Historians in the News

Henry Lewis Gates, Jr. has new The Root column

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University, director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, and winner of innumerable awards (including a MacArthur genius grant), has a new weekly blog, "100 Amazing Facts about the Negro," at The Root, where he also serves as editor-in-chief. The blog is inspired by a 1934 pamphlet by pioneering African American journalist. The blog series uses commonly-asked questions about black history -- "who was the first black president in North America?" (Hint: He predated Barack Obama by 179 years) or"what was North America's first black town?" as a jumping-off point for a detailed meditation on broader currents in African American (broadly defined as the history of Africans in all of the Americas) history, and the incredible diversity of African Americans. The blog will continue throughout the next year in advance of Gates's forthcoming PBS series, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross.As Gates wrote in his introductory post:

Sean Wilentz pens official history of Columbia Records

With all the books and CDs that used to live on our shelves ascending into the clouds, we still need something to put on our coffee tables, right?That’s one way to explain “360 Sound,” a large, lovely, photo-crammed book celebrating a storied American record label’s 125 years in a business that’s recently turned perilous. Commissioned by Columbia, Princeton historian Sean Wilentz has undertaken the tricky task of sprinting across 13 decades of music, technology and commerce, sharing precious page space with 300 gorgeous archival photos of Columbia signees who helped shape the arc of American song....

Harold Holzer writes companion book for "Lincoln"

ALBANY, N.Y. — One of the leading authorities on Abraham Lincoln has written a companion book for Steven Spielberg's newly released film on the 16th president.The book by New York historian and author Harold Holzer, titled "Lincoln: How Abraham Lincoln Ended Slavery in America," is geared toward young readers....Related LinksHNN Hot Topics: "Lincoln": The Movie

A historian’s Spanish lessons for modern America

Sir John Elliott is our greatest historian of 16th- and 17th-century Spain and the author of the magisterial biography “The Count-Duke of Olivares: The Statesman in an Age of Decline.” In “History in the Making” this distinguished scholar — now in his early 80s — looks back on his career as a Hispanist and reflects on the developments in historiography over the past 60 years.Straight off, Elliott lays out his cards: “I believe that theory is of less importance for the writing of good history than the ability to enter imaginatively into the life of a society remote in time or place, and produce a plausible explanation of why its inhabitants thought and behaved as they did.” While Elliott has done intense archival research and learned much from the social-science approaches of the French “Annales” school, he nonetheless comes across as very much a classic British historian: thoughtful, non-doctrinaire and quietly brilliant. He sensibly notes, for instance, that “over-interpretation” has joined “the post-modern insistence on the impossibility of interpretation as one of the sins of our age.”...

Doris Kearns Goodwin on life, death and the presidency

Doris Kearns Goodwin has not only seen her biography Team of Rivals become one of the definitive accounts of Abraham Lincoln’s life (and touted by President Obama as the one book he’d want on a desert island), she has now seen her work provide the basis for the recently released film “Lincoln,” directed by Steven Spielberg. In this interview, Goodwin — who has also written biographies of presidents Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson — looks at Obama’s presidential leadership in the context of Lincoln. She also reflects on what it’s like as a historian to live with the dead, and to help pass on their lessons in leadership. Goodwin spoke with Lillian Cunningham, editor of the Washington Post’s On Leadership section. The conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Is 'Lincoln' the real deal?: Interview with James McPherson

Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" is a historical biopic more concerned with depicting the 16th president's log-rolling politics than his log-splitting childhood."Lincoln," one of many high-profile films this season based on real events, has been warmly embraced by critics and audiences. But there's another group whose opinion matters — historians."There have been other movies about Lincoln," said James McPherson, a Civil War historian, Lincoln biographer and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Battle Cry of Freedom," in a recent interview after seeing the film. "They tended to reflect a romanticized Lincoln, almost a mythologized Lincoln. This comes closer to reality. This shows Lincoln's exhaustion, his gauntness — and his storytelling."...

NPR Asks a Historian: Just How Accurate Is 'Lincoln'?

A great many families going to the movies over this Thanksgiving weekend will probably see Lincoln, Steven Spielberg's new film starring Daniel Day-Lewis and an impressive cast.Based on a biography by Doris Kearns Goodwin, but scripted by playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner, it's been very well-reviewed, but here's a question: How true to history is it?Ronald White, author of A. Lincoln: A Biography, tells NPR's Linda Wertheimer that if a ninth-grader were to write a school paper based on the film, she'd find that its "dramatic core" is basically on target.Interview HighlightsOn the film's overall historical correctness"The dramatic core of this remarkable four months of trying to pass the 13th Amendment [which banned slavery] is true. Is every word true? No. Did Lincoln say, 'And to unborn generations ...'? No. But this is not a documentary. And so I think the delicate balance or blend between history and dramatic art comes off quite well."... 

