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Image of Jimmy Carter during his ‘Malaise’ Speech.

Should Obama Deliver Another ‘Malaise’ Speech?

… to think about the balance between individual wants and common goals.   What was the effect of Carter's speech? Some … healthy people and middle- to low-income adults choose to buy coverage. They must decide to defer immediate … a collective goal.   In Iraq and Afghanistan, American soldiers a minority among thheir generation — are fighting two …
Slobodan Milosevic, just after signing the Dayton Agreement

Lessons from the Holocaust Are Relevant to the Crisis in Kosovo

… terrain. When the war did not progress as planned, military commitments escalated. America’s credibility had to be … analogy working in his favor, though, that is more compelling than all of the so-called “lessons of the past” presently being bandied about. It concerns the West’s response to the …
Image of President Carter displayed in the National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC. Portrait by Robert Templeton.

Obama Can Learn from Jimmy Carter, Too

… to think about the balance between individual wants and common goals.   What was the effect of Carter’s speech? Some … healthy people and middle- to low-income adults choose to buy coverage. They must decide to defer immediate … a collective goal.   In Iraq and Afghanistan, American soldiers a minority among their generation — are fighting two …
Person holding sign that reads "Stop Voter Suppression"

From Poll Taxes to Partisan Gerrymandering: Voter Disenfranchisement in the United States

… to include many more citizens since 1776, these gains have come haltingly and unevenly. Even as women gained suffrage, … voter suppression continue to affect electoral outcomes today? Listen in to find out. To learn more about the … represent our interests in Congress and state legislative bodies and local bodies across the country. And this is the …
Lady Liberty, wearing a cape labeled "Votes for Women," stands astride the states (colored white) that had adopted suffrage. A poem by Alice Duer Miller is printed beneath.

Smile, You’re a Liberal After All!

… The story line for the upcoming November elections has been that conservatives are …   Don’t believe me? Let’s do a quick history lesson and compare the conservative position on issues over the last … they fought the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance …
Cover of Caesar A Life in Western Culture by Maria Wyke.

A Man for All Seasons

Review of Caesar: A Life in Western Culture, by Maria Wyke (Chicago 2008)
… Whereas in the 20th century, Caesar could just as easily become the savage conqueror again, someone to be resisted … who would finally surrender to Caesar in 51 B.C., would become the symbol of the revolutionary spirit in 19th- and … the millennia, the book, I think, is not without its shortcomings.  Perhaps it says more about my own biases, but I …
Monti's parents receive his Medal of Honor from President Barack Obama during a ceremony in the White House, September 17, 2009.

Leave the Medal of Honor Alone!

… the department to upgrade other decorations that soldiers have received in action to the Medal of Honor. They … whether there is an inadvertent subjective bias amongst commanders that has contributed to the low numbers of awards … them, including 864 awarded during the Civil War to the soldiers of the 27th Maine, who received the medal simply for …
General George Washington Resigning his Commission.

Diplomatic Advisers: Washington, Kennan, FDR

… on the one-dollar bill lived a long time ago. His last communication – the "Farewell Address" of 1796 – was really … Farewell Address (if we think of it at all) as an obsolete command for Americans to isolate themselves from the rest of … the United States into supporting their parochial wishes. Complying with such entreaties, Washington knew, could harm …
Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire, by Judith Herrin Book Cover

Byzantium for Dummies

Review of Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire, by Judith Herrin (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2008)
… to Byzantium , Herrin relates a story of two builders coming to her office after passing it daily to ask her what … Empire. Byzantium fulfills some of our ideas about the Medieval period, with political and religious influence … (Foundations of Byzantium, The Transition from Ancient to Medieval, Byzantium Becomes a Medieval State, and Varieties of …
Cover of A Decade of Upheaval: The Cultural Revolution in Rural China by Dong Guoqiang and Andrew G. Walder.

The View from the Countryside

Review of A Decade of Upheaval: The Cultural Revolution in Rural China, by Dong Guoqiang & Andrew G. Walder (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021)
… According to official accounts from the Chinese Communist Party, “The ‘cultural revolution,’ which lasted … (1958—1962) and his fear that enemies in the Chinese Communist Party planned to place China back on the … is a short book, but it makes a sizable contribution to studies of the Cultural Revolution. Paradoxically, however, the …
Former President Jimmy Carter

Putting Ex-Presidents Back to Work

… Baker as co-chair, Carter will lead a national bipartisan commission on election reform. His prestige and experience will insure that policy makers will consider the commission’s recommendations. Carter is not our only activist former …
The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth-Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism, by Aaron Sachs Book Cover

The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth-Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism

