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History News Network

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On Other Websites: Archives October 2002 through December 2002

AT A MILITARY MUSEUM, THE LOSERS WRITE THE HISTORY BOOKS
Judging by the texts on the walls at this new museum of military history, Japan sacrificed its blood and treasure throughout the 20th century not to conquer other Asian countries but to fight for their independence.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/30/international/asia/30JAPA.html

GAY HISTORY IS STILL IN THE CLOSET
Gay history is invisible. With rare exceptions, schools fail to acknowledge that there even is such a thing. Only university students who opt for elective courses — if they are offered — learn that, in the 1920's, gay liberation was an important part of Emma Goldman's radical agenda.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/30/opinion/30GOLD.html

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OCCUPYING IRAQ AND JAPAN
The Bush administration is now debating a post-war occupation of Iraq modeled on the U.S. occupation of Japan after World War II.
http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed/ohanlon/20021022.htm

THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS VERSUS THE CRISIS WITH IRAQ
President Bush would have us believe that the lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis support a preemptive war against Iraq. He is wrong, and his misreading of the Cuban Missile Crisis illustrates what is wrong with the current administration's policy toward Iraq.
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0210cmc.html

NORTH KOREA IS NOT IRAQ
North Korea presents a very different kind of threat than Saddam Hussein's regime. North Korea, for example, has not started a war in half a century — whereas Saddam has started several in the last 25 years.
http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed/ohanlon/20021021.htm

ELECTRIC CHAIR LORE ENTRANCES LOCAL PROFESSOR
The instrument of death began as an advertising weapon, according to Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse and the Invention of the Electric Chair, by Mount Holyoke College sociology professor Richard Dean Moran. The new book details the history of the controversial item.
http://masslive.com/holyoke/unionnews/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1035813816140900.xml

ROOTS OF ANTI-AMERICANISM
Since last year's attacks on New York and Washington, the conventional wisdom about the motivation behind such deadly terrorism has gelled. The violence, we are often told, was a reaction to misguided U.S. policies. Yet Barry Rubin discusses that Arab and Muslim hatred of the United States is not just but is largely the product of self-interested manipulation by various groups within Arab society.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=4247

GEORGETOWN CONTROVERSY OVER ISLAM
National Review reports that when historian Bat Yeor spoke at Georgetown University she was treated badly by Muslim students who did not want to hear how Jews and Christians have been discriminated against in Islamic states.
http://www.nationalreview.com/dreher/dreher102902.asp

OPEN ACCESS TO HISTORICAL COLLECTION
Since selling his world-famous film archive to the Library of Congress, Rick Prelinger's been busy saving 40,000 magazines, newspapers, and government documents from history's dustbin. He wants you to take a look. Users simply download the films without paying a penny or signing a licensing agreement.
http://www.sfweekly.com/issues/2002-10-30/feature.html/1/index.html

ANTI-SEMITIC 'ELDERS OF ZION' GETS NEW LIFE ON EGYPT TV
An Egyptian satellite television channel will be running the series"Horse Without a Horseman" during Ramadan, an Islamic holy month. The series traces the history of the Middle East from 1855 to 1917 through the eyes of an Egyptian who fought British occupiers and the Zionist movement. Daniel J. Wakin gives the opinions people have on what will be the outcome of showing such hatred and propaganda and how it may hurt the situation in Middle East.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/26/international/middleeast/26CAIR.html

DON'T BLAME COLUMBUS FOR ALL THE INDIANS' ILLS
Europeans first came to the Western Hemisphere armed with guns, the cross and, unknowingly, pathogens. The epidemics that resulted have been well documented. What had not been clearly recognized until now, though, is that the general health of Native Americans had apparently been deteriorating for centuries before 1492. John Noble Wilford gives examples of what the teams of anthropologists, economists and paleopathologists who did the research found. It suggests that the New World was hardly a healthful Eden.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/29/science/social/29INDI.html

LESSONS FROM JAPAN ABOUT WAR'S AFTERMATH
The events of September 11th reminded many of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor 60 years eariler. Does America's successful occupation of Japan after World War II provide a model for a constructive American role in a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq? John Dower says no and discusses why.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/27/opinion/27DOWE.html

