Recently Published

Mahdism (and Sectarianism and Superstition) Rises in the Islamic World

by Timothy R. Furnish

Muslims praying. Credit: Wikipedia

Middle East Studies Association to Israelis: “Go to the Back of the Bus”

by Alan Luxenberg

A scandalous -- but unreported -- event took place in Washington, D.C. late last year at the Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), a constituent organization of the prestigious American Council of Learned Societies.As is customary at such meetings there were well over 200 panels to discuss a wide range of topics -- historical, political, and cultural -- with four or five scholars presenting different perspectives at each panel. The purpose of such meetings is to provide a forum for these scholars to exchange ideas, present their research findings for critical review by peers, and in general to promote the advance of knowledge. Scholars come from all over the world to participate. All of this is unremarkable but what happened at one particular panel this past December merits public attention.

How a Left-Wing Look at America's "Heroes" Reveals Its Own Ignorance

by Ron Radosh

The Nation magazine is playing a trick on me. I regularly receive a lot of books, since publishers know I review many and they’re hoping I’ll respond by writing up the one they are pushing. Many are conservative books; others histories; others simply by publishers who know I’ve written on a topic that their new book covers.But until now, Nation Books, an imprint of the Perseus Book Group, has never sent me one of the books by any of their left-wing authors. But two days ago, I received a copy of Peter Dreier’s new book, The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame. Dreier is the E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and director of the Urban and Environmental Policy Program at Occidental College, and happens to be one of the main characters of Stanley Kurtz’s new book on Obama’s radical redistributionist plans for a second term (he has an entire section).

What Al Smith Can Teach Mitt Romney

by Michael R. Whitaker

Al Smith 1928 presidential campaign button.Those following Mitt Romney in the news may have noticed the frequency with which the former Massachusetts governor’s name has been linked to former New York governor Al Smith.Eighty-four years ago, Smith was the Democratic candidate in the 1928 presidential election, which he lost in a landslide to his Republican opponent, Herbert Hoover. Looking forward to this November’s contest, more than a few historically-minded journalists have suggested that Smith’s miserable showing might augur something for Romney when he challenges Barack Obama for the presidency in a few months’ time.Why the comparison is relevant is that it allegedly set the precedent for first-of-their-kind religious outsiders seeking the Oval Office, and Smith, the first Roman Catholic in American history to headline a major party’s presidential nomination, saw his campaign wilt under a glare of virulent anti-Catholic hysteria. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (better known as the Mormons), Romney may have to endure something similar, and, we are told, is probably doomed to suffer the same outcome as Smith.

Hiroshima: Truman’s Choices Revisited

by Stanley Kutler

Credit: HNN Staff/NARA.The historical reconstruction of the decision to use the atomic bomb in August 1945 is an interlocking puzzle, revealing a seemingly inexorable choice to use the weapon. The United States had made a bomb and successfully tested it in July, and the scientists, generals, politicians and civilians caught up in events readily supplied the accelerating momentum to a decision: we must use it. Civilian decision-makers anxious to justify expenditures of unprecedented sums of money to develop a weapon designed to end the war offered no resistance.The historical narrative to use the bomb largely derives from the recollections and rationales of President Harry Truman and his civilian and military advisers. For them, the stark choice came down to drop the bomb or invade the Japanese homeland and sustain a “million” American casualties -- an arbitrary, unsubstantiated figure propelled by its own momentum, with apparently no consideration of the potential for Japanese civilian casualties. A small number of scientists raised ethical and moral considerations, but their influence was of no immediate consequence. 

The Nixon Foundation *Did Not* Delay the Opening of the New Watergate Exhibit at the Nixon Library

by Bob Bostock

Nixon Library and Gardens, Yorba Linda, California. Credit: WikipediaNumerous reports about the obstacles the Richard Nixon Foundation supposedly placed in the way of Nixon Library director Dr. Timothy Naftali over the three years it took him to produce a new Watergate exhibit are entirely unfounded. It is time to correct the record. Quite simply, the Nixon Foundation – the private, non-profit foundation that seeks to work with the National Archives to promote the legacy of the 37th president – did not attempt to delay or derail the new exhibit.When the Richard Nixon Foundation turned the Nixon Library over to the National Archives (NARA) in 2007, both parties agreed that the National Archives would produce a new Watergate exhibit to replace the one that had been in place since the Library opened in 1990. They also agreed that the Nixon Foundation would have the opportunity to review and comment on the exhibit as it was being developed. This is consistent with the practice at every other presidential library in the National Archives system.

