Stacy Vlasits, Author at Not Even Past

Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America by Rick Perlstein (2008)

Rick Perlstein traces the antecedents of contemporary American politics to the period 1965-1972, presenting Richard Nixon as a central figure in creating a foundation for today’s bitter partisanship. Perlstein builds his story around the 1966, 1968, 1970, and 1972 elections, where Nixon, “the brilliant and tormented man struggling to forge a public language that promised mastery of the strange new angers, anxieties, and resentments wracking the nation in the 1960s,” acted as a critical participant. The author argues that during this time period, Americans intensely divided into two general groups, “each equally convinced of its own righteousness, each equally convinced the other group was defined by its evil.” Richard Nixon exploited the fears and rages of those Americans who resented elites and activists, further tearing apart the United States into warring political factions and establishing what Perlstein terms “Nixonland.” The nation of Nixonland persists today in America’s polarized electorate, which remains incapable of escaping the feuds initiated in the 1960s.

The author contemplates why Americans elected two presidents from different parties in landslides over a matter of eight years (Democrat Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and Republican Richard Nixon in 1972). He concludes that as Democratic liberalism collapsed under the weight of intense unrest at home and violence in Vietnam during the 1960s, Nixon sought to build a new political coalition among Americans who loathed the chaos permeating their society. Perlstein argues that Nixon particularly courted white southerners and northern working-class ethnics who resented the burgeoning counterculture, antiwar protestors, and Democratic embracement of civil rights. Yet as Nixon demonized his detractors and successfully captured the presidency in 1968, Democratic victories in the 1970 midterm elections and his increasing paranoia led him to conclude that his failure to be re-elected in 1972 would lead to the downfall of the United States, with its governance placed again in the hands of liberals now all the more influenced by civil rights activists, antiwar protestors, and rebellious youth. These obsessions caused him to resort to any means necessary to win a second term, leading to his own ruin in the Watergate scandal.

Nixonland is a magnificent work presenting a detailed political, social, cultural, and economic history of the United States during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Perlstein illustrates how the United States of today, especially in its acrimonious politics, owes much of its legacy to this tumultuous era. Perlstein concludes: “Both populations—to speak in ideal types—are equally, essentially, tragically American. And both have learned to consider the other not quite American at all. The argument over Richard Nixon, pro and con, gave us the language for this war.”

Further reading:

An interview with Rick Perlstein by History News Network.

George on the Lege, Part 7 – Medicaid

By George Christian

With much of the current budget debate centered on proposed reductions in funding for public and higher education, the biggest elephant in the room is the Texas Medicaid program. It can break whatever budget the Legislature adopts and force one or more special sessions in the next two years. It is also the part of the budget that is the furthest beyond the Legislature’s control. This brief historical overview will attempt to put the Texas budget crisis into clearer perspective by addressing the following questions: what is Medicaid, where did it come from, and how much does it cost?

A centerpiece of President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s “Great Society,” the Medicaid program was enacted by Congress in 1965. As originally conceived, Medicaid paid for health care to low-income people through reimbursements to hospitals, clinics, and physicians. In subsequent decades, the program expanded to cover services for persons with disabilities, the elderly, children, and pregnant women, and to provide cash payments to certain low-income families with dependent children. Although states are not required to participate in Medicaid, Texas opted to join the program in 1967 (as has every other state). Participation in the program entitles the state to receive federal funding to match state money spent on services for eligible persons (this match rate varies somewhat among states, but generally hovers around 60-40 federal-state split), but it likewise requires the state to fund the program at federally required minimum levels.

For the first twenty years or so of Texas’ participation in the program, caseload increases in Medicaid did not unduly stress the overall state budget. Beginning in the late 1980s, however, Medicaid expansion at the federal level began having a dramatic impact on Texas Medicaid spending. Coupled with the explosive growth of the low-income population in Texas from 1990 forward, Medicaid grew by more than one million clients between 1990 and 1995. The vast majority of this growth consisted of pregnant women, newborns, and non-disabled children from age 0-20. Though caseloads leveled off in the second half of the decade (partly because Texas tightened eligibility standards and partly by virtue of a booming economy), they exploded again beginning in September 2001. In that month, Texas served nearly 2 million clients. That number mushroomed to 2.5 million by September 2003, almost 3 million by 2005, and nearly 3.5 million today.

