Roundup: Historians' Take

Barron H. Lerner: The Annals of Extreme Surgery

Barron H. Lerner, a professor of medicine and public health at Columbia, is the author of “The Breast Cancer Wars: Hope, Fear and the Pursuit of a Cure in Twentieth-Century America” and the forthcoming “One for the Road: Drunk Driving Since 1900.”...Aggressive cancer therapy started in the late 19th century with the radical mastectomy, which involved the removal of the breast, along with the chest muscle below it and nearby lymph nodes, and was championed by William S. Halsted, a surgeon at Johns Hopkins.In the following decades, Dr. Halsted’s methods became more and more popular, particularly after World War II, when surgeons who had performed heroic operations on European battlefields returned to America optimistic about what could be achieved in cancer surgery. In an attempt to eradicate all potentially dangerous cells without the assistance of chemotherapy — which was not yet in wide use — surgeons began removing even parts of the sternum and rib cage of certain breast cancer patients in something called a super-radical mastectomy.

Jonathan Zimmerman: When Candidates Won't Face Facts

Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of history and education at New York University, is the author of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory." Is the GOP becoming the "anti-science party"?That's what Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman warned last week, and there's plenty of evidence to suggest that he's right. Example A is Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who recently suggested that man-made climate change was a vehicle for scientists to aggrandize themselves rather than an accurate way of describing the world.

Fouad Ajami: From Baghdad to Tripoli

Mr. Ajami is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and co-chairman of Hoover's working group on Islamism and the International Order. On the face of it, the similarities of the undoing of the terrible regimes of Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gadhafi are striking. The spectacles of joy in Tripoli today recall the delirious scenes in Baghdad's Firdos Square in 2003—the statues pulled down, the palaces of faux grandeur and kitsch ransacked by people awakening to their own sense of violation and power, the man at the helm who had been full of might and bravado making a run for it, exposed as a paranoid and pretender, living in fear of his day of reckoning. In neither case had the people of these two tormented societies secured their liberty on their own. In Baghdad, the Baathist reign of terror would have lasted indefinitely had George W. Bush not pushed it into its grave.

Patricia A. Turner: Dangerous White Stereotypes

Patricia A. Turner is a professor of African American studies and the vice provost for undergraduate studies at the University of California, Davis. Her most recent book is “Crafted Lives: Stories and Studies of African American Quilters.”ONE of the most noteworthy movies of the summer is “The Help.” Set in Jackson, Miss., in the early 1960s, it focuses on the relationships between white upper-middle-class women and the black domestics who took care of them and their children....This movie deploys the standard formula. With one possible exception, the white women are remarkably unlikable, and not just because of their racism. Like the housewives portrayed in reality television shows, the housewives of Jackson treat each other, their parents and their husbands with total callousness. In short, they are bad people, therefore they are racists.There’s a problem, though, with that message. To suggest that bad people were racist implies that good people were not.

Sam Tanenhaus: Imperial Conservatism’s Last Gasp

Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of The New York Times Book Review, is writing a biography of William F. Buckley Jr. This article originally appeared in the September 15, 2011, issue of the magazine.It was not so long ago that George W. Bush seemed to embody the future of conservatism. He had entered office amid doubts about his rightful place there, but pressed ahead nonetheless with grand ambitions, conducting an ideologically potent foreign war while also promising much at home. Which led some to wonder: Was this lavish spender really a conservative? Bush’s champions rushed in to explain. The president, Fred Barnes wrote approvingly in The Wall Street Journal in August 2003, was a “big government conservative.” He believed, that is, in “using what would normally be seen as liberal means—activist government—for conservative ends.”

Clarence Lang: Race, Class, and Obama

Clarence Lang is an associate professor of African-American studies and history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is author of Grassroots at the Gateway: Class Politics and Black Freedom Struggle in St. Louis, 1936-75 (University of Michigan Press, 2009), and co-editor, with Robbie Lieberman, of Anticommunism and the African American Freedom Movement (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).In his latest book, The End of Anger: A New Generation's Take on Race and Rage (Ecco), published in May, the journalist Ellis Cose argues that middle-class African-Americans are uniquely optimistic about the future. A few months later, however, the Pew Research Center disclosed that from 2005 to 2009, the racial wealth gap had reached a record high, with wealth falling by 53 percent among black households. That news arrived as President Obama and Congress brokered an end to the debt-ceiling standoff, laying the groundwork for deficit cuts that will disproportionately affect black Americans. Meanwhile, prominent voices in the black public sphere have been urging African-Americans to defend Obama against his detractors. How to reconcile Cose's optimism, Pew's findings, and the appeals of African-Americans to circle the wagons, even as Obama appeases Republicans by sacrificing black constituencies and interests? Simply put, you can't.

