Awakened recently at four and then six in the morning by the clanking and booming of salt trucks and snow plows lumbering outside my
Category: History
H.W. Bush & Bob Dole fought a “good war”
Bob Dole did everything that he could to get his ninety-five-year-old war-ravaged body once again to the U.S. Capitol, this time to pay a final tribute to his friend and rival, George H.W. Bush.
How World War I unleashed total war and the power of propaganda
Nov. 11, now called Veterans Day, was originally Armistice Day, a commemoration of the end of World War I, in 1918, the cessation of
Death by TIF: Another African-American neighborhood faces extinction
Local history may be about to repeat itself in suburban St. Louis, as another well-established African-American neighborhood faces extinction by buyout, demolition and commercial
A review of “October: The Story of the Russian Revolution”, by China Mieville
Centennials don’t have much objective relevance, but they are marked nonetheless. It shouldn’t surprise, then, that everyone from The New York Times to Alex
It’s harder to be a Howard Baker now than then
Political observers such as David Gergen and Jeffrey Toobin have said that what we need now is another Howard Baker. For those who may
Comey firing is worse than Watergate
Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey is worse than Nixon’s 1973 Saturday Night Massacre. Sure, just as Trump is doing now, Nixon acted out his
Sean Spicer: Holocaust denier?
Where did Sean Spicer’s incredibly ignorant and offensive remark about Adolf Hitler “not using chemical weapons on his own people” come from? I watched
Supreme Court surprises: You don’t always get what you want
How will the next justice appointed to the Supreme Court vote? The answer, history tells us, is: We don’t know for sure. Surprises happen.
Political quotes: Absurdities
Is Trump unique? No. He’s just the latest in a long line of demagogues and false populists who use deceit and “alternative facts” to