In terms of spending, the Texas Medicaid budget grew an average of nearly 13% per year from 1990-2001 (the U.S. average was 10.9%). Since 2001, Medicaid spending growth has averaged more than 8% per year, well above the national average and far more heavily weighted toward children than in the rest of the nation. These numbers indicate an ominous trend: Texas’ population is becoming progressively younger and poorer. To put this into historical perspective, in 1971-72 Texas spent less than $400 million out of a nearly $8 billion budget on public health (about 5%), most of which went to Medicaid; a decade later the total had grown to about $5.5 billion of nearly $26 billion. By 1994-95, spending on health care alone had skyrocketed to $26.5 billion. To complete this depressing litany, today nearly one-third–$60 billion—of the state’s $180 billion budget pays for Medicaid and related health services, about 90% of which is spent on children, the disabled, and the elderly.

The problem for budget-writers is that there is literally nowhere to go but up. Unless federal law changes significantly, Texas cannot refuse services to Medicaid eligible clients, even if it doesn’t have the money to pay for them. Moreover, Texas’ eligibility levels for most client populations are already at the minimum in most categories and cannot be reduced without either a waiver from the federal government or a congressional overhaul of the program (one popular idea is a “block grant” system of funding that would let the states decide how to spend federal Medicaid money). Previous crises in Medicaid—particularly those in the early 1990s and another in 2003—were remedied by slashing eligibility, consolidating service delivery, reducing provider reimbursement rates, and underestimating caseload growth. These ideas are under consideration again this year, but barring major federal reform, it appears likely that Texas will pass a budget for 2012-13 that substantially underfunds Medicaid—possibly to the tune of $10 billion. With nearly one in five Texans living below the poverty line, the question is not whether Texas will have to pay the piper, but when.

Sources:

The Henry F. Kaiser Family Foundation, Texas: Medicaid Spending, (accessed April 20, 2011)

Texas Health and Human Services Commission, Medicaid History and Organization, (accessed April 20, 2011)

Texas Legislative Budget Board, Texas Fiscal Size-Up, 2010-11 Biennium, December, 2009

Naming and Picturing New World Nature

by Maria Jose Afanador

When Cassiano dal Pozzo, the Pope’s personal assistant, returned to the Vatican from Spain in 1626, he brought with him a Mexican manuscript on natural history, the Libellus de medicinalibus Indorum herbis. The “herbal” was a marvelous Mexican manuscript containing illustrations of more than 180 plants. Commonly known as Codice de la Cruz-Badiano, it is considered the first illustrated survey of Mexican nature produced in the New World.

In 1552, the son of the Viceroy, Francisco de Mendoza, sent the Latin manuscript to Spain, where it probably remained until the early seventeeth century, when it came into the possession of Diego de Cortavila y Sanabria. It next appeared in the library of the Italian Cardinal Francesco Barberini, where it remained until 1902, when the Barberini library became part of the Vatican Library. The manuscript was rediscovered in 1929 by Charles Upson Clark and finally, in 1991, Pope John Paul II returned the Libellus to Mexico, where it is now in the library of the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico City.

The herbal is organized in chapters associated with parts of the body, starting with afflictions of the head, eyes, ears, nose, teeth, and cheeks; it then goes to the chest and stomach, and continues with the knees and feet; it ends with “falling sickness or comitial sickness” and remedies for “fear or faint-heartedness, mental stupor, for one afflicted by a whirlwind or a bad wind, … and for a traveler crossing a river or lake.” The diseases treated in the herbals are named in Latin in accordance with the tradition of medieval and early modern European herbals. However, the names of the plants are all written in Náhuatl, the indigenous Aztec language.

The manuscript, produced by a Nahua physician, Martín de la Cruz, and translated into Latin by Juan Badiano, was a gift for the king that sought to demonstrate the worthiness of educating the Nahua nobility in the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco. At first glance, this marvelous codex resembles a typical medieval herbal. A closer look, however, reveals a fascinating blend of European and Aztec cultures. The codice can be viewed as a form of expression of the Nahua in a context of increased European influence and as a manner of dealing with a changing reality.

