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Week of October 15, 2012


The Cuban Missile Crisis at Fifty

Noam Chomsky and the Cuban Missile Crisis
Sheldon M. Stern

He gets Kennedy and the ExComm tapes very, very wrong.

Washington Looks Back at the Cuban Missile Crisis
David Austin Walsh

Part 1 of an ongoing blog series on D.C.-area Cuban Missile Crisis events

The Week the World Stood Still
Noam Chomsky

The Cuban Missile Crisis and the ownership of the world.

The Cuban Missile Crisis ExComm Meetings: Getting it Right After 50 Years
Sheldon M. Stern

RFK was far from a dove during the Crisis -- he consistently advocated for invading Cuba.

What If Nixon Had Been President During the Crisis?
Harvey Simon

Kaboom.

The Cuban Missile Crisis: The View from Okinawa
Jon Mitchell

Six months earlier, the U.S. secretly brought near-identical missiles to the ones on Cuba to another small island -- Okinawa.

HNN Hot Topics: The Cuban Missile Crisis

The best of commentary from historians, political scientists, journalists, diplomats, and politicians from around the web.


Historian's Take: The Second Presidential Debate

Obama Did More than Simply Win the Debate
Ruth Rosen

He came across as a powerful president who is genuinely with expanding the middle class.

Nothing Has Changed Except for the Media Narrative
Gil Troy

This was a classic pseudo-event, a media-generated moment that fit into the narrative many reporters were looking to right.

Obama and Romney Have Fundamentally Different Visions
Bernard Weisberger
The president never pivoted from his pragmatic centrism, but Romney's pro-business sounded like something out of the Roaring Twenties.

My Fantasy Questions for Obama and Romney
Leo P. Ribuffo

Town-hall questions are general short-sighted and ill-informed -- here's what should have been asked of the candidates.

"Was It a Good Show?"
Ira Chernus

Above all, the debates are TV entertainment, and on that basis, both candidates won.

Romney's Lost Libya Opportunity
K.C. Johnson

The president's vulnerable on the Libya attacks, but Romney found a way to make it a negative for himself.

Obama Was Hurt on Libya
Daniel Pipes

And that matters more than who "won" the debate.


Blogs

Fact-Checking the Candidates: A Sacred Ritual in the Theater State
Ira Chernus's MythicAmerica

Even the wonky fact-checkers emphasize performance over substance.

Individuals and Collectives
Steve Hochstadt

Paul Ryan's Randian nightmare.

The New “New Normal”: Saving Ourselves From the Cliff
Ira Chernus's MythicAmerica

When did government leaders decide to completely abdicate responsibility for our common interest?


News at Home

How History Shaped Barack Obama’s View of National Identity
Robin Lindley

Historian Ian Reifowitz on the president's concept of "one American family."


Mormons and African Americans Have Criss-Crossed Political Identities
David Prior
It used be African Americans who were the Republican base, while Mormons were hated by the party.

Return of the Paranoid Style
Marc-William Palen

The spirit of Joe McCarthy is alive and well in Jack Welch's job numbers paranoia.

Obama Wasn't the First President Who Hoped to be a Uniter
Ray Raphael

George Washington faced an intense partisan divide.


News Abroad

The Vietnam War as You've Never Seen It ... From Hanoi
David Austin Walsh

Lien-Hang Nguyen discusses her new book, Hanoi's War: An International History of the War in Vietnam


Historians & History

A Historian Taught by History
Ron Radosh

Eugene D. Genovese, R.I.P.


Culture Watch

The Irish Troubles Still Troubling Thirty Years Later
Bruce Chadwick

Brian Friel's Freedom of the City gets the revival treatment at the Irish Repertory Theater.

The N-YHS Takes a Look at the Big Apple in World War II
Bruce Chadwick

The city that never sleeps slept little during that particular dust-up.


Books

Review of Louis P. Masur's Lincoln Hundred Days
Jim Cullen

Louis Masur successfully makes the story of the Emancipation Proclamation the story of the Civil War itself.

Review of Shawn Francis Peters's The Catonsville Nine
Patrick Henry

The Catonsville Nine, a group of anti-war Catholic priests, turned the protests against Vietnam from radical to mainstream.