New Books in History

There’s a quip that goes “Christianity is probably a great religion. Someone should really try it.” The implication, of course, is that most people who call themselves Christians aren't very Christian at all. And, in truth, it's hard to be a good Christian, what with all that loving your enemi...

Clausewitz famously said war was the “continuation of politics by other means.” Had he been unfortunate enough to witness the way the Wehrmacht fought on the Eastern Front in World War II, he might well have said war (or at least that war) was the “continuation of politics by any means.” Hit...

I have a good friend who grew up in East Germany in the bad old days. The East German authorities suspected that her family would try to immigrate to the West (which they did), so they naturally told the Stasi"the East German secret service"to watch them (which they did). After the fall of the Wall,...

If you grew up in the 1960s or 1970s in suburbia, you probably lived in a smallish ranch house that looked like this. That house probably had an "ultra modern" kitchen that probably looked like this. I grew up in such a house and it had such a kitchen. In fact, I think my mom, sister, and self were...

I asked my wife if she knew who W. E. B. Du Bois was. She did, as would most Americans. I then asked her if she knew where Du Bois was born and raised. She did not, and most Americans wouldn't either. The odd thing is that Du Bois, who was one of the founders of the American civil rights movement an...

I've got a name for you: Robert Zimmerman (aka Shabtai Zisel ben Avraham). You've heard of him. He was a Jewish kid from Hibbing, Minnesota. But he didn't (as the stereotype would suggest) become a doctor, lawyer, professor or businessman. Nope, the professions were not for him. He loved the Americ...

In preparation for this interview I watched the documentary (that's what the producers call it, anyway) "Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup." Of course it's absolutely loony. In fact, it's so loony that I began to wonder if the director, Dylan Avery, wasn't having us on. It's hard to tell whether "...

There's a concept I find myself coming back to again and again--"speciation." It's drawn from the vocabulary of evolutionary biology and means, roughly, the process by which new species arise. Speciation occurs when a species must adapt to new circumstances; the more new circumstances, the more new...

I met George Kennan twice, once in 1982 and again in about 1998. On both occasions, I found him tough to read. He was a very dignified man--I want to write "correct"--but also quite distant, even cerebral. Now that I've read Nicholas Thompson's very writerly and engaging The Hawk and the Dove: Paul...

Historians are by their nature public intellectuals because they are intellectuals who write about, well, the public. Alas, many historians seem to forget the "public" part and concentrate on the "intellectual" part. Our guest today--sponsored by the National History Center--is not among them. Juli...