Visual culture is a powerful means by which different societies depict reality and convey meanings. The images contained in this sixteenth-century manuscript pose great challenges to scholars willing to consider visual evidence as core material of historical analysis. What was the purpose of the pictographic material as utilized by the authors of the codice? Can we determine which patterns and conventions are purely Aztec or European? Is there such thing as a pure visual tradition? Does it make sense to study colonial sources under the assumption of cultural contamination? Aside from questions of cultural purity or contamination, perhaps a more interesting question to be asked is whether the purpose of these illustrations is primarily informational or aesthetic.

As a gift to the king, aesthetics certainly played an important role in the purpose of the illustrations. The beauty of the pictures is undeniable, and the extensive use of colors to depict nature surpasses other depictions of nature of the time. Although scholars have regarded the manuscript as a European source due to its resemblance to late medieval and early modern herbals, the codice contains pictographic elements of the Nahua tradition such as the glyphs, which convey both descriptive elements and the ecology of the plants. Take for example the Nahua glyph for stone –tetl– which works as a ideogram to point to the rocky soil in which the plant grows in the illustration above. The ants visible among the roots in the illustration below also indicate the environment in which this plant grows. The ants, however, are not associated with any Náhuatl glyph but it was common in European herbals to include associated parasites in such illustrations.

The Codice de la Cruz-Badiano is an example of the encounter of between writing systems, and thus of systems of knowledge, with multiple swings from the pictographic-glyphic tradition to the alphabetical. The illustrations are by no means subordinated to the writing. Visual evidence and linguistic analysis of Náhuatl offer ways of approaching the complexities of cultural forms and to provide information about natural history that was not present in the Latin texts.

This article is excerpted from the forthcoming publication:

Maria José Afanador Llach. “Nombrar y representar. Escritura y naturaleza en el Códice De la Cruz-Badiano, 1552.” In Fronteras de la Historia, vol. 16-1, Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia, Bogotá, June 2011.

The codice is available in facsimile: De la Cruz, Martín, The Badianus manuscript (Codex Barberini, Latin 241) Vatican Library; an Aztec herbal of 1552. Ed. Emily Walcott Emmart. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1940.

For more on the codice see:

Debra Hassig, “Transplanted Medicine: Colonial Mexican Herbals of the Sixteenth Century.” Anthropology and Aesthetics 17-18, Spring/‌Autumn (1989).

Three Hundred Sex Crimes

by Brian Levack

Early in the morning on May 20, 1709, before the trials of offenders commenced, the judges of Scotland’s north circuit court in Perth pardoned some 300 men and women who had been charged with fornication or adultery. After granting these pardons, the court spent most of the day trying a case of incest that resulted in the conviction of John Martin, a 67-year old blacksmith from Dundee, and the acquittal of his half-brother’s 16-year old daughter, Elspeth Martin, for engaging in incestuous sexual intercourse.

Page 1 of the document recording the pardons
(National Archives of Scotland, JC 11/1)

The pardons and the trials of that day marked a turning point in the history of Scottish criminal justice. They brought about the de facto decriminalization of fornication and adultery in the Scottish secular courts while clarifying the Scottish law of incest and challenging prevailing male and clerical attitudes towards rape.

The pardons came about as a result of the passage of a bill of indemnity passed by the British parliament in the previous year. The union of England and Scotland in 1707 had resulted in the establishment of the United Kingdom and the creation of a single parliament for both England and Scotland. In this British parliament the English greatly outnumbered the Scots. On the face of it, the act of indemnity passed by parliament in 1708 had little to do with the prosecution of sex crimes. Its purpose was to pardon people accused of crimes in the wake of a Scottish rebellion against the British monarch, Queen Anne, in that year as a means of reconciling the Scottish population to the established regime. The statute extended a free and general pardon to subjects of the queen who had committed “all manner of treasons, misprisions of treasons, felonies, treasonable or seditious words or libels, misprisions of felony, seditious and unlawful meetings . . . riots, routs, offences, trespasses, entries, wrongs, deceits, [and] misdemeanors.”

