Search Results

Displaying 1105 - 1128 of 1474
Lady Bird Johnson in the Texas Hill Country.

The Power of the Pedestal

… lady than Lady Bird Johnson. Being a southerner, she had a good start; southern women of all classes and races know a lady when we see one. She combines a highly attuned sense of others’ needs with an … mission. The role of a good political wife is to keep the unofficial machinery of politics running smoothly, presiding …
Zog I of Albania in front of the Albania Republic flag.

Albania’s First Republic

… the multireligious provisional government was challenged by competing leadership, most notably the Republic of Central … amounted to a puppet government.  While world leaders once again debated the future of Albania during the Paris Peace … to the premiership was more of a power grab than by the will of the people, as many disliked him and he was known …
President George W. Bush and his wife Laura listening to a Missouri elementary student read aloud to them.

Can Bush Avoid the Curse of Re-election?

… But Bush should not be so confident that his second term will be productive. It takes the press and the opposition party a full term to become familiar with an administration’s use of executive … press, which relished the opportunity of chasing him from office. Nixon used the president’s warmaking power to …
Film poster for Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995).

Top Ten Origins: Bollywood Films

… in several languages across the country. For example, only 300 of the roughly 2000 films produced in India in 2017 were Bollywood films. In recent decades, Bollywood has become popular across the world with sizeable audiences in … (Dharamendra) and Jai (Amitabh Bachchan), a retired police officer named Thakur (Sanjeev Kumar), and a bandit named …
Illustration of Adam and Eve.

Changing the Constitution to Protect Adam and Eve?

… unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas, Republican Sens. William Frist of Tennessee and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania … bingo games in the town of Jasper to providing for the compensation of the Judge of Probate in Barbour County. As a … is a sorry reason for doing it, one unlikely to yield good constitutional law. Ralph E. Luker, an Atlanta …
Cartoon in Punch, 1906.

For Iraq, a Lesson from Africa

… of the full panoply of liberal institutions, strongmen will take over, as has happened in Africa. Security and … Fifty years ago, Africans were euphoric after they threw off the shackles of colonialism. Sober reality soon set in … own independence from tyranny. But before 9/11, astute commentators warned about grandiose calls for democracy to …
Cover of A Cruel Wind: Pandemic Flu in America, 1918-1920 by Dorothy Ann Pettit and Janice Bailie.

Before There Was Swine Flu

Review of A Cruel Wind: Pandemic Flu in America, 1918-1920, by Dorothy A. Pettit and Janice Bailie (Timberlane Books, 2008)
… was upgrading the recent outbreak of H1N1 influenza, more commonly known as "swine flu," to a global pandemic. … tease out the many implications of the outbreak. They are good at the big consequences: the possibility that Woodrow … planning, the economic consequences of the number of people off work. They evoke the frightening scenes of bodies …
Isaac W. Williams (front) in a file photo from the 1960s.

Still Fighting the Civil War in South Carolina

… "has nothing to do with slavery."  He proposes that it is a commemoration of South Carolinians who "stood up for their … John C. Calhoun, who had died in 1850.  In 1887, after a 30-year campaign, they installed a monument to Calhoun in … to the monument has been formidable.  Local whites have offered the standard litany of excuses about the marginal …
Bruce Lee

The Original Street Fighting Man

Review of Striking Distance: Bruce Lee and the Dawn of Martial Arts in America, by Charles Russo Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 2016)
… the hips. Further, the static foot position prevented quick offensive and defensive footwork. San Francisco's Chinatown … after Lee challenged anyone who doubted his word to come to his studio in Oakland. Russo makes his case by … sprung from his own arrogance and indifference to good manners. Moreover, he does puncture a few holes in the …
A photo of Helmut Kohl in1987.

Germany After Kohl

… sad watching a powerful political figure overstay his welcome. Helmut Kohl, German chancellor for sixteen years, has … and Free Democrats. While the end of Kohl’s term in office is of interest, what Germany under Schrôder might do … able to manage its own affairs, political and economic? And will a politician with a genuine capacity for leadership …
John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club.

Conservation — An American, and Republican, Tradition

… of personal virtue, but not a sufficient basis for a sound comprehensive energy policy,” he turned his back on a major … national project that involves more than just turning off unnecessary lights.  While Cheney seems to reduce … not as a personal virtue but as a matter of public good that concerned the growth, development and character of …
Mao proclaiming establishment of PRC.

The Establishment of the People’s Republic of China and Its Impacts

… governmental upheavals after 1911.  Mao Zedong and the Communist Party’s Rise to Victory During the 1920s and 1930s, the  Kuomintang (KMT, the nationalist party led by … themselves as “Taiwanese” only. However, Taiwan’s official status remains complex and unclear. While the PRC …
Headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Austria.

