Roundup: Talking About History

Stephen J. Morris: We Could Have Won the Vietnam War

Stephen J. Morris, in the NYT (5-1-05): [Stephen J. Morris, a fellow at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, is writing a book on the Vietnam War in the Nixon years.]THE Vietnam War is universally regarded as a disaster for what it did to the American and Vietnamese people. However, 30 years after the war's end, the reasons for its outcome remain a matter of dispute. The most popular explanation among historians and journalists is

Stephanie Coontz: What "Killed" the Institution of Marriage? L-O-V-E

Stephanie Coontz, in the Wa PO (5-1-05):Thirteen years ago, Vice President Dan Quayle attacked the producers of TV sitcom's Murphy Brown for letting her character bear a child out of wedlock, claiming that the show's failure to defend traditional family values was encouraging America's youth to abandon marriage. His speech kicked

Ian Peter: Who Really Invented the Internet?

Ian Peter, at the website, NetHistory.info: Fuelled largely by the PBS television series "Triumph of the Nerds" some years ago, and by the earlier writings of Silicon Valley gossip columnist Robert Cringely in the beautifully titled "Accidental Empires - how the boys of Silicon Valley make their millions, battle foreign competition, and still can't get a date" (Penguin, 1992), a popular belief has sprung up that the Internet was invented in the Pentagon in 1969.

Pu Zhiqiang : China Needs to Amend Its Textbooks, too

Pu Zhiqiang, in the NYT (4-28-05):[Pu Zhiqiang is a Chinese lawyer. This article was translated by Perry Link from the Chinese.]EVER since June 4, 1989, when the world's cameras embarrassed the Chinese government by recording the slaughter of unarmed protesters in Beijing, spring has been a sensitive period in Chinese politics. Public demonstrations of all kinds have been repressed as if they were vicious cancer

The Last Helicopter to Leave Saigon in 1975? The Truth Is ...

Hubert Van Es, in the NYT (4-29-05): THIRTY years ago I was fortunate enough to take a photograph that has become perhaps the most recognizable image of the fall of Saigon - you know it, the one that is always described as showing an American helicopter evacuating people from the roof of the United States Embassy. Well, like so many things about the Vietnam War, it's not exactly what it seems. In fact, the photo is not of the embassy at all; the helicopter was actually on the

Gwynne Dyer: Why Hitler's Evil Is Unlikely to Be Forgotten as Napoleon's Was

Gwynne Dyer, in the New Zealand Herald (4-28-05):Adolf Hitler has now been dead slightly longer than he was alive, and he is about to stop being real. As long as the generation whose lives he terrorised is still with us, he remains a live issue, but the 60th anniversary of his death tomorrow is the last big one that will be celebrated by those who survived his evil and knew his victims. By the time the 75th anniversary comes around, they will almost all be g

Is Ridley Scott's New Movie About the Crusades Fair?

Joanne Laucius, in the Ottawa Citizen (4-28-05): Muslims and Christians clash in the desert. There are bloody battles, power struggles and even gruesome decapitations, all in the name of faith. Familiar as this may seem to any consumer of the nightly news, this is Gladiator director Ridley Scott's tale Kingdom of Heaven, to be splashed across the big screen starting next week. The film is about the Crusades, a centuries-old subject that is history to most Westerne

FDR's Disability: New Recognition by the Media

Lynn Smith, writing in the LAT about the new HBO movie about FDR's disability ("Warm Springs"), starring Kenneth Branagh (4-23-05): ... David Taylor, producer-director of "FDR: A Presidency Revealed," said he encountered 53 scholarly books about Roosevelt's policies but little about his physical disability. Of 35,000 photos of Roosevelt, only two show him in a wheelchair, and they were not published while he was alive. When Taylor researched arc

Ian Buruma: Denuding the Holocaust of Meaning by Applying It to Political Enemies

Ian Buruma, in the Financial Times of London (4-23-05):When a respected public figure in Washington DC describes the view that people should pay tax on large amounts of inherited wealth as “the morality of the Holocaust”, one can only conclude that something has gone seriously wrong with political debate. The statement was made by Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, board

Alison Dickman: So When Did the Gay Rights Movement Begin?

Historians have disagreed over the origin of the modern gay civil-rights movement, debating whether it began in the 1950s or 1960s or even earlier.This year, the argument was re-ignited with some prodding by Equality Forum organizers who suggest it originated in Philadelphia.Organizers of Equality Forum, which runs through May 1, have dubbed this year's event the "40th Anniversary of the GLBT Civil Rights Movement," and also referred to Philadelphia as the site of the first gay and lesbian civil rights demonstrations. While the July 4, 1965, protest held by more than 40 gays and lesbians outside Independence Hall was noteworthy because it was repeated every year through 1969, many historians question its significance in the overall movement."There's no basis for considering the first annual reminder as a founding, launching or in any way decisive event in the history of the g/l/b/t movement in the U.S.," said John D'Emilio a University of Illinois history, gender and women's studies professor who has written many books on the U.S. gay civil-rights movement.D'Emilio also noted that the 1965 protest cannot even lay claim to being the first public protest of gays and lesbians in the country.