KEEPING U.S. NO. 1: IS IT WISE? IS IT NEW?
President Bush's release of an audacious new strategy last month for defending America against future foreign threats stunned Washington and even some close allies. Analysts have been centering on the Bush doctrine's last chapter. America, it states, is the world's strongest nation, enjoying"unparalleled military strength," and will never again allow its military supremacy to be challenged as it was during the cold war. Judith Miller gives examples of the different thoughts on America's power and where it will lead.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/26/arts/26STRA.html

MENCKEN AND ORWELL, SOCIAL CRITICS WITH LITTLE (AND MUCH) IN COMMON
Had H. L. Mencken, an obstreperous polemicist against American Puritanism, ever met George Orwell, a left-wing anti-Communist who fought the Fascists in Spain, the result, I imagine, would have been mutual disgust. Yet here they are, brought close by the accidents of publishing and the epicycles of literary taste - and perhaps because both touched on issues that are still unresolved and still urgent. Edward Rothstein discusses their similarities and differences.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/26/arts/26CONN.html

RUMINATING ON SMALLPOX VACCINE AND THE SWINE FLU FIASCO
Philip Boffey recalls what happened a quarter-century ago when a mass vaccination campaign, the ill-fated swine flu immunizations of 1976, ended in disaster. As public health officials debate whether to offer smallpox vaccine to every American who wants it they should first remember past experiences.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/27/opinion/27SUN3.html

ENGAGING NORTH KOREA
Jimmy Carter discusses his role with North Korea in 1994 and his feelings about what is happening today."It is not clear if the North Koreans are bluffing, actually have a nuclear program or have yet produced any nuclear explosives. It is clear that the world community cannot permit North Korea to develop a nuclear weapons capability."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/27/opinion/27CART.html

A DISCOVERY AND A DEBATE: WHO WAS 'JAMES, BROTHER OF JESUS'?
Ancient writers remembered him as"James the Just," leader of the early Christian church in Jerusalem and, according to the New Testament,"the brother of the Lord." Yet in Christian tradition, he has been a rather neglected figure. Last week, however, James became the focus of new attention with the dramatic announcement of the discovery of a burial box inscribed"James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." Sheller discusses the burial box and the significance of the owner.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/021104/misc/4james.htm

JUST LIKE THE DAY THEY DIED
Federal bureaucracies are born in Washington, but they go to Texas to die. Fifteen government agencies and commissions, slain by budget cutters or dead of natural causes in recent years, have achieved a sort of afterlife at Texas library.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56970-2002Oct20.html

IKE'S DARK DAYS
U.S. News's cover story excerpts former Washington Post reporter Rick Atkinson's new book, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 about the U.S. invasion of North Africa and the rise of Dwight D. Eisenhower.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/021028/misc/28ike.htm

FLASHBACK: A NEAR MISS
Forty years ago this week the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war. Sara Lipka discusses the events in 1962 and the closest we have come to nuclear annihilation.
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/missilecrisis.htm

JOHN LEWIS GADDIS COMMENTS ON A GRAND STRATEGY
Gaddis discusses past strategies and the purpose they had, to the recent national security strategy of the United States, which was released September 17, 2002, and what it means for America.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/issue_novdec_2002/gaddis.html

GEORGE F. WILL RELAYS JIMMY CARTER'S DISSAPPOINTMENT OVER THE NORTH KOREAN DEAL
There can be a serendipitous time to receive terrible news, and last week, while Carter was still luxuriating in his warm bath of post-Nobel praise, came a cold shower-news that North Korea's drive to become a nuclear power, a drive that probably began shortly after the Korean War armistice in 1953, had not after all been ended by Carter's 1994 pastoral visit.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/823372.asp

THE SNIPERS IN CONTEXT
It came as no surprise to learn that the Washington,D.C.-area sniper was an African American who converted to Islam about 17 years ago. Even less does it amaze that he reportedly sympathized with the 9/11 attacks. All this was near-predictable because it fits into a well-established tradition of alienation, radicalism, and violence among American blacks who convert to Islam, thereby turning against their country.
http://jewishworldreview.com/1002/pipes.html

WHOSE ABRAHAM?
The Biblical Abraham has recently become the subject of a Time Magazine cover story as well as two books, leaving defenders of the Jewish faith unsure as to what to make of the emergence of a"new and improved", politically-correct father of monotheism.
http://jewishworldreview.com/avi/shafran.html

