On 22 January 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in Roe v. Wade, the abortion rights case that culminated in one of the most controversial legal rulings in the country’s history. Forty years later, numerous myths continue to circulate about the contents and meanings of Roe. Here are five of the most significant. Continue Reading Marc Stein: Five Myths about Roe v. Wade
Before the war began, few would have foreseen Hampton emerging as a die-hard Confederate. After President Abraham Lincoln called for troops to suppress the Southern rebellion, however, Hampton no longer hesitated. Continue Reading Rod Andrew Jr.: Wade Hampton, One of the Last Confederate Generals to Surrender
People rarely invite my husband and me to their homes for dinner, and many who do become quivering blancmanges of nerves. One of my husband’s friends invited us, then emailed me five or six times during the week before to be sure that the menu met with the approval of The Food Writer. Continue Reading Debbie Moose: Feed Me
Today marks the 70th anniversary of Casablanca’s world premier on November 26, 1942. In the following post, M. Todd Bennett, author of One World, Big Screen: Hollywood, the Allies, and World War II, reveals what fans may not know about the movie, widely considered among the best ever made. Continue Reading M. Todd Bennett: How and Why Humphrey Bogart, in Casablanca, Taught American Moviegoers to Risk Their Necks for Others’ Well-Being
Developed at the beginning of the twentieth century, movies quickly arose to become the cultural centerpiece, especially during Hollywood’s “golden era” of the 1930s and ’40s. In 1941, 85 million Americans—85 million, more than three-fifths of the overall U.S. population, which totaled 131 million at the time—attended movie theaters each week. Cinema’s remarkable popularity led observers to conclude that movies strongly influenced impressionable theatergoers. Continue Reading M. Todd Bennett: When Behaviorism Went to the Movies
2012 marks the two hundredth anniversary of the first Protestant American foreign missionaries. Over the course of those years, the movement’s fortunes and its public presence have waxed and waned. In 1812, the movement boasted five missionaries sailing to the Indian subcontinent. One hundred years later, its most prominent members were recruited for diplomatic missions. Yet whatever the public perception of missionaries, their work raises significant questions, even for people who might have little interest in the movement itself. Continue Reading Sarah E. Ruble: All Americans Are Missionaries
It’s not easy to write a biography of a living person, for a variety of reasons. Bill made it easy. I spent more than 40 hours interviewing him. He was unfailingly generous in offering his time, including a last round of interviews after I had written a draft of the book. We got to know each other well. I developed a habit of drinking Diet Cokes because that was what he always offered, and only recently have I shaken the habit. Continue Reading William A. Link: Remembering Bill Friday
Vann Bighorse, the director of the Osage Cultural Center, expressed the opinion that Congress could take a lesson from the Osage In-lon-shka dances. He had explained that during the dances, everything (especially political fighting) was put aside for those three weeks in June and everyone from the drum keeper to the cooks focused on making the whole thing run smoothly. Continue Reading Jean Dennison: Osage Nation Reform: From Colonial Entanglement to Citizen Engagement
Jesus was part of the Revolution and formation of the United States, but not as much as one might expect. As a physical presence, he was almost completely absent. And in the language of law and legislation for the new republic, he was virtually as nonexistent. In comparison to how prominent Jesus would become in the United States of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Revolution and founding of the new nation were profoundly Christ-less. Continue Reading Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey: The Christ-less Revolution
Travel across the U.S.A., from Maine to California, and sooner or later you’re bound to stop at a new Main Street-inspired mall. Along the way, you may also find yourself driving into a town with an actual historic Main Street that is struggling to assert its relevance in the age of malls and supermalls. After the postwar romance with the mega shopping mall—which drained the vitality out of small towns across the U.S.—Americans are gradually coming back to the idea of the small-scale community embodied in the Main Street model. Continue Reading Miles Orvell: Main Street in the 21st Century
In nineteenth-century America, Catholic sisters, despite disapproval, increasingly pursued opportunities for higher education. They did so to satisfy their personal intellectual interests and to meet new requirements for certification by government agencies. Continue Reading Anne M. Butler: Nuns and the Road to Academic Recognition
If you think the past week or so has not gone well for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, then what to say about the U.S. position in the Middle East? Washington’s attempt to remake or at least manage the region has suffered a string of blows that suggests the end is nigh. Continue Reading Michael H. Hunt: The American Project in the Middle East: The End Is Nigh!
Murphy attacked the tight-fisted policy of Ford Motor Company (FMC) and its indifference toward unemployed workers. Henry Ford publicly maintained he would never cut wages or jobs, even as he proceeded to do both. Employment at the largest facility of FMC in Dearborn, just outside Detroit, fell nearly 50 percent between 1929 and 1932. But the overwhelming majority of laid-off Ford workers resided in Detroit, raising the question, who bore responsibility for assisting them? Continue Reading Beth Tompkins Bates: What is Society’s Obligation to Those in Distress?
American exceptionalism, or the idea that the United States is somehow both different and better from all other nations, has a long history. From the decision to put novus ordo seclorum (a new order for the ages) on the back of the Great Seal of the United States to President Barack Obama’s claim during his 2008 inaugural that “we are ready to lead once more,” many Americans have believed that their country is something different from anything that has come before or that has arisen since. A leader. A new order. Continue Reading Sarah E. Ruble: The Newsroom and American Exceptionalism
As a first-time book author facing book-signing events, I’m going to have to sign my name in books that people are buying. (At least I hope so. Otherwise, I’ll get a lot of practice sitting at little tables and smiling cheerfully while people ignore me.) Continue Reading Kathleen Purvis: Preparations of a Book-Signing Novice
A large portion of New Orleans lies below sea level, although the historic and touristic French Quarter, the part of the city that dates to the French period in the mid-eighteenth century, is just barely above sea level and suffered the least from Katrina. The reasons for New Orleans’ vulnerability, and the reasons why the city was established where it is, are revealed in the narrative of Jean-François Benjamin Dumont de Montigny. Continue Reading Gordon M. Sayre: The Founding of New Orleans: A City of Floods
People often ask me how to write cookbooks and where I get my recipes from…. As with all writing, there’s a certain amount of mystery involved. A high number of trips to the kitchen for snacks and other attention-diverting activities are also critical. After writing five cookbooks, I believe I’m qualified to offer seven tips for creating them. Feel free to take notes. Continue Reading Debbie Moose: Confessions of a Crazed Cookbook Author: 7 Tips for Writing a Cookbook
In some unexpected ways, it is Mitt and Gwen who have the most in common. For both of them are not only children of immigrants, but children of parents who were themselves children of immigrants. Continue Reading Lara Putnam: Children of Immigrants, the American Way: Mitt, Gwen, and Barack
Most sisters do not wear the once ubiquitous garb any more; many bishops yearn to see the gender-weighted tradition reinstated; nostalgic lay people reminisce about the habit along with such Catholic signposts as fish on Friday or parish bingo. It is time to drop the overdone fascination with the antiquated clothing of an earlier era—the long black veils, starched bonnets, and sweeping serge skirts—that supposedly measured the holiness of cloistered women, or at least made nuns easy to identify. Continue Reading Anne M. Butler: Sisterhoods and Habits
Much of the news coverage for Issac has focused on Tampa, host city for the Republican National Convention set to get underway on Monday. There’s good reason to focus attention on Tampa too, because along