Historians of science look forward to a unique gathering in UK

This Friday sees the deadline for submissions to what will be the largest ever meeting of historians of science in the UK, and almost certainly the largest for at least a generation to come....With the individual submissions still to come in, this promises to be huge for the history of science, which usually counts conference delegates in the 10s or 100s.The event is taking place next year, 22-28 July 2013, in Manchester. It is officially hosted by the British Society for the History of Science, and is being co-ordinated locally by members of the University of Manchester's Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine....

McCullough to help Dallas mark JFK assassination anniversary

DALLAS — The city of Dallas will mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy next year with a ceremony featuring the tolling of church bells, a moment of silence and readings by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough from the president’s speeches.“I think what we want to do is focus on the life and legacy and leadership of President Kennedy,” Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said Tuesday. “The tone is going to be serious, simple, respectful, and it’s going to be about his life.”...

U.S. tobacco historian says industry relies on incomplete reports

MONTREAL _ Academics hired by the tobacco industry to paint a historical portrait of how much the public knew about the harmful effects of tobacco use left out an important element, according to a witness at a class-action trial: internal documents from the companies themselves.Robert Proctor is testifying for the plaintiffs before the Quebec Superior Court at a landmark $27 billion lawsuit that pits an estimated 1.8 million Quebecers against the country's three major tobacco manufacturers _ Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd.; Rothmans, Benson & Hedges; and JTI-Macdonald.Proctor, a historian from California's Stanford University, is a self-described cigarette historian and public-health advocate. He has published extensively on the history of smoking, tobacco and health....

Some scholars reject dark portrait of Jefferson

Henry Wiencek suspected he would be in for a rough ride when “Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves,” his scathing assessment of America’s third president, was published last month. But just how rough he may not have realized.True, Mr. Wiencek, an independent scholar, has received the kind of attention most authors can only dream of: book excerpts on the covers of both Smithsonian and American History magazines, a C-Span interview at Monticello, almost universally glowing reviews from nonspecialists. (Jonathan Yardley of The Washington Post called the book “brilliant,” while Laura Miller of Salon hailed it as one “every American should read.”)

Historians, authors dispute what is to blame for killing compromise

Washington's political culture and the corrosive impact of money on politics are killing compromise, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin says."Even in LBJ's time, Republicans and Democrats stayed there on the weekends. They weren't running home to raise money," she said in an interview aired Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation." "Money is the poison in the system, we can never forget that, I think." Kearns Goodwin also pointed to the effect of the 24-hour news cycle in the deterioration of Washington culture. "You have the television that honors people who are extremists on either side. You've got districts that are so apportioned.  So the political culture has to change somehow," she said. "So maybe we do need to just put them all together in a room and not let them out."...

Historians need to give Spielberg a break

Kevin M. Levin is a Civil War historian based in Boston.  He is the author of the book Remembering the Battle of the Crater: War as Murder and can be found online at Civil War Memory. Historians are stakeholders in anything that attempts to represent the past. The vast majority of these stories pass us by innocently enough, but when the most popular Hollywood director makes a movie about Lincoln we watch and listen closely. We also feel a strong need to educate the general public and point out interpretive shortcomings in popular films.Over the past few days I've read numerous reviews of Spielberg's Lincoln by professional historians, both in print and in my circle of social media friends. All of them are informative, even if they tend to reflect individual research agendas much more than the movie itself.Beyond nitpicking specific moments such as the roll call in the House or whether Lincoln ever slapped Robert, my fellow historians have pointed out the lack of attention on women and abolitionists, as well as the free black community in Washington, D.C. Do any of these critiques help us to better understand the movie? No. They simply reinforce what we already know, which is that Hollywood will never make a movie that satisfies the demands of scholars. Nor should it....

Eric Foner: "['Lincoln'] offer a severely truncated view"

Eric Foner, a history professor at Columbia University, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for history for “The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.” ...The film grossly exaggerates the possibility that by January 1865 the war might have ended with slavery still intact. The Emancipation Proclamation had already declared more than three million of the four million slaves free, and Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee and West Virginia, exempted in whole or part from the proclamation, had decreed abolition on their own.Even as the House debated, Sherman’s army was marching into South Carolina, and slaves were sacking plantation homes and seizing land. Slavery died on the ground, not just in the White House and the House of Representatives. That would be a dramatic story for Hollywood.Related LinksHNN Hot Topics: "Lincoln": The Movie

