Ulysses S. Grant is widely remembered as a great general and a poor president. In his new biography of the 18th president, historian Josiah Bunting III notes that pundits and historians have tended to write of Grant the president with" condescension." Bunting sums up this view of Grant:"There may be strength in his soul, but no fineness in it, no grace; little culture, small learning . . . meager evidence of the capacity to learn and reflect; no felt obligation to explain himself; no evidence of self-doubt."

If those words strike you as remarkably similar to the view of President Bush that is dominant in academia, much of the media and urban-oriented blue-state America, then you see one of the parallels between Grant and Bush that fairly leap off the pages of Bunting's fascinating book.

These similarities struck me with particular clarity during the recent round of debates between the president and his Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry, that polar opposite of Bush in ideology, culture and worldview.

It's worth pondering the parallels between Grant and Bush because the American people are about to decide what qualities they want in their president, and the choice has rarely been starker. Bush, for good or ill, shows many of the same character traits, strengths and weaknesses as the Union general who became known as"Unconditional Surrender" Grant -- whose single-minded pursuit of victory at whatever the cost ultimately won the Civil War, but whose nave trust in and loyalty to his friends resulted in a scandal-marked presidency.

Man of few words

Grant was neither cultured nor eloquent. Bunting calls him a"stumpy, awkward, bashful man" of few words, who won a reputation in the Civil War as"a fighter not a talker." He was a rough-cut Westerner, a cigar-chewing general who would sit on a stump during battles, oblivious to personal danger, issuing terse orders.

As the casualties piled up and the Northern press called him a"butcher," he bulldozed ahead, never second-guessing himself through the blood-soaked horrors of 1864 to a final armistice at Appomattox, Va., in 1865. His tenacity, like Bush's regarding Iraq, was widely questioned during the war, but later cited as crucial to victory.

As a general-turned-politician, Grant was a poor public speaker. He could write clear and precise battle orders but couldn't give a decent speech. Bunting believes that was no handicap to Grant as president."America has always loved a tongue-tied hero, a Charles Lindbergh, a Lou Gehrig," Bunting writes."Here was the very incarnation of Act not Talk."

That, too, is what millions of Americans admire in George W. Bush: He is Act, not Talk. The contrast between Bush and Kerry on this count is telling. The president clearly was outclassed on eloquence in the debates, where Kerry's mastery of language and argument was evident. But Bush's record as president shows a willingness to make big decisions, take big risks, stick with a course of action and play for victory. This is the essence of strong leadership.

The doubts about Kerry run to the opposite qualities: Is he too indecisive, too politically calculating and too quick to change positions under pressure -- all too much Talk not Act?

This is Bunting's take on Grant's decisiveness:"Grant was willing to make decisions and live with their consequences, sustained, as William Tecumseh Sherman once said, by a constant faith in victory." Bush was willing to gamble his presidency on war with Iraq and seems sustained by an unshakable faith that freedom will triumph over terrorism. He will live with the consequences, which could arrive on Nov. 2.

Authorities in the Spanish region of Aragon, whose kings helped evict the Moors from Spain 500 years ago, has stirred controversy by suggesting that the severed heads of four Moors should be removed from its heraldic shield.

The heads have upset the semi-autonomous region's growing population of Muslim immigrants, provoking its socialist administration to propose that the heads be erased from its bottom left-hand quarter.

"This is the ideal moment . . . to revise our symbols," the regional government's president, Marcelino Iglesias, said."We should think about one of the quarters that are on the current shield."

The Moors' heads are on the shield to mark the conquest of the northern Aragonese city of Huesca by one of the region's first Christian kings, Pedro I, in 1096.

That was in the early stage of the Christian reconquista that eventually saw the last Moorish king driven out of Spain in 1492, 700 years after they conquered most of the Iberian peninsula.

Opposition politicians yesterday accused Mr Iglesias of trying to airbrush the event out of Spanish history.

"We don't really think that the people of Aragon care about this," said Antonio Suarez, of the conservative, People's party opposition."Should we also take the crosses off our shield because they might offend other religions?"

"Changing an emblem of this category should not be done lightly," Guillermo Redondo, a historian and expert in Spanish heraldry, told the local Heraldo de Aragon newspaper."There is a fair amount of ignorance and ingenuity (in this idea)."

