Michael Hiteshew

(Your) Recommended History Reading (List)

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I’m looking for recommendations and I need your help. I’m looking for two types of books: one type for me and one for my 24 year old daughter.

For my daughter some explanation is order. She has a self confessed ‘mental block’ regarding history. It bores her to death, at least the history she’s read so far in school. She knows who George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were. She’s heard of FDR but can’t can’t quite place him. She can do calculus, but she’s always confused about when events happened; WWI was, umm, when? Was Hitler in WWI or WWII or Vietnam? So, I’m looking for a book on American history that is sweeping yet engaging. History as a story. Light on detail yet touching on all the important points. Something she’ll enjoy. Recommendations?

I’m looking for a history of the revolutionary war. Something well written and engaging. Any favorites?

Any history books that don’t fall into the above categories that you’d still recommend reading?

Reverse Engineering – A Society

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There’s a fascinating article in the NYT about the attitudes, dreams and effects expatriates are having in India after returning from America.

Drawn by a booming economy, in which outsourcing is playing a crucial role, and the money to buy the lifestyle they had in America, Indians are returning in large numbers.

The technology hub of India, Bangalore, is being transformed by the Indian-American expats. First are the outward manifestations. Suburban communities are springing up that could have been transplanted directly from California.

Many of them are returning to communities like Palm Meadows, whose developer, the Adarsh Group, advertises “beautiful homes for beautiful people.” The liberalization of India’s state-run economy over the last 13 years has spawned a suburban culture of luxury housing developments, malls and sport utility vehicles that is also enabling India to compete for its Americanized best and brightest.

“It is amazing what you can get in terms of quality of life,” Subhash Dhar said of the India to which he and his family returned about two months ago.

Portending a deeper and perhaps more profound impact for India are the Americanized attitudes they’ve brought back with them.

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Robert Oppenheimer: Soviet Spy?

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It’s long been common knowledge that Robert Oppenheimer was sympathetic to communist ideology, to say the very least. His brother, sister-in-law, wife and mistress were all members of the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA). The established historical view that is presented of Oppenheimer is that while he had flirted with communism (as indeed, had many intellectuals in the 1920’s and 1930’s) there was no evidence that he ever been less than loyal.

In 1954, Lewis Strauss, first chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), called for the removal of Oppenheimer’s security clearance after reviewing his intelligence dossier. William Borden, chief counsel on Congress’s Joint Comittee on Atomic Energy during the debate on whether to pursue the development of a hydrogen bomb (something Oppenheimer opposed for philosophical and technical reasons) wrote a letter to J.Edgar Hoover in which he wrote:

“…my own exhaustively considered opinion, based upon years of study of the available classified evidence, that more probably than not J.Robert Oppenheimer is an agent of the Soviet Union.”

The AEC subsequently conducted hearings to determine Oppie’s fitness to retain a security clearance. At the conclusion of those hearings his clearance was withdrawn.

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Hate Crimes

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Ian Murray at The Edge of England’s Sword has an interesting post on a proposal by British MP and Home Secretary, David Blunkett, to ban expressions of religious hatred. He’s not impressed.

I couldn’t help but think how his arguments apply to the larger issue of hate crimes in general. Here’s an example:

Case 1
A man is assaulted and beaten unconcious by a white supremist because he’s ‘a nigger’.
Case 2
A man is assaulted and beaten unconcious by a deranged homophobe because he’s ‘a fag’.
Case 3
A man is assaulted and beaten unconcious by a street thug for his wallet.

In cases 1 & 2, a hate crime has occurred. In case 3, a robbery. Yet in each case the hypothetical victim was assaulted and beaten unconcious. The end result, the injury sustained, was identical. Were we to punish these crimes diffferently, what would be the rationale? That an additional crime is committed by virtue of the perpetrator’s thoughts? It’s difficult, to say the least, to determine a person’s motivation. How do you see into a person’s heart? What is to be the measure of the ‘hatred’ if the end result is equivalent? Is crime #2 more hateful than crime #3?

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