History Study Group (HSG) - William Smith Map of England and Wales

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann

12/12/2018

April 18, 2019

Discussion led by Peter Bluhm

ABOUT 1493
A deeply engaging new history of how European settlements in the post-Colombian Americas shaped the world, from the bestselling author of 1491.

Presenting the latest research by biologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Mann shows how the post-Columbian network of ecological and economic exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Mexico City—where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted—the center of the world. In this history, Mann uncovers the germ of today's fiercest political disputes, from immigration to trade policy to culture wars. In 1493, Mann has again given readers an eye-opening scientific interpretation of our past, unequaled in its authority and fascination.

An excellent NY Times review
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/books/review/1493-uncovering-the-new-world-columbus-created-by-charles-c-mann-book-review.html

Presidents of War by Michael Beschloss

12/12/2018

March 21, 2019

Discussion led by Joel Wolk

Ten years in the research and writing, Presidents of War is a fresh, magisterial, intimate look at a procession of American leaders as they took the nation into conflict and mobilized their country for victory. It brings us into the room as they make the most difficult decisions that face any President, at times sending hundreds of thousands of American men and women to their deaths.

From James Madison and the War of 1812 to recent times, we see them struggling with Congress, the courts, the press, their own advisers and antiwar protesters; seeking comfort from their spouses, families and friends; and dropping to their knees in prayer. We come to understand how these Presidents were able to withstand the pressures of war—both physically and emotionally—or were broken by them.

Beschloss’s interviews with surviving participants in the drama and his findings in original letters, diaries, once-classified national security documents, and other sources help him to tell this story in a way it has not been told before. Presidents of War combines the sense of being there with the overarching context of two centuries of American history. This important book shows how far we have traveled from the time of our Founders, who tried to constrain presidential power, to our modern day, when a single leader has the potential to launch nuclear weapons that can destroy much of the human race.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/11/books/review/michael-beschloss-presidents-of-war.html

https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/presidents-war

https://www.dallasnews.com/arts/books/2018/10/15/presidents-war-michael-beschloss-looks-long-history-lines-crossed

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/americas-5-worst-wartime-presidents-12668

The Wright Brothers by David McCullogh

12/11/2018

February 21, 2019

Discussion led by Nathan Doctorow

On a winter day in 1903, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, two brothers—bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio—changed history. But it would take the world some time to believe that the age of flight had begun, with the first powered machine carrying a pilot.

Orville and Wilbur Wright were men of exceptional courage and determination, and of far-ranging intellectual interests and ceaseless curiosity. When they worked together, no problem seemed to be insurmountable. Wilbur was unquestionably a genius. Orville had such mechanical ingenuity as few had ever seen. That they had no more than a public high school education and little money never stopped them in their mission to take to the air. Nothing did, not even the self-evident reality that every time they took off, they risked being killed.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/books/review-the-wright-brothers-by-david-mccullough.html

https://www.amazon.com/Wright-Brothers-David-McCullough-ebook/dp/B00LD1RWP6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1544561103&sr=8-1&keywords=the+wright+brothers+book

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wright_Brothers_(book)

https://www.biography.com/news/the-wright-brothers-david-mccullough-book

How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

12/10/2018

Discussion led by Andy Fisher

January 16, 2019

What’s the worst thing to happen to US democracy recently? Most answers to that question start and end with Donald Trump. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, two Harvard political scientists, though as horrified by Trump as anyone, try to take a wider view. For them the great harbinger of disaster happened during the final year of the Obama presidency. Following the sudden death of the conservative supreme court justice Antonin Scalia in early 2016, President Obama nominated Merrick Garland, a centrist liberal, to replace him. It was up to the Senate to decide whether to confirm the president’s choice. But the Senate did something it had never done in more than 150 years: it refused even to grant Garland a hearing. This was not about Trump – most Republican senators were at this point deeply alarmed by, if not downright hostile to, the prospect of the Donald in the White House. Instead, it was about their shared view that any Republican supreme court nominee would be better than any Democratic nominee, and any price was worth paying to achieve that. It was scorched earth politics.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2018/jan/21/this-is-how-democracies-die

http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?id=1334

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/10/books/review-trumpocracy-david-frum-how-democracies-die-steven-levitsky-daniel-ziblatt.html

