Category Archives: History

Nomenclature for a Nuclear Age

Approximately 7603 words.

A GLOSSARY OF IDEAS DISCUSSED IN
HERMAN KAHN’S CLASSIC BOOK:
ON THERMONUCLEAR WAR

INCLUDING AN ACCOUNT OF HOW TWO DAYS OF INNOVATIVE LECTURES GOT INTO BOOK FORMAT AND AROUSED A WORLDWIDE AUDIENCE IN 1960

The pioneering book On Thermonuclear War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1960) by Herman Kahn, the nuclear physicist, strategic thinker, and futurist, is 652 closely reasoned pages. It uses first to last a vocabulary mostly unknown to the public at its time of publication–and not much better comprehended since then. The awesome subject of the book is, in the author’s precise words, “the deterrence and waging of thermonuclear ‘Central Wars’ between the United States and the Soviet Union….” (p. viii) The book’s complex contents have long posed a challenge for interested readers.

This article and the scholarship attached does something to remedy that situation. After an essay on how the book came into existence, it offers an alphabetical listing of terminology, called here a Glossary, which was slowly prepared by one who was closely involved with editing the original Kahn book into published form. Kahn did not prepare the glossary; and he never got to see it. None of it claims to offer ideas original with this author; everything derives from Kahn’s book. The claim here is that the attentive reader should emerge with some familiarity with the nomenclature of thermonuclear war. Continue reading Nomenclature for a Nuclear Age

Remember: Those Notorious Anti-Semitic Protocols are Fiction!

The author found the notorious Protocols of Zion of durable interest years ago when studying Russian History. He slyly suggests “Protocol analysis” could qualify as an intellectual hobby. Condemning it in every generation strikes an always welcome blow against anti-Semitism. Published and archived on History News Network (hnn.com) on November 15, 2012. Approximately 887 words.

Even in this day of obsession with things Islamic and the coming and going of terrorist activities across borders, anti-Semitism in many lands continues to be a civil rights problem worth keeping an eye on. Every generation of young scholars needs to be reminded that the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, an item that crops up every so often over the years, remains a fake and a fraud. Never is it to be elevated to the height of a scholarly contribution to knowledge. Continue reading Remember: Those Notorious Anti-Semitic Protocols are Fiction!

Maybe Add Values Teaching to Our American History Survey Courses?

Published and archived on History News Network (hnn.com) on May 15, 2011. Approximately 2079 words.

The aged author of this essay just showed his faith in the value of patriotism when in spring 2011 he published his book Speaking Up for America. Available from iUniverse, Amazon, etc., the 176 page book consists of 12 speeches, the first delivered May 30, 1963, and two essays.

This essay of advice and guidance will recommend seven ideas that in my view should be present in one way or another in an extensive survey course in American History at both the college and secondary school levels. An eighth idea, advancing the idea of patriotism, is brought forward now and then in my 2011 book Speaking Up for America. The first seven will be advanced shortly.

One of the arguments being waged at this time, many will acknowledge, is that between those endorsing the Howard Zinn school of social history content and endorsement, and the historians trained in United States history a generation or  more in the past. This essay is not about that continuing fight but is relevant. Continue reading Maybe Add Values Teaching to Our American History Survey Courses?

When the Space Race Began

Copyrighted 1959. Approximately 19,578 words.

An Introduction to Space, Based on a Pioneering
Scientific Report to the Congress in 1958

A condensation of The RAND Corporation’s volume Space Handbook, prepared for historically minded readers in a new century.

This is a condensation of the pioneering research study Space Handbook, which was researched and written by Robert Buckheim and other scientists and engineers of The RAND Corporation. It was first crafted early in 1958 in classified form as RM-2289-RC for the Select Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration of the United States House of Representatives (which was then drafting the National Aeronautics and Space Act). In slightly revised form it was published by the Government Printing Office in Washington, D. C. in 1959.   It became a hardcover book issued by Random House (1959). The original report and book contained many tabulations, diagrams, tables, and engineering renderings.

This condensation for the general public was drafted in the year 1959 by Vaughn Davis Bornet, who was then a recently employed staff member of RAND Administration.   The original 239 page fine print version (301 as illustrated in the book) was reduced to 70 typed pages. The author of each chapter was required to read his portion of the manuscript and sign off on it as a completely accurate summary. (Most of them acquiesced with patient resignation.) Although put in line to be published for a non-specialized audience (finally, with internal order L-23982 of December 11, 1962), it somehow got detoured. The author treasured his handwritten original and kept a clean copy of the final manuscript, expecting ultimate publication. The RAND Corporation is now permitting the condensed version to be published on a nonprofit basis.

