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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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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)
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 …
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 …
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. …
Antichristus, a woodcut by Lucas Cranach the Elder: the pope depicted as the Antichrist, using his temporal power to grant authority to a generously contributing ruler.

The Bible as a Political Tool

… The 5,280-pound monument of the Ten Commandments installed by the Alabama Supreme Court Chief … leading the Israelites to freedom.   Franklin, who had studied Hebrew, suggested that the inscription on the seal be … It read in that language “Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God.” In addition, the Liberty Bell was inscribed …
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 …
Sister Rosetta Tharpe

The Mother of Rock and Roll

… disc jockey Alan Freed crowing “That’s Bill Haley and the Comets rockin’ and rollin’ you with ‘Shake, Rattle and … even of sexuality. Tharpe’s career was cut short when she died of complications from diabetes in 1973, at the age of … packed Griffith Stadium were mostly middle-aged church ladies, not the screaming teeny-boppers who would fill Shea …
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
Alfonso García Robles at the Public Hearing on Nuclear Weapons and Disarmament in 1981.

A Model for a Nuclear-Free Middle East

… programs. These recent developments no doubt bring comfort to some. But we can't rest easy. The dangers of … With the Treaty of Tlatelolco in 1967, that goal was accomplished. Latin America is now a nuclear weapon free zone. … same capability. Iran has been scolded by the international community for failure to accurately report its use of …