Search Results

Displaying 913 - 936 of 1207
electrical towers

Energy, Deregulation and Prosperity

… They built their cities around the automobile. Their lifestyles and campus-style industries, designed around the use of electric power, also used oil to fuel the ever longer commute to work at jobs that the electric power industry and … doing things differently, California created a new energy commission that followed the advice of energy guru Amory …
The Taras Shevchenko monument in Borodyanka, Ukraine damaged by the Russian attack, April 2022.

Taras Shevchenko, Poet of Ukraine

… Born a serf in March 1814 on an estate just over 100 miles from Kyiv, Shevchenko demonstrated an early aptitude for … He painted Ukrainian national landscapes and historical sites in an album he titled Picturesque Ukraine . He also … was, but we should keep this as it is now.” Learn More: The Complete Kobzar: The Poetry of Taras Shevchenko. Translated …
Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon walking on White House grounds.

Don’t Believe “Peace Is at Hand”

… it. Halfway through his first term, he secretly decided to complete American troop withdrawals around election time. … for the president and his party, continuing the war posed less risk politically than ending it. We can't know Bush's … off final withdrawal. If Bush follows the Nixon game plan completely, next year he will launch a big bombing campaign …
Cover of A Wicked Company The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment by Philipp Blom.

Dangerous (Thinking) Liaisons

Review of A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment, by Philipp Blom (New York: Basic Books, 2010)
… and Voltaire. Diderot is remembered today mostly as a compiler of others people's work in his role as editor of … wrote a number of his own philosophical works, letters and commentaries.  Holbach is scarcely remembered at all, though … well as their intellectual combat, the love affairs, squabbles, bitter fallings-out, and personal foibles of the …
 Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet, by John G. Turner book Cover.

He Led His People Into the Desert

Review of Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet, by John G. Turner (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012)
… and beliefs drastically shifted as he evolved from a penniless farmer on the social margins to the patriarch of a vast … of Young's evolution as a leader brings the full complexity of his character into focus.  Upon his ascension … As a leader, he could use mirth to build consensus and community, or he could dictate terms in absolutist manner to …
Immigrants on ocean steamer passing the Statue of Liberty, New York City, 1887.

Strangers in the Land: An Old Theme Replayed

… The numbers of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe pouring into Ellis Island were the largest the United States … United States, built on its Anglo-Saxon heritage, could accommodate large numbers of Slavs and Italians whose … be too much of a stretch to say that were it not for the discredited precedent of that internment, a similar fate might …
On August 8, 1918, 17,000 German soldiers surrendered to the Allies.

November 11, 1918: The End of World War I?

… the story goes. In January 1918, after forty-one months of combat, Allied troops were ready for a ceasefire, but they … was signed in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. So when did the First World War end? November 11, 1918? … capital cities, in town squares, at cemeteries and memorial sites throughout the world—for many an annual ritual—to …
Mosaics from the apse in the Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna. Justinian is the figure in the center. The mosaics were completed in 547 CE.

The Justinianic Plague

… Justinian is the figure in the center. The mosaics were completed in 547 CE. Because there have been multiple … the same time as Procopius. He wrote about the plague in Palestine and Syria, and his narrative aligns with Procopius’ … or recommendations expressed in this content do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for …
Three 10th Mountain Division Ski troopers above Camp Hale in the Pando Valley, Colorado in February, 1944.

Skis, Samba, and Smoking Snakes: An Unlikely World War II Partnership

What happened when glacier-goggled American ski troops and samba-loving Brazilian soldiers fought side-by-side halfway across the world?
… in a stalemate with Axis troops north of Rome. With a commanding view of the narrow approach to the Po River … disembarking, the honor guard was whisked away to their plush quarters on Copacabana Beach to await the following … and training were intricately bound together. So much unnecessary paperwork was done that nobody checked to see …
President Barack Obama signed the ARRA into law on February 17, 2009. Vice President Joe Biden stood directly behind him.

