Textbook row stirs Japanese concern
January 29, 2015
“The old adage that time is the best healer may ring true in most parts of the world, but unfortunately not in North Asia.”
Category: History
The Price of a 50-Year Myth: The Consequences of the Memory of the Cuban Missile Crisis
January 29, 2015
“The ‘eyeball to eyeball’ imagery made for great drama (it features in the 2000 movie “13 Days”), but it has contributed to some of our most disastrous foreign policy decisions, from the escalation of the Vietnam War under Johnson to the invasion of Iraq under George W. Bush.”
What history is and isn’t
January 29, 2015
“History is not the past.
The semantic problem is not helped by the fact that in English we tend to use the words ‘history’ and ‘the past’ interchangeably. One of the most useful things you can do in studying history is to begin to use the words to signify very different things. The past is a term used to indicate all the events which occurred before a given point in time: everything that has ever happened to everyone, everywhere at any time before now. The past is neither the present nor the future.”
http://www.internationalschoolhistory.net/tok/what_history_is_and_isnt.htm
History Under Construction in Florida
January 29, 2015
“Yet the wording of the law befuddles me. Facts mean little or nothing without being interpreted — another word for ‘constructed.’ All historians know that facts never speak for themselves.”
Light at The Edge of The World – The Wayfinders
January 29, 2015
“Ancient Polynesians settled 10 million square miles of the Pacific by navigating sailing canoes from island to island. But their tremendous story was almost lost. Can a single sailing canoe from Hawaii restore the pride of the Polynesian culture after years and years decay and denial?”
The Power of Memory in the Civil-Rights Movement
January 22, 2015
The events of the 1960s are fading into history, but John Lewis believes eyewitness accounts are key to continued progress.
John Lewis tells his truth about ‘Selma’
January 21, 2015
“The role of art in our society is not to reenact history but to offer an interpretation of human experience as seen through the eyes of the artist. The philosopher Aristotle says it best: ‘The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inner significance.'”
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-lewis-selma-movie-20150119-story.html
Truth matters in movies based on true stories
January 21, 2015
“The question of historical accuracy in movies based on real life, as so many are, has been debated for years. But it has come to a boil in connection with the highly acclaimed film Selma.”
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/01/19/selma-historical-truth-in-movies/21991249/
The real American Sniper was a hate-filled killer. Why are simplistic patriots treating him as a hero?
January 21, 2015
“There is no room for the idea that Kyle might have been a good soldier but a bad guy; or a mediocre guy doing a difficult job badly; or a complex guy in a bad war who convinced himself he loved killing to cope with an impossible situation; or a straight-up serial killer exploiting an oppressive system that, yes, also employs lots of well-meaning, often impoverished, non-serial-killer people to do oppressive things over which they have no control. Or that Iraqis might be fully realised human beings with complex inner lives who find joy in food and sunshine and family, and anguish in the murders of their children. Or that you can support your country while thinking critically about its actions and its citizenry. Or that many truths can be true at once.”
What is history?
January 21, 2015
“Historians do not, as too many of my colleagues keep mindlessly repeating, ‘reconstruct’ the past. What historians do is produce knowledge about the past, or, with respect to each individual, fallible historian, produce contributions to “nowledge about the past. Thus the best and most concise definition of history is::
http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Whatishistory/marwick1.html
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