WAS TROY A METROPOLIS? HOMER ISN'T TALKING
In a bitterly controversial theory, a German archaeologist says ancient Troy was a thriving center of commerce between the Aegean and Black Seas.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/22/science/social/22TROY.html

NATIONAL(IN)SECURITY ARCHIVE (NSA)
A discussion on the NSA, a favorite of proponents of"openness" in U.S. foreign policy; how they burden the CIA.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=4092

SOME CHALLENGE BUSH OVER JKF COMPARISON
Michael Corkey discusses the analogy President Bush made comparing his rationale for attacking Iraq the same as former President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
http://www.projo.com/news/content/projo_20021009_war9.10bcb.html

BELAFONTE A STALINIST?
Ronald Radosh gives examples of Belafonte's past actions; including his recent comments about Colin Powell.
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/60298.htm

THE PACT THAT THE KOREANS FLOUTED
A history of the nuclear agreement signed by President Clinton and North Korea in 1994, after North Korea threatened to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and halted international inspections of a nuclear reactor.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/17/international/asia/17NUKE.html

AS ITS PAST IS EXHUMED, RUSSIA TURNS AWAY
A team of researchers from the human rights organization Memorial have unearthed what they say is grim evidence of one of the Soviet Union's most egregious crimes, Stalin's Great Terror of 1937 and 1938. But what Memorial has discovered, it seems, is evidence not just of Stalin's crimes, but also of Russia's reluctance to come to terms with its Soviet past to this day.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/20/international/europe/20STAL.html

SCHOLARS: OLDEST EVIDENCE OF JESUS?
A limestone burial box, almost 2,000 years old may provide the oldest archeological record of Jesus of Nazareth. The box could have been owned my his brother, James.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/10/21/jesus.box/index.html

KENNEDY, KHRUSHCHEV CHILDREN MEET FOR FIRST TIME ON ANNIVERSARY OF 1962 CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS
Caroline Kennedy and Sergei Khrushchev met at the John F. Kennedy Library in a what organizers called"the first meeting between the children of the men who in 1962 saved the world from a nuclear world war."
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAW144KJ7D.htm

NPR: CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS
Forty years ago today, a U.S. spy plane's surveillance tape showed evidence that the Soviet Union was constructing nuclear missile silos on Cuba, 90 miles from the U.S. mainland. The incident led to a tense stand-off between the U.S. and Russia that is often cited as the closest the world ever came to nuclear war. Surviving U.S., Russian and Cuban veterans of the crisis met in Cuba this weekend to talk about the Cuban Missile Crisis.
http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/segment_display.cfm?segID=151626

HISTORIAN, BIOGRAPHER SHARE LOVE OF TEDDY
A conference in Buffalo, delayed by 9-11, explores the life of Teddy Roosevelt; Edmund Morris present.
http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20021019/1000527.asp

HOW THE SAINTS LIVED IN OLD ENGLAND
Some of Britain's earliest saints lived in virtual urban slum conditions rather than in stained glass seclusion, according to an archaeological rescue dig on the collapsing cliffs of the North Sea coast.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,2763,816710,00.html

IS BUSH LIKE CAESAR?
Journalist Richard Heinberg suggests that the comparisons of the US with Rome and Bush with Caesar do a disservice to Caesar. Bush is no Caesar.
http://www.museletter.com/archive/128.html

RELIVING 13 DAYS IN OCTOBER
Using an innovative oral-history technique, a scholar has overturned the standard view of what happened in the Cuban missile crisis. (subscriber only)
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i08/08a01601.htm

HISTORY OF AERIAL ESPIONAGE
The history of"U.S. Aerial Espionage in the Cold War and Beyond" is introduced and documented by Jeffrey T. Richelson in a new National Security Archive reader.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB74/

CUBAN CONFERENCE ON CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS
Cuban missile crisis not over in 13 days; Soviet tactical nukes in Cuba until Nov. 20; New documents detail Cuban-Soviet arguments on missile pull-out, UN inspections; Cuban November order to fire on US planes provoked Khrushchev to pull tacticals; British ambassador predicted long-term victory for Castro in Cuba.
http://www.nsarchive.org/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/index.htm

4 SOUTHERN HISTORIANS CLAIM CIVIL WAR WAS NOT INEVITABLE
The Civil War could, and probably should, have been avoided, according to a new book authored by four Southern historians. In the recently published"This Terrible War: the Civil War and its Aftermath," the authors weighed the war's brutality against its benefits. They came to the conclusion that the bloodshed was not"inevitable" and that slavery was not the key issue of the war.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20021014/civilwar.html#jump