Contradictions in Atomic Agency’s Mandate

… addressed the matter of access. All signatories pledged “good faith” efforts to end the arms race and proceed toward “general and complete disarmament.” Nuclear weapons states pledged not to … of uranium enrichment. The United States and others scoff at this claim, since Iran also refuses inspections, the …
Depiction of the Battle of Bosworth Field by the eighteenth-century painter, Philip James de Loutherbourg.

The Battle of Bosworth Field

… later, this battle was memorialized by the playwright  William Shakespeare (c.1564-1616). Shakespeare painted a … was thus justified and necessary to bring about peace and order in England.  Shakespeare followed the lead of … when Henry Tudor arrived in the summer of 1485 to wage war against Richard, he believed he was acting rightly in …
Thomas Jefferson

The Road to a New American Aristocracy

… that the blood in their veins distinguished them from the common herd. Despite the rhetoric about property rights that … an effort to establish an American aristocracy. The fight against aristocracy goes back to the nation's founding and … to be divided successively over generations. By the 1830s America had become one of the most egalitarian societies …
First Cabinet of President Barack Obama in the White House East Room.

The Distant Horizon of a President

… cautious, thoughtful Obama was just plain weak, or worse: incompetent. Well, health care legislation has passed, the … abolition more than 20 years ago.   No doubt everything will look different in another month’s time. This is the … odds. The results only became evident years after they left office.   Leaders who seek to replicate the lessons of the …
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum with a sign announcing the 70th anniversary ceremony.

A Postcard from Hiroshima

… of the bombing and was able to witness how the Japanese commemorate these tragic events. Hiroshima Peace Memorial … Memorial Cenotaph, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. The official ceremonies took place near the Hiroshima Peace … he is bald due to radiation. Twenty years from now, there will be no eyewitnesses left to tell their stories. The …
US Senator Mitt Romney of Utah.

The “Wall of Separation” Has Preserved Religion — Including Mormonism

… backwards. We can date the beginnings of this separation to William Penn’s Philadelphia. When he founded the City of Brotherly Love in the 1680s he did so without an official, “state” religion (in contrast with the … to the world that people of any religious faith would be welcome. To Penn we owe our freedom of religion. Penn was a …
Kosovo is located to the south of Serbia.

The Perils of Breaking Away

… going to receive international approval for its quest to become an independent nation. While many inside Kosovo and out will rejoice at its liberation from Serbia, there are … or realistic. Both the Balkans and Iraq would be better off if their populations could learn to live together again. …
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)
… When I was six years old, I distinctly remember falling off my bicycle when I was trying to do tricks and breaking … cycling clubs were one type of group where cyclists could come together, but they were not merely for elites only. … (185) For every type of cyclist, there was a group that accommodated them and, though they disagreed over who should …
Fully lit Menorah

Chanukah Candles Shed Light on Mideast Conflict

… It will not be easy lighting Chanukah candles this year.  Like … also faces the seed of a cultural civil war within its own borders, this time between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews.  … Surely they know that nothing brings people together like a common enemy. But in the United States, the "rally round the …
"The National Game. Three Outs and One Run." Drawing depicting the four candidates of the 1860 United States presidential election (L to R): John Bell, Stephen Douglas, John C. Breckinridge, and Abraham Lincoln. The artist is comparing the election to a baseball game.

The Election of 1860 and Secession — to Preserve Slavery

… initiated." That evening, in a foreshadowing of events to come, fireworks lit the sky above Fort Sumter. Who could … War. A new textbook for Virginia fourth-graders, Joy Masoff's "Our Virginia, Past and Present," makes the wholly … in Confederate ranks." The notion that black Americans willingly fought for what Rhett called "a Slave Republic" is …
Cover of The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union by Serhii Plokhy

"The Greatest Geopolitical Catastrophe of the Century"

Review of The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union, by Serhii Plokhy (New York: Basic Books, 2014)
… to declare independence ensured that the Soviet Union had become an irrelevancy and its dissolution had become an … returned from his vacation.   What followed was a stand-off in the streets of Moscow between the military and Boris … Baker III were committed to maintaining the Soviet Union in order to maintain security over the Soviet nuclear arsenal …
Woman reading inside a newsstand in the 1950s.

Journalists and the Bomb

… atomic bombing of two Japanese cities. Most reporters and commentators who write about Hiroshima and Nagasaki … The claim of "military necessity," he argued, rang hollow. Official justifications would "never erase from our minds … to the public on Hiroshima anniversaries. Only in this way will Americans be able to honestly and critically confront …