Murray Polner reviews JFK and LBJ: The Last two Great Presidents by Godfrey Hodgson:
History News Network | Review of Godfrey Hodgson’s “JFK and LBJ: The Last two Great Presidents”.
I Believe in Freedom of Choice
Parents should be able to send their children to the school of their choice. And they do, but the public should not be expected to pay for their private choices.
The public has a civic obligation to support public education. Even if you don’t have children, you pay taxes to educate the children of the community. Even if your children are grown, you pay school taxes. Even if you send your children to private school, you pay school taxes. Public schools are a public responsibility.
If you don’t like the public schools, you are free to choose a private school, a charter school, a religious school, or home school. That’s your choice. But you must pay for it yourself.
We all pay for police and firefighters. If you want a private security guard, pay for it yourself. We all pay for public schools, even if we don’t patronize them. They…
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“Why It’s Time to Remember Waterloo for a Different Reason” | History News Network
Christine Haynes suggests that we remember the Battle of Waterloo for the peace building process that followed it. “This battle deserves to be celebrated not as the end of the first “total war,” but as the beginning of a “total peace,” which following two more world-wide conflicts, came to fruition after 1945 but is facing new challenges today.” Read his argument here:
History News Network | Why It’s Time to Remember Waterloo for a Different Reason.
“Battle of Waterloo” by William Holmes Sullivan
“Just What Exactly Are People Commemorating on the 200th Anniversary of Waterloo?” | History News Network
The Battle of Waterloo is one of the most famous battles in history since it marks Napoleon’s ultimate and final defeat. Escaping from the island of Elba, where he had been exiled after his first defeat, Napoleon took power once again of the French empire only to be defeated by the British and Prussians a few months later at Waterloo.
But as the 200th Anniversary of this battle approaches, its commemoration poses a dilemma for those countries involved in the conflict, France in particular. Alan Forrest, author of Great Battles: Waterloo, examines the difficulties presented by this commemoration. He asks, “Is it appropriate, in the twenty-first century, to celebrate, joyously, an engagement that resulted in the deaths of so many soldiers in a single day? Should we not remember Waterloo more for the scale of the sacrifice it demanded of the men who fought and the families they left behind, or for the fact that it ushered in a century of relative peace following the Congress of Vienna? Or is it more about the colour of the military spectacle – as will doubtless be exemplified in the re-enactments of the battle that will take place on 18 June and the days following?”
Read his thoughtful examination of the commemoration here:
Painting of the Scots famous cavalry charge at the Battle of Waterloo by Elizabeth Butler: Scotland for Ever!, 1881
“Showing Pictures of Muhammad Is Ok” |History News Network
The historian Timothy R. Furnish examines the history of Islamic thought concerning images of Muhammad and concludes that the current “iconophobia” is not representative of all Islamic traditions. He also argues that the best way to confront the current radical reaction to drawings of Muhammad “might be to eschew modern drawings of Muhammad (and certainly intentionally insulting ones) and, rather, stage exhibits with examples of ISLAMIC paintings of him. That would make the point more historically and legitimately, and less provocatively, in my opinion.” I agree!
Read his review of the history here:
History News Network | Showing Pictures of Muhammad Is Ok.
Mohammed and Jesus
The Forgotten Hero of the American Revolution: The Marquis de Lafayette
Today Americans think of the French as effeminate snobs who are lazy and weak. This caricature was in part inherited from the British, but it has been allowed to flourish in the absence of a historically informed citizenry. This distorted view of the French is unfortunate given the significant role the French played in the American Revolution. And one Frenchman in particular stands out as a forgotten American hero: the Marquis de Lafayette. During his lifetime he was treated like a rock star by grateful Americans, who were very much aware of the key role he played in the American victory. But since then he has faded from historical memory as the complexities of the revolution gave way to a simplified heroic narrative.
