Russia and Ukraine: Ongoing Tensions
Jeff Berger — In August of 2017, I published an article in Wise Guys about Ukraine entitled “Understanding Ukraine: The Historical Context of Current [...]
History
Finding Nebuchadnezzar in Poland
DeWitt Clinton — All of us are hungry as dogs, though it’s not even noon, but our guide in green shoes wants us to stop at this grocery store, pick up some cheeses [...]
1968: The Year That Changed U.S. Politics, and Our Lives
Ron Berger — For people of my generation, the baby boomers, Lawrence O’Donnell’s Playing With Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics [...]
Forty-Eight Hours in Budapest: A Photographic Essay
Charles Cottle and James Cottle — In May 2017 my brother Jim and I traveled on a tour of central Europe. The major cities on the tour included Budapest, Vienna, Prague, [...]
Picking Up a Prisoner at Dachau
Warren R. Johnson — Though it is not a particularly well-known fact, the “bunker” of the former concentration camp at Dachau was used after World War II as [...]
The White Slave Jordan Chambers
Dave Gillespie and Judi F. Gillespie — Surprising though it may be, it is true. Through most of the long global history of slavery, race or “blood” was largely [...]
American Fighter Pilot: A Tribute to a Veteran and Gentleman
Bob Bates — Toward the end of World War II in the turbulent skies over France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany, thousands of rounds of German ground artillery exploded [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
