Roundup Top 10!
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Obama's problem with history Obama’s surprisability about history, which is why he is always (as almost everyone now recognizes) “playing catch-up,” is owed to certain sanguine and unknowledgeable expectations that he brought with him to the presidency. New Republic |
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The Color of His Presidency Optimists hoped Obama would usher in a new age of racial harmony. Pessimists feared a surge in racial strife. Neither was right. New York Magazine |
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The secret history of pot (it was made illegal in rapid response to Mexican immigrants smoking it) The speed with which Americans are now considering legalizing marijuana has taken everyone by surprise. But in the midst of this shift in public opinion and state law it is worth remembering the speed with which marijuana was made illegal. Ohio State Department of History |
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Innovation: The Government Was Crucial After All Fortunately, a new book, The Entrepreneurial State, by the Sussex University economist Mariana Mazzucato, forcefully documents just how wrong the conservative claims are that the government is inconsequential. NY Review of Books |
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Why We’re in a New Gilded Age The big idea of Capital in the Twenty-First Century is that we haven’t just gone back to 19th-century levels of income inequality, we’re also on a path back to “patrimonial capitalism,” in which the commanding heights of the economy are controlled not by talented individuals but by family dynasties. NY Review of Books |
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Cliven Bundy Wants to Tell You All About 'the Negro' When people like Cliven Bundy assert the primacy of the past it is important that we do not recount it selectively. American enslavement is the destruction of the black body for profit. Atlantic |
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Veterans and White Supremacy The one factor that has fueled every surge in Ku Klux Klan membership in American history, from the 1860s to the present: war. NYT |
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LBJ: Hero or Not ... A debate between David Greenberg and Michael Kazin How do we deal with Vietnam? New Republic |
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T-Shirts for historians "You are caricaturing my argument." The Aporetic (blog) |
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The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers in the 21st Century Various scholars have sought to identify what the objective criteria are for a state to become and remain a great power—especially a dominant great power or hyperpower. KatzEyeView (Blog) |