Новости за 19.06.2018

The historian who lived a long life is working on a long article—a monograph, perhaps, about city planning and urbanism in provincial Russia, finding and shaping Catherine the Great’s imperial urban space. Born in 1925, Albert Schmidt calls himself a workaholic, and insists he always has been, but he tries to have fun too. 

It’s New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s last day in office. I spoke with him while he was still packing up his office. We talked about why he removed statues from his city that honored the Confederacy, his new book — In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History — and of course the question many have for him: Are you running for president?Transcript

Although the U.S. mass media are awash with stories about America’s “booming economy,” the benefits are distributed very unequally, when they are distributed at all.

Suggesting that President Trump lacks a “moral compass” is not a new criticism. But this charge requires further exploration. The fault is twofold. The first is a personal failing, the second a societal one. We shall examine both of these dimensions in some detail, but first several paragraphs about the moral compass of President Obama and the values of some of our outstanding previous presidents.

At a time when we have the controversies surrounding Donald Trump in the White House, we have seen in the past few years the dramatic rise of the 18th President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant, in rankings of polls of scholars in history and political science.

Some Founding Fathers, like John Dickinson, supported the colonists’ insurgency, but not independence. Some favored independence, but with little change in America’s social and political fabric. Still others, like Alexander Hamilton, who in 1776 referred to England as an “old wrinkled, withered, worn-out hag,” thought they wanted America changed until changes began to occur, and thereafter they sought to erect barriers to make it difficult to bring about further change. But some revolutionaries... Читать дальше...

The Great Mosque of Córdoba turned church after the Reconquista - By Berthold Werner, CC BY-SA 3.0

To: The 2017-2018 Pulitzer Board

From: Philip Nobile

Re: The Pulitzer's Gentlemen's Agreements 

I am writing the full Board because neither your Chair Eugene Robinson nor your Administrator Dana Canedy responded to my March 30 email and subsequent phone calls to the Pulitzer office seeking comment on my draft of "The Prize That Taints the Pulitzer's Ethics and Honor" posted on the History News Network on April 20.  

The article makes the case for reviewing the bona fides... Читать дальше...

Dr. Jerry Falwell, the founder of Liberty University, was a Christian pastor and televangelist - By Liberty University - Liberty University, CC BY-SA 3.0

"Smoke Over Widnes," photograph c. 1898. Photographer unknown. Courtesy: Robert Martindale. 

Related Link The North Korean Nuclear Crisis in History (Interviews with Mitch Lerner and David Fields)

Ocean’s 8, the latest in the long time of Ocean’s heist thriller movies, stretching all the way back to the 1960s with Frank Sinatra and extended to recent years with George Clooney, is the delightful tale of an all-girl robbery ring. Their target is no ordinary liquor store or bank, but the historic, mammoth Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and its decades old Met Gala ball, whose tickets cost $30,000 each and whose guests include the most famous women in the world from Madonna to Katy Perry and Kim Kardashian... Читать дальше...

This year is the 100th anniversary of the passage of the landmark Migratory Bird Act, passed by Congress to prevent the killing and mutilation of millions of birds in order to create feather accentuated women’s wear that was eagerly purchased by the wealthy. To celebrate the act, and the liberation of all those birds, the New-York Historical Society has opened “Feathers: Fashion and the Fight for Wildlife,” an intriguing and thought-provoking exhibit that chronicles the murder of so many birds... Читать дальше...

Related Link Historians' comments on the summit 

As Donald Trump lands in Singapore for his historic summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, there is reason for concerned citizens around the world to be pleased. What a few months ago looked like imminent war has (for the moment) been averted, and the Trump administration deserves credit for charting a new, bold course in US-North Korea relations. Though there are obvious risks in the kind of unprecedented high-level direct diplomacy... Читать дальше...

One cannot escape the fact that Asperger worked within a system of mass killing as a conscious participant, very much tied to his world and to its horrors. – Edith Sheffer, Asperger’s Children

Related Links

●  Jefferson’s Monticello finally gives Sally Hemings her place in presidential history

● It’s time for Sally Hemings to show us the unvarnished Thomas Jefferson

● Sally Hemings Takes Center Stage By Annette Gordon-Reed

In a new “manifesto” titled “Monticello Affirms Thomas Jefferson Fathered Children with Sally Hemings” (June, 2018), The Thomas Jefferson Foundation has declared that the official position of the foundation is that Thomas Jefferson fathered all six of Sally Hemings’s children. Читать дальше...

Spiegelgrund, the Vienna facility where hundreds of children were killed at the behest of Nazi regime doctors

The United States tried for close to 200 years to build humane asylums, and there are very good reasons why few are in existence today. At the beginning of the 19th century, New York City legislators made plans to replace what was recognized as an early attempt gone horribly wrong. The public hospital now known as Bellevue had also been the location of the city’s asylum for the “lunatic poor.” For wealthy citizens suffering from mental health issues there were private, and kinder, sanatoriums. Читать дальше...

When one thinks of the pantheon of the great black abolitionists, several spring to mind: Frederick Douglass. Harriet Tubman. Solomon Northup. But there is a fourth leader who once belonged to that hallowed group: Josiah Henson.

News story about the 1844 convention of African-Americans in Ohio

It’s 1851, in Gibson County, Indiana. And Keziah Grier is standing before the Gibson County clerk. She is nearing sixty, and the clerk is looking at her closely as he assesses her skin, the visible scars, the texture and color of her hair, her build. 

Did this remind Keziah of her childhood when she was enslaved in South Carolina, before she was brought in bondage to the Indiana Territory? By 1851 Keziah Grier had long been free... Читать дальше...

As I was putting the finishing touches on my new book, the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute published an estimate of the taxpayer dollars that will have gone into America’s war on terror from September 12, 2001, through fiscal year 2018. That figure: a cool $5.6 trillion (including the future costs of caring for our war vets). On average, that’s at least $23,386 per taxpayer.

Harvard’s Graham Allison, as early as 2013, but also last year in his book, Destined for War, expounded his concept of the “Thucydides’ Trap:” “When one great power threatens to displace another, war is almost always the result.” He also describes it as the “severe structural stress caused when a rising power threatens to upend a ruling one.” 

President Donald Trump's actions at the recent G-7 Summit – imposing tariffs on America's trading partners a few days before the meeting opened, leaving the meeting early, refusing to sign the closing protocol, and disparaging the meeting's host, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in post-conference tweets – continues his policy of "America First," independent of and alienating toward our longstanding Canadian and European allies. Trump has criticized the policies of the prime minister of Great Britain and the Chancellor of Germany... Читать дальше...

“History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes,” Mark Twain was reported to have said. I have been thinking about that observation as the minuet between Donald Trump and the Republican Party continues. While Trump undermines the rule of law in an attempt to protect his presidency from the Mueller investigation, his party members swirl around him, some of whom challenge his actions, others attempt just to survive, while still others are willing accomplices. In researching the emergence of the abolitionists movement in the 1830’s... Читать дальше...