Queen Anne in the House of Lords, Peter Tillemans (Wikimedia Commons)

The Members of Parliament (MPs) who passed this bill of indemnity most likely never thought about its application to adultery and fornication, especially since neither of those offenses was a secular crime in England. But 300 Scottish offenders, whose names fill seventeen pages in the records of the court in the National Archives of Scotland, took advantage of this opportunity to avoid the penalties they would have otherwise incurred for these relatively minor sexual offenses. The judges of the court, who agreed that fornication and adultery should not be prosecuted, were happy to grant the pardons. After this trial, there were no more prosecutions in the Scottish secular courts for either offense.

Incest and rape, however, were considered much more serious crimes than fornication or adultery, and they had been specifically excluded from the bill of indemnity. Therefore the trial of John and Elspeth Martin for incest went forward. It is surprising that John was not charged with rape, since the indictment made it clear that he had forced his niece to have sex with him. The court had been reluctant to try him for rape because local magistrates and clergy considered Elspeth just as guilty as John for their sexual intercourse, presuming that she, like all victims of rape, had consented to this sexual act. The reason the court proceeded in this case was that sexual relationship between John and his niece had been incestuous. On that basis John was convicted. During Elspeth’s trial, however, her lawyer emphasized that John had used force against her. This led the jury to recognize that she was a victim of this sexual crime, not its perpetrator, and for that reason she was acquitted. By making the jury understand that rape was a violent crime against women and therefore the most serious of all sex crimes, Elspeth Martin’s lawyer contributed to a significant change in Scottish attitudes toward rape in the eighteenth century.

Americans and The Royal Wedding

by Philippa Levine

Love it or hate it, the British monarchy is one of Britain’s major tourist attractions, and many people will be tuning in on April 29 to watch the spectacle of the royal wedding as Prince William marries Catherine (Kate) Middleton. The New York Times suggested this past weekend that Americans are showing less interest in the events than they did thirty years ago when the heir to the throne, Prince Charles, married Lady Diana Spencer, when 750 million people watched the ceremony on television. Still, there are many tales in the press of Americans who are planning parties that day, who are flying to London to be closer to the spectacle, who are enthusiastically buying up the many souvenirs – tea towels, knitting kits, key rings, china, comic books, — you name it.

Despite America’s republican founding principles, there has long been a fascination here with the British royalty, and with the aristocracy more generally. When the British aristocracy was in steep decline and ready cash was scarce, alliances between the moneyed daughters of the American business elite and titled sons who lacked a fortune were commonplace. The elite Anglo-American marriage market produced, perhaps most famously, Winston Churchill, whose mother, Jennie, was the daughter of wealthy New Yorker Leonard Jerome. Mary Leiter, whose father owned a successful department store in Chicago, brought a dowry of 1.5 million pounds to her marriage with Lord Curzon in 1895; the couple would go on to become Viceroy and Vicereine of India. Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough, married two Americans in succession: Consuelo Vanderbilt in 1895 whose very considerable fortune helped restore Blenheim Palace (now visited by American tourists in large part for its Churchill associations), and in 1921, the bewitching Gladys Deacon. His first marriage was brokered by another of the newly titled American heiresses, Minnie Stevens of New York. When Stevens, whose father had made his fortune in the hotel business, married Lord Arthur Henry Paget, the New York Times (29 July, 1878) listed four other “American beauties who have become allied by marriage to the English nobility” and who, along with a royal entourage, attended her wedding in 1878.

But the marriage of Kate Middleton and Prince William offers something even more enticing for contemporary Americans, for Middleton is what in Britain is called a ‘Commoner.’ Unlike her husband-to-be’s mother, Diana Spencer, whose father was a viscount (something between an earl and a baron) and thus a member of the British peerage, Middleton has no link to the aristocracy. Hers was a solidly middle-class background, the child of British Airways staffers who later went into business together producing party supplies. In marrying William she’s fulfilling a version of the ultimate American dream – anyone can do anything, however humble, however ordinary they might be. You too, goes the message, might just become a princess one day.

