Historians/History

History Meets Neuroscience

by Daniel Lord Smail

The brain of Charles Babbage, father of modern computing, on display at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. Credit: Wikipedia.The facts are coming in and the truth isn’t a pretty one. It turns out that we’re addicts. All of us.

"The Other America": Still Invisible

by Ron Briley

A deserted, dilapidated street in Camden, New Jersey, 2009. Credit: WikipediaIn 1962, Michael Harrington published The Other America, alerting middle-class Americans during the post-World War II affluent society and move to suburbia that poverty persisted in the inner cities and many rural areas. Responding to the pleas of Harrington and the awakening of the nation’s social conscience inspired by the civil rights movement, President Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty, but these dreams of the Great Society and the programs required to address economic inequality were sacrificed on the altar of the Vietnam War. Since the Reagan era, the economic gap between rich and poor continues to grow, but, unfortunately, our ability to ignore the plight of the poor seems to have also increased fifty years after the publication of Harrington’s book

Jim Downs: Civil War and Emancipation the "Greatest Biological Catastrophe of the Nineteenth Century."

by Robin Lindley

Contraband during the Civil War. Credit: Wiki Commons.January 1, 2013 will mark the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the effective date of the Emancipation Proclamation.We tend to think of the emancipation of African American slaves in the South as a celebratory moment of jubilation and ecstasy. But there is a darker, bitterly ironic side to this triumphant story -- a grim story of neglect and indifference to a vulnerable population of uprooted men, women and children left to negotiate their freedom in a hostile, war-torn, disease-plagued land.

How Suffering Shaped Emancipation: Interview with Jim Downs on the Plight of Freed Slaves During the Civil War and Reconstruction

by Robin Lindley

January 1, 2013 will mark the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the effective date of the Emancipation Proclamation.We tend to think of the emancipation of African American slaves in the South as a celebratory moment of jubilation and ecstasy. But there is a darker, bitterly ironic side to this triumphant story -- a grim story of neglect and indifference to a vulnerable population of uprooted men, women and children left to negotiate their freedom in a hostile, war-torn, disease-plagued land.

Saul Alinsky Elementary School? How We Honor America's Radicals and Reformers

by Peter Dreier

Some day your child might attend Saul Alinsky Elementary School, named after the controversial community organizer from Chicago. Or perhaps Gloria Steinem Middle School. Or maybe Pete Seeger High.Sound far-fetched?Consider this: A daily newspaper in eastern Pennsylvania recently published an article that began: "The West Chester Bayard Rustin High School Science Olympiad team placed 14th out of 60 teams in the national competition last week."

The Cuban Missile Crisis: The View from Okinawa

by Jon Mitchell

A TM-72 Mace missile is trundled through the Okinawa city of Gushikawa in the early 1960s in a rare open display. Courtesy of Charles Headlee.In October 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union teetered on the brink of nuclear war after American spy planes discovered that the Kremlin had stationed medium-range atomic missiles on the communist island of Cuba in the Caribbean, barely over the horizon from Florida....Six months prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis, however, a parallel drama had played out on the other side of the world as the U.S. secretly brought near-identical missiles to the ones the Russians stationed on Cuba to another small island -- Okinawa.While the full facts of that deployment have never been officially disclosed, now for the first time three of the U.S. Air Force's nuclear pioneers have broken the silence about Okinawa's secret missiles, life within the bunkers and a military miscalculation of apocalyptic proportions -- the targeting of unaligned China at a time when China-Soviet polemics were in full public view.

The Space Needle at Fifty -- Historian and Writer Knute Berger on His History of the Seattle Landmark

by Robin Lindley

Space needle n.  (a) each of a large number of short copper fibres placed experimentally in earth orbit to reflect communication signals (now rare);  (b) a very tall, slender tower; spec. that opened in Seattle, United States, in 1962.--Oxford English DictionaryAs 1962 dawned, the Cold War was simmering and the United States was lagging in the Space Race with the Soviet Union. It was an anxious time as thermonuclear war between the two superpowers threatened, citizens dug fallout shelters, air raid sirens screamed periodically, and schoolchildren drilled for the apocalypse,But citizens of Seattle were not discouraged by the possibility of nuclear annihilation. In April 1962, an ambitious group of civic luminaries kicked off a world’s fair, the Century 21 Exposition, with the theme of science and the future.

