George Mason University's
History News Network

Week of January 7, 2013


Richard Nixon at 100: The Man Who Matters
Stanley Kutler

Nixon endures as the commanding figure of American political life since the end of World War II.


Up Front: AHA 2013

Highlights from the 2013 Annual Meeting of the AHA
David Austin Walsh
Dispatches: Day 1
Dispatches: Day 2
Dispatches: Days 3 & 4

AHA Roundup: The Rest of the Web

A (reasonably) comprehensive collection of articles and blogs on the 2013 AHA Annual Meeting, plus picks of the best blogs.

Survival Guide for the 2013 AHA Annual Meeting
David Austin Walsh

For those attending, both in the flesh and in spirit.


AHA Videos

The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers

Newspapers aren't dead yet, but they're struggling. What are some of the alternatives to the venerable daily newspaper?

A Conversation with John Sayles

Featuring the acclaimed filmmaker, William Cronon, Peter Galison, and Vanessa R. Schwartz

Open Societies at War: A Comparative History, 1939-45
David Hackett Fischer

George C. Marshall Lecture in Military History

Storytelling
William Cronon

The outgoing president's keynote address.

Taking a Longer View: The 2012 Election in Historical Context

Featuring Jim Grossman, Laura Kalman, Sean Wilentz, William Inboden, and Mary Frances Berry.


Blogs

Why Some Americans Want Big Guns
Steve Hochstadt

Paranoia strikes deep.

The New Age of Austerity
Iwan Morgan

Perhaps it's time to revisit some ideas from the Second New Deal.

Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation as an Exercise in Muscular Moderation
Gil Troy

His genius lay in his judgment.

Fiscal Deal: And the Winning Myth Is ….
Ira Chernus's MythicAmerica

Insecurity. The economic threat is now the new normal.


News at Home

Disarm the Filibuster
Joyce Appleby

It's undemocratic and, more importantly, unconstitutional.

Has a Tipping Point Finally Been Reached for Gun Control?
Sheldon M. Stern

The NRA sounds as ridiculous today as the AMA did in the 1960s opposing "communist" Medicare.


News Abroad

“So Many People Died”
Nick Turse

The American system of suffering, 1965-2014.


Historians & History

When Assessing Zinn, Listen to the Voices of Teachers and Students
Robert Cohen

Yes, A People's History is provocative, but that's the point: to serve as a contrast to standard textbooks.

Red Menace
Gerald Sorin

The heavy hand of politics and the historical novels of Howard Fast.

Did George McGovern Misremember His Past as a Bomber Pilot?
Robert Huddleston

The senator's famed anecdote from The Wild Blue could not have happened.

Culture Watch

The Law of Slavery Lies at Heart of Both "Lincoln" and "Django"
Gregory L. Kaster

The "peculiar institution" was deeply embedded in every local, state, and national law right up to the Constitution.


Books

Review of Joseph McCartin's Collision Course
Ron Briley

As organized labor fights for its life in the Midwest, it's worth considering why Reagan beat PATCO in 1981.

Review of Dennis Drabelle's The Great American Railroad War
Luther Spoehr

A stimulating appetizer when it comes to railroad history.

Week of December 31, 2012


Blogs

"The Other Civil War"
Jim Loewen

Howard Zinn, Abraham Lincoln, Lerone Bennett, Stephen Spielberg, and Me

Why are High-Capacity Magazines Still Legal?
Steve Hochstadt

There's no valid non-military reason to own one.


News at Home

What About All the Thousands of Other Kids Killed with Guns?
Susan J. Pearson and Blain Roberts

Why does it take a "massacre of the innocents" in order to effect change?

Gun Control and Arms Control
Lawrence S. Wittner

Using the UN to solve both.


News Abroad

Were U.S. Marines Used as Guinea Pigs on Okinawa?
Jon Mitchell

New evidence that American soldiers were knowingly exposed to nerve gas.


Historians & History

Improvising Digital History in the Deep South Digital Desert
Michael Mizell-Nelson

How to make digital history beyond the coasts.

The Grand Emancipation Jubilee
Alan Singer

How did the public celebrate the proclamation 150 years ago, in 1863?

Where Are the Pseudohistory Wars?
Michael D. Gordin

Immanuel Velikovsky's pseudoscientific theories also had an historical component, so why isn't he labeled a pseudohistorian?

Picturing the History of Sexuality in America
Thomas A. Foster

What’s the first image that comes to mind when you think of the word “sex”?


Books

Review of The United States and the Second World War, edited by G. Kurt Piehler and Sidney Pash
Lawrence S. Wittner

It's ... pretty good.

Review of William Thomas Allison's My Lai: An American Atrocity in the Vietnam War
Murray Polner

It's ... also pretty good.