IN DEFENSE OF BELLESILES: THE NATION
Jon Wiener in the Nation says Michael Bellesiles has been unfairly attacked on account of his views.
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021104&s=wiener

JIMMY CARTER, APOLOGIST FOR ARAFAT
Jay Nordlinger offers his thoughts on the ex-presidency of Jimmy Carter in the National Review.
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=3865

ONLY ONE ADOLF HITLER
What one gathers from history is that politicians who try to cut-and-paste past events into their understanding of current situations are prone to lead their countries to disaster. Matthew Engel of the Guardian encourages the U.S. to sit up and pay attention, as we are not exempt from the lessons of history.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,806583,00.html

PAT BUCHANAN'S NEW MAGAZINE CRITIQUED BY RON RADOSH
Pat Buchanan may continue to dislike the left for many reasons, but one of the chief influences on his current thinking is William Appleman Williams, the radical historian who did the most to develop the New Left approach to American history in the 1960s and '70s.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/286/focus/The_red_and_the_brown+.shtml

THE MISSILES OF 1962 HAUNT THE IRAQ DEBATE
The U.S. should heed the lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis when dealing with Iraq.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/13/weekinreview/13PURD.html

IN DEFERENCE TO THE CHIEF
When the shouting finally dies down and the moment of decision arrives, it is almost always the president who prevails over Congress and determines whether or not the country faces a clear and imminent danger to its national security. It was thus in 1964, when Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, it was thus in 1991, when it approved military action in the Persian Gulf, and it was thus once again this week, when it authorized action against Iraq.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/12/national/12ASSE.html

HOW A CATHOLIC INSTITUTION IS VIEWED AFTER 40 YEARS
Forty years ago, the Second Vatican Council formed and made one of the greatest peaceful revolutions in history. It transformed the Roman Catholic faith more sweepingly than any other single event since the Protestant Reformation. As with all great revolutions, however, the Council has provoked battles between different groups claiming to be its true heirs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/12/national/12BELI.html

REOPENING A MORMON MURDER MYSTERY
In 1857, a group of California-bound pioneers camping in southern Utah were brutally murdered by a Mormon militia and its Indian allies. Yet despite two trials, one execution and many official investigations, the event — known as the Mountain Meadows massacre — remains shrouded in mystery and rumor. Now, two authors who have studied the massacre point to Brigham Young as the mastermind of the killings.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/12/arts/12MORM.html

COMMENTARY ARTICLE: PLAGIARISM INVOLVING AMBROSE, GOODWIN AND THE SLAVE HANNAH CRAFTS
Three high-profile cases of plagiarism involving Stephen Ambrose, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Hannah Crafts are discussed, as are the historical manifestations of plagiarism. Up close, it is notoriously difficult to distinguish superior from inferior literary genius, but time, the only medium in which taste can unfold, will sort out the large fish from the little satisfactorily enough.By Thomas L. Jeffers.
http://commentary.org

JIMMY CARTER AS CONSERVATIVES SEE HIM
National Review reviews the Csrter record, noting that he once drafted a speech for Arafat.
http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/flashback-nordlinger101102.asp

ATLANTIC MONTHLY HISTORY OF IRAQ
With the United States seemingly moving ever closer to a confrontation with Iraq, and with the debate about the advisability of an attack growing ever more heated, now seems a fitting time to take a considered look at Iraq, and at some of the arguments, both historical and new, on the subject of U.S. involvement there. A collection of Atlantic articles from 1958 to the present offers a variety of perspectives on this volatile nation and its contentious relationship with the United States.
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/iraqwar.htm

WE SHOULD BE OPTIMSTIC ABOUT THE ECONOMY
George F. Will: Pessimism can be self-fulfilling in the short run. And remember: the stock market has predicted nine of the last five recessions.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/817614.asp

FDR'S AUSCHWITZ SECRET
In an exclusive excerpt from his new book, historian Michael Beschloss reveals the untold story of how Franklin Roosevelt decided against bombing the Nazi death camp.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/817172.asp