Mr Redondo pointed out that the four heads were similar to those carried on the shields of Corcega and Sardinia and said that they reflected the region's past as a land of both Christian and Islamic cultures.

"It is the sum of the Christian culture, because of the crosses, and Islamic culture, because of the heads. There is no blood on them - as there is on other pieces of iconography," he said.

But the proposal has won support from others.

"It is about time," said Adolfo Barrena of the local, far left, United Left-Aragon party."Symbols like this do nothing to favour integration and multiculturalism."

"It is a positive thing that would favour coexistence (between religions), in Aragon," agreed the general secretary of the Union of Islamic Communities in Spain, Riay Tatary.

In a dark wood in northern Poland, up near the Russian border, something dreadful is happening: Hitler is being brought back to life. There have been resurrected Hitlers before, of course, on screen and in novels, but nothing remotely like this. Using "the most innovative computer animation techniques ever seen on TV", Hitler's face has in effect been superimposed on to an actor's body.

Although this hybrid Hitler is only partially flesh and blood, he struts, rants and gesticulates just like the real thing. But having breathed new digitalised life into the Fuhrer, what do you do with him? This being television, the answer is simple: you give him his own show.

Virtual History: The Plot to Kill Hitler is a cod documentary about the attempt to kill him in 1944 - "The July Plot". On July 20, 1944, a group of high-ranking German generals, led by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, tried to blow Hitler up at his Polish headquarters, the Wolf's Lair. The plot failed, but only just: a briefcase full of explosives detonated as planned, but left Hitler with only minor injuries. He soon recovered, the captors were shot, and the war continued for another year....

Now, just a few yards away from where Stauffenberg's bomb exploded, The Plot to Kill Hitler is being screened in the Fuhrer's former communications bunker. So what exactly is the future of history? Well, on this evidence here, it looks very much like being fabrication.

What the film-makers have done is to shoot "new" newsreel footage that resembles the real thing but in fact shows events that were never filmed at the time. Thus Hitler is seen having his breakfast and being injected with his daily "pick-me-up" by his physician, while Churchill loafs about in his dressing-gown until mid-morning reading the papers.

In order to obtain the desired level of would-be veracity, the actors involved had to wear specially designed frames on their heads while they were filmed. These recorded each of their movements, however tiny. Meanwhile, images of the three historical faces were scanned into a computer. Once filming was completed, the actors were digitally decapitated and their heads replaced by those of their computer-generated counterparts.

The results may not be faultless - Churchill's head, in particular, seems to be moving in a different plane to the rest of him - but they were certainly good enough to send a ripple of astonishment through the assembled hacks and historians.

According to David Abraham, head of Discovery Networks Europe, "Audiences will be able to see historical figures as they never have done before. In future, if it's done responsibly, this technique will allow us to tell history's greatest stories in a completely new way."

The key word here, of course, is "responsibly". Everyone involved is very aware that in the wrong hands this technique could cause an even greater blurring of the line between fact and fiction than exists at the moment. For instance, you could create convincing broadcasts from despots or crackpots who had either died years beforehand or didn't want to run the risk of actually being filmed.

As the historian Andrew Roberts, one of the advisers on The Plot to Kill Hitler, concedes, "Yes, it is possible to create false history like this. But here we've been very careful only to construct scenes that are non-contentious, and we haven't tried to reconstruct dialogue. I think that as long as you make it perfectly clear what's going on, then there isn't an ethical problem."

Also in the audience is a dapper, black-haired man with something worryingly familiar about his features. He is Clive Brooks, a former official in the immigration department of the Metropolitan Police, who plays Hitler - at least he does from the neck down. But in order that the visual effects team should have a suitable base on which to superimpose Hitler's face, it was necessary that there should be a close resemblance between actor and dictator.

"People have told me several times in the past that I look like Hitler," admits Brooks, trying to sound as cheerful about it as one can under the circumstances. "When they approached me, I thought it would be fascinating to have a go. However, I wasn't under any illusions. Basically, I was there as a body actor. I had to hit my marks and turn my head at the right moment. But in a sense," says Brooks, valiantly if none too plausibly, "you could argue that there was more acting involved; that it's easier to give your face to the camera than it is to keep it away."

