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Alert soldiers on the Brandenburg Gate, during the Spartacist Uprising

Victorious Weimar: Reframing the German Revolution

Review of November 1918: The German Revolution, by Robert Gerwarth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020)
… While 2018 marked the one-hundredth anniversary of the November Revolution, … in an international context noting that the revolution was “remarkably bloodless,” at least initially, as compared … to put the November Revolution into the context of other socialist revolutions is one of the strongest elements of …
Official portrait of President Gerald R. Ford (February 25, 1976).

Will Vindication Elude Ford?

… “History will vindicate me!” It is the rallying cry of politicians worldwide who are unpopular, … situation — one he handled with aplomb — his reputation was unfairly and irrevocably ruined by his pardon of Richard Nixon. When Americans look backward, they’re impressed by bold …
A refrigerator advertisement in The Ladies Home Journal, 1948.

The Feminine Mystique

When W.W. Norton published Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique in February 1963, it printed just … a concept insisting that women’s true fulfillment was to be found through dedication to household labor and …
“Bombardment of Fort Sumter by the batteries of the Confederate states,” 1861.

The Civil War: Losing the War, Winning the History

… 1861, Edmund Ruffin proudly fired a shot at Fort Sumter, the Federal military installation in the Charleston, South … Ruffin fired what has been called the last shot of the war when he killed himself, so distressed was he that his beloved Confederacy had lost. History is …

Policing the Police: A Civil Rights Story

… This winter, my daughter’s first-grade class celebrated the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. at her elementary … Luther King, Jr. said during his address at the March on Washington in 1963 . “We want an immediate end to police … of Michigan, mayor of Detroit, and U.S. attorney—took when FDR appointed him Attorney General in 1939. “Where …
Cover of Where Have All the Soldiers Gone: The Transformation of Modern Europe by Jeff Sheehan.

How the Mighty European Military State has Fallen

Review of Where Have All the Soldiers Gone: The Transformation of Modern Europe, by Jeff Sheehan (Illustrated. 284 pp. Houghton Mifflin Company)
… would differ so strongly from Americans in regards to the War in Iraq and the question of Islamic terrorism. It is … stands a proudly nationalist worldview, in which statehood was understood in terms of its military. Sheehan sees this … that Americans and Europeans speak very different languages when it comes to the issue of terrorism. When Americans, …
President Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Coming: Something New in Presidents

… On this Presidents Day, it’s worth celebrating the fact that our nation is almost certainly about to make … Almost all were married and had children; only one was a bachelor (Buchanan), only one was divorced (Reagan), … Cleveland gets that designation in some trivia books, but when he was mayor of Buffalo, the city’s population was only …
The United Nations headquarters in Geneva.

Will We Turn the U.N. Charter into a “Scrap of Paper”?

… Great Britain [is] going to war,” Germany’s chancellor, Theobold von Bethmann-Hollweg complained as the First World War began. The “scrap of paper” was the treaty that Germany disregarded when it invaded Belgium. Because of such dismissal of …
Rush hour traffic in Interstate 95 in Miami.

Finally, Too Many Cars

… billion more in federal loans to stay afloat. GM needs another $9.1 billion now, with more requests likely down the …   The precipitous plunge in auto sales over the last year was caused principally by spiking gasoline prices, tight … from 1908 to 1927, may be hazy, but those were the years when automobiles began to change from a toy to the necessity …
The theatrical poster for Birth of a Nation.

3/25/2015: At the Movies: "Birth of a Nation" After 100 Years

… cinematic spectacular : D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation  was the first 12-reel film in movie history and the first movie … the threat of the black mob in the climactic scene. When Dr. Cameron is besieged along with his daughter and …
Auguste Chouteau—Founder of St. Louis and Head of the Chouteau family

Blood Rules the Water: Kinship Diplomacy in Early America

Review of Masters of the Middle Waters: Indian Nations and Colonial Ambitions Along the Mississippi, by Jacob F. Lee (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019)
… Jacob Lee’s Masters of the Middle Waters traces warfare, conquest, trade, and … and ceremony to form economic and political alliances. It was these same practices, Lee argues, that dictated their … and Otoe ) peoples. That is until the seventeenth century, when the Illinois peoples (Lee argues they constitute a …
This painting, which dates from 1859, reimagines the toppling of the equestrian statue of George III in New York City. Erected in 1770, the statue featured the regent garbed in Roman military regalia on horseback, in the fashion of Marcus Aurelius. It is doubtful that Native Americans, women and children were in attendance at this episode of iconoclasm by the Sons of Liberty.

