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Ann Lane's Dissertation

by Nathan Williams

Click here for Ann Lane's response to this article.EDITOR'S NOTEAfter the Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose stories broke earlier this year, HNN received an email

History and Memory: They’re Different

by Thomas Fleming

Every time I walked through the vestibule of my family home in Jersey City in the 1940s, I saw Franklin D. Roosevelt's face on the wall, where many devout Irish-Catholic families hung a portrait of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. FDR was the hero of my youth, the almost mythical figure on whom the political fortunes of my father, leader of the gritty working class Sixth Ward, a vital cog in the city's powerful political machine, depended. The name Roosevelt had a magical aura, inducing total admi

Is Organized Labor Fighting Mad?

by James Ottavio Castagnera

The Norris-LaGuardia Anti-Injunction Act and the National Labor Relations Act were passed as a part of the New Deal of the 1930s. Prior to their passage, most private-sector labor organizations relied on their muscle to move employers to the negotiation table. During the late 1860s and 1870s, the Molly Maguires burned breakers, blew bridges and beat up mine bosses in the anthracite coal patches of eastern Pennsylvania, until more than 20 of them were tried and hanged at the county seats of Potts

What Lies Behind the Multicultural Approach to History

by Clare Spark

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Why Japan Has to Keep Apologizing

by Gavan McCormack

How different the 60th anniversaries of the end of World War II in Europe and in Asia. In the former, German participation was taken for granted, and the defeat of Nazism celebrated on all sides as the dawn of liberation. In the latter, it would be inconceivable for the Japanese Government to be invited to participate in commemorative events in Beijing, Seoul, Pyongyang, or elsewhere, as debate over what the war was about continues. There may be no other country in the

Jazz Was Denounced by Some Black Leaders, too

by Thaddeus Russell

A leading African American newspaper published a series of articles assailing black musicians for holding back the race. The music"is killing some people," the paper claimed."Some are going insane; others are losing their religion." The artists under attack were not rappers such as 50 Cent or Ludacris but Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington."The young girls and boys who constantly take jazz every day and night are absolutely becoming bad, and some criminals," the (New York) A

Why We Need Nuclear Arms Control Now More than Ever

by William Lambers

The United States continues to live under the fear of nuclear attack. The source of this threat has changed from the Soviet Union to terrorist groups. Yet what hasn't changed is the need for the United States to provide leadership in enhancing nuclear security worldwide.   Anti-terrorist efforts include improving security at Russian nuclear sites, which are considered vulnerable to theft. The Bush administration is also forming a network of nations to intercept illegal shipments o

Is Sharansky Right? Does Everyone Want to Be Free?

by Martin Kramer

On February 23, 2005, Tel Aviv University hosted a panel on democratization, featuring Natan Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident and political prisoner, who currently serves as the Israeli minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora affairs; Hebrew University political scientist Shlomo Avineri; and Martin Kramer. The panel focused on Sharansky's much-discussed book, The Case for Democr

Bedtime Stories Governments Tell During Wartime

by Daniel Oppenheimer

On January 11 th, 1967, three days after the start of Operation Cedar Falls, the New York Times published its first reports on the mission, which was the “largest…of the [Vietnam] war” to that point. There were two articles, both written by anonymous stringers.* The first provides a dry overview of what was happening and why; the objective of Operation Cedar Falls, according to the Times, was to seize control of a jungle about “60 square miles about

Quotations: The Power to Make War

by HNN Staff

The following quotations are taken from Alexander DeConde's Presidential Machismo: Executive Authority; Military Intervention, and Foreign Relations (2000). Mr. DeConde observes: The framers did not view the title of commander in chief as conferring control over the power to declare or instigate war. They perceived it as amounting to "nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces" so as

Series: What America Needs to Do to Achieve Its Foreign Policy Goals ... Dealing with Terrorism (4)

by William R. Polk

Click here to read the other articles in this series. What is now being done about terrorism has proven ineffective. We begin with misunderstanding what “terrorism” is.1 It is not a thing, a place or a group. To speak of waging war on it is vacuous. It is simply a tactic which is used in desperation by those who do not have power comparable to those they regar

