo) by both Native America