At the HNN, Thomas Fleming recalls Lafayette’s valiant heroism at Yorktown: “The Marquis de Lafayette played a crucial role in the final attack. His Americans captured one key redoubt, while French troops captured another one. The allies soon had cannon in the two redoubts, enabling them to fire directly into the rest of the British defense line. Cornwalliis [sic] decided it was time to surrender.” This victory was also made possible by Lafayette’s servant, and former slave, known as James. He infiltrated the British camp pretending to be a runaway, and came away with crucial information that led to the victory at Yorktown.
Read Fleming’s account of Lafayette’s heroism here:
History News Network | How Lafayette’s Arrival on the Hermione Made Yorktown Possible.
Marquis da Lafayette
James Armistead
“The Renaissance of the Sultans by William Dalrymple” | The New York Review of Books
William Dalrymple examines the seventeenth-century Indian ruler, Sultan Ibrahim, and his obsession with art. In many ways his reign ushered in a renaissance,”[b]ringing together Hindu and Muslim traditions in an atmosphere of heterodox learning, and uniting Persians, Africans, and Europeans in a cosmopolitan artistic meritocracy, Ibrahim presided over a freethinking court in which art was a defining passion. For Ibrahim was literally obsessed with the power of art. In his poems he dwells on its ability to bring people together, and on the way that art, and particularly music, acted on the body and was capable of moving an individual to tears, or ecstasy, or a deep melancholic sadness.”
Read Dalrymple’s interesting review of Deborah Hutton and Rebecca Tucker’s The Visual World of Muslim India, and the “Sultans of Deccan India, 1500-1700: Opulence and Fantasy” (exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, April 20–July 26, 2015) here:
The Renaissance of the Sultans by William Dalrymple | The New York Review of Books.
“Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, lent by Howard Hodgkin
Sultan Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah II in Procession; painting by the school of ‘Ali Riza, Bijapur, early seventeenth century”
“Ten fascinating facts on the 71st anniversary of D-Day” – Yahoo News
History News Network | Did the Bush Invasion of Iraq “Create” ISIS?
Brian Glyn Williams weighs in on the “who created ISIS” debate. He concludes that it was the policy of disenfranchising the Baathists (civilian and military) that “fulfilled the Law of Unintended Consequences,” and “opened the Pandora’s Box that would ultimately lead to creation of ISIS.”
Here’s an excerpt from the essay: “The Iraqi military, which consisted of 385,000 men in the army and 285,000 in the Ministry of Defense, was a much respected institution in Iraq and its disbandment shocked Iraqi society. The tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers who had taken their weapons home instead of fighting the American invasion felt betrayed when they were fired. This created a recruitment pool of armed, organized and disaffected soldiers. In one fell swoop these Iraqi soldiers lost their careers, their paychecks, their pensions and their source of pride. General Daniel Bolger would claim that de-Baathification ‘guaranteed Sunni outrage.’[6]”
Read Williams’ entire argument here:
History News Network | Did the Bush Invasion of Iraq “Create” ISIS?
The Textbook Wars: An Historical Perspective
The Texas Textbook controversy has recently received a lot of attention, but it is only the most recent chapter in a long struggle over what our children should be learning. It is this history that Christopher Babits examines in order to add perspective to the current polemics. Babits found that debates over the content of textbooks goes back at least 130 years, but one episode in particular stood out as the most instructive in the current textbook wars. This episode began in the late 1920s.
The Great Depression brought great social change and a willingness to critically examine the causes of the crisis, even if it wasn’t pretty. Therefore, according to Babits, “many Americans embraced what came to be called the social reconstructionist curriculum. Observing the consequences of capitalism run amok, Americans became more comfortable with curricula that not only critiqued economic inequality but also encouraged students to ask critical questions about the American past.” In the schools the “[s]ocial reconstructionist curricula focused on the economic challenges facing the United States and the ways that schools could improve society.” This curricula came under attack from conservatives in the 1930s, but it wasn’t until the 1940s that this approach was replaced with a patriotic focused curriculum in response the rise of fascism and World War II.
Read the entire history of the textbooks wars here:
History News Network | The Texas Textbook Controversy. It’s Part of a Long, Awful, Tradition.
History Chick in AZ 