In a culture saturated with celebrity, the glamour and spectacle that will unfold on TV and computer screens around the country on April 29 is already powerful, and the British have always handled royal pomp and circumstance magnificently. It’s hard not to be impressed by the old-world carriage, the magnificent costumes, the sparkling jewellery, the solemnity of the service, and all the trappings of well-established power. But add to that the Horatio Alger element of the story and this is as much a dream come true for the American press corps as it is for Kate Middleton and those who aspire to what she has won. This marriage represents the democratisation of the monarchy, suddenly accessible not just to the rich and powerful but, in theory at least, to any and all of us.

This message has not been lost on the British; there’s much talk there about how and whether this historic institution has a role in the modern world worth its high costs. The spectacle of the wedding may suggest a certain timelessness in British institutions, but Britain in 2011 is a very different, and far more diverse, place than it was when Elizabeth ascended to the throne in 1952, and there has been considerable damage to its reputation in the past three decades or so. Some hope that this new modern approach – a Commoner in the Palace – will rekindle support for the monarchy. In the US, it represents, in some ways, a triumph for American values: Middleton may not be going from rags to riches but she’s entering a rarefied world which until recently would have been utterly off limits. And you can’t get much more American than that!

The Broadcast schedule

The Official website of The British Monarchy

The Telegraph’s A History of Royal Weddings, with video, historical photographs, photos of Kate & Will, Prince William as an infant with Mom & Dad, stories about the announcement, and lots of gossip and souvenirs

The definitive historical and genealogical guide to the British aristocracy, Burke’s Peerage

A brief History of the British monarchy

For a classic American treatment of this story, there’s the 1951 film, Royal Wedding, directed by Stanley Donen, with Fred Astaire dancing up the wall and across the ceiling. Fred’s sister in the film and Fred’s sister in real life both fall in love with and marry British aristocrats.

Photograph: Prince William and Kate Middleton, PA, The Telegraph, Nov 16, 2010, accessed here, April 24, 2011

Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey (1918)

by Joseph Parrott

Almost a century after its publication, Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians remains a landmark work in the field of biography. The author chooses four notable personalities – Henry Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and Charles George Gordon – and uses their lives to illuminate the broader history of Victorian England. Unlike previous biographers of the time, Strachey consciously rejects romanticized images of these figures. Instead, he presents the facts of their lives “dispassionately, impartially, and without ulterior intentions.” These mythic characters take on human proportions and they prove all the more interesting for their ambition, pettiness, hypocrisy, and peculiarity. Cardinal Manning, the leader of the Catholic Church in England, becomes a merciless if conflicted self-promoter. The Crimean War nurse Nightingale is a hard-bitten health advocate haunted by memories of dying young men. Arnold appears less the champion of public school reform than an intellectual theocrat. Finally, Strachey calls into question the heroism of General Gordon’s death during the Mahdist Revolt in the Sudan; far from seeming a great strategist, the military commander parades across the pages as a tempestuous zealot, “a fighter, an enthusiast, a bold adventurer.” Strachey’s critical accounts shocked his Edwardian audience, but contemporary readers will find them fascinating for their candid portrayals of the eccentricities and passions that motivated four remarkable figures.

The brief biographical sketches also offer glimpses into the history of the era. The Oxford Movement’s introduction of ritual and ceremony into the Anglican tradition frames Manning’s conversion to Catholicism, while Gordon represents a microcosm of European imperialism in Africa and Asia. The remaining subjects provide Strachey with the opportunity to investigate restrictive upper-class mores and the evolution of reform movements in British society. The interactions of these four distinguished Victorians with characters like the influential theologian John Henry Newman and Prime Minister William Gladstone go still further and elevate the biographies to the level of high politics. As such, the author provides an accessible narrative that emphasizes the role of individuals in shaping the recent history of Great Britain.

Strachey’s book heralded a new age of biographical study, but his fluid prose and charming style account for the work’s ability to transcend its time and still speak to us today.

More detailed and scandalous investigations of nineteenth century Britain and its most famous citizens have since appeared, and many delve deeper into the historical record than does Eminent Victorians, which relies almost exclusively on earlier histories and collected letters. Yet Strachey’s vivid prose, artless erudition, and eye for detail move the stories along at a fast pace, simultaneously educating and entertaining in equal doses. A somewhat sardonic tone pervades the book, but the critical distance and the wry allusions recall the feeling of a conversation with an especially learned friend. As much a literary experience as a lesson in history, Strachey’s Eminent Victorians continues to attract new readers simply because it offers such a pleasurable and increasingly rare integration of scholarship, writing, and wit.