With that, we gathered up our kitbags and tin mugs and were loaded back on to the trucks. On the way to the airfield, accompanied by motorcycle outriders in WW2 uniforms, we passed a line of cars waiting at a level crossing. Inside the cars people stared in astonishment as history, briefly replayed as farce, swept past their gaze.

It's taken months of removing soot, tackling water damage, and reorganizing, but readers and researchers are back at Iraq's National Library.

Nearly a year and a half after one of Iraq's chief repositories of historical record was looted and burned, surviving archives and manuscripts are being cleaned and catalogued - while the director ventures out occasionally to scour book markets for lost treasures.

At the same time, the Iraq Museum remains closed. Its location near a hotbed of resistance puts it in the crossfire of frequent attacks on US forces. But its directors express high hopes of reopening amuseum - perhaps within a year - that far outshines that of the Hussein era.

Today both institutions, early symbols of postwar troubles, are looking toward a fresh start.

"We want to be not just a part of Iraq's new democratic and liberal culture, but a leader in it," says Saad Eskander, a Kurdish historian who was appointed library director last December. "There's still a lot of work to do and we could use much more help, but the library has come a long way since those dark days after the war."...

At the National Library, director Eskander says the blame for cultural losses must be laid at the feet of Iraqis and Americans alike. Receiving guests in an office that before the war was the kitchen of the library's theater, Eskander says, "There is no question the Americans neglected their duty as military occupiers. But what happened to this library was still primarily the fault of the former director general."

About 60 percent of the records and documents of modern Iraq were lost, along with virtually all historical maps and photos, and perhaps 95 percent of rare books, Eskander says. Almost all equipment was destroyed or carried away as well.

The wrong relocation

The former director - once the preferred poet of Saddam Hussein - was dismissed after accusations that he removed rare books from the collection. But Eskander faults the former director for a different decision: moving the library's rare books and national archives to the basement of the nearby ministry of tourism in the prewar frenzy.

"The best thing would have been to move those collections to nearby mosques," he says, "but there was a reason for choosing that ministry: It was a fortress of support of the Baathist regime and housed officials" from Mr. Hussein's intelligence forces.

Eskander says the move meant the books and archives in that basement survived the burning and looting. But about two months after Baghdad's fall, he says, "someone entered the basement, took what they wanted, and opened the water taps."

The objective, some speculate, was to obliterate the Republican Guards' archives, which were among the documents. But about 40 percent of Iraq's archives from the Ottoman Empire, along with rare books and manuscripts, were also destroyed.

The threatened total loss of documents prompted swift action from the US military, Eskander says. When it was determined that the best response would be to freeze the soaked documents for later restoration, officials quickly came up with $ 70,000 to purchase special freezers.

Still, Eskander barely hides his disappointment in other US institutions as he tours the library's gutted shell. Reaching a collection of vacuum cleaners, he says, "This is what the Library of Congress came up with to help us out - and then they wanted pictures of them in use, like they thought we were going to steal them for personal benefit."

Eskander says the US has committed to placing several library employees in archival restoration programs in the US - but as yet has refused to issue them visas.

The US official says "fears of terrorism" are holding up the visa process in general and not just for Iraqis. But, he adds, "we will get the library those visas" - if they wait long enough. Meanwhile, Eskander says he is pursuing restoration programs in European countries.

... contemporary attitudes toward inebriation mean that "it's hard for people to take the study of alcohol consumption seriously," says Richard W. Unger, a professor of history at the University of British Columbia and the author of Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (University of Pennsylvania Press).

Mr. Unger says such attitudes stem from a failure to realize that brewed beverages were a necessity before the advent of dependable, clean water supplies or soft drinks.

In early modern Europe, "beer was a normal part of daily life," says Mr. Unger. With food often scarce, it was a nutritional godsend. It was also an all-purpose social lubricant, regarded with "neither suspicion nor awe," he says. Consumption per person far exceeded today's levels. For children as young as 4 years old, too, beer was a staple. Presumably they were fed weak brews, says Mr. Unger, but not too weak: "If the alcohol levels are low, the nutrition level is low, too."