Thomas Sowell: The Surprising Discovery of What Lays Behind High Black Illiteracy Rates

Thomas Sowell, in the WSJ (4-26-05): For most of the history of this country, differences between the black and the white population--whether in income, IQ, crime rates, or whatever--have been attributed to either race or racism. For much of the first half of the 20th century, these differences were attributed to race--that is, to an assumption that blacks just did not have it in their genes to do as wel

Norman Solomon: 40 Years After We Invaded the Dominican Republic

Norman Solomon, in the Baltimore Sun (4-26-05): FORTY YEARS AGO, on the morning of April 26, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson spoke with a top State Department official about fast-moving events in the Dominican Republic. A popular rebellion was on the verge of toppling a military junta and restoring the country's democratically elected president, Juan Bosch, to power. "This Bosch is no good," Mr. Johnson said. "He's no good at all," replied Ass

Jörg Friedrich: It Was to Impress Stalin that Truman Bombed Hiroshima

Jörg Friedrich, in Arts & & Letters Daily (4-5-05): [Jörg Friedrich was born in 1944. Since the 70s he has written extensively on the legal history of the Second World War, and the NS war crimes. His Book "Der Brand", on the Allied bombing of Germany, achieved international acclaim. Jörg Friedrich lives as a freelance author in Berlin.]... Like the bombing of Hiroshima, Dresden's destru

Martin Kramer: Questions About Columbia's Commitment to Transparency in the Middle East Studies Controversy

Martin Kramer at his blog (4-25-05): In Professor Joseph Massad's mid-March statement to the ad hoc committee investigating faculty intimidation of students at Columbia, he listed the support he'd received from various quarters, including petitions and letters. He then added this: The Middle East Studies Association’s Academic Freedom Committee also issued a letter defending my academic freedom, as

Edwin Black: Passover, as Told By One Who Was There

Edwin Black, in a syndicated article by Feature Group (4-23-05): [ Edwin Black is the bestselling author of The Transfer Agreement (Macmillan 1986), IBM and the Holocaust (Crown 2001) and, War Against the Weak (Avalon 2003) and Banking on Baghdad (Wiley 2004). His next book appears in April 2006.] Aproximately two million Children of Israel are now encamped in the Sinai following their extraordinary exodus from Egypt yesterday. Just d

Juan Cole: The New McCarthyism

Juan Cole, at Salon.com (4-22-05):A member of the U.S. Congress calls for an assistant professor at a major university to be summarily fired. The right-wing tabloid press runs a series of vicious attacks on him, often misquoting him and perpetuating previous misquotes. Opinion pieces attacking "tenured radicals" and questioning professors' patriotism use him as their centerpiec

Arun Pereira: The Relevance of the New Papacy

Arun Pereira, in the Toronto Star (4-21-05): [Arun Pereira is an associate professor at Saint Louis University. His book Papal Reich, an historical novel about the papacy, is set in a world where religions are displacing nations as the global powers.]In an age of globalization, people's identities and loyalties are increasingly tied to the one constant in their lives: Religion. Can the new Pope make a difference in their lives, asks A time of expanding global trade, ne

Just How Bad Was It in Nanjing?

David McNeill, in the Independent (4-21-05): ... Japanese troops poured into the wartime capital city of Nanjing on 13 December 1937, after suffering heavy casualties in Shanghai. They then began a six-week orgy of medieval raping, killing and looting, carrying out what the United Human Rights Council called 'the single worst atrocity during the World War Two era in either the European or Pacific theatres of war'. An American eyewitness, Minnie Vautrin, who kept a d

Who Was Benedict XV?

Bruce West, in the Montreal Gazette (4-21-05): The new head of the Catholic church is "carving his own space" by taking the name Pope Benedict XVI, one of Canada's leading church historians said yesterday. "He has strategically not placed his name as being an immediate successor to John Paul II," said Mark McGowan, a professor of church history at the University of Toronto and principal of the university's St. Michael's College. "He

The 10 Greatest Popes Were ...

Cathy Lynn Grossman, in USA Today (4-19-05): ... When the Rev. John O'Malley, a professor at Weston Jesuit School of Theology, and the Rev. Richard McBrien, professor at Notre Dame and author of Lives of the Popes, were asked their choices for the 10 most influential popes, both listed Pope John XXIII. But they diverged sharply on several other names, citing some as influential for good, others for ill -- and some for both, underscoring that "influential" a