In “The Anatomy of the Myth,” Alan T. Nolan discusses Civil War denialism, specifically focusing on the “Lost Cause” perspective. Nolan outlines the claims that Lost Cause proponents make, and then explains the purpose this view serves. First, Lost Cause proponents claim that neither the South’s secession nor the war were fought to protect slavery. …
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In the introduction to his book . . . the Heavens and the Earth, Walter A. McDougall discusses the political responses to Sputnik, focusing on the effect it had on the relationship between the government and new technology. McDougall claims that the launch of Sputnik created an intensified, if not totally, state-controlled technocracy in …
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For this week’s blog, I explored NASA’s description of Sputnik, reading its brief historical timeline titled “Sputnik and The Dawn of the Space Age”. This website describes the launch of Sputnik as causing developments in various fields like technology and science, starting the Space Age and the Space Race, and resulting in the creation of …
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In “Remembering the forgotten war: America historiography on World War I,” Jennifer D. Keene describes different perspectives on the diplomatic and economic history of World War One, specifically focusing on the main reasons the US joined the war, what America’s goals were, and why the the Versailles Peace Treaty failed. After giving a brief historical …
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In “Market Failure in Delivering Electricity to Rural Areas Before 1930”, Laurence J. Malone outlines the historic timeline of the electric industry in relation to rural America. According to Malone, the early market for the electronic industry was almost solely urban. Consequently, “rural regions of the United States were generally without electricity and were denied …
In “Presidential Decision Making in the Korean War: The British Perspective,” Michael A. Lutzker details the course of the war, focusing primarily on the British perspective. To start, Lutzker discusses the “series of paradoxes” within this conflict (Lutzker, 979). First is the American narrative, one that says “the UN Security Council, led by the United States, …
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In “”Now You See It, Now You Don’t: The War of 1812 In Canada And The United States In 2012,” Karim M. Tiro analyzes both the Canadian and American standard narrative of the War of 1812. According to Tiro, the war has a nationalist narrative built and used for political means by the Canadian …
In “Household Labor and Technology in a Consumer Culture,” Eileen B. Leonard challenges the idea that technology liberated women from the burdens of domestic work, arguing instead that technology changed the domestic work women were responsible for; further, Leonard discusses the persistent gender, race, and class inequalities that technology failed to undermine (and perhaps even …
Peter Wood’s “Revisionisms” is the introduction to an issue of the publication Academic Questions. In this introduction, Wood discusses the origin of the term revisionism and what it stands for today; moreover, he criticizes the revisionist approach to history, especially as it relates to the World War II and Cold War era. Wood explains that …
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In “The Decision to Use the Bomb: A Historiographical Update,” J. Samuel Walker explores different perspectives regarding the use of atomic bombs against Japan during World War Two, explaining how and why the central concern shifted over time. Walker states that the initial central issue was whether or not the bomb was necessary to end …
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