Review of The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth-Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism, by Aaron Sachs (Viking Books, 2006)
… early in the nineteenth century, but whose adventures and accomplishments were so much admired they made him an … name. By one estimate, 20% of the world's fish catch comes from the extraordinary ecosystem called The Humboldt … an explorer into a conservationist. Alexander von Humboldt dies on p. 105 of this book, roughly a third of the way …
Collapsed bridge

America's Infrastructure Challenge

… and what it can tell us about  changing conceptions of the common good. In addition, host Patrick Potyondy interviews … big federal involvement in infrastructure would be subsidies for the railroads in the nineteenth century.   Dr. … market, and just trying to get outside investment to buy the mortgages of newer suburban developments.   Dr. …
A photograph from the tumultuous German-Czech border in 1938 during World War II. The Sudetenland had long been a hotspot of contact between the two groups.

The Space In Between

Review of Cleansing the Czechoslovak Borderlands: Migration, Environment, and Health in the Former Sudetenland, by Eagle Glassheim (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016)
… the Second World War. Glassheim notes that with the end of combat in Europe in 1945, the borderlands of Czechoslovakia … recounts the long history of German and Czechoslovakian competition to define the Sudetenland each in its own in … “always a foreign ulcer in our body.” That "ulcer" was remedied in Most by way of a forced “cleansing” or “liquidation” …
Protestors against the U.S. Trump administration voice their commitment to the world's dispossessed.

The Politics of Refugee Aid in America’s “Short Century”

Review of Benevolent Empire: U.S. Power, Humanitarianism, and the World's Dispossessed , by Stephen R. Porter Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017.
… U.S. Power, Humanitarianism, and the World’s Dispossessed comes at a time that many observers of U.S. domestic … has had a murky, even “schizophrenic,” view of its commitment to the world’s dispossessed. Although the United … During the war, volunteer agencies like Herbert Hoover’s Committee to Relieve Belgium and the American Jewish Joint …
Heroin bust.

Devising a Drug-Free World (Prologued, Season 2, Episode 3)

… on Drugs, it isn’t colonial China or Japan or Mexico that comes to mind…it's the United States. And for good reason. … And they're going to create their own drug control bodies to kind of regulate and keep an eye on how much drugs … Agent White to Istanbul to make this first case where he buys like three kilos of heroin for $6,000. And then it's …
Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill Final Vote.

True Bipartisanship Is Not Love and Kisses

… Fathers designed it to have, while working against true compromise. That’s bad not just for Democrats, but for … down to the possible. Madison’s genius was to make this commonsense principle work to the government’s advantage. … who’s fighting just as hard. The battle itself will produce compromise.   Today’s Republican leaders have learned the …
Ali, left, walking through the streets of Kinshasa in 1974.

The Rumble in the Jungle

… knocked out an exhausted Foreman with a series of powerful combination punches. George Foreman vs Muhammad Ali, October … documentary of the fight, When We Were Kings , wasn’t completed until 1996, by which time both Ali and Foreman … America: A Tribute to Heroes as an explicit example of the compatibility of Islam with American culture. …
President LBJ's "Midnight Address" on the 2nd Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964.

Remember the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

… colonialists in their war against Ho’s Vietminh, he had become a bitter U.S. enemy. Over the next decade, Ho frustrated American designs in Southeast Asia. By 1964, communist guerrillas, aided by the North Vietnamese army, … were in Vietnam. By 1973, more than 58,000 of them had died there. Congress later recognized the mistake of the …
A Hawaiian man employing the spearfishing techniques described by Fagan, circa 1890.

Built Upon Bounty

Review of Fishing: How the Sea Fed Civilization, by Brian Fagan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017)
… Some of the earliest evidence of Homo sapien s fishing comes from Central Africa where catfish were captured using … enabled extensive chemical analyses of fish bones. These studies reveal not only what fish species people were … limited written records do exist, such as in the case of medieval Europe, evidence from isotope analysis of bones adds …
Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany.

Peace through Olympic Sport?

… corruption scandals, doping controversies and rampant commercialism have done so little to dent the popularity of … Olympic teams. Even before the First World War, sport had become, as one French official put it, "a matter of state." … a sign that the "Free World" was in danger of losing to communism. This thinking has given the Olympics a political …
Protesters with signs in support of immigrants: "We are all here thanks to immigrants", "If you don't want immigrants, stop destabilizing their countries"; "Defend DACA"

Honduras, TPS, and U.S. Policy

… Jessica Vinas-Nelson  Welcome to History Talk , the podcast that brings together a … State University and director of the Center for Folklore Studies. She studies and teaches about ordinary life, and her … Vinas-Nelson. Song and band information can be found on our website. You can find our podcasts and more on our website