So was medieval life like living in a college fraternity today? Perhaps so, for beer was brewed in one in 10 houses, all by trial and error, as modern methods of chemistry had not yet been developed.

"You couldn't walk down the street without smelling beer," says Mr. Unger.

The historical sources on beer are vast, Mr. Unger says, because "governments have regulated the production of alcohol since at least 3500 BC, and governments keep records."...

The United States is always urging other nations to embrace its form of government. But although it is the world's oldest constitutional democracy - formed more than 200 years ago when some important countries of today did not even exist - not one foreign state has ever adopted the American system.

The reasons for this are simple, though they require a knowledge of history. Because the US form of democracy was decided in the late 18th century, important aspects are outmoded today. It is also extraordinarily complicated, so much so that many Americans still fail to understand it.

These citizens were shocked after the last presidential election in late 2000, when it became clear that although Vice-President Al Gore, the Democrat, had 530,000 more votes than his opponent, the Republican George W Bush, the latter was headed for the White House.

This November, a similar outcome is possible, perhaps with the parties' fortunes actually reversed. The final spectacle on Jan 6, 2001, when Mr Gore presided in Congress over the formal registration of his own defeat, exposed another shocker: Americans do not directly vote for their president (in fact the Constitution offers no federal right to vote at all).

Instead, something called the Electoral College had taken over. This was not a group of academic political scientists, but a few hundred loyal party members, or 'electors', from every state but two, who were pledged to elect the president in a winner-take-all final ballot. That was why the election in Florida was vital; its electoral college votes decided the result.

There are deep flaws in this system, and it has been contested unsuccessfully in countless constitutional amendments over two centuries. Twice, in 1800 and 1888, the outcome went against the popular vote, and the result was disputed and critical in 1824 and 1876.

The US was embarrassed by the 2000 debacle, but rarely discussed is something even more mortifying: That the basic reasons for the electoral college are anti-democratic and racist.

The founding fathers invented it to block what they feared as 'mob rule' in choosing the president, but it also functions unfairly due to a reason rooted in slavery.

Only in November last year came a scholarly book devoted singularly to this unpleasant complication. The distinguished historian Garry Wills published, Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power, about the 1800 election and how Thomas Jefferson's victory depended on the nation's population of disenfranchised slaves. Hence the derisory name given him that provided Mr Wills with his title.

Three-fifths rule

In a notorious decision in the 1787 Constitutional Convention, the founding fathers decided that each slave would count as three-fifths of a white person. This was not because they literally believed that's all the humanity African-Americans possessed.

It was instead a compromise fraction to allay threatened rebellion from the less citizen-populated Southern states, by increasing population numbers that counted in each state in the region. This in turn decided the allocation of its congressional representatives - and the electoral college votes to which each state was entitled.

In the words of John Quincy Adams, America's sixth president, it was 'the triumph of the South over the North; of slave representation over the purely free'. Its effects also gave the South disproportionate dominance over much of US political history, even up to today.

The three-fifths rule granted the South greater influence on federal affairs, because not only did it influence presidential elections, but the structure of the senate.

Again, with Southern support, smaller states got two US senators each, the same as the larger ones, despite the latter's objections. So that today Wyoming, with under one million population, has the same number of senators as California, with 30 million. Both of each state's senators are also added to the electoral college vote totals, once more giving smaller states an advantage. Not to have counted the US senators would have brought Mr Gore victory in 2000.

In his book, Mr Wills points out that historians have ignored the three-fifths clause because it directly influenced only one presidential election, but disproportionate Southern political power - based on slave ownership - helped shape America.

For decades slave states held one-third more congressional seats than their free populations warranted. Before 1850, slaveholders also controlled the presidency for 50 years, held the speakership for 41 years, and provided 18 of 31 Supreme Court justices.

This imbalance undoubtedly prolonged slavery as an institution, and it certainly allowed its establishment in Missouri, as well as permitted the expulsion of native Americans from their ancestral lands. Altogether, more than a quarter of US presidents in its entire history owned slaves.