Series: What America Needs to Do to Achieve Its Foreign Policy Goals ... Getting Serious About the UN (3)

by William R. Polk

Click here to read the other articles in this series. The reality of our world is that, like it or not, it is pluralistic. We may be the sole superpower although our perch may be more temporary than we now think, but we cannot accomplish unilaterally what we crave. And, for better or for worse, our best institutional means of action is the United Nations. So, we must stop the pointless and often ridiculous g

It's Not How to Make a Bomb That's the Problem

by Ann Larabee

Following the recent bombings in London, Britain's home secretary, Charles Clarke, rushed to announce plans for sweeping new terrorist legislation that would criminalize downloading bomb-making instructions from the Internet. Once again, the Internet has become the target of law makers who seek a simple remedy for making a complex world safe again.   If only it were so easy. A major flaw in blaming the Internet for terrorist bomb making is that no one has ever sufficiently demon

What's at the Bottom of the Growing Rift Between South Korea and the US?

by Sheila Miyoshi Jager

The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 led to one of history’s worst atrocities. Known as the Taejon massacre, an estimated 5000 to 7500 civilian deaths have been attributed to a single incident committed by the North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) in late September 1950. The incident, described as “worthy of being recorded in the annals of history along with the Rape of Nanking, the Warsaw Ghetto, and other similar mass exterminations” in the offici

Series: What America Needs to Do to Achieve Its Foreign Policy Goals ... Re Nuclear Weapons (2)

by William R. Polk

Click here to read the other articles in this series. America must renounce the threatening unilateralist approach to other nations proclaimed by the Bush administration to begin to reëstablish its leadership. Reëstablish is the key word. What I have to say is not so much an argument for change as for restoration, not radical but conservative, not theoretical but proven by experience. So,

Why Indians Aren't Celebrating the Lewis and Clark Expedition

by David Mould

Allen Pinkham has been doing a lot of soul-searching about the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition.“This is a heart-wrencher,” says Pinkham (Five Rays of Light), a tribal leader of the Nez Perce (Niimiipuu). “My people were slaughtered. But you don’t read about that. All I read about is Lewis and Clark, the heroes of the day 200 years ago. Well, whose heroes? They’re not my heroes.”As nationwide events to mark the epic expediti

Is Europe Dying? Notes on a Crisis of Civilizational Morale

by George Weigel

America's "Europe problem" and Europe's "America problem" have been staple topics of transatlantic debate for the past several years. Political leaders, media commentators, and businessmen usually discuss those problems in terms of policy differences: differences over prosecuting the war on terrorism, differences over the role of the United Nations in world affairs, differences over the Kyoto Protocol on the global environment, differences over Iraq. The pol

What Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin Got Wrong About Hiroshima

by Robert Newman

Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, two indefatigable Truman bashers, were at work for the 60th anniversary of Japan's surrender. They have a slightly new version of the big myth about this event: the bomb did not trigger surrender, Soviet entry into the war did. Their "Myths of Hiroshima" was syndicated by the Los Angeles Times. Of course, most Japanese, and some American Japanophiles, believe this. Bird and Sherwin, findi

Einstein, Russell, and the Bomb: The 50th Anniversary

by Lawrence S. Wittner

July 9, 2005 will be the fiftieth anniversary of one of the most important statements ever issued about the threat posed by nuclear weapons to human survival. Usually referred to as the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, it was initiated by Bertrand Russell, the famed mathematician and philosopher, and Albert Einstein, the world's best-known scientist. After the annihilation of Japanese cities with atomic bombs in August 1945, both Ru

Following is a statement approved by a group of historians at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. (Their website: www.yachana.org/haw.) As of January 24, 2003, it had been signed by more than 1,000 historians. Click here for the developments at the OAH annual meeting 4-4-03.Click here