Here we have a rendering for the general reader of the scientific and engineering space knowledge of that point in time. The purpose of the entire Space research enterprise, wrote RAND president Frank R. Collbohm to the Congressional Committee in his letter of December 1, 1958 was “the development and accomplishment of a vigorous, adequate astronautics and space exploration program” for the United States. Continue reading When the Space Race Began

Long Ago: A Total War in the Pacific Came to An Unimaginable End

Published and archived on History News Network (hnn.com) on September 2, 2009. Approximately 2370 words.

From 1941 to 1945, America’s fighting forces fought a desperate war with a dedicated and ruthless adversary, the Empire of Japan, which the enemy began with a surprise attack and which for nearly four years they did everything—fair and foul alike—to try to win.

The manner in which the war came forcefully to an end has invited emotional attention ever since, and especially during the month of August, when in a few moments, twice, back in 1945 new weapons were used by the United States to bring the enemy to a decision to surrender. Continue reading Long Ago: A Total War in the Pacific Came to An Unimaginable End

The United States in 1960

The text in this publication is identical to that prepublished on the Internet site HISTORY NEWS NETWORK on July 21, 2008 with permission of the author and through arrangement with its editor, Rick Shenkman, Ph.D. Approximately 7489 words.

Readers will want to keep in mind that this narrative description was written for encyclopedia publication as 1960 was about to fade into 1961. The text has not been modified in facts, wording, or indeed anything except a few commas and several paragraph modifications.

The wording of the following essay is precisely that placed in the mail on December 30, 1960. It was written for the New International Year Book for 1961. Although I was duly paid for this after working hours effort, the manuscript was returned to me, for there was a dispute between the publishers and the writer over the paragraphs dealing with Fidel Castro’s degree of attachment to Communism, for example, “…the Castro regime…turned to the Communist Bloc for military and economic aid and for ideological comfort.” That sentiment may have been regarded by the encyclopedia’s final review persons as conjectural, or too pessimistic, as unsuitable for their audience, likely to provoke overseas readers or, perhaps they thought me downright wrong. As for me, then a confident administrative editor who read Cold War material almost daily as a RAND Corporation staff member, my assessment of Castro’s movement toward the Third International seemed fully warranted and not to be edited out. In addition, after looking at the unsigned and much shorter version ultimately run by the yearbook, I think there may have been in house editorial decisions of which I—not an employee–was not made aware at the time. Continue reading The United States in 1960

Dedicating a History Book– A Time for Euphoria

Published and archived on History News Network (hnn.com) on March 27, 2013. Approximately 1974 words.

Let’s fantasize for a moment. That book draft, the one calling on you to sacrifice so much, is on the verge of being finished. Hooray! But wait: shouldn’t there be a dedication—to somebody or something? Researching and writing it was a highly personal act; nobody would blame you if you think, “The act of creation is mine—all mine.” The moment is one for euphoria!Every author owes a debt to somebody…. If you believe the final product turned out, well, brilliantly, maybe it’s Dedication time. Continue reading Dedicating a History Book– A Time for Euphoria

How Race Relations Touched Me During a Lifetime

Published and archived on History News Network (hnn.com) on September 3, 2007. Approximately 6704 words.

This is a particularly personal essay about American race relations as I witnessed them during my very long lifetime. In a challenging book, the president of Spelman College in Atlanta says the time has come to talk about race. I would like that; however, nearly final drafts of this article have had hard sledding from a handful of carefully chosen editors. Apparently I can talk about race, as Beverly Daniel Tatum urges in Can We talk about Race? (Beacon Press, 2007), but it may be that few are much interested these days in reading about race. Continue reading How Race Relations Touched Me During a Lifetime

Review of “Mrs. Kennedy and Me” by Clint Hill

Review of Clint Hill’s and Lisa McCubbin’s
“Mrs. Kennedy and Me: An Intimate Memoir”
(Gallery Books, 2012)

Published and archived on History News Network (hnn.com) on July 21, 2012. Approximately 1825 words.

Yes, Virginia, other people lead lives sometimes that are amazingly different from ours!

It will do most of us in the history profession good to read the intimate details of the lives lived by Jackie Bouvier Kennedy, on the one hand, and Clint Hill, North Dakota’s contribution to the U. S. Secret Service in the early 1960s, on the other. The lives of both are embraced in close detail in Gallery Books’ 343-page book about presidential life, Mrs. Kennedy and Me. Continue reading Review of “Mrs. Kennedy and Me” by Clint Hill