Adams again, in 1843, told the House of Representatives: 'Your country is no longer a democracy, it is not even a republic. It is a government of 2,000-3,000 holders of slaves, to the utter exclusion of the remaining part.'

Not exactly the proud history of a nation devoted to rule by the people, for the people, and of the people; or of one person, one vote. The racist and undemocratic elements of the three-fifths clause continue to influence the US Senate today. By deliberately creating an institution more on the lines of the British House of Lords than a democratic assembly for the people, the senate is today overwhelmingly composed of rich white men.

The senate's own majority is held by members from the 26 smallest states, representing only 18 per cent of the nation's population. It has no black senator and over half of the 100 are millionaires. The nine largest states, containing a majority of Americans and including New York and California, are represented by just 18 of the 100.

This means that these few men - the senate's percentage of women is still well below a fifth - directly control what becomes law in the US. It is, according to American historian and author Richard Rosenfeld, 'a grotesque monument to (an) anti-democratic legacy'.

In an essay calling for the abolition of the US senate, he adds that the institution, 'remains largely a preserve of wealthy white male aristocrats drawn from an entirely different economic class than the people they purport to represent. . . disadvantaging women, blacks, the young, and other groups with smaller percentages of millionaires.'

The combined impact of the electoral college system and the continuing bias towards small, country populations as against large cities, contributes to voter apathy. Less than half of entitled Americans cast a ballot, in many cases because they believe it does not count.

And because of the electoral college requirement, unless they live in a swing state - of which there are only about 17 of the 50 this time - their presidential vote does not indeed count.

Most conservative

Of almost all Western democracies, the US is the most conservative. If its electoral system was fairer, the Democrats would more often have held the presidency in recent decades, instead of increasingly conservative Republicans. Its senate would also be more liberal.

American democracy, it can be argued, is broken, but it will not be fixed. Why? Because the small states have to agree to constitutional changes that would cost them power. They are not about to surrender that.

Germany: The Berlin Wall returned to the German capital last week like a bad sequel. Berliners watched in disbelief as the wall rose from the dead before their eyes, days before they celebrate the 15th anniversary of its demise writes Derek Scally in Berlin.

A 200-metre stretch of the wall has been reinstated at the notorious former border crossing, Checkpoint Charlie - this time for the tourists.

"We want to remember the victims of the wall and the efforts of the Allies," said Ms Alexandra Hildebrandt, director of the nearby Wall Museum and initiator of the project.

Her Berlin Wall II has whipped up a lively controversy in the German capital, a city well used to heated historical debates.

The original 166-km long"anti-fascist protection wall", as it was officially known, was erected at dawn on August 13th, 1961, turning West Berlin into an Allied-controlled island in East Germany.

The wall halted the flow of refugees to the west that had reached 160,000 in the first eight months of 1961.

Some 215 people were killed trying to cross in the 28 years of the wall's existence, with another 800 dying on the border with West Germany.

Most of the wall has ended up in motorway foundations, with only three sections still standing in the city centre.

Like most sequels, the Berlin Wall II is a shadow of the original and many see it as a crass attempt to cash in on the notoriety of its predecessor.

Dr Hubertus Knabe, a leading historian of the period, criticises what he calls the"trivialisation" of the wall - the reconstruction without the razor wire, automatic machine guns and other deadly methods used to seal the border.

"The wall wasn't a tourism project but an instrument of murder," said Mr Walter Momper, mayor of West Berlin in 1989, to Die Welt newspaper."The authentic locations with their wall remainders are sufficient. Anything else would be Disneyland."

Puzzled Berliners and tourists weren't sure how to react."It's so difficult to imagine that there used to be anything here, so in that sense it's a good idea," said Ms Pauline Morris, visiting from Bristol. Ms Greta Schiller from Bonn said:"I think it's a good idea. For my grandchildren the wall's just a boring historical detail." An elderly Berlin lady said:"Don't they know how much we hated that thing?" before stalking off with a stricken expression.

A spokesman for the city government admitted yesterday that they badly need new ideas for ways of keeping alive the memory of the wall, but said this project was of"little help".

Anyone who wants to see the reconstructed Berlin Wall will have to hurry, though: the city has approved the project only until the end of the year. As construction workers put the finishing touches to the wall yesterday, an impatient British tourist asked:"What time does the Berlin Wall open?"

