Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
By Geoffrey Kabaservice
Will you be tuning in to watch this year’s Republican and Democratic national conventions in the hope of seeing something of historic significance? The managers of both conventions are working hard to make sure that you don’t get your wish. From their standpoint, the best convention is a precooked and tightly controlled event that passes placidly and without controversy into the annals of national forgetfulness.
By Alexander Tsesis
The Supreme Court’s recent equation of personal and corporate campaign contributions has vastly increased corporate and super-PAC donations during this election year. The Court’s premise that corporations deserve the same right to political speech as ordinary people is a modernist interpretation that would have sounded completely foreign to the framers of the Declaration of Independence. I
In the 1960s hippies and Indians found common cause. How so? They joined forces to challenge and overturn longstanding federal policies designed to extinguish all remnants of native life and culture. In addition, civil rights advocates, Black Panthers, unions, Mexican-Americans, Quakers and other Christian denominations, and Hollywood celebrities also supported Red Power activists’ fight for Indian rights. In Hippies, Indians, and the Fight for Red Power, Sherry Smith offers the first full account of this remarkable story.
By Robert Repino
Though they were conceived for idealistic reasons and designed to celebrate universal human aspirations, the modern Olympic Games have served as a stage for the world’s political and social struggles. Virtually every political controversy — from wars to ideological conflicts to human rights struggles — have managed to find expression every four years in the athletic events and in the media campaigns that go with them. Perhaps no group has influenced the Games more — both as athletes and as human rights pioneers — than African Americans, whose very participation in the modern games has been one of many tiny steps forward in the progress toward a more just world.
The story of the Civil War has never been simple: from slavery to states rights, liberation to sharecropping, the loss of life on the battlefield with bullet wounds to in the camps with illness. As new scholarship for the sesquicentennial emerges, many myths are shattering. One such myth is exactly how liberating emancipation was.
Andrew J. Polsky
The long conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have prompted a number of politicians and pundits to recommend a return to conscription. On several occasions Charles Rangel, the Democratic representative from New York City, has introduced bills to revive the draft. Stanley McChrystal, former military commander in Afghanistan, has urged that the country not fight another war without a draft. His call was the point of departure for noted journalist Thomas E. Ricks, who proposes a law mandating universal service for all 18-year-olds, with an option for either military or civilian public service.
By John Welshman
At the time of the collision, Hanna Touma was standing in the doorway of the family’s cabin. She was talking to one of the other migrants from her village. It was just a jolt, but it made the door slam shut, cutting her index finger. Two of the men went to find out what had happened while Hanna went to the Infirmary to get her hand bandaged. Everyone she passed wondered what had caused the jolt and why the ship had stopped.
By Andrew Polsky
In 2012, the American people will choose between two candidates for the Oval Office who share in common something unusual — neither one has ever spent a day in a military uniform. No presidential election since 1944 has featured two major party candidates with no military experience. The absence of a candidate with time in the military has led some to bemoan the separation between civilian life and military service. But the more immediate concern should be whether a lack of military experience has an impact on how well a president performs as a wartime leader.
By David Bodenhamer
Americans do not question the revolutionary character of the Declaration of Independence. Far fewer view the US Constitution in such terms. It is easy to identify many reasons for this duality. The Declaration speaks in the cadences of Shakespeare and the King James Bible. By comparison, the Constitution is a mechanics manual or lawyers brief. The Declaration offers a concise statement of first principles and goals; it created a nation, and it called for noble sacrifice for the sake of liberty. The Constitution is more procedural.
By Mark Clague
The Fourth of July, aka “Independence Day” (the annual federal holiday in the United States marking the 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence from Britain), is cause for national celebration and certainly the celebration of nationalism. Fireworks, orchestral concerts, parades, 5-K runs, carnivals, family picnics, and political speeches are common holiday happenings. Many are accompanied by music, especially by a haphazard class of folk tunes known as patriotic song that often defy historical logic, but nevertheless have become potent cultural symbols.
In April 2012, the American National Biography gladly received a new general editor: Susan Ware. Mark Carnes welcomed his successor, saying, “A superb choice! Susan Ware is an outstanding biographer, a proven editor, and a wonderful person. She will thrive in a job whose importance does not preclude it from being great fun.” We’re excited to have Susan leading the ANB and she’s offered a sneak peak of her plans for improving and extending this fantastic resource.
By Travis McDade
Ten years ago, responding to $200,000 worth of thefts by curator Shawn Aubitz, United States Archivist John Carlin said he had “appointed a high-level management task force to review internal security measures” at the National Archives. “A preliminary set of recommendations are under review and a number of new measures are already in place.” Four years later, an unpaid summer intern smuggled 160 documents out of the very same Archives branch. His only tool was a yellow legal pad.
This Day in World History
On 28 June 1919, in the famous Hall of Mirrors of the French palace at Versailles, more than a thousand dignitaries and members of the press gathered to take part in and see the signing of the treaty that spelled out the peace terms after World War I. American President Woodrow Wilson, British Prime Minister Lloyd George, and French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau were the among the leaders in attendance.
On April 4, 1864, Abraham Lincoln made a shocking admission about his presidency during the Civil War. “I claim not to have controlled events,” he wrote in a letter, “but confess plainly that events have controlled me.” Lincoln’s words carry an invaluable lesson for wartime presidents. Author Andrew J. Polsky believes when commanders-in-chief do try to control wartime events, more often than not they fail utterly. He examines Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, showing how each gravely overestimated his power as commander-in-chief.
This Day in World History
On 26 June 1948, after three months of Communist rulers blocking the delivery of supplies to the American, British, and French zones of West Berlin, the western powers struck back with a bold response. American and British planes stepped up their process of flying supplies to West Berlin to an around the clock operation and the Berlin Airlift was on.
By Andrew J. Polsky
John A. Nagl, a noted commentator on military affairs, blurs many lines in his effort to claim success for counterinsurgency tactics in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. For example, he correctly observes that in Iraq in 2007 both the counterinsurgency (COIN) methods employed during the American troop surge and the Sunni Awakening helped reverse the tide of violence. Yet he quickly brushes past the impact of the latter when he asserts “[t]he surge changed the war in Iraq dramatically.”