Niall Ferguson: After the Fall of Gaddafi

Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Harvard University and a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. He is also a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His latest book, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, was published in November. It still works. Western military intervention—no matter how halfhearted and apparently ineffectual—is still sufficient to tip the balance against a rogue regime.

Richard J. Evans: Make History Compulsory in the UK for the Right Reasons

Richard J. Evans is regius professor of modern history at the University of Cambridge.The annual dissection of GCSE results, announced on Thursday, is well under way, and as usual, commentators have been wringing their hands about the decline of history as a subject. Conservative MPs have described the situation as "alarming", while the Daily Telegraph accuses schools of "refusing to offer GCSEs in history". They echo concerns voiced by Michael Gove, the education secretary, and historians Niall Ferguson and Simon Schama, who advocate a facts-based approach to a core narrative of British history as a means of stopping the rot.Much of this alarmism is exaggerated. History has been an optional subject since GCSEs were introduced in the 1980s Then it was taken by just over a third of students; in 2011 by just under a third. The decline in entries this year has been just over 1%. Hardly drastic. And a major reason why more students aged 14-16 don't take history is the requirement to study English, maths, science, religious studies, citizenship and ICT up to school-leaving age, while history is optional after 14.

Niall Ferguson: Gloating China, Hidden Problems

Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Harvard University and a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. He is also a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His latest book, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, was published in November.Small wonder the Chinese news agency was on gloat mode during the week of Aug. 8. The U.S. stock market fell off a cliff, bounced briefly, and then fell again. The Federal Reserve admitted the economy is close to stalling. And in China? Oh, just the usual. Exports surging to record heights, that sort of thing.

Rick Shenkman: Dismantling an Agency Isn't Easy

Rick Shenkman is the publisher of the History News Network and author of "Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth About the American Voter." He wrote this for the New York Times's "Room for Debate" feature on the question, "What if Republicans Close the E.P.A.?"Not even Ronald Reagan, patron saint of the conservative movement, attempted to abolish the E.P.A. — and with good reason. There was an easier way to sabotage environmental regulations, which was after all the goal. It was to put deregulators in charge of the agency and then cut its budget. The first year of his administration, E.P.A. enforcement actions referred to the Justice Department fell by 69 percent. Only a scandal involving one Anne Gorsuch Burford, the now forgotten administrator of the agency, prevented its wholesale dismantling just a decade after it was established by (surprise!) Richard Nixon.

Victor Davis Hanson: Obama is More Like Clement Attlee than Harry Truman

NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.Since 2009, the example of the economic boom following World War II has been used by Keynesians to justify their record “peacetime” levels of borrowing intended to lift the U.S. out of the doldrums. Indeed, the more the contemporary borrowing fails, the more the vast indebtedness of the war years is invoked to reassure us. On occasion a wry lament follows that if only a spaceship full of dangerous aliens were to appear, we might have the requisite excuse to follow our grandfathers into a new collective frenzy of economic stimulus and public debt.

Conrad Black: Out with Qaddafi

Conrad Black is the author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom and Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full. He can be reached at cbletters@gmail.com.

James A. Millward: Being Blacklisted by China, And What Can Be Learned from It

James A. Millward is Professor of Intersocietal History at the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown UniversityBloomberg, and more recently The Washington Post, have run stories about the visa problems of scholars who contributed to Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderland, a volume edited by Frederick Starr and published by M.E. Sharpe in 2004. The Bloomberg piece was exhaustively reported; the reporters who wrote it, Dan Golden and Oliver Staley, conducted interviews with Chinese as well as western participants in the episode, and all in all did a good job with a complicated story.

Paul Kengor: It’s the Spending, Stupid: A Crucial Historical Look at Federal-Government Spending

Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values.