US CONDUCTED OPEN-AIR BIO AND CHEMICAL WEAPONS TESTS ON TROOPS
The United States held open-air biological and chemical weapons tests in at least four states - Alaska, Hawaii, Maryland and Florida - during the 1960s in an effort to develop defenses against such weapons, according to Pentagon documents.
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAXRVIN27D.html

BEN FRANKLIN: INVENTING HIMSELF AS WELL AS THE KITE EXPERIMENT
As Ed Morgan emphasizes again and again in his new book about Ben Franklin, Franklin knew the importance of appearing to be a man of business and virtue. He knew how fully success depended upon the opinion of oneself created in others.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/11/opinion/11FRI3.html

REWRITING HISTORY
The historical contribution of Britain's ethnic minority communities has been overlooked for far too long, says Lee Jasper.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/race/story/0,11374,810188,00.html

TAFT-HARTLEY'S MANDATES
President Bush used his authority under the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 to intervene in the West Coast port dispute. This article provides the background to that Act.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/281/business/Taft_Hartley_s_mandates+.shtml

DISCOVERIES AT ICELAND DIG
Bob Edwards speaks with Elizabeth Ward of the Smithsonian Institution about an archeological dig in Iceland where legend and history converge. Researchers are finding evidence of Icelandic migration and settlement that corresponds to the country's mythic sagas.
http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/segment_display.cfm?segID=151013

FIRST PRESIDENT TO TRAVEL AROUND THE UNITED STATES
A historian is tracing the steps of Rutherford B. Hayes, the first president, he contends, to travel around the U.S. “I don’t know why this has been missed in American history, except there’s a tendency to downplay the impact of the presidents after Lincoln, until you get to McKinley.”
http://www3.cantonrep.com/cantonrep01/menus.php?ID=65901&r=6&Category=11

IKE PLOTTED HIS WAY TO THE WHITE HOUSE
History professor William B. Pickett has shed new light on the popular myth that Eisenhower"succumbed to pressure and was thus the first individual since George Washington to receive a presidential draft."
http://cjonline.com/stories/100702/kan_eisenhower2.shtml

WHY TV TURNS TO EGYPT SO OFTEN
A few millenia from now, when archeologists are blowing the dust off of artifacts in the sub-basement of the Museum of Television & Radio, I'm convinced they'll come across a TV programmer's manual with a chapter titled,"When in Doubt, Do Something on Egypt."
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/tv/89840_tv07.shtml

KAMIKAZE INSTRUCTOR MEETS WAR VETERANS
A man who trained Japanese kamikaze pilots during World War II had a friendly meeting with some of their former adversaries at the London Imperial War Museum Monday -- but at a time when suicide air attacks have a new meaning, not all were quick to forgive.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=573&ncid=573&e=9&u=/nm/20021008/od_nm/kamikaze_dc

LEFTIST RACISM
John J. Ray examines the history of leftist racism, including such phenomena as Nazism, feminism, and affirmative action.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=3689

UNDAUNTED COURAGE
Stephen Ambrose talks about his new books, his achievements, his critics and writing his way through his private war with an implacable foe: cancer.
http://www.nola.com/living/t-p/index.ssf?/livingstory/ambrose06.html

AMATEUR SCHOLAR SPECULATES THAT PORTUGAL BEAT SPAIN TO SOUTH AMERICA
Peter W. Dickson, an amateur geographer, at a a Columbus Day lecture at the Library of Congress, speculates that Portugal, Spain's great rival, sponsored a secret expedition around 1500 that traveled through the Strait of Magellan, around Cape Horn and up the coast of the Americas. Explains why the famous Waldseemuller map includes accurate representations of South America.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46455-2002Oct5.html

HOW REPUBLICANS GOT A REPUTATION FOR BEING STRONG ON DEFENSE
For most of the 50 years since a real general — Dwight D. Eisenhower — last won the White House, polls have shown that Americans"trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America's military might and thereby protecting America," as Mr. Rove told party leaders in January.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/06/weekinreview/06PURD.html

DEFINING EVIL IN THE WAKE OF 9-11
The philosopher Susan Neiman compares these events--9-11 and the earthquake that devastated Lisbon in 1755--in her new book,"Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy" (Princeton University Press).
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/05/arts/05EVIL.html

