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Sudan in Crisis

… we need to look all the way back to the Sudan’s colonial past. Post-independence conflicts in Sudan were largely … institutions and improving social, educational, and health services. Western regions of Sudan, such as Darfur, were … coexisted with Egyptian schools, missionary schools, community schools, and Sudanese private schools. In the …

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

… ideals. Obama also evoked these hard-won victories of the past to contrast with the apparent precision, economy, and … us from the ravages of modern warfare, or if they will become the appliances of Orwellian control. What is remarkable … Major General Bennett E. Meyers of the army’s Air Technical Service Command (ATSC) tried to distinguish America’s bomb …
Liu Bang, or Emperor Gaozu of Han

Liu Bang, from Peasant Rebel to Emperor

… of China’s greatest imperial dynasty was, like Mao, a commoner. As with many dynastic founders, it is difficult to … his late twenties, however, Liu improved his condition by passing the civil service exam—high marks on government tests were a powerful … Milestones …
A rendering of the Battle of Fort Pillow, also known as the Fort Pillow Massacre, which was fought on April 12, 1864 in Tennessee.  It ended with a massacre by Confederate soldiers of at least one hundred surrendered black troops serving the Union, exemplifying one of the Civil War's transgressions of the norms of warfare.

The American Civil War, Then and Now

Review of The War that Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Still Matters, by James McPherson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015)
Coming to terms with the American Civil War is no easy task. … was discovered in California, tens of thousands of people poured in by spring of 1849 and, to avoid the competition of … will recognize that these questions bear not only on the past, but also on our present and future. …

South America’s ‘Sleeping Giant’ Wakes: Brazil’s 2010 Election

… to assume a permanent seat. Brazil is also poised to bypass Venezuela as the hemisphere's major oil exporter; and … and Russia, and with nearly two times the per-capita income of China, Brazil is on track to become a major force in … and studied economics, and began a career in government service. Rousseff was not a member of the Worker's Party …
Oppenheimer: The Tragic Intellect, by Charles Thorpe Book Cover

Oppenheimer: The Tragic Intellect

Review of Oppenheimer: The Tragic Intellect, by Charles Thorpe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006)
… I am become death, the shatterer of worlds. J. Robert Oppenheimer … atomic bomb, his creation, explode at the Trinity test site. An atomic age was dawning and Oppenheimer was leading … biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer that grew out of Charles Thorpe's dissertation. Thorpe earned his Ph.D. from the …
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 … they venerated science, materialism, reason and natural passions. Thus followed a disdain for aristocracy and … that of the Bastille, so was the Enlightenment pressed into service of the new, authoritarian regime.  Robespierre saw …

The Human Use of Human Beings: A Brief History of Suicide Bombing

… 9/11, reveals a great deal about the phenomenon we have come to know as suicide bombing. First, a radical left-wing … were about the aircraft, not the people on board. The passengers, in fact, were a liability rather than an asset, … 2000s brought no tangible political benefits. Quite the opposite: by 2003, Israeli officials were intercepting the …
Team photo of a soccer team

The Politics of International Sport

… in putting the nation on display on the global stage. And coming up, Brazil : about to host to the 2014 World Cup and … they were spending money in LA to do that, across town in Pasadena, they were building a more or less identical … and Leticia Wiggins. Find our podcasts and more at our website, origins.osu.edu , and you can find us on Twitter, …
General Edmund Allenby entering Jerusalem on December 11, 1917. Allenby dismounted as a sign of respect for the holy city.

The Collapse of Ottoman Power

Review of The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, by Eugene Rogan (New York: Basic Books, 2015)
… of two Russian ships by a German taskforce under the command of a German admiral improbably marked the entry of … of winter)—organized by the Ottoman Minister of War, Enver Pasha—failed spectacularly. Likewise, an ambitious bid to … beach of ANZAC Cove, one of the principle Entente landing sites on the Gallipoli peninsula Rather than quickly driving …

The Secular Roots of a Religious Divide in Contemporary Iraq

… some political pundits conclude, negotiations cannot overcome divine principles dictating distinct worldviews that … Sunni minority. Religious and Ethnic groups in Iraq. Many posited that Prime Minister al-Maliki's resignation in … tragedy, insisting the power of the state should have passed to Husayn. In general, there is nothing culturally …
Actors in the Berezil troupe, 1922.

