Recently Published

Why We Should All Regret Jefferson's Broken Promise to Kościuszko

by Gary B. Nash and Graham Russell Gao Hodges

In March 1798, Tadeuz Kościuszko, a hero of the American and Polish revolutions, and Thomas Jefferson, Vice President of the United States, huddled in a cramped second-story room in Philadelphia to make a pact of ho

Why Guernica Speaks to Us Now More than Ever

by Ian Patterson

Humankind (as T.S. Eliot said) may not be able to bear very much reality, but fantasy has never had it so good — or so powerful. Unfortunately, fantasy is not extricable from reality, and imaginary aims can have real consequences, especially in war. Look at the American tactic of “shock and awe” that was going to have such a rapid and devastating effect on Iraq that it would force Saddam Hussein to capitulate within days, after which peaceful Western-style democracy would sprin

Is the National Archives Preserving or Distorting the Heritage of the New Deal?

by Martin Halpern

In encouraging students to conduct research on important events in history, historians today have access to a wealth of resources on the Internet. I tell my students to view critically all sources but that sites managed by government agencies and university libraries are generally reliable. My experience with calling to the attention of the National Archives an important error on the www.ourdocuments.gov website will lead m

What's Left of Bush's Democracy Agenda?

by Daniel Mandel

The other month in Cairo, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice confirmed at a press conference that the Bush Administration had quietly waived a congressional hold on $100 million in military aid to Egyp

What If Someone from the Obama Camp Said Hillary Clinton Is Where She Is Because She's a Woman?

by Arica L. Coleman

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color), he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."--Geraldine’s FerraroGeraldine’s Ferraro’s comment sparked a firestorm of controversy which once again injected race into the 2008 Democratic primary. It was bound to happen as earlier remarks by the Clinto

The Obama Coalition

by Morton Keller

From the 1830s to the 1930s, most presidential elections were shaped by the major parties rather than by charismatic candidates or overriding issues. The great exception was the clash in the 1850s over slavery, states’ rights, and the territories, which divided the Democrats and destroyed the Whigs. But the Republicans quickly replaced the Whigs, and two-party hegemony prevailed thereafter.

Can the State Kill Someone Twice? The Strange and Disturbing Case of the Death of Willie Francis

by Gilbert King

Having heard oral arguments in Baze v. Rees, the Supreme Court will soon decide whether the drugs used in lethal injection executions constitute cruel and unusual punishment as prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. It’s a question the Court has not addressed in more than sixty years, in a case that some legal scholars believe was botched just as badly as the state execution of a stuttering, seventeen-year-old African-American named Willie Francis by a drunken guard and inmate fro

Why Did Truman Fire MacArthur? (And Why Did He Wait So Long to Do It?)

by Michael D. Pearlman

That President Harry Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur will hardly be news to readers of the History News Network. The recently published Truman and MacArthur: Policy, Politics, and the Hunger for Honor and Reno

The Coming Age of Preventive War

by Thomas M. Nichols

The French president threatens nuclear retaliation against state sponsors of terror. His Russian counterpart makes thunderous vows to strike first at any threats to Russia anywhere on the planet. The Ethiopians, with Wester

Will the Democrats Blow It (Again)?

by Donald T. Critchlow

There is good news and bad news for the Democrats this year: The good news is that the conservatives are in disarray. (So much so that recently Boston University political scientist Andrew Bacevich, writ

London Calling: The Dollar is Falling!

by James Livingston

Being in London for a week is instructive, especially during a financial crisis that keeps creeping from its Anglo-American roots to the wider world.  No matter what paper I bought, headlines and front-page stories were full of exotic references to hedge funds, SIVs, CDOs, and the like.  Meanwhile, there was little coverage of the Obama speech except notice of declining support for his candidacy in the wake of the Reverend Wright’s YouTube performances.  (Two Financia

Before Obama Was a Favorite Son

by Timothy Stewart-Winter

In his losing 2000 Democratic primary campaign in Illinois's First District, Barack Obama won the white vote, which made up 30% of the electorate, but lost the all-important black vote. Obama's relatively little-known 2000 campaign was the most demoralizing moment of his political career; in The Audacity of Hope, he wrote, "It was a race in which

The Olympics: A Return to Ethics: Character, Principles, and Consequences

by William Thompson

Public administration scholar James Svara advances the notion that moral duty should be defined within a triangle bounded by concerns for three factors: character, principles, and consequences.*   The three factors are illustrated in the philosophies of Aristotle, Kant, and Bentham.  All the factors must be considered if ethical choices are to be made.  However, the factors may conflict with one another, and leaders are often guided by one or two sides of the triangle in t

Forgiveness : Grandeur or Political Slogan?

by Valérie Rosoux

On February 13, the prime minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, presented the official apology of his country to the Aborigines, particularly to the “Stolen Generation,” the children wrested from their parents and placed in institutes and with white parents. The words of the head of the government were unequivocal: “To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry. And for the indignity and degradation thu

OAH: Slighting '68

by Fran Shor

The OAH plenary on “1968” provided a large audience of historians with a variety of perspectives on the broader context and implications of that tumultuous year. However, in their desire to escape fetishizing a single year, practically all of the panelists (with the exception of Manning Marable) overlooked the actual events of that year and how they were emblematic of significant changes or on-going contradictions. What I would like to highl

Predicting China’s Fate in the Year of 08/08/08

by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom

Let’s pretend that, twelve months ago, someone had put me in a room with 20 or so other China specialists, handed us each three slips of paper, and asked us to write on each piece a story with a Chinese theme that we predicted would make headlines in 2008, the year when the Beijing Olympics will start on August 8. It’s quite possible that the following would have happened:

The Worst Massacre of Blacks by Whites in U.S. History--And the Lesson It Teaches Today

by Charles Lane

On April 13, 1873, the United States experienced the worst one-day slaughter of blacks by whites in its history. In tiny Colfax, La., white paramilitaries attacked lightly armed African American freedmen who had assembled in a local courthouse to defend their elected officeholders. By the time the Colfax Massacre was over, more than 60 black men lay dead. Most were killed after they had surrendered.

Is Reverend Wright a Black Liberationist?

by Clare L. Spark

Recently, in the aftermath of the Pastor Wright controversy, historian Ralph Luker, writing in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and HNN, linked Martin Luther King Jr. to black liberation theology. In his first address to the Montgomery Improvement Association in 1955 King had said, Luker noted: The Almighty God himself is not the only, not the God just standing out saying through Hosea, 'I love you, Israel.' He'

Time (Yet Again) for Preventative Regulation

by Christopher McKnight Nichols

The Bush administration, Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve and the financial sector all think the actions they've taken in recent days and weeks will fend off disaster. That's unlikely. Today's crisis calls for a new take on what used to exist: preventative regulation. So how to get there? First, look at the nation's history: The recent salvage of the investment bank Bear Stearns is in fact the legacy of decades of anti-regulation ideology. After the Fed allowed Drexel Burnham

Human rights and the ‘work of memory’ in international relations

by Valérie Rosoux

For more than a century and a half, the incessant reminder of past confrontations created entrenched positions on either side of the Rhine. These perceptions gave rise to belligerent discourses calling for the crushing of the ancestral enemy. They were based on the same events, but the meaning assigned to these events was totally different. The discourses were thus frequently based on mutually contradictory versions of the past.In 1950, however, Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman stressed