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/05/how-democracy-dies

The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made

9/17/2018

December 20, 2018

Discussion led by Ben Liptzin

Instead of “The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made,” Patricia O’Toole could have titled her new book “The Hypocrite.”
After all, as she herself points out, to lay claim to the moral high ground as often and as fervently as President Wilson did during his eight years in the White House was to court charges that he failed to live up to his own principles. He called for an end to secret treaties while negotiating secretly with the Allies in World War I. He declared himself unwilling to compromise with belligerents abroad while showing himself very willing to compromise with segregationists at home. He pursued a progressive economic agenda while approving a regressive racial one. He spoke of national self-determination in the loftiest terms while initiating the American occupation of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
O’Toole’s is the third major biography of Wilson in the last decade, coming on the heels of substantial works by John Milton Cooper Jr. (2009) and A. Scott Berg (2013), an output of Wilsoniana that attests to the 28th president’s complicated — and contested — legacy. O’Toole’s book doesn’t purport to be as exhaustive as Cooper’s or Berg’s; her project was born from her interest in World War I, and as she persuasively shows, American foreign policy throughout the 20th century adopted Wilson’s war-forged liberal internationalism, in word if not always in deed.
President Richard Nixon cynically used the rhetoric of Wilsonian idealism to escalate the war in Vietnam, saying that his plan would bring the United States closer to Wilson’s “goal of a just and lasting peace.” Wilson’s principle of national self-determination — a phrase that his own secretary of state deemed “loaded with dynamite” — has since been enshrined in the charter of the United Nations.

NY Times Books of the Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/01/books/review-moralist-woodrow-wilson-patricia-otoole.html

Auther Talk at Wilson Center
https://youtu.be/rp_1gWny-JY

"The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War" by Benn Steil

9/5/2018

November 15, 2018

Discussion led by Alan Rubin

Hope M. Harrison is an associate professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University and the author of “Driving the Soviets up the Wall.”
If you want to ensure you’re never so naive as to call for another Marshall Plan, read this book. Benn Steil’s exhaustive narrative about the massive and complicated U.S. effort to aid Europe after World War II makes it clear that a similar initiative is not likely ever to be implemented — even if the United States is someday governed again by a president who sees America’s core interests as connected to others we might want to help.
Drawing extensively on U.S. archival material as well as some Russian, British, French, German, Serbian and Czech sources, Steil tells the story of not just the development of the Marshall Plan but also the division of Germany, the founding of NATO and, as the subtitle of his book indicates, the dawn of the Cold War. Steil’s account is the most detailed yet of the lengthy, constantly evolving initiative, named after U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall, who guided the planning of the enormous effort to help Europeans recover from the war’s devastation. He argues that the main success of the Marshall Plan was the psychological boost it gave to Western Europeans, but the chief drawback was that it essentially marked the start of the Cold War.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/why-the-marshall-plan-spooked-the-soviets-and-sparked-the-cold-war/2018/02/23/fdeae418-0a85-11e8-8890-372e2047c935_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9d8565185128

https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2018/02/20/excellent-book-tells-story-marshall-plan-which-rebuilt-europe-launched-cold-war/355129002/

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35297577-the-marshall-plan

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

8/25/2018

October 18, 2018

Discussion led by Lucy Kennedy

From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.”
One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us?
Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas.
Dr. Harari also compels us to look ahead, because over the last few decades humans have begun to bend laws of natural selection that have governed life for the past four billion years. We are acquiring the ability to design not only the world around us, but also ourselves. Where is this leading us, and what do we want to become?