Ukrainian Theater on the Soviet Stage

… Tserkva, and arrived at the tail end of fighting between Poles and Bolsheviks (the Bolsheviks won ). They were not … cavorted with dancing girls. Finally, the figure of comic writer Ostap Vyshnia was depicted hunting a line of … Avant-Garde of the 1910s and 1920s (Rodovid, 2015). Website: “Open Kurbas” created by Tetiana Rudenko and the team …

Tradition vs Charisma: The Sunni-Shi'i Divide in the Muslim World

… in the Islamic world and the reasons why they have become so explosive in Iraq, it is hardly surprising that … the Caliphate, based on his kinship with Muhammad and his service to Islam. 'Ali's assassination in 661 represented … reaction to Husayn's death came to be commemorated as the Passion of Shi'i Islam, celebrated during the month of …

The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Ghosts of Ned Ludd

… in eighteenth-century Britain. Electrification and telecommunications , led by nineteenth-century American … 17 th century. This “collective bargaining by riot” encompassed everything from earlier sabotage by craft workers in … from the time of the Luddites to the era of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. In this context, it is no surprise that …
Soldiers marching at the Champs Elysee

Recovering the History of the French Far-Right

Review of Assassination in Vichy: Marx Dormoy and the Struggle for the Soul of France , by Gayle K. Brunelle and Annette Finley-Croswhite (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020)
… hardly in question. The mystery was how high the plot went. Commissioner Charles Chenevier and Superintendent Georges Kubler of France’s … story of commemoration and remembrance of France’s troubled past. In their study of Marx Dormoy and his murder, Brunelle …

NATO's New Order: The Alliance After the Cold War

… Reading the headlines over the past weeks and months, it seems like déjà vu all over again. … in the region and deploy more heavy weapons, armored vehicles, and other equipment. NATO-member Turkey shoots down a … and dangerous, amplifying the sense of tension and competition across Europe and strengthening the sense of …

A New View of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: From Needs and Narratives to Negotiation

… to be solved in that “top-down” way, we have seen the impasse as a question of political give and take. It has been … Arabs saw both these diplomatic developments as treachery, generating hostility toward Jewish settlers. Map of … national myths of each community, such diametrically opposite attitudes toward the founding of Israel were …
Graffiti reading "Ireland a Nation, Irish and Free"

The Provisional Irish Republican Army

… thirty-year conflict in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles. By the time the violence ended in the late 1990s, the … Catholic Republic of Ireland, an utterly unacceptable outcome. They therefore fiercely fought the civil rights … A civil rights march in Northern Ireland, 1968. In years past, the role of defending Catholics in Ireland had been …

With a Little Help from Our Friends?: The Costs of Coalition Warfare

… Hornet pilots defied the orders of their American commanding officers. These pilots independently aborted 40 … effective coalitions. The Burdens of Friendship Over the past two centuries, democracies have been more likely than … of coalition warfare derives also from the prerequisites of developing a coherent multinational fighting force. …
Cover of The City's End: Two Centuries of Fantasies, Fears, and Premonitions of New York’s Destruction by Max Page.

The City's End: Two Centuries of Fantasies, Fears, and Premonitions of New York's Destruction

Review of The City's End: Two Centuries of Fantasies, Fears, and Premonitions of New York's Destruction, by Max Page (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008)
… of the text.  In examining roughly two hundred years of comic, filmic, propagandic, and literary portrayals of the … films all testify to the need for humans to learn from the past and their mistakes to recover from disaster, either … is a pleasure to read; the wealth of images is the Art Deco cherry on the Chrysler Building. …
Cover of A Short History of Celebrity by Fred Inglis.

A Short History of Celebrity

Review of A Short History of Celebrity, by Fred Inglis (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010)
… watched more than a modest portion of cable news in the past two years might be forgiven for believing that we live … London, city displaced court as the preferred site of the social scene, while new money engendered a … of intense familiarity with distance.  This is the "compound" that makes the celebrity sacred in modern society: …

All Politics is Local: Understanding Boko Haram

… The consensus among many academics, journalists, and commentators is that Boko Haram is an Islamist organization … organization, the roots of Boko Haram lie deep in Borno’s past. The impetus for the group’s current activities can be … from Mali, North Africa, Egypt, and the Saharan oases visited the region of West and Central Africa known as …
An Armenian woman leans over her dead child near Aleppo, Syria,1915.

On the Armenian Genocide

… On April 24, 2015, much of the world will commemorate the centennial of one of the most highly … symbol of the Centennial ;  The City Hall of Los Angeles colored purple in commemoration of the Genocide 2015. … and none to the Armenians, who became in this scenario passive and blameless victims. The Turkish version, which …