Ten Memorable Monument Takedowns in History

… of Julia Aquilia Severa, wife of Roman Emperor Severus, was destroyed after the Senate decided to demolish all … of many of the Western canon’s great works of art. When Pope Julius II’s troops overtook the rebellious city of … as “Stalin World,” also exists in Lithuania . Many busts of Lenin, Marx, and Engels are on view in Budapest’s Szoborpark …
Flag of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

NATO Expansion in Eastern Europe: For What and For Whom?

… expansion into Eastern Europe goes on, sometimes taking on the aura of melodrama, sometimes of farce, there has been little attempt by to explain to Americans what NATO was and is all about. Perhaps history from the early cold … dollar U.S. defense expenditures in the post war period. When one looks back before 1945, NATO may also be seen as a …
French troops under Charles VIII entering Florence, 1494.

The Blood Behind the Beauty

Review of The Beauty and the Terror: The Italian Renaissance and the Rise of the West, by Catherine Fletcher (New York City: Oxford University Press, 2020)
… Brutal violence is not typically the first thing that comes to mind when observing the artwork of the Renaissance’s greatest … is also inextricably linked to the human suffering that was experienced during the period that is now known as the
Bust of Harlan Fiske Stone, the 12th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Following Bad Precedents for Deciding Military Justice

The recent capture in Pakistan of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, … a classic example of primitive political justice. The case was a result of Japanese atrocities in the Philippines … United States in 1942 and tried by a U.S. military court. When the defendants appealed to the Supreme Court for writs …
Downstream view of Marco Polo Bridge by Thomas Child, 1877. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The Marco Polo Bridge Incident (1937)

… War II began with Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939, the roots of that global conflict actually reach back to the … history itself is segmented by events termed “incidents” when they occurred in efforts to minimize their importance. … liberated from colonialism by war’s end in September 1945, was working on it. And, more generally, what was then termed …

The Fate of the Kurds

… his sudden withdrawal of U.S. military support for the Kurds in northern Syria in October 2019 with an … The Kurds within the Ottoman Empire Much of Kurdistan was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire , centered in what … changed markedly in the middle of the 19 th century, when the central Ottoman government embarked on a series of …

As Cuba and the United States Reengage: The Presence of the Past

… 2014, Presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro announced to their respective nations that the United States and Cuba had … agreed to resume full diplomatic relations. The occasion was dense with history. It could hardly have been otherwise, … with the recognition that “change is hard,” especially “when we carry the heavy weight of history on our shoulders.” …

Aerial Torpedoes, Buzz Bombs, and Predators: The Long Cultural History of Drones

… major speech to outline drone warfare policies. Since 2002, the nation has been arming drones to fight its global war on … shares such optimistic appraisals of drones, and even Obama was forced to concede the dangers of undue secrecy, lack of … of the combat drone, beginning dramatically in spring 1944 when Nazi robot bombs started falling on London. Germany’s …
Cover of Motherland in Danger: Soviet Propaganda during World War II by Karel C. Berkhoff

Long Live the Soviet Motherland?

Review of Motherland in Danger: Soviet Propaganda during World War II, by Karel C. Berkhoff (Harvard University Press, 2012)
… village last month I toured a school history museum. The principal and her museum director proudly showed us the one room exhibition in which the history of the region was displayed in objects, images, even a diorama. The major … officials monitored the press themselves, stepping in whenever some editor or author was out of line. In the
President George W. Bush

Policies for the Fearful: Rollback Then, Regime Change Now

… All indications are that regime change in Iraq is still on the agenda of the Bush administration. Ironically, the … of force is rarely the answer. The idea of containment was that force was available to use in the last resort. … the concept of rollback only once during the Cold War, when General Douglas MacArthur had the North Korean army on …

The Dominican Republic and the United States: A Baseball History

… Over the past century, baseball has become a truly global game. … league to return to television in the United States was the KBO from South Korea . Dominican young men play for … of games played on those sugar plantations, especially when work was light during the tiempo muerto (dead time)in …