THE SUPREME COURT--LESS TURNOVER THAN SINCE 1823
The Supreme Court term that begins Monday will be the ninth without turnover. Ninety-eight months have gone by since Justice Stephen G. Breyer took the judicial oath on Aug. 3, 1994, the longest time without change on the court since the interval between the arrival of Justices Joseph Story in 1812 and Smith Thompson in 1823.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/06/weekinreview/06GREE.html

BUSH SHOULD TRY TO BE MORE LIKE TRUMAN
Thomas Mann:"Is George W. Bush another Harry S. Truman? He and we should surely hope so. While Truman waged bruising domestic political battles and suffered long bouts of public unpopularity, he is viewed now as having presided over the most creative and productive period in American diplomatic history."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/06/opinion/06MANN.html

SCHOOL HISTORY TEXTBOOKS
The Texas Board of Education will soon decide which history textbooks may be used in the state. Activists on the left and right are lobbying the board, to influence its choices.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/02/education/02LESS.html

KING TUT HAD SPINE DISEASE
Original x-rays taken from inside his coffin reveal that the young pharaoh's death may have resulted from Klippel-Feil syndrome, a rare spinal disorder also associated with anomalies of the kidneys, heart and nervous system.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20020930/kingtut.html

JAPANESE REWRITE GUARDIAN HISTORY
A pre-war Guardian correspondent who exposed the notorious Nanjing massacre by Japan's occupation army in China in 1937 has become the target of Japanese historians seeking to prove that it never took place.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/japan/story/0,7369,804391,00.html

A LOST BUDDHIST LITERARY TRADITION IS FOUND(for subscribers only)
Scholars at the University of Washington and at the British Library are deciphering what might be the Dead Sea Scrolls of the Buddhist tradition.
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i06/06a01801.htm

THE OBSOLESCENCE OF THE AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL (for subscribers only)
Whatever happened to intellectuals? According to John Lukacs, a professor emeritus of history, intellectuals have become an endangered species.
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i06/06b00701.htm

THE MIDEAST: A CENTURY OF CONFLICT (NPR)
NPR News presents a seven-part series on the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to bring context and perspective to the story, and to help listeners understand the complex situation in the Mideast, the history, and the consequences of the confrontation. In Part Five, NPR's Mike Shuster reports on the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and the Camp David peace accords between Egypt and Israel.
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/mideast/history/index.html

SPUTNIK ANNIVERSARY (NPR)
NPR commemorates the 42nd anniversary of Sputnik's launch.
http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/segment_display.cfm?segID=64887

JOHN PAUL II IS HISTORY'S CHAMPION SAINTMAKER
The 82-year-old pontiff heads into his 24th year of papacy this month having named an astonishing 463 saints -- so far. In fact, John Paul II has recognized more saints than any pope in history -- more, in fact, than all the popes of the past four centuries combined. As he prepares to name yet another saint this Sunday, some voice their concern that the Pope is rushing through recognition for fad candidates whose merits haven't been tested by time.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=676&ncid=676&e=16&u=/usatoday/20021003/ts_usatoday/4503559

WHO SAYS WE NEVER STRIKE FIRST? (NYT)
It is certainly true that pre-emptive wars are not the norm in history. But the president's pre-emption doctrine — and its first application, in Iraq — is firmly rooted in centuries of tradition says Max Boot.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/04/opinion/04BOOT.html

THE MISFORTUNE OF POETRY
Christopher Hitchens reviews Fiona MacCarthy's new biography of Lord Byron, Byron: Life and Legend.
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/10/hitchens.htm

FICTIONS EMBRACED BY AN ISRAEL AT WAR
Since the outbreak of the current intifada two years ago, it is as if Israeli society has turned to a new page in the chronicle of its conflict with the Palestinians and, simultaneously, erased many of the pages that preceded - 33 years of repression, occupation and humiliation that Israel imposed on the West Bank and Gaza.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/01/opinion/01GROS.html

WHAT THE IRAQ WAR IS REALLY ABOUT
As it turns out, it is not really about Iraq. It is not about weapons of mass destruction, or terrorism, or Saddam, or U.N. resolutions. This war, should it come, is intended to mark the official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged global empire, seizing sole responsibility and authority as planetary policeman.
http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/epaper/editions/sunday/issue_d369495ba6c610e900c3.html