Don't Listen to the Naysayers -- The New Deal Helped to End the Depression

by Anthony D'Agostino

Europe and the United States are now four years into the slump and deepening financial crisis that followed the crash of 2008. Efforts to find a way out have been limited by monetarist notions that dominated the boom years and the central bank response to economic stagnation has been restricted to repeatedly recapitalizing the big banks, printing money, and hoping for a return of confidence. The globalist ideological consensus has been an additional burden with its simplistic notions of internationalism. For the last few decades progress has been more or less defined in terms of getting beyond the Westphalia model of great states, presumably as part of a global process that the EU and the euro were thought to be leading by example. This view was ironclad during the days before the crash of 2008.

Clinton's Laos Visit is an Opportunity to Shed Light on the Devastation of Vietnam

by Jeremy Kuzmarov

The visit of Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to Laos this past week, the first of an American official in over four decades, has raised badly needed attention on one of the darkest episodes of American history, the clandestine bombing of Laos during the Vietnam War. Clinton made the trip to Laos as part of the U.S. “pivot” strategy in Southeast Asia, pledging $9 million in support of bomb clearance initiatives. For many years the U.S. refused to pay any reparations to Laos for war damage or accept any responsibility for civilian casualties and environmental devastation. During Clinton’s stay, she met with victims of the U.S.-led secret war such as Phongsavath Souliyalat, who lost his eyesight and both hands to a previously undetonated cluster bomb on his sixteenth birthday just a few years ago. “So many survivors are without help. Their life is very, very hard,” Souliyalat reportedly told her.

The Rise of the Nazis, and Other Absurdities in Politics

by Jerome Braun

Sometimes the historical question comes up, why does America so often win the war and lose the peace? This is not to say that other countries don’t suffer from similar problems, but still, we can start with by asking why was Abraham Lincoln -- perhaps our greatest president, and a war president to boot -- followed by Andrew Johnson, our worst president who sabotaged the integration of the ex-slaves into society? Why was Woodrow Wilson, who led America successfully into World War I, not supported by his fellow Democrats let alone by Republicans in Congress into working for a lasting peace? As far as I know Woodrow Wilson didn’t even try --since he had no political backing for it -- to come up with his own Versailles Treaty and threaten to conclude a separate peace with Germany unless the Allies came up with treaty provisions less vindictive and ultimately less stupid.

Russia's Architect of Victory: Interview with Geoffrey Roberts on Georgy Zhukov

by Aaron Leonard

Geoffrey Roberts is the author of Stalin’s Wars and Victory at Stalingrad. He is professor and head of the School of History at University College Cork, Ireland. Roberts is a frequent contributor to British, Irish, and American newspapers and to popular-history journals and has been a consultant for TV and radio documentaries.His latest book is Stalin's General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov, based on new research in the Russian archives. The book not only examines Zhukov’s record during World War II, but also his political and personal life. I recently conducted an email interview with Roberts about the book.Why do you think Georgy Zhukov merits a biography in 2012?

Progressives Need to Celebrate America's Triumphs, Not Just Criticize Its Tragedies

by Ian Reifowitz

I've read a lot of articles and blog posts about July 4 this year. As a progressive, there is a certain kind of post that always pushes my buttons and gets me thinking, and I read one that inspired me to write. The post centers on Frederick Douglass's iconic speech "The Meaning of July 4th for the Negro," delivered in Rochester, New York in 1852. As many of you know, the speech delineated the alienation slaves, and African Americans in general, felt from July 4 specifically but from America more broadly as well.Although the most often quoted section is about that sense of alienation, it is also important to remember Douglass's conclusion to the speech:

What is the Least Credible History Book in Print?

by David Austin Walsh

David Barton's book on Jefferson voted the least credible.

The Declaration of Independence -- The Original Abolitionist Document

by Alexander Tsesis

Historians have not given the Declaration of Independence the amount of attention it deserves relative to its influence on American culture. It is a wonder that so few books and articles have been written about a topic that has made such a profound impression on the lives of so many ordinary Americans. A common mistake made by the select authors who have written about the subject is to claim that the Declaration had little effect on American society and politics until the War of 1812 with Great Britain. This error stems from a 1962 article by Philip Detweiler, whose conclusions have often been repeated without reexamination. Historians have often overlooked that substantive references to the Declaration of Independence stem from the eighteenth century, immediately after independence from Britain.

The Soviet Famines: A Stalinist Genocide?

by Nick Shepley

In 1931, one of the most successful public propaganda campaigns in support of an action that resulted in mass killing was mounted. At the height of the collectivization campaign in the Soviet Union and the resultant famines, a range of voices, mostly Western, were galvanized in support of the Stalinist regime.Walter Duranty, the New York Times correspondent in Moscow, later described by journalist Malcolm Muggeridge as “the biggest liar I have ever met,” claimed openly, and in full knowledge of the real facts, that whilst there may be shortages in the USSR, there was no famine.Fabians Sidney and Beatrice Webb, before visiting the country, based many of their assumptions on Duranty's reports, and similarly dismissed talk of famine while they were in Russia at the height of the catastrophe as “unfounded.”The subsequent rise of Nazism in Germany from 1933 onwards occupied much of the attention of the Western media, with only one or two correspondents, Muggeridge and Western Mail reporter Gareth Williams, telling the story of the famines in Britain and America. The audience for their reportage was small, and Duranty's reportage highly respected and believed.

