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Sacking of Rome.

Bush’s Road Leads Back to Rome’s Empire

… the Romans had paved for their own armies to travel. If war comes, Iraq will be using the computers and cell phones and radar it got from the United … dangerous road. Ira Chernus is a professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a writer …
Cover of The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall by Mary Elise Sarotte.

…And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: A History of Contingency and Happenstance

Review of The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall, by Mary Elise Sarotte New York: Basic Books, 2014.
… irrevocably porous. But the events of November 9 did not come from nowhere. The fall of the Berlin Wall—as detailed … she instead writes the history of serendipity whose outcome was far from predetermined, even if it seems so in … authority of East Germany’s Socialist Unity Party (SED) was compromised; the leadership’s attempts to rebuild were …
Soldiers in Kosovo

Kosovo: The Lessons of History?

… “If our bombs are so ‘smart,’ how come they’re always hitting refugees, hospitals and … but if we listen carefully, their voices convey a sense of compassion, coupled with disappointment. Often stereotyped … But my students reminded me that such answers are never easy and that we must never rush to judgment. Ron Briley is …
Hessian troops surrendering to General George Washington after the Battle of Trenton.

The Return of the Mercenary

… phenomenon. This is why Congress should examine the recommendations made in a 2002 British government Green Paper … sector military operators. Mercenaries — professional soldiers who fight for pay rather than out of ideological … of their day. The British hired more than 30,000 German soldiers — the famed Hessians, some of whom were defeated by …
Cartoon by Ali Delim in honor of 20th anniversary of Said Mekbel’s killing. The cartoon reads: “Said Mekbel in Heaven for journalists. Here it is not the quills that are missing.” (Cartoon used with permission)

1/30/2015: The Dangers of Being a Humorist: Charlie Hebdo Is Not Alone

… have been levelling their ire with deadly consequences at comedians whose work they have deemed to be blasphemous or … was kidnapped and murdered in September 1995, while Dorbane died when a bomb that militants had placed near the offices … printed, journalists including Dilem and Mekbel deserved to die for producing cartoons and writings they believed not …
Senator Fred Thompson at the Chattanooga Summit in 1996.

Back to the Future of Fund-Raising Scandals

… Now Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., who chairs the Senate committee looking into Clinton’s fund-raising, has joined … a contrast with Clinton, Thompson praised Roosevelt for coming to the Senate in person to testify on the funding of … Roosevelt’s scandal hit when a New York State legislative committee looking into the finances of the state’s insurance …
Bronze statue of Sir William Blackstone.

Back to the 17th Century: Money and Political Speech

… rather, he wrote, “[t]he electors themselves are becoming the oligarchy.” Mill’s fear, like that of today’s … scheme would, he hoped, “prevent the labouring class from becoming preponderant in Parliament.” Society has changed even …
members of the Tea Party holding signs

The Great American Debate Recommences

… Constitution yet their principles were most fiercely embodied not in our current Constitution, but in the Articles of … that Congress was debating a declaration of independence, a committee was drafting the Articles. Its purpose was to form … Nashville and sparked an explosion of approval from her audience.   Today’s defenders of the Constitution are the …
Sir Winston Churchill in 1945.

Churchill on Iraq: “Living on an Ungrateful Volcano”

… the Arab officials of Iraq’s British-backed King Feisal “incompetent.” He noted the gross over-expenditure of monies in … American troops from that nation now. Shannon Monaghan studies history at Yale University and writes for the History …
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 …
From left to right, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and Vice President Dick B. Cheney having a working lunch in 2007.

Foreign Policy Doesn’t Need a Mandate

… executive. History suggests that even a president primarily committed to enacting a domestic agenda can achieve … capital in launching the New Deal, Roosevelt, before he died in 1945, wrenched America from its isolationist … we should not overlook his many foreign policy accomplishments. These successes included negotiating the …
Statue of Peter the Great in Moscow

The Past and Future of Russian-American Relations

… one. We should not panic if Russia, in the short-term, becomes more antagonistic toward Western values and interests. … more important, the current round of reforms is part of a complex and ongoing process of assimilation and rejection of … to the West for the technologies and ideologies needed to compete in European international politics. In the usual …
American Jewish Loss after the Holocaust, by Laura Levitt Book Cover

American Jewish Loss after the Holocaust

Review of American Jewish Loss after the Holocaust, by Laura Levitt (New York: New York University Press, 2007)
… to describe the legacy of loss. Although the Holocaust has come to be widely commemorated in the United States, and … the tale of her father's mysterious birth mother, who died tragically when he was very young. Levitt had not known … she sees these individuals for how they lived, not how they died. Suddenly, she catches herself. She remembers her …
The Norwegians Land in Iceland 872 by Oscar Wergeland (1877).

Why We Love the Vikings

… ties were also immensely important, for one often needed community support at the assembly to win a legal case. Thus, … was not the first one to do so, his work found a captive audience: the Victorians loved Vikings.  In previous … ancestor that embodied freedom and self-reliance. It’s easy to see why the  Sagas of Icelanders in particular …
Strangers Nowhere in the World: The Rise of Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Europe , by Margaret Jacobs book cover.

Strangers Nowhere in the World: The Rise of Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Europe

Review of Strangers Nowhere in the World: The Rise of Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Europe , by Margaret Jacobs (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006)
… the history of science, Jacob offers a series of case studies looking at Avignon, Alchemy, early stock markets, … Republicans. This allows her to easily skim over the often complicated inter-relations between politics, science, and … of the same paths without much reference to the previous studies that have mapped out the connection between religion, …
Flag of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic

Soviet Ukraine in a Nutshell

… of violence and instability until 1922. Multiple communities of former tsarist imperial subjects imagined the … raised the grain quotas for newly collectivized villages. Combined with bad harvests this led to the Holodomor , the … between Poles and Ukrainians was fierce because of their incompatible national projects involving the same land. …
Portrait of President James K. Polk from 1846.

The Lessons of Mr. Polk’s War

… for going to war and his facile assumptions about an easy U.S. victory contributed to a massive public … history of foreign occupation, Iraqi civilians would welcome U.S. troops as liberators. Most Iraqis, like most … Service and a doctoral student in history and security studies at Yale. E-mail:  jmankoff@yahoo.com . …