Benny Morris: The Death of Egyptian-Israeli Peace

Benny Morris is a professor of history in the Middle East Studies Department of Ben-GurionUniversity of the Negev. His most recent book is One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict (Yale University Press, 2009). The head of Israel's opposition, Kadima Party leader Tzipi Livni, had it right when she said last Friday that Israel's southern border with Egypt was "no longer a border of peace.” She was referring at once to the complex attack across the Sinai border the day before by Palestinian terrorists, which left eight Israelis dead (six of them civilians, including two middle-aged sisters) and two dozen wounded, and to the Israel-Egypt peace treaty of 1979.

Walter Russell Mead: Dubya Gets a Third Term in the Middle East

Walter Russell Mead is professor of foreign affairs and the humanities at Bard College and editor-at-large of The American Interest.  With the forces of humanitarianism and international law, or at least the forces of his tribal and religious enemies, closing in on his Tripoli lair, Africa’s King of Kings and Loon of Loons is on the verge of overthrow. And in Damascus, Butcher Assad, the world’s most notorious opthamologist, watched the Great Loon’s last stand as he contemplated the prospect of economic sanctions that could cut into his bullet and thug budget, reducing the rate at which he is able to slaughter his opponents and possibly even threatening his hold on power. Via Meadia has wanted both the Loon and the Butcher gone for a long time; we only wish the Dear Leader of North Korea and the Lion of Zimbabwe were packing their luggage under similar time pressure.  They can be strung up in the streets like Mussolini, they can kill themselves in their last redoubts l

Steve Hochstadt: Libertarians, Watch Out

Steve Hochstadt of Jacksonville is a professor of history at Illinois College. His column appears every Tuesday in the Journal-Courier and is available and on his blog at stevehochstadt.blogspot.com.Libertarianism is mainstream. It seems as if the libertarian moment has finally arrived, when Americans grasp the significance of the national Libertarian Party motto: “Minimum Government, Maximum Freedom.”The level of anti-government sentiment in the U.S. is startling. Liberals think the Democratic president and his Democratic Congressional colleagues have failed miserably to promote liberal policies, and talk about taking their disapproval to the streets. Republicans have been preaching an anti-government line since Ronald Reagan was president, and have shown more than once their willingness to thwart the normal working of the federal government.Self-promoting ideologues, like Glenn Beck, adopt a Libertarian cover to hide fascist ranting. Congressman Ron Paul, who talks like a Libertarian, is making a respectable run for the presidency.

Timothy Snyder: A Dangerous Misreading of the Boston Tea Party from Rightwing Anarchists

Timothy Snyder is professor of history at Yale University. An expert on eastern Europe and the second world war, he has published numerous books and written articles for periodicals such as the New York Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, New Republic, Prospect and the Nation. His latest book is Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010).

John Sainsbury: Gandhi's Ghost Haunts Modern India

John Sainsbury is a professor of history at Brock University. A frail man, Anna Hazare, goes on a hunger strike to protest corruption in India. Thousands rally to his cause in New Dehli. The old man is arrested and protests spread nationwide. Rahul Gandhi, scion of the family that dominates the ruling National Congress Party, orders Hazare released. Hazare refuses to leave prison until the government promises to allow his campaign to continue freely. The government buckles and Hazare continues his fast. For those with long memories or some knowledge of history, the events playing out in India evoke a sense of déjà-vu.

Corey Robin: The War on Tax

... Had politics not intruded and had Obama heeded the advice of centre-left economists, these are the steps he might have taken. First, do nothing about the debt, at least not now. The debt can be significantly reduced only if the economy improves. The best way to encourage that is for the government to spend, which will add to the debt in the short term but reduce it in the long term through revenues generated by growth. Second, once the economy is healthy, increase taxes, particularly on the wealthy. As a share of GDP, revenues are at their lowest levels since 1950. With the exception of a brief interregnum in the late 1980s and early 1990s, top marginal rates are the lowest they’ve been since 1931. Corporate taxes in the US are the lowest of any OECD country. The notion that taxes shouldn’t be raised, not only to fund necessary and desirable expenditure but also to cut the debt, runs counter to common sense. Last, cut military spending. As the economic journalist Doug Henwood has observed, if the US simply returned to the spending levels of 2000 – when ‘the Pentagon didn’t have to hold bake sales’ and spending was 3.7 per cent of GDP as opposed to the current 5.4 per cent – it could save $3.6 trillion in the next decade, 72 per cent more than the debt-ceiling deal negotiated by Obama and Congress will save.