Photographs of war, more than photographs of any other subject, make war seem both very distant and impossibly close.
On Veterans’ Day: War Photos
The Strangest Dream – Reykjavik 1986
College freshmen have no personal knowledge of the Cold War. Born after the Berlin Wall’s fall and the Soviet Union’s collapse, the threat of nuclear Armageddon seems far removed from their experiences, a relic of a bygone age. Yet, today, more countries than ever hold weapons whose scale of destruction can dwarf that of every bomb used in World War II.
The Doubtful Strait/El Estrecho Dudoso by Ernesto Cardenal (1995)
“Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory,” wrote Robert Penn Warren in a preface to a poem on Thomas Jefferson in 1953. “For if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake."
Looking at World War II
Looking at World War II on Wikimedia Commons
The Atomic Bombs and the End of World War II: Tracking an Elusive Decision
In what amounted to the last act of World War II, US forces dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and another on Nagasaki three days later. Ever since, controversy has swirled around the decision to drop those bombs and annihilate those two cities. But exactly who made that decision, and how did it come about?
Re-Reading John Winthrop’s “City upon the Hill”
The city upon the hill that Winthrop sought to create in New England is a different world from that of his alleged ideological heirs. For Winthrop, the stakes of getting the city right were high (and they continue to be). To build a lasting “city upon the hill” the Puritans needed to create a society held together by charity, mercy, and love.
Sarah’s Key (2011)
Just before dawn on July 16, 1942 the French Police began Opération Vent Printanier, or “Operation Spring Breeze.” That morning over 13,000 Jews were forcibly removed from their homes and trudged through the streets of Paris to the Vélodrome d’Hiver, the Winter Bicycle Racetrack, on the rue Nélaton in the city’s fifteenth arrondisement.
Order No. 227: Stalinist Methods and Victory on the Eastern Front
Order 227 called for dramatically expanding the number of penal battalions. Penal battalions were sent to the most dangerous sections of the front to perform semi-suicidal missions such as frontal assaults on the enemy or walking across minefields.
Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary by Bertrand M. Patenaude (2009)
Within the span of thirty years, Lev Davidovich Bronshtein (Trotsky) went from living as a revolutionary in exile to being one of the world’s most successful revolutionary leaders, only to spend the waning years of his life back in exile and on the run from the regime whose creation defined his life’s work.
Summer, Interrupted
“Summer vacation” is a misnomer for what we academics do from mid-May to late-August. Most of us are not on vacation, but many of us are definitely a little unreachable.