THE TELLING TALE OF THE TWENTY-SEVENTH AMENDMENT: A SLEEPING AMENDMENT CONCERNING CONGRESSIONAL COMPENSATION IS LATER REVIVED
John Dean chronicles the story of the Twenty-seventh Amendment, which relates to Congressional compensation -- and of Gregory Watson, the young student who started a successful campaign to get it ratified over 200 years after it had first been proposed.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20020927.html

RADICAL CONSERVATISM
The restatement of the United States' fundamental defense doctrine issued by the Bush administration last week -- substituting preemption of potential threats for containment of aggression -- is probably the most dramatic and far-reaching change in national security policy in a half-century. But it is also part of a pattern of radical revisionism in basic governmental philosophy and structure engineered by President Bush, who is quietly rewriting the classic definition of conservatism.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62886-2002Sep24.html

REALITY TV MEETS POLITICS
Michael Kazin hopes that"American Candidate," the new reality show that the FX cable channel, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, is planning to air in 2004, will bring to prominence individuals, neither wealthy nor market tested, who are eager and able to stand for positions that no contemporary politician would ever dream of taking.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/28/opinion/28KAZI.html

BEATING THEM TO THE PREWAR
In the latest example of how history, definitions and defense doctrines are being twisted to fit the Iraq debate, the Bush administration last week defended its new strategy of"pre-emption" by pointing to Daniel Webster's defense of the strategy more than a century and a half ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/28/arts/28PREE.html

HOLOCAUST WASN'T UNIQUE, SAY TWO HISTORIANS
Two historians--Debórah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt--challenge the idea that the Holocaust was unique, describe how anti-Semitism was worse in prewar America than in Germany and compare Hitler & Co. to the '60s generation.
http://www.salon.com/books/int/2002/10/02/dwork/index.html

LENI RIEFENSTAHL
At age 100 she still claims she's innocent.
http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/2002/10/01/leni_riefenstahl/index.html

OLE MISS: 40 YEARS LATER--NPR
On the 40th anniversary of the desegregation of Ole Miss, NPR presents a series of stories examining the events of that time, what has become of the people involved, and the campus today.
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/olemiss/index.html

UTAH ABUZZ WITH TALK OF 1857 MEADOW MOUNTAIN MASSACRE; NEW BOOK
Nearly a century and a half after California-bound pioneers were slaughtered by Mormon settlers and their Indian allies, a new book blaming the massacre on church leader Brigham Young is causing a sensation in the Mormon community.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020921-25395203.htm

THE FIRST SCIENTIST
In a new book writer John Mr Gribbin champions Thomas Digges as the inventor of the telescope and bestows the title of “the first scientist” on William Gilbert, whose experimental approach to the investigation of magnetism did much to inspire Galileo.
http://www.economist.com/books/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1352803

HE WAS THE WRIGHT BROTHERS RIVAL
Etched squarely into American history, certainly, are the Wright Brothers, their flimsy contraption barely lifting above Kitty Hawk's cold and windy dunes. In"Unlocking the Sky," Seth Shulman revisits Orville and Wilbur's greatest rival, Glenn Hammond Curtiss.
http://www.savannahnow.com/stories/092902/LOCCurtissBook.shtml

HOW CANADA FOUGHT THE COLD WAR--AND THE SIMILARITIES TO THE NEW WAR ON TERRORISM
THE WAR AGAINST TERROR has been called unprecedented, a new kind of conflict.In fact, it is not. With its emphasis on shadowy conspiracies and apocalyptic rhetoric, with its casual trampling of civil rights in the name of state security and its enthusiasm for projecting military power around the globe, it is a most familiar war.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1026145758327&call_page=TS_Canada&call_pageid=968332188774&call_pagepath=News/Canada&col=968350116467

TOTEM POLES: NPR HISTORY
Since they were first noticed by European explorers in the 1700s, totem poles may have been misunderstood.
http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/totempoles/index.html

CONNECTICUT WAS A SLAVE STATE
Connecticut was a slave state. Does that sound wrong? Does it feel wrong? It shouldn't. Connecticut has a history to confront as much as any Southern state.
http://www.ctnow.com/news/local/northeast/hc-slavery.special

OREGON TO VOTE ON CONSTITUTION'S RACIST LANGUAGE
"No free negro, or mulatto, not residing in this state at the time of the adoption of this constitution, shall come, reside, or be within this State, or hold any real estate," reads a provision in the Oregon Constitution from 1857. A century and a half later, the passage is still there.
http://www.salon.com/politics/wire/2002/09/27/ore_vote/index.html

