The past is never dead. It's not even past
From the editors: William Inboden is the William J. Power, Jr. executive director of the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin. A former State Department official who served on the National Security Council under President George W. Bush, Inboden is also a distinguished scholar of international history. His most […]
From the editors: William Inboden is the William J. Power, Jr. executive director of the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin. A former State Department official who served on the National Security Council under President George W. Bush, Inboden is also a distinguished scholar of international history. His most […]
Contrasting visions of Reagan have been especially stark in the realm of foreign affairs. Advocates often argue that he launched a new arms race that undermined the Soviet Union. Critics remember a detached leader presiding over the shameful Iran-Contra scandal. Both depictions are problematic, as they accentuate different aspects of a complex, often inscrutable man.
During the summer of 2016, we will be bringing together our previously published articles, book reviews, and podcasts on key themes and periods in the history of the USA. Each grouping is designed to correspond to the core areas of the US History Survey Courses taken by undergraduate students at the University of Texas at Austin.
Hailed as a pioneer of conservatism by some and reviled as an enemy of the middle class and a supporter of dictators by others, Reagan’s legacy has largely been shaped by debate between partisan pundits. Gradually, however, a limited body of more moderate of “Reagan revisionism” has begun to emerge.
Historians often define political periods in the United States according to the dominant president of the era. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., most famously wrote of an Age of Jackson, and other scholars have proposed Ages of Jefferson, Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Bruce J. Schulman in his 2001 work The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics surveys the history of an overlooked decade. Defining the “long 1970s” as the period between Richard Nixon’s entrance in the White House in 1969 and Ronald Reagan’s landslide reelection in 1984, Schulman counters popular conceptions that the decade was seemingly forgettable and unimportant.
Guest Matthew Dallek is a historian and professor of political management at George Washington University’s College of Professional Studies. He is the author of: The Right Moment: Ronald Reagan’s First Victory and the Decisive Turning Point in American Politics; Defenseless Under the Night: The Franklin Roosevelt Years and the Origins of Homeland Security; and, most […]
Introduction by John Gleb In February 1979, a popular revolution in Iran overthrew the authoritarian government of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, a key ally of the United States. Ten months later, on November 4th, 1979, Iranian college students demonstrating against U. S. support for the Shah seized control of the U. S. embassy compound in […]
Local Memory: A History of Music in Austin is a digital public history project by Brian Jones and Michael Schmidt. We created Local Memory to document less-familiar chapters of Austin’s musical history. Anyone familiar with the culture of the Texas capital likely already knows Willie Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and the college town’s reputation as […]