A New New Deal Must Be For All

… Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan has provoked comparisons with Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. Like … By January 1934, only 300,000 out of four million jobless women — 12 percent — had found government jobs.   In … women earned only 51 percent of what men did for work of comparable worth.   During the Depression, officials …
Billboard of Nursultan Nazarbayev in Kazakhstan, 2015.

Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and the Democratization Shell Game

… often have lucrative government contracts and cushy sinecures in the public or private sectors. Protests against … both countries appear to break from the autocratic past and complicate our understanding of their political future. In … when it was set to assume the position. In reality, the opposite occurred. By the time Kazakhstan assumed the …
Vegetables from ecological farming.

Bringing Democrats and Republicans Together over Food

… be a wonderful gift. Before scrapping that wish as hopeless, consider one area where the two sides do have a … enemies of peace."   Democrats and Republicans could surely come together to realize that children overseas dying or … hunger a foreign policy priority.  They can and should come together over food.   This has to happen if we are to …
Tommie Smith and John Carlos protesting at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City.

Ten Protests in Sports History

… in American sport involved white athletes refusing to compete against or alongside African-Americans. On at least … – and ruin the league’s prime-time broadcast window – unless the league agreed on the spot to bargain with the NBPA … suspended over their decision to wear black armbands in connection with an upcoming game against BYU, as a protest …
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, … The resolution granted Johnson the authority “to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the …
soldiers in Vietnam

Memories of Vietnam in Memoriam

Review of Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, by Viet Thanh Nguyen Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016.
… who view the dead and choose to remember them. This is a complex work.  Equal parts philosophical treatise, … to his core principle of an ethical “just memory”. Nguyen sites first person shooter style videogames as allowing … parts of the war machine. Nguyen looks deeply into the examples provided by American films of the Vietnam War, Nguyen …
Cover of the Measure of Earth The Enlightenment Expedition That Reshaped Our World by Larrie D. Ferreiro

Figuring Out the Shape of the World

Review of Measure of the Earth: The Enlightenment Expedition That Reshaped Our World, by Larrie D. Ferreiro (New York: Basic Books, 2011)
… one requiring an almost obsessive attention to detail, a commitment to exacting measurements, and above all a patient … A quite laborious process, often involving measuring miles of territory in small 20 foot segments, it does not … the earth which might give France the scientific advantage necessary to supplant British sea power. It is no surprise …
Mr. Professor by Joan Carlsson, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0

Needed: A New Deal for Academics

… on faculty hires. Suddenly, new Ph.D.s found themselves competing with a hundred or even a thousand other candidates … despondent souls at any academic conference, squirming uncomfortably in their suits and waiting — always waiting for … of people to work building bridges, parks, and highways. Less familiar is the so-called “white-collar” New Deal, …
George Washington Bridge Flag Retirement Ceremony

Who’s Desecrating the Flag, Anyhow?

… vote for the "flag-burning" amendment, perhaps the honorables can turn their attention to another hot topic. How did … advertising–presumably this would apply to businesses now competing the have the biggest flag in the neighborhood. One … couple of years back turned up on the House floor in a flag necktie while he lambasted flag burning. Maybe the senators …
First Lady Michelle Obama reading a Dr. Seuss book to children at the White House.

Celebrating the “Seussentennial”

… has proclaimed 2004 the “Seussentennial,” a year-long commemoration of Geisel’s work. Geisel’s books have expanded … and challenged us to make the world and our local communities better places. They’ve also reminded us that the … message. But even as he tried to avoid writing morality tales, much of Geisel’s work reflected his commitment to human …
Marshall "Major" Taylor was a professional African American cyclist

(Bicycle) Wheels of Change

Review of The Cycling City: Bicycles and Urban America in the 1890s, by Evan Friss (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015)
… moment at the end of the nineteenth century in which bicycles shaped American cities and the lives of those who lived … riders freedom and independence, whether they rode out of necessity or utility was a question of personal preference. … cycling clubs were one type of group where cyclists could come together, but they were not merely for elites only. …