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23692271-sapiens
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Bill Gates disagrees with some of author Yuval Noah Harari's premises in her book.

https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Sapiens-A-Brief-History-of-Humankind

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapiens:_A_Brief_History_of_Humankind

One Hot Summer: Dickens, Darwin, Disraeli, and the Great Stink of 1858 by Rosemary Ashton

8/25/2018

November 15, 2018

Discussion led by Alan Rubin

A unique, in-depth view of Victorian London during the record-breaking summer of 1858, when residents both famous and now-forgotten endured “The Great Stink” together

While 1858 in London may have been noteworthy for its broiling summer months and the related stench of the sewage-filled Thames River, the year is otherwise little remembered. And yet, historian Rosemary Ashton reveals in this compelling microhistory, 1858 was marked by significant, if unrecognized, turning points. For ordinary people, and also for the rich, famous, and powerful, the months from May to August turned out to be a summer of consequence.

Ashton mines Victorian letters and gossip, diaries, court records, newspapers, and other contemporary sources to uncover historically crucial moments in the lives of three protagonists—Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, and Benjamin Disraeli. She also introduces others who gained renown in the headlines of the day, among them George Eliot, Karl Marx, William Thackeray, and Edward Bulwer Lytton. Ashton reveals invisible threads of connection among Londoners at every social level in 1858, bringing the celebrated city and its citizens vibrantly to life.

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300227260/one-hot-summer

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/15/one-hot-summer-rosemary-ashton-review

American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies in the Founding of the Republic by Joseph Ellis

8/19/2018

September 20, 2018

Discussion led by Peter Bluhm

Acclaimed historian Joseph J. Ellis brings his unparalleled talents to this riveting account of the early years of the Republic.
The last quarter of the eighteenth century remains the most politically creative era in American history, when a dedicated group of men undertook a bold experiment in political ideals. It was a time of both triumphs and tragedies—all of which contributed to the shaping of our burgeoning nation. Ellis casts an incisive eye on the gradual pace of the American Revolution and the contributions of such luminaries as Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, and brilliantly analyzes the failures of the founders to adequately solve the problems of slavery and the treatment of Native Americans. With accessible prose and stunning eloquence, Ellis delineates in American Creation an era of flawed greatness, at a time when understanding our origins is more important than ever.

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/27/books/27kaku.html

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/joseph-j-ellis/american-creation/

War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier by Smedley D. Butler

8/16/2018

August 16, 2018

Discussion led by Will Singleton

Unique among the high ranking military officers of the US and the world I do not know of any other high ranking military officer of the US or the world, who has spoken or written such most important truths and facts about the nature and causes of war.

General Butler wrote these in simple and direct language that everyone can understand. His honesty; care for society, humanity, and justice for all; and profound insights; are self-evident in his writing. Moreover, it is even much more relevant now than when it was written in 1935.

War Is a Racket is the title of two works, a speech and a booklet, by retired United States Marine Corps Major General and two time Medal of Honor recipient Smedley D. Butler. In them, Butler frankly discusses from his experience as a career military officer how business interests commercially benefit (including war profiteering) from warfare.

After his retirement from the Marine Corps, Butler made a nationwide tour in the early 1930s giving his speech "War is a Racket". The speech was so well received that he wrote a longer version as a small book with the same title that was published in 1935 by Round Table Press, Inc., of New York. The booklet was also condensed in Reader's Digest as a book supplement which helped popularize his message. In an introduction to the Reader's Digest version, Lowell Thomas, the "as told to" author of Butler's oral autobiographical adventures, praised Butler's "moral as well as physical courage".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket

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The Untold Plot to Over-through FDR

Most people will be shocked to learn that in 1933 a cabal of wealthy industrialists - in league with groups like the K.K.K. and the American Liberty League - planned to overthrow the U.S. government in a fascist coup. Their plan was to turn discontented veterans into American "brown shirts," depose F.D.R., and stop the New Deal. They clandestinely asked Medal of Honor recipient and Marine Major General Smedley Darlington Butler to become the first American Caesar. He, though, was a true patriot and revealed the plot to journalists and to Congress. In a time when a sitting President has invoked national security to circumvent constitutional checks and balances, this episode puts the spotlight on attacks upon our democracy and the individual courage needed to repel them.