The past is never dead. It's not even past
The French entrepreneur Francois LaBorde was born April 16, 1867 in Arudy, France. He arrived to Rio Grande City by steamboat up the Rio Grande. Soon after settling there, he met Eva Marks, the daughter of a French immigrant father and a Mexico born, but Texas raised, mother.
The challenge of informing an inquisitive American public about the nation’s own two-hundred year old tragedy—slavery—has not fallen squarely on the shoulders of historians and other scholars. Artists, and particularly filmmakers, have played a central role in helping the larger public grapple with the horrors and indeed, aftershocks of human bondage.
Stalin’s Genocides provides an in-depth analysis of the horrendous atrocities -- forced deportations, collectivization, the Ukrainian famine, and the Great Terror -- perpetrated by Joseph Stalin’s tyrannical regime. Norman Naimark argues that these crimes should be considered genocide and that Joseph Stalin should therefore be labeled a “genocidaire.”
Reflecting on his motives for joining the Royal Welch Fusiliers at the outbreak of the First World War, Robert Graves wrote: “I thought that it might last just long enough to delay my going to Oxford in October, which I dreaded.” So began a five year pause in Graves’ life, in which the main action of his autobiography unfolds.
In Survival in Auschwitz, Primo Levi depicts a life where, under the severe conditions of hunger, cold, illness, and constant fear, men are transformed into beasts, and where justice and morality become insignificant in the fight for survival.
The global history of tobacco—the weed that captured the hearts, minds, and imaginations of so many in the twentieth century—has been told in splendid and enlightening detail. Historians have delved into the stark economic, political, and social implications of the production, consumption, and exchange of this commodity in various national contexts, most notably the United States.
On October 19, 1812, 200 years ago today, Napoleon Bonaparte was forced to admit that he had failed to defeat Russia and would have to abandon Moscow. The retreat that followed became the symbol of the suffering and folly of warfare for the rest of the century.
Malaparte’s description of Axis Europe during World War II is not the most accurate, but it may be the most telling. His extravagant writing style and excellent use of symbolism provide several haunting and powerful images that sum up the horrors of the war like few accounts have.
I wrote about Ulysses Grant for two reasons: necessity and curiosity.
I passed my comprehensive exams in 2010, but I still have dreams about them.