Mark Twain's Progressive and Prophetic Political Humor

by Walter G. Moss

Mark Twain in 1907. Photograph taken by A.F. Bradley.In the midst of a presidential campaign, with ads (and money to pay for them) flying left and right, what better time to recall Mark Twain? He was our first major stand-up political humorist. On one lecture tour in 1871-72, this author and public speaker/entertainer gave more than eighty speeches. Not only a humorist, he was also akin to a Jewish prophet criticizing his society for not living up to its principles. Thus, a major study of Twain as a radical social critic (by Maxwell Geismar) is entitled Mark Twain: An American Prophet.

Did Monica Lewinsky Really Save Social Security?

by Eric Laursen

Bill Clinton delivers his 1997 State of the Union address. Credit: NARA.After Bill Clinton was reelected president in 1996, he was looking for a domestic-policy issue that would cement his legacy and seal his comeback against a conservative Republican leadership in Congress. The issue he settled on was Social Security. Encouraged by the unexpected shrinkage of the federal budget deficit soon after his second inauguration, he quickly negotiated a bipartisan Balanced Budget Act that aimed to eliminate deficits entirely by 2002.

Protections for the Working Class Have Vanished in America

by Jerome Braun

Abandoned storefront in Washington D.C. The partially obscured graffiti on the door reads "Don't Just Vote Get Active." Credit: WikipediaIn the midst of the political season leading to the 2012 presidential election, it is striking how little discussion there has been on working-class issues, other than the too often banal discussions of how the unemployment rate is too high.. Usually the only solutions offered are that this problem will resolve itself, or a plan to apply the band-aid of unemployment compensation and other palliatives in the short-run, and nothing in the long-run.

What Can Historians Learn from Neuroscience?

by Christopher U.M. Smith

False color image of a human brain. Credit: Wikipedia.There is a flourishing academic interest in the history of neuroscience. An international society, the International Society for the History of the Neurosciences (ISHN) is devoted to its study, publishes a quarterly journal (the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences) and conferences are held each year.But is there a similar interest in the neuroscience of history? Should there be? Can the great accession of knowledge in the neurosciences over the last decades be used to illuminate, to use the words of H.G. Wells, "what happened in history?"

How Does Obama's Personality Stack Up Against FDR's?

by Andrew M. Obritsch

Credit: HNN Staff/Wikipedia/FDR Library.In today’s society, it is common to anoint “the next.” The media has been searching for years to find the “next” Elvis Presley and the “next” Michael Jordan. One such comparison that has arisen in the last few years is the comparison of Barack Obama to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

History Meets Neuroscience

by Daniel Lord Smail

The brain of Charles Babbage, father of modern computing, on display at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. Credit: Wikipedia.The facts are coming in and the truth isn’t a pretty one. It turns out that we’re addicts. All of us.

Defunding Mass Transit is Not Good for the Tea Party, Whatever They May Think

by Tammy Ingram

MARTA train in Atlanta, Georgia. Credit: WikipediaThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s July 31st headline, “Tea Party notches a big win in T-SPLOST loss,” credits the conservative group with the defeat of a ten-year, one-cent sales tax that would have raised an estimated $7.2 billion ($8.5 billion after inflation) for transportation initiatives in metro Atlanta. The article does a better job of inflaming election-year divisions, however, than explaining the reasons behind the failure of the transportation tax.