Portrait of Lytton Strachey by Dora Carrington, via Wikicommons

Remembering Pinochet’s Chile: On the Eve of London 1998 by Steven Stern (2006)

by Monica Jimenez

Remembering Pinochet’s Chile: On the Eve of London 1998 is the first book in Steve J. Stern’s trilogy entitled The Memory Box of Pinochet’s Chile. Stern’s trilogy studies the ways that Chileans have struggled to understand the collective trauma of the 1973 military coup and the repressive regime that resulted from it. In his introduction to the trilogy Stern explains that he imagines this process as a ‘memory box’ that contains the community’s conflicting memories and lore, of various kinds, seeking to make sense of this crucial experience The memory box is not hidden away but is vividly present and foundational to the community; people are drawn to it and to engaging with it. This is a beautiful work that explores the difficult themes of collective versus individual memory of events that were both traumatic and terrifying.

Stern relates individual memory narratives and attempts to theorize memory in order to understand the specificity of Chilean struggles to understand their past. In this volume, Stern investigates Chile’s collective memory on the eve of Pinochet’s arrest in London for crimes against humanity. He establishes four types of emblematic memories that have competed in the peoples’ minds: memory as salvation, memory as rupture, memory as persecution and awakening, and memory as a closed box. He argues that on the eve of Pinochet’s arrest, the memory question overflowed ordinary boundaries, connecting the political, the moral, and the existential. It challenged political loyalties and alliances; it entangled the personal and the public. The various emblematic memories had come together in the memory box to form what Stern calls a “memory impasse,” in which no particular memory reigned supreme. Remembering Pinochet’s Chile: On the Eve of London 1998 provides a unique retelling of the critical events that lead to the 1973 coup and the military period that followed it while also raising deeply important questions about collective memory and trauma.

General Pinochet on parade in Buenos Aires, September 11, 1982. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn by Asef Bayat (2007)

by Lior Sternfeld

In the wake of the recent events in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere in the Middle East, many try to predict whether Islam can exist together harmoniously with democracy. In this book, Bayat successfully dismantles the presumptions that constitute this discourse, by stating in the beginning that “the question is not whether Islam is or is not compatible with democracy, or by extension, modernity, but rather under what conditions Muslims can make them compatible.” In order to answer this question Making Islam Democratic closely examines the different trajectories of two countries with similar socio-religious backgrounds: Iran and Egypt. Specifically Bayat asks why Iran produced an Islamic revolution, while Egypt developed only an Islamic Movement.

Bayat first analyzes Iran as a “revolution without movement,” arguing that as a result of years of a repressive political system the clergy failed to build social infrastructures and thought that the way to gain political influence would be to “recruit” the intellectual elites to their side. While they were successful in creating national-religious discourse among the intellectual elites, they “lost” the masses to other ideologies, such as Socialism, Marxism, and Secularism. The public heavily consumed western cultural products, magazines, movies, and books. During the revolution in 1979, the different sectors “were pushed into the arms of Shi’a clergy” to lead the revolution, but sectarianism remained present and vital.In Egypt, on the other hand, the Islamic parties could not participate in the political game, but succeeded in winning the hearts and minds of the population by establishing a wide system of education, healthcare, banking and social welfare that benefitted the poor and traditional population of Egypt. The decision of the Egyptian ‘ulema (Muslim jurists) not to attempt to take over the government but rather to win the population allowed them work and prosper with government consent, and was therefore able to influence and Islamize society, which became significant later (as recently seen). This model can be useful to some extent in looking at other instances such as Turkey and Jordan.

Bayat has succeeded in writing a clear and jargon-free book. He supports his argument on profound research in these two telling case studies. This book eloquently refutes many common beliefs and anxieties about Islam and democracy.

