Remembering the U.S. Torture Regime
Ron Berger — In the spring of 2004, during the early years of the Iraq War launched by the administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, reports of widespread [...]
History
Labyrinth of Enigmas: The JFK Assassination
Bob Bates — When Jack Ruby died in prison on January 3, 1967, barely three years after he ended Lee Harvey Oswald’s life with one fatal shot to his gut, any [...]
Collective Memories of Death Camps and Complicity in Nazi-Occupied Poland
Ron Berger — The Polish government recently passed a law making it illegal in Poland to accuse the nation of complicity in the crimes committed by Nazi Germany in [...]
God: A Human History, by Reza Aslan
DeWitt Clinton — Every year—for years, decades, and perhaps centuries—scholars, theologians, and lay leaders have been defining, then redefining, then [...]
Daniel Ellsberg’s Doomsday Papers
Bob Bates — Daniel Ellsberg is universally known as the “man behind the Pentagon Papers.” However, with the publication of his new book, The Doomsday [...]
Baseball and the World Series: Context and Contests
Bob Bates — Two months after the first “World’s Series,” Wilbur and Orville Wright made their first flight at Kitty Hawk. Baseball’s only rivals [...]
German Nazism and the Complicity of Ordinary People
Ron Berger — Donald Trump’s remarks in the aftermath of the recent turmoil in Charlottesville, Virginia and the murder of Heather Heyer brought forth widespread [...]
Understanding Ukraine: The Historical Context of Contemporary Events
Jeff Berger — Ukraine is largely an unknown country to most Americans, one that they never travel to. Most Americans couldn’t even place Ukraine on a map or [...]
Innocence Lost: From Babes to Bloodshed
Bob Bates — In his book Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil (2013), Paul Bloom, psychology professor at Yale University, reports on the work he has conducted [...]
Crime and Due Process: Two Scenes Connected in the Dylann Roof Case
Dave Gillespie — On June 17, 2015 Dylann Roof murdered nine African American parishioners at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South [...]
Uncle Ho: A Man of Peace
Jeff Berger — On November 11, 1944, a U.S. reconnaissance plane piloted by Lieutenant Rudolph Shaw encountered engine trouble while flying over the rough mountainous [...]
Inequality of Disclosure: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Tony Platt — In 2010, Rebecca Skloot was a little known science journalist on the faculty at the University of Memphis when her first book The Immortal Life of [...]
Remembering the Iran-Contra Scandal
Ron Berger — Amidst the evolving scandal involving the Trump administration’s dubious ties to Russia, which is currently under investigation by Senate and House [...]
Watergate: The Benchmark Political Scandal
Ron Berger — We are currently in the midst of a political scandal that has the potential to rival the infamous Watergate scandal of the early 1970s. A political [...]
In Hamilton’s Wake
Ron Berger — The critically acclaimed Hamilton: An American Musical, which opened off-Broadway in February 2015 and on-Broadway in August 2015, has been heralded as a [...]
U.S. Immigration Policy and the Jewish Refugee Crisis of the 1930s
Ron Berger — George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The mere act of remembering, however, does not [...]
Witnessing the End of a Family Farm: Twenty-Five Ways to Say Goodbye
Richard Quinney — I am a witness to the ending of a family farm in Wisconsin. This is the farm that was started in 1868 by my great-grandparents and farmed by the [...]
David’s Secret Demons
Jeff Berger — Recently I read Baruch Halpern’s biography about King David of ancient Israel/Judah called David’s Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, [...]
Christianity and Nazi Germany: The Question of Apostasy
Ron Berger — Evangelical Christians were a significant part of the political coalition that won the presidency for Donald Trump, with more than 80 percent of this [...]