REMEMBERING AN AMERICAN INSURRECTION
William Doyle's An American Insurrection: The Battle of Oxford, Mississippi, 1962 describes the showdown that proved"the biggest domestic military crisis of the twentieth century" and a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement. Doyle recounts James Meredith's brave stand against Mississippi's Democrat governor Ross Barnett, the state police, the Ku Klux Klan, and the students and rabble-rousers who took up guns, clubs, bricks, and bottles in their bid to prevent a fellow American citizen from getting a college education.
http://jewishworldreview.com/michelle/malkin.html

WEB SITE FUELS DEBATE ON CAMPUS ANTI-SEMITISM
Campus Watch, a Web site started last week by the Middle East Forum, cites eight professors and 14 universities for their views on Palestinian rights or political Islam. Now, as nearly 100 outraged professors nationwide — Jews and non-Jews, English professors and Middle East specialists - have responded to the site by asking to be added to the list, a new chapter in a growing debate over campus anti-Semitism has been opened.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/27/education/27COLL.html

BENEATH HISTORIC FASHIONS
History's unmentionables come out of the closet in a new calendar from the Costume Society of America called Underwear: Beneath Historic Fashions. The calendar depicts undergarments from the early 18th century to the 1960s. Listen as NPR correspondent Scott Simon talks with Sally Queen, the calendar's editor.
http://www.npr.org/programs/wesat/features/2002/aug/underwear/index.html

THE SECRET HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY AND POP MUSIC
NPR cultural correspondent Rick Karr presents a six-part series on how technology has changed popular music, from the home piano to electronica. The series is heard Fridays beginning Sept. 20, 2002 on Morning Edition.
http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2002/technopop/index.html

THE BLACK OKIES: A LOST TRIBE AND ITS JOURNEY OF EXILE
A chronicle of the lives of the black Oklahoma migrants who settled in the Tulare Lake Basin.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-blackokies1aug25.story?null

A STORY OF MARGINALIZED COLONISTS NOT IN HISTORY BOOKS
Wayne Karlin's new book, The Wished For Country, attempts to re-create the turbulent history of the original Wesorts, a community of people descended from the couplings in the Maryland colony's earliest days of whites, blacks and Native Americans.
http://www.calendarlive.com/books/cl-lv-books27sep27,0,4194042.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dbooks%2Dmanual

MARKING A MASSACRE
Twenty years ago, Lebanese Phalangist militiamen, under the watchful tutelage of the Israeli army, massacred some 1,000-3,000 Palestinians in the Beirut refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila.
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021014&s=carey20020926

IT'S THE 1920S ALL OVER AGAIN
David Gelernter in the Weekly Standard makes the argument in a long essay that the world is at about the same place now that it was in the 1920s. World War II's lessons are irrelevant now. It's World War I to which we need to pay attention.
http://weeklystandard.com/content/public/articles/000/000/001/659rpqyj.asp

HOW SADDAM HAPPENED
Congressional hearings: there is abundant documentary and reportorial evidence to demonstrate that"the U.S. Government provided nearly two dozen viral and bacterial samples to Iraqi scientists in 1985--samples that included the plague, botulism, and anthrax, among other deadly diseases."
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_cr/s092002.html

CAMP DAVID: MISSED OPPORTUNITY
A liberal Egyptian intellectual reviews the history of Camp David and explains why Arafat missed the opportunity to make peace, noting that Arafat has admitted he made a mistake.
http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD42202

TELLING LIES ABOUT HITLER
The London Socialist Historians Group: Review of R. J. Evans, Telling Lies about Hitler: The Holocaust, History and the David Irving Trial. The last chapters include an account of how David Irving responded to the evidence in court. At first he denied everything, then he sought to filibuster, seizing on the most inconsequential points while neglecting the main ones.
http://www.londonsocialisthistorians.org/cgi-bin/newsletter%20articles/webbbs_config.pl/read/58

HISTORY OR IRAQ: NPR INTERVIEW
Charles Tripp, author of a history of Iraq, explains how the history of Iraq led to the creation of a Saddam. He notes how dangerous a war would be and asks if a war is really designed to stop Saddam from acquiring WMD, or rather, is intended to show American will so no one dares attack us again.
http://freshair.npr.org/dayFA.cfm?todayDate=09%2F25%2F2002