“My Head on a Platter to the Archivist of the United States”: How Tim Naftali was Almost Sacked as Head of the Nixon Library

by Maarja Krusten

A year after he joined his federal bosses in opening a comprehensive exhibit about Watergate at the Nixon Presidential Library on March 31, 2011, Timothy Naftali spoke about "Watergate in Nixonland.” A handful of people, I among them, already knew the story the former director of the Nixon Presidential Library vividly shared at the Miller Center on April 30, 2012. As a historian and former Nixon tapes archivist, I fought hard to ensure that Tim Naftali succeeded. He completed the federal mission of my archival cohort.There were some clues at the March 31, 2011 Watergate exhibit opening as to what Tim endured in federal service. As the National Archives’ video shows, Naftali then thanked Archivist of the United States (AOTUS) David S. Ferriero for standing up to immense external pressure.Tim Naftali is pictured with David Ferriero in a National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) photo taken on June 29, 2011. I am standing between them. Over time, some of Naftali’s story has been revealed to the public. As a former federal specialist in Nixonian “abuses of governmental power,” Tim and I share close bonds.

Wisdom and War: From Homer’s Trojan Horse to Spielberg’s "War Horse"

by Walter G. Moss

In Steven Spielberg’s 2011 World War I epic War Horse there is a scene in which Joey, the titular equine hero, is entangled in barbed wire in the no-man’s-land between German and British trenches. An English soldier hoists a white flag and goes out to disentangle Joey. He is eventually joined by a German soldier who brings wire cutters, and the two men free Joey, exchange first names and friendly words, and then decide who will take Joey back with them by a flip of a German coin.The scene moves us because amidst all the horrific and senseless killing of the First World War, we see a glimmer of human cooperation and decency that transcends national boundaries.

The Legacy of the War of 1812 Is With Us Still

by James M. Banner, Jr.

Battle of Lake Erie by William Henry Powell, 1873. Two hundred years ago today, American naval vessels fired the opening shots in what we know as the War of 1812. Like all wars, this was a war filled with ironies and unintended consequences. It's also a war that's hard to fit into the nation's triumphalist mythology. For one thing, it was a misbegotten war. Lacking today's fast communications, Washington didn't learn until after the American declaration of war that the British had already repealed the offending trade restrictions that were a major U.S. pretext for taking up arms. The war's final battle, Andrew Jackson's celebrated victory at New Orleans in early 1815, might also have been avoided with faster communications. The battle took place two weeks after negotiators had signed a peace agreement on Christmas eve 1814. The final irony is that the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the war, left things as they had been at the start. The U.S. gained nothing concrete from two and half years of conflict and the loss of 15,000 American lives. Yet if the war is often derided or forgotten, its consequences lie all around us, rooted deep in American life.

The Most Famous Unknown Writer of the Twentieth Century: An Interview with Historian Peter Clarke on Winston Churchill as Author

by Robin Lindley

I’ve never had any money except what my pen has brought me.--Winston Churchill (1945)The achievements of Winston Churchill as a politician and statesmen now eclipse his career as a writer. Perhaps the most popular image of Churchill is the cigar-chomping, intrepid prime minister who led Britain through the darkest days of the Second World War. But he earned his living as a writer and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1953 for Literature -- not for his celebrated statecraft.

Remembering Watergate

by Stanley Kutler

Credit: Wikipedia/HNNNo leak, no "investigatory journalism" ever revealed any facet of what we know as "Watergate" that was not already a subject of investigation and inquiry by properly-authorized authorities. The 40th anniversary commemoration of the Watergate break-in nevertheless appears to focus on the role of a few journalists. Robert Redford will reprise his 1976 movie All the President's Men with a documentary version. Now, of course, he can identify Mark Felt, aka "Deep Throat" as the "leaker" who destroyed Nixon's presidency. Felt indeed played a part, and Nixon knew of his actions in October 1972, as revealed in Nixon's tapes released in 1997, eight years before Felt, suffering from dementia, went public. Nixon was furious because he had considered Felt, "that Jew" (he was not) for the post of FBI Director. Nixon realized he could do nothing for Felt "knew too much" -- as, for example, the illegal break-ins of Nixon's "Plumbers."