From The Washington Post by Mark Kramer: The poisoning of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter in southern England, most likely by Russian intelligence agents, highlights the role of espionage in Russia’s relations with the West. Skripal had… Read More ›
Month: March 2018
The Russian ‘fake news’ campaign about AIDS that damaged the United States — in the 1980s
From The Washington Post by Alexander Poster: Imagine a covert plan to weaken the United States, not through military sabotage or stealing state secrets, but simply through the manipulation of the news media. The plan involves foreign agents who write… Read More ›
What were the Root Causes of the Spanish Civil War?
The Spanish Civil War was one of the bloodiest wars in Twentieth Century in Europe. The war was not simply a Spanish affair, but drew in other several other nations, including Italy, Portugal, Germany and the Soviet Union. The war… Read More ›
Don’t Like Paying Taxes? It’s an American Tradition.
From History News Network by Suzy Evans author of Machiavelli for Moms: Maxims on the Effective Governance of Children: Not long after George Washington took office, one of the most serious threats to the authority of the federal government and stability of the… Read More ›
The Iraq War and the Inevitability of Ignorance
From The Atlantic by James Fallows author of Blind into Baghdad: America’s War in Iraq: There’s a specific reason it is so hard to be president—in normal circumstances—and why most incumbents look decades older when they leave the job than… Read More ›
10 World War I battles that killed Christianity
From Real Clear History by Brandon Christensen: World War I is responsible for destroying Christianity as a moral order. Christianity survives today, of course, and even thrives in parts of the world, but it does so in the West as… Read More ›
When did oil paints become popular?
While the dating of oil paint’s origins are still under scrutiny, the technique of oil painting became widely popular during the fifteenth century. The medium, which revolutionized painting, supplanted the previously popular medium of tempera paint and afforded artists with… Read More ›
Why does Wikipedia often overlook stories of women in history?
From PBS.org by Lara Nicosia and Tamar Carroll author Mobilizing New York: AIDS, Antipoverty and Feminist Activism: Movements like #MeToo are drawing increased attention to the systemic discrimination facing women in a range of professional fields, from Hollywood and journalism… Read More ›
How did Monotheism Develop?
While monotheism is seen as something that has derived from Judaism, the history of how monotheism became pervasive is complex. Integrating both historical and archaeological data, we find that the rise of monotheism has been influenced by key political events…. Read More ›
The Fighting Roosevelts
From Werehistory.org by Todd Arrington: In all of American history, millions of men and women have served in the nation’s armed forces. Of those many millions, only 3,517 have received the nation’s highest award for military valor: the Medal of… Read More ›
The Great British Empire Debate
From The New York Review of Books by Kenan Malik the author of The Quest for a Moral Compass: A Global History of Ethics: The sun may have long ago set on the British Empire (or on all but a few… Read More ›
The Conspiracy of Free Trade: Interview with Marc-William Palen
Marc-William Palen’s new book The “Conspiracy” of Free Trade: The Anglo-American Struggle over Empire and Economic Globalisation, 1846-1896 is relevant not only to historians of imperialism, capitalism, and economics, but to the 2016 American presidential primary election. Once again, free trade has… Read More ›
Margaret Sanger in Japan
From Stanford University Press Blog by Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci author Contraceptive Democracy: Reproduction Politics and Imperial Ambitions in the United States and Japan: Margaret Sanger’s first visit to Japan in 1922 stirred public hype in Japan. Comparing it to the “black… Read More ›
The Racist Origins of Organic Farming
From UNC Press Blog by Venus Bivar author of Organic Resistance: The Struggle over Industrial Farming in Postwar France: The first French men to organise themselves in opposition to industrial farming, and they were indeed all men, included a neo-fascist,… Read More ›
Ten fascinating facts about the Marshall Plan
From OUP Blog by Benn Steil author of The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War. In 1947, with Britain’s empire collapsing and Stalin’s rise in Europe, US officials under new Secretary of State George C. Marshall set out to… Read More ›
History, Memory, and the Power of Black Radio
From Black Perspectives by Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders: Between 1948 and 1950, a radio series called Destination Freedom aired on WMAQ, a local Chicago NBC station. Richard Durham created Destination Freedom in an attempt to profile significant African American historical figures and their contributions to American democracy and… Read More ›
The Third Reich’s nuclear programme: Churchill’s greatest wartime fear
From History Extra from Damien Lewis author of Hunting Hitler’s Nukes: The Secret Race to Stop the Nazi Bomb: That Hitler’s Germany might win the race to build the world’s first atom bomb was arguably one of Winston Churchill’s greatest wartime concerns,… Read More ›
Mary Seacole: Disease and Care of the Wounded, from Jamaica to the Crimea
From Nursing Clio by Peter Sleeth: While Florence Nightingale is legendary in the history of nursing because of her foundational role in the creation of Western healthcare systems, she was not the only important woman in this history. It is perhaps… Read More ›
How Did Spy Services Develop in France?
Espionage, in the French monarchy period, has become notorious in suppressing aspirations of those who sought to loosen the bonds of the monarchy in the late 18th century. The history of spying in France, similar to other European powers, started… Read More ›
NURSING AND NUTRITION: TREATING THE INFLUENZA IN 1918-9
From the Recipes Project by Ida Milne: This season’s higher than normal influenza cases has inevitably drawn comparisons with the 1918-19 influenza pandemic, the worst in modern history. It killed more than 40 million people, according to the World Health… Read More ›