For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War by Melvyn P. Leffler (2008)

by Michelle Reeves

In this accessible and remarkably balanced synthesis, Melvyn Leffler, one of the most distinguished and prominent historians of American foreign relations, offers a refreshing interpretation of Cold War policymaking from the vantage points of both Washington and Moscow. Rejecting the oft-repeated assertion that U.S. foreign policymakers were ignorant or inattentive to the realities of power in the Soviet Union and the complexities of Third World nationalism, Leffler argues that cold warriors on both sides of the iron curtain were in fact keenly aware of the liabilities inherent in the zero-sum approach to international politics. Benefiting from access to multiple archives and a clear command of the secondary historical literature, Leffler has crafted a persuasive and thoroughly documented analysis that recasts the Cold War as not simply a political, economic, or military confrontation, but a battle “for the soul of mankind.” In doing so, he has transcended the scholarly debate over whether economic, structural, or ideological factors were more influential in determining the course of Cold War history.

Rather than adopting a standard narrative approach, Leffler focuses on both American and Soviet political leadership during five distinct intervals of potential détente—Truman and Stalin and the origins of the Cold War; Eisenhower and Malenkov during the power struggle within the Kremlin in the wake of Stalin’s death; Khrushchev, Kennedy, and LBJ in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis; Carter and Brezhnev and the erosion of détente; and finally, Gorbachev, Reagan, and Bush, and the end of the Cold War. Leffler argues that, while the decisions of policymakers were clearly shaped by perceptions of both threat and opportunity, the constraints of the international system within which they operated also severely circumscribed their freedom of action.

U.S. President Harry Truman and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin alongside their advisors at the Potsdam Conference, July 18, 1945. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

This raises a conceptual problem with Leffler’s analysis, however. Although emphasizing contingency as a major factor in the arc of history, Leffler argues that Cold War leaders were trapped within ideological prisons of their own making, suggesting perhaps that the trajectory of the Cold War was more predetermined than he allows for. And viewing the time periods he has chosen for analysis here as moments of missed opportunity, he proceeds to prove that American and Soviet policymakers were so limited in their options that they had little choice other than to behave as they did. If that is in fact the case, the reader is left wondering whether there truly were opportunities for peace during these critical junctures.

These criticisms should not, however, obscure the fact that Leffler has written one of the most eloquent, balanced, and extensively researched books on the Cold War. “For the Soul of Mankind” certainly raises the bar for scholars of the Cold War, and in its nuanced complexity, elevates the scholarly debate over which factors were more salient in the development of Cold War policymaking. Although not definitive (and what monograph on such a huge topic possibly could be?), “For the Soul of Mankind” will likely grace both undergraduate and graduate level required reading lists for years to come.

The Wilsonian Moment by Erez Manela (2007)

by Lior Sternfeld

President Woodrow Wilson’s address in January 1918, later known as the “Fourteen Points,” outlined the principles for the post-war new world order. According to this speech, the U.S. would support the right of every people to “self-determination” and “consent of the governed.” Wilson also proclaimed that every nation, regardless of the size of its territory or population, should hold equal rights among the family of nations. Did Wilson honestly intend to grant every nation those rights? Can this message be considered universal? These vague questions are the basis for Erez Manela’s The Wilsonian Moment.

Manela closely examines the events that followed Wilson’s address to Congress in a few distinct contexts. He identifies four nascent national movements that exemplify the profound impact Wilson had over the colonial world. These case studies — Egypt, India, China, and Korea – illustrate Wilson’s emergence, development, and downfall as the great liberator of the colonial world. Manela begins with the contradiction that was embedded in America’s new vision: as a small, but nevertheless active colonial power, how could America champion an anti-colonial order? That contradiction was expressed in the concept of “Benevolent Supremacy.” Americans viewed their project in the Philippines as a civilizing mission that would eventually enable the native people to take control over their fate. The success of previous endeavors, such as Cuba, gave them good reason to believe in this policy. The U.S. propaganda service (Committee on Public Information-CPI) supported this view by creating an inspiring, universalist message that became well known all over the world by the end of the First World War. The “dawn of a new era” that Wilson promised was well anticipated everywhere on the colonial world.

Manela’s book is enjoyable and readable. With his rare breadth of expertise, Manela writes effective and illuminating introductions to each section. His ability to examine the exact same moment in five different countries (including the US) shows the genre of International History at its finest. His use of such sources as diplomatic correspondence, newspapers, journals, memoirs, and biographies in four different languages make the story more comprehensive than anything that has been told so far about this period.

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