Sean Wilentz calls Oliver Stone's new history series "cuckoo"

  

Diane Ravitch takes on a movement

ABSTRACT: ANNALS OF EDUCATION about Diane Ravitch, who has emerged as one of the leading opponents of the education-reform movement. Now seventy-four, Ravitch has been a forceful voice in education debates for more than four decades. A research professor at New York University since 1995, she has taught at Columbia University’s Teachers’ College, served as an Assistant Secretary of Education, and edited education journals. She has written ten notable books on education history and policy. Most recently, she has written a series of scathing rebuttals of reform measures in The New York Review of Books and some two thousand posts on a blog she started in April, which has received almost a million and a half page views. Since the publication, in 2010, of her book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education,” she has barnstormed across the country giving speeches berating the reform movement, which, in addition to test-based “accountability,” also supports school choice and charter schools (public institutions that often receive substantial private funding and are free from many regulations, such as hiring union teachers in states that require it), and which she calls a “privatization” movement.

Hip-hop historian scrutinizes Rubio's taste in rap

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio lit up the Internet Monday after his interview with GQ devolved into a discussion of rap. The rising Republican star not only spoke knowledgeably about Public Enemy's role in hip hop, but weighed in on whether Kanye West and Nicki Minaj are rappers or singers and name-dropped Tupac Shakur. Considering that his party's nominee this year, Mitt Romney, identified a bunch of old white guys as his musical favorites (Garth Brooks, Alabama, the Eagles), Rubio looks downright edgy.He also looks very smart, according to hip hop historian Davey D, a journalist and professor at San Francisco State University."He covered all the bases," Davey D told Yeas & Nays of Rubio's favorite rap songs. "That Marco's a slick guy."...

Israel historian Benny Morris responds to critics left and right

JERUSALEM — Historian Benny Morris has a knack for enraging Israelis of every political stripe. Morris' research on the 1948 war for independence challenged long-standing Zionist narratives that said Israel was not responsible for the creation of 750,000 Palestinian refugees. He infuriated right-wing Israelis by documenting secret plans to expel Arabs and accounts of massacres and rapes by Jewish forces.... In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Morris, 63, insists he has no regrets. You've scoffed at the fuss made about your supposed "right-wing conversion," but haven't you changed your views? My historical views haven't changed at all, and my historical writing remains the same, for good or ill. In fact, my second book on the Palestinian refugee problem, which came out in 2004, has got material that is unpleasant for Israelis to read. But my political views have changed. In the 1990s I was cautiously optimistic that the Palestinians were changing their tune and becoming agreeable to a two-state solution. [The late Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat seemed to signal this with the Oslo process. Before the 1980s, they just talked about destroying Israel....

When is an academic not an academic?

With the steady growth of self-publishing, do we need to redefine what scholarship is? This week on the Higher Education Network Wanda Wyporska explains why she is a 'secret academic'."Academics no longer have to be in an ivory tower lecturing, writing peer-reviewed articles, or even be attached to a university. There are historians who have abandoned PhDs but written books, enthusiastic amateur historians whose knowledge of their field would put dons to shame, and journalists who present TV series on history although they don't actually have a degree."The other day I heard someone describe himself as a professional historian though he only had a BA in history. I found myself feeling rather huffy. Surely one needs at least a PhD to use that label? Can I still call myself a historian, given my day job outside university and the fact I haven't been to a conference on my subject for more than a decade?"My desire to pursue a PhD in history came out of my sheer lust for books. My fantasy of a professorial room came from the realisation that I needed a job to accommodate my expanding library. Doing a doctorate was a way of fulfilling my twin ambitions: to have lots of books and to write a book....

A Ukrainian quest to shed light on horror Soviets kept in the dark

When Ukrainian historian Stanislav Kulchytskyi began poring through thousands of declassified secret police files in Kiev, he felt as if his eyes had finally been opened.The files contained reports, letters, telegrams and directives all relating to the famine in 1932 and 1933 that killed more than three million Ukrainians. Many historians like Prof. Kulchytskyi had long concluded that the famine was a man-made disaster and genocide, imposed by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to squash growing Ukrainian nationalism. But it was only after the Ukrainian government recently opened up public archives and declassified hundreds of thousands of documents that researchers have started to get first-hand accounts of what really happened. And there is much more to come. Thousands of new documents are coming to light almost daily, offering more insights into the tragedy.“It is a little bit like a vase that is broken into small pieces and we are trying to piece the various pieces together to create the full vase,” Prof. Kulchytskyi said through a translator from Winnipeg, where he is starting a Canadian tour to discuss the famine and his findings. “We are trying to understand, what was the original thinking that Stalin had?”...