Rome: An anatomy professor yesterday gave Michelangelo an A-plus for his masterpiece David, despite one small flaw: a missing muscle in the statue's back.

University of Florence anatomy professor Massimo Gulisano, working with haematology professor Pietro Bernabei, said their measurements of the statue also debunked long-held notions that the 4.1m-high hunk of marble was out of proportion.

"Some say the feet, the hands are out of proportion. It's not true," Professor Gulisano said during a two-day conference in Florence of art historians, restorers and scientists to mark the 500th anniversary of the statue's unveiling.

"Michelangelo knew anatomy very well. There was only one error. There was a hollow where there should have been a muscle on the right side of the back."

But Michelangelo, who learned anatomy by dissecting cadavers, was aware of the flaw, Professor Gulisano added, writing in a letter that a defect in the marble block forced him to leave out that muscle.

The professors also admired the technical correctness with which Michelangelo depicted the tensions in the muscles of the biblical hero, who, with his slingshot, was about to challenge Goliath.

Some observers have commented that David's genitals seemed a little small, but the professors told the conference that measurements indicated all was normal.

"Taking in consideration this is a statue of a young man who was thinking about a battle that was about to happen, everything is normal," Professor Gulisano said.

Mark Carnes, in the Chronicle of Higher Ed (subscribers only) (Oct. 8, 2004):

Teachers often forget successful classes but find their failures indelibly imprinted in their minds. I clearly recall one first-year seminar from nine years ago, on masterpieces of the human imagination.

"What," I asked,"are we to make of Plato's attempts to define justice?" A chill descended. Noses burrowed into The Republic. One student hesitantly volunteered a comment; another offered a passing observation. Something resembling a discussion followed, but most of the remarks betrayed the superficiality of the students' engagement.

They were eager to discuss their favorite movies and books, censorship, or the problem of date rape, but they shrank from theseeming irrelevance of Plato to their lives. Often the brightest students were the most subdued. Their occasional remarks showed intelligence and sophistication, yet every gesture and tone of voice conveyed boredom.

The more I thought about that failed seminar, the more I realized that it had not been very different from other discussions of classic texts that I had led at Barnard and Columbia. I could recall particular sessions when a student's insight blazed into real illumination and rekindled my own enthusiasm; in the better classes a steady, intelligent patter made the time pass quickly. But those were exceptions. And when I confessed my sense of failure to colleagues, most recounted similar frustrations.

What was wrong?

Early the following semester I met individually with students from that seminar. They were initially surprised by my sense of its inadequacy, but as we talked they opened up. They explained that what I had taken to be sullenness on their part was actually a manifestation of deep anxiety. They knew that my knowledge of the texts exceeded their own; they chafed at being obliged to reveal the insufficiency of their understanding.

Another revelation followed. If students were uncomfortable with me, they were even more worried about their peers' reactions. Their sophisticated disinterest masked a fear of saying something foolish, inappropriate, or -- even worse -- revealing about their fragile sense of self. The more I pushed them to the brink of otherness -- other ideas, cultures, and societies -- the more they clung to familiarity or simply clammed up.

Students were also put off by the purely cerebral character of the undertaking. They regarded classic texts as abstract mental games: intellectual hurdles to be cleared, rather like math or language requirements, before they could dash off to the courses whose relevance to their lives was obvious. They had little sense that the ideas behind the texts had been forged in the heat of human passions. They knew that Socrates had been put to death for his views, but that appalling fact merely proved how distant his world was from their own.

I concluded that if my role as mentor impeded my students' engagement with the texts, it should be minimized. If students' insecurity hampered their ability to engage fully with otherness, they should assume an alternative identity. If students regarded important texts as vague and abstract, they should examine the texts within the context of the impassioned debates and dramas from which they had emerged.

Instead of teacher-generated discussions, I decided that the class would play games, each set in an intellectually charged moment in history. Because I didn't want students to behave like callow novices, inferior to a grand inquisitor, I would have them assume the roles of powerful adults: mighty emperors, influential scholars, religious zealots. I would become mere tutor or scribe....

Click here to see a Mark Carnes class in action.