Links to Recent Articles of Interest
By Gareth Porter, MR Online, posted May 31
Based on a Pentagon-sponsored account of the 1958 Taiwan Strait crisis, kept secret for more than fifty years and recently released by Daniel Ellsberg. “The report provides a hair-raising portrait of a reckless U.S. military leadership relentlessly pressing President Dwight Eisenhower for the authority to carry out nuclear attacks on communist China.” The author is a longtime analyst of US policies in Asia.
By Zachary M. Schrag, History News Network, posted May 31
On the anti-Catholic riots of 1844 in Philadelphia and their background. The author teaches history at George Mason University and is the author of a forthcoming book on the Philadelphia riots, The Fires of Philadelphia (Pegasus Books, publication date June 1).
Interview with Greg Grandin by Sasha Lilly, Jacobin, posted May 31
This interview was conducted in connection with the re-issuing of Greg Grandin's 2006 book Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States and the Making of an Imperial Republic. The author teaches history at New York University and his most recent book is The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America (Metropolitan Books, 2019).
By DeNeen L. Brown, Washington Post, posted May 28
A stunning illustrated history of the Tulsa massacre of 100 years ago, including old photographs and movie clips and photos of the three survivors who testified before a congressional committee this year. The author is an award-winning staff writer for the Washington Post.
By Ussama Makdisi, Los Angeles Review of Books, posted May 28
A capsule history of Palestine since the Ottoman period that was marked by genuine coexistence but ended in World War I.” The author teaches history and Arab Studies at Rice University and is the author of Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World (U. of California Press, forthcoming in October).
By Reece Jones, Washington Post, posted May 19
On the Emergency Quota Act, signed into law by President Harding on May 19, 1921. The author teaches geography and environment at the University of Hawai‘i and wrote White Borders: The History of Race and Immigration in the United States from Chinese Exclusion to the Border Wall (Beacon Press, forthcoming in September).
By Kathryn Schumaker, Washington Post, posted May 19
“The Theory, drawing the ire of the right, helps us to understand our past.” The author teaches classics and letters at the University of Oklahoma. She is the author of Troublemakers: Students’ Rights and Racial Justice in the Long 1960s (NYU Press, forthcoming July 2).
By Jon Schwartz, The Intercept, posted May 2
On the significance of Raoul Peck's four-hour HBO miniseries “Exterminate All the Brutes,” tracing the violent history of white supremacy over 500 years. The very existence for such a radical film “means that deep tectonic plates are shifting in the world’s consciousness.”
By Robert Brent Toplin, History News Network, posted May 16
On the mandatory inoculation against smallpox of all Continental Army soldiers in 1777 who had not previously contracted the disease. The author was a professor of history at Denison University and the University of North Carolina, Wilmington and has taught courses at the University of Virginia in retirement.
By Ann Fabian, The National Book Review, posted May 8
A review essay on Dorothy Wickenden's book The Agitators (Scribner, 2021) about Frances Miller Seward, Martha Coffin Wright, and Harriet Tubman, friends and activists who knew each other in Auburn, New York in the 1850s. Ann Fabian is a professor emeritus of history at Rutgers University and author of The Unvarnished Truth: Personal Narratives in Nineteenth-Century America (U. of California Press, 2002).
Thanks to Jerise Fogel and an anonymous reader for suggesting articles included in the above list. Suggestions can be sent to jimobrien48@gmail.com.