Jim Downs: Civil War and Emancipation the "Greatest Biological Catastrophe of the Nineteenth Century."

by Robin Lindley

Contraband during the Civil War. Credit: Wiki Commons.January 1, 2013 will mark the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the effective date of the Emancipation Proclamation.We tend to think of the emancipation of African American slaves in the South as a celebratory moment of jubilation and ecstasy. But there is a darker, bitterly ironic side to this triumphant story -- a grim story of neglect and indifference to a vulnerable population of uprooted men, women and children left to negotiate their freedom in a hostile, war-torn, disease-plagued land.

There's No Basis for the Claims that John Punch was "Indentured" -- Or That His Fellow Escapees Were "White"

by Jeffrey B. Perry

Graves dedicated to Jamestown settlers who died in 1607. Credit: WikipediaSheryl Gay Stolberg's article in the New York Times on President Obama's  ancestor John Punch contains important inaccuracies. Ms. Stolberg wrote "In 1640, Mr. [John] Punch then an indentured servant, escaped from Virginia and went to Maryland. He was captured there and, along with two white servants who had also escaped, was put on trial.”There is no basis for the claims that John Punch was "indentured" and that the other two servants were "white."Ancestry.com (in the article Stolberg discusses) cites the following paragraph from the Journal of the Executive Council of Colonial Virginia, dated July 9, 1640, as “the only one surviving account that certainly pertains to John Punch’s life”:

John Punch Wasn't the First Slave in America -- Just the First Slave in the English Colonies

by Pearl Duncan

Contemporary artist's depiction of African slaves in Virginia, 1670.Since I am completing a book about the ancestry of my blended ancestors from America, Africa and Europe, I was intrigued by the announcement about President Barack Obama’s mother’s American ancestry. So I pause to make one small correction in that story. I am also completing a manuscript about the colonial merchant cargo ship discovered a few summers ago in the foundations of the World Trade Center, so stories of lost, blended colonial ancestors are still vivid in my memory.

Whatever Happened to Good Old-Fashioned Customer Service?

by Richard Striner

A call center in Bogotá, Colombia.Years ago, furniture stores used to ship what you purchased to your home -- completely assembled. What you often buy now is a box full of parts that you will use to complete the assembly that used to done routinely on the factory floor. And it is up to you to pick up the box (as often as not at a remote warehouse), unless you wish to pay extra for delivery. If you want someone else to assemble the furniture, the store will refer you to a different vendor. You will often have to deal with this other vendor on your own.What happened?

"The Other America": Still Invisible

by Ron Briley

A deserted, dilapidated street in Camden, New Jersey, 2009. Credit: WikipediaIn 1962, Michael Harrington published The Other America, alerting middle-class Americans during the post-World War II affluent society and move to suburbia that poverty persisted in the inner cities and many rural areas. Responding to the pleas of Harrington and the awakening of the nation’s social conscience inspired by the civil rights movement, President Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty, but these dreams of the Great Society and the programs required to address economic inequality were sacrificed on the altar of the Vietnam War. Since the Reagan era, the economic gap between rich and poor continues to grow, but, unfortunately, our ability to ignore the plight of the poor seems to have also increased fifty years after the publication of Harrington’s book

How Suffering Shaped Emancipation: Interview with Jim Downs on the Plight of Freed Slaves During the Civil War and Reconstruction

by Robin Lindley

January 1, 2013 will mark the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the effective date of the Emancipation Proclamation.We tend to think of the emancipation of African American slaves in the South as a celebratory moment of jubilation and ecstasy. But there is a darker, bitterly ironic side to this triumphant story -- a grim story of neglect and indifference to a vulnerable population of uprooted men, women and children left to negotiate their freedom in a hostile, war-torn, disease-plagued land.

It’s Time to Impeach Justice Scalia

by Alan Singer

Antonin Scalia in 2010. Credit: WikipediaIn April 1970, Gerald Ford, minority leader of the House of Representatives and future Vice President, then President, of the United States, demanded the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. Ford told the House, “An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history; conviction results from whatever offense or offenses two-thirds of the other body [Senate] considers to be sufficiently serious to require removal of the accused from office.” Ford justified his demand for Douglas’s removal by stating “I think it is fair to come to one conclusion, however, from our history of impeachments: a higher standard is expected of federal judges than of any other ‘civil officers’ of the United States."