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With a Little Help from Our Friends?: The Costs of Coalition Warfare

… Hornet pilots defied the orders of their American commanding officers. These pilots independently aborted 40 … pilots mistook a four vehicle British reconnaissance patrol for the enemy, even though the vehicles were decorated with … of familiarity with one another's commanders and staff, visits, the creation of liaison teams, multinational …
The South Korean flag in Seoul, South Korea.

The Impeachment of Roh Moo-hyun and the Patterns of South Korean Politics

… March 2024 marks the 20th anniversary of the impeachment of former President Roh Moo-hyun of South Korea (Republic of … different parties have gained the 20 seats necessary to become a “negotiation group”—a parliamentary caucus that holds … issues of gender and minority rights have emerged as new points of contention, with conservatives generally hesitant …
Queen Mary’s College, opened in 1914.

A Postcard from Madras: A City Born of the Colonial Encounter

… (Madras) in India. Madras was born in 1636, when East India Company official Francis Day signed a treaty with the Nayaka … overlooking the Bay of Bengal. Madras was an odd choice for a city because it had no existing port for trade, and … he chose to settle the EIC where he could be near her and visit her frequently. Nearly four centuries later, the EIC …
A photograph of Dr. David Livingstone from 1857.

Dr. Livingstone, I Presume?: Missionaries, Journalists, Explorers, and Empire

Review of Dr. Livingstone, I Presume?: Missionaries, Journalists, Explorers, and Empire, by Clare Pettitt (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2007)
… of famous British explorers in her famous wax museum. Yet, for all of his exploits he is most remembered not for what … The writer Walter Benjamin once suggested that "History decomposes into images, not narratives" and Clare Pettitt … a celebrity figure until his death in 1904. And as Pettitt points out it was Stanley's portrayal of "darkest Africa" …
Minaret Islam Khoja in Khiva

A Postcard from Khiva, Uzbekistan

… magnificent and richly historic town of Khiva (formerly known as Khorezm), one leaves behind the tree-lined … history. The train stops in Urgench, a quiet and comparatively modern city of about 150,000 people. Exiting … Heritage City. Arabkhan madrasa, 1616. (Photo by author) Visitors are greeted with comfortable hotels, restaurants …
A bus that has been blown up by terrorists

A Who’s Who of Jihadi Terrorism in Europe

Review of Islamist Terrorism in Europe: A History, by Petter Nesser (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015)
… of leadership, funding, training and recruitment. Nesser points out that the roots of jihadist terrorism lay in the … Europe during this period, it included Spain in its plans for a global caliphate and eventually helped establish … European cells in Europe and established its own cells commanded directly by leaders in Afghanistan. Despite being …

Re-mapping American Politics: The Redistricting Revolution Fifty Years Later

… The news media today are full of stories about efforts across the United States to draw new state and federal … thereby over-ruling earlier decisions that courts were not competent to decide such political questions. Two years … since the 1960s, the Court has not wavered on those key points of constitutional interpretation. All of this …
Agincourt: Henry V and the Battle that Made England, by Juliet Barker Little, Brown and Company book cover.

Agincourt: Henry V and the Battle that Made England

Review of Agincourt: Henry V and the Battle that Made England, by Juliet Barker Little, Brown and Company (New York, 2006)
… of the English exchequer records describing the preparation for the campaign. With this wealth of context, Barker makes … unalloyed sense of justification: She announces that the outcome of the battle of Agincourt showed "God had chosen to … During the campaign, Henry issued a challenge to single combat to the dauphin ; Barker goes to great lengths to …
The Thinker by Auguste Rodin

Graduate Students Discuss Public Intellectualism

… interest, inspiring our most recent History Talk podcast, “ Visiting the Ivory Tower: Conversations on Public … While we interviewed public intellectuals themselves for our podcast, we wanted to be sure and take a moment to … as the case might be. If we really want to engage the community with historical thinking, a better model might be …
Waiting for a Chinook, by C.M. Russell. Overgrazing and harsh winters were factors that brought an end to the age of the Open Range.

Dot-Coms and the Great Cattle Die-Off

… reward for reasonable risk. We're talking about the dot-com industries of the '90s, aren't we? Not this time. We're … actually got fatter as they grazed their way to Kansas and points north. Like our own era, it was a period of economic … Stock Growers Association offered sumptuous facilities to visiting owners, much as dot-com owners living on venture …
President Bush makes remarks in 2006 during a press conference in the Rose Garden about Iran's nuclear ambitions and discusses North Korea's nuclear test.

