Новости за 29.11.2018

One hundred and fifty-five years ago, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, his paean to democracy. Donald Trump has compared himself to Lincoln and has stated falsely that Lincoln’s Address was universally panned at the time. But the differences between Lincoln and Trump couldn’t be starker. Lincoln came from a poor family, lived in a frontier cabin, and was self-educated; Trump comes from wealth, lived in a penthouse, and attended an Ivy League university. Lincoln opposed nativism; Trump champions it. Читать дальше...

On the night of October 8, 2017 – the eve of National Fire Prevention Day – a swarm of fires broke out in northern California. The resulting ‘fire siege’ burned 245,000 acres, destroyed 8,920 structures, and killed 44 people. On December 4 the siege moved to Southern California, where the six largest fires burned 308,380 acres, 1,375 structures, and took two lives. The northern siege was California’s most damaging on record; the southern had its largest fire, the Thomas. A year later, November 8... Читать дальше...

Look out everybody, the Big Guy is back.

King Kong, who made his debut in the classic 1933 film, is once again carrying off gorgeous Ann Darrow, killing prehistoric monsters and climbing New York’s Empire State building to face the planes, this time at the Broadway Theater at Broadway and W. 53rd Street, in New York. He is big. He is powerful. He is Kong, the mighty eighth wonder of the world.

As everybody knows from the 1933 movie, and its remakes, tough guy showman Carl Denham sails... Читать дальше...

Dr. Toyin Falola is an African historian and the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair Professor in the Humanities and a Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a Fellow of the Historical Society of Nigeria and a Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters. Click here for his website.

Some historians say that the origins of the National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation date back to the 1860s, when Abraham Lincoln’s son Tad begged his dad to spare the life of a wild turkey that had been sent to the White House to be part of a holiday dinner. Others claim that the tradition began during the Truman administration. And while it's true that the National Turkey Federation has been providing holiday turkeys to the White House since 1947, there are no extant records to confirm that this is true. Читать дальше...

On Thanksgiving Day in 1956 a group of families sat down to a feast at Camp Kilmer in New Jersey. Almost none of them had ever heard of the Thanksgiving holiday. But it quickly became a favorite! 

While the details of the US, Mexico, Canada Trade Agreement (USMCA), informally known as NAFTA 2.0, are still being analyzed, some are breathing a sigh of relief that their interests appear to remain protected. For dairy producers, soy and corn growers, automobile manufacturers, and corporations, the new deal either retains or expands the access to markets they enjoyed under the earlier trade agreement, NAFTA, which went into effect in January 1994. But “we” are not those interests. Few of us own consolidated commodity grain farms... Читать дальше...

All areas of the world that were ever part of the British Empire. Current British Overseas Territories have their names underlined in red.

There is an understandable desire to explain Trump and Trumpism by comparing him to past individuals and movements. Although understanding Trump and Trumpism in this way is useful, it runs the risk of attributing too much influence to one person. Focusing on the leader disregards the social and political environment and the people that helped bring that leader or movement to power. Instead, it is often more fruitful look at broader historical patterns in the past to understand our present.

A half century ago this November, Richard Nixon was elected the 37th President of the United States.

In July 2017, by a vote of 122 to 1, with one abstention, nations from around the world attending a United Nations-sponsored conference in New York City voted to approve a treaty to ban nuclear weapons.  Although this Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons received little coverage in the mass media, its passage was a momentous event, capping decades of international nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements that, together, have reduced the world’s nuclear weapons arsenals by approximately... Читать дальше...

Strange. A White House never shy about proclaiming its achievements, real or imagined, has been uncharacteristically reluctant to inform the world about one of its major successes:  Easing the hostility between China and Japan.

If there was one demographic group that blunted the force of the “blue wave” in this month’s midterm elections, it was rural white voters. Even as Republicans lost control of the suburban areas that had been their strongholds in the 1980s and 1990s, Republicans extended their hold over rural America. The GOP is now on the verge of uniting nearly all rural white voters into a single party – which has never happened before. 

Michael Beschloss has written a highly readable, but deeply flawed account of our nation’s war-making presidents. The book follows the traditional, Euro-centric narrative of American history, emphasizing the noble motives of our 19th century Presidents and ignoring the major impact of African slavery and territorial expansion on our nation’s history. Becshloss may have written a bestseller, but he has missed an opportunity to educate readers about the importance of racism in forming our nation’s early foreign and domestic policies. Читать дальше...

"The discipline of history in Africa is facing a crisis in that it is attracting fewer and fewer students."

Title page of the 1828 first edition of the American Dictionary of the English Language featuring an engraving of Webster - By Cullen328 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

Neo-Confederate pamphlet on left. Loewen book on right. 

James W. Loewen is a sociologist.  The New Press has just brought out new paperbacks of Loewen's bestseller, Lies My Teacher Told Me, and Sundown Towns, about places that were/are all-white on purpose. 

In 2016 I wrote here about Clyde Wilson’s scurrilous neo-Confederate pamphlet, “Lies My Teacher Told Me: The True History of the War for Southern Independence.” It is a 38-page pamphlet that mostly reprints an article he wrote... Читать дальше...

For the presidential campaign of 2020 the nation is likely to see up to 12 former or sitting mayors of cities possibly competing for the Democratic presidential nomination. A total of nine former mayors, and three sitting mayors are all said to be interested in running for the presidency.

It feels incredibly satisfying. When academic historians such as Princeton’s Kevin Kruse dismantle the partisan misstatements of pundits like Dinesh D’Souza, it gives the rest of us a glimmer of hope. In the process, though, historians should heed two lessons from another culture-war battleground. 

An October 2018 report, Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape, indicated that poor national leadership and our political polarization were main concerns. Our recent midterm election offers little hope that the two problems will diminish. Thus, we ask ourselves, “What type of political leadership is now needed? Who might furnish it? Trump supporters might answer Trumpian and Trump. But most of us seek a better answer.