Fighting a War in Name Only

… the global war on terror is the central event of our time, comparable to the great struggles of the last century … has become Americas mission to defend the peace through the forward march of freedom. Yet to peel back the rhetoric is … as if it didn’t exist. Pass through a major airport, visit a mall or grocery store, shop for a new car do …
Black Friday shoppers in the morning at Walmart store in Durham, North Carolina.

Is Retailing’s Death Star Vulnerable After All?

… to Christmas, head over to the local Wal-Mart. The company’s promise of “everyday low prices” is music to the ears of every shopper. For better or worse, we’re living in a Wal-Mart World. The … a place where people would want to work — and love to visit again. Bob Batchelor is the author of "The 1900s" …
Close-up of Indian couple's hands during wedding ceremony

Reproductive Politics and the Making of Modern India

… eugenicists, feminists, and family planners all aimed to reform reproduction to transform both individual bodies and the body politic. Across the … national sovereignty, normative heterosexuality and drives for economic development. This podcast is brought to you by …
Cover of 428 AD: An Ordinary Year at the End of the Roman Empire by Giusto Traina.

The End of the World as They Knew It

Review of 428 AD: An Ordinary Year at the End of the Roman Empire, by Giusto Traina (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. pp. xix, 203. Trans. by Allan Cameron)
… a "mere concept," since it was the "key reference point" for all of our sources for the period (and so for the people … sphere of influence. In this context Flavius Dionysius, commander of Rome's eastern military forces and a native of …
In 2014, the debate about the underlying causes of "long, hot summers" remerged with the high-profile police killings of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, and others.

Long Hot Summers and Separate Societies

Review of Separate and Unequal: The Kerner Commission and the Unraveling of American Liberalism, by Steven M. Gillon (New York: Basic Books, 2018)
For two weeks in August 2014, the St. Louis suburb of … Do the police reify inequality by targeting low-income communities of color or are they the “thin blue line” … in his last (and most interesting) chapters, “conservative newspapers, Republicans, southern [white] Democrats, and …
 Cover of Chivalry in Medieval England by Nigel Saul

Knighthood As It Was, Not As We Wish It Were

Review of Chivalry in Medieval England, by Nigel Saul (Harvard University Press, 416 pp, 2011, ISBN 978-0-674-06368-6)
… wished that things could just be like they used to be. A common sentiment, it is actually responsible for distorting the realities of our collective past because … only to attend the nearest Renaissance fair or turn on the latest movie depicting medieval warfare to see just how …
A French Quarter Pontalba Row building.

A Postcard from New Orleans, Louisiana

… about a block north of New Orleans’s famed French Quarter. Completely walled in, the cemetery is unwelcoming. The Roman … racial violence. In 2018, the city erected plaques at key points around the French Quarter, recognizing New Orleans’s … the victims of the slave trade. Whitney tour guides escort visitors through the grounds of this once-profitable sugar …
cars on a highway

Sweet Fuel: The Remarkable Story of Brazilian Ethanol

… world seek to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, the search for clean and affordable alternate energies has become an increasing priority in the twenty-first century. … Dr. Nicholas Breyfogle  Welcome to "Sweet Fuel: The Remarkable Story of Brazilian … Society and College of Arts and Sciences, and by the Center for Latin American Studies, a Title VI National Resource …
Jackie Robinson

Living Up to Jackie Robinson

… "Rookie of the Year" award after him, and retiring his uniform, No. 42. Now it can do more to honor his example by … jeopardize the process of integration. He was, by nature, a combative individual, so he had to struggle to restrain … color. William C. Kashatus's is a writer for the History News Service. His most recent book is "Money Pitcher: The …
Lyndon Johnson greets American troops in Vietnam 1966.

A Curtain Call for the Domino Theory?

News leaked recently that President Obama had called a group … troops to Afghanistan? Most likely.   Experts will argue forever about whether the Vietnam War was a lost cause. But … Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. If Vietnam fell to the Communists, they argued, so too would the rest of Asia. …
An artist's rendering of the Tunguska event

The 1908 Tunguska Event and the Threats of Tomorrow

… No disaster scenario more challenges human hopes to overcome nature’s forces than the sudden and unpredicted strike of a giant … they wanted to determine if a guest from outer space had visited. Yet their commitment to empirical research …
Sonia Sotomayor, U.S. Supreme Court justice.

Attacks on Sotomayor Ignore Court’s History and Makeup

… President Barack Obama’s first high court nominee. It’s odd for them to protest Sotomayor’s left-wing views, though, … process. What’s unusual is that conservatives are complaining about the Court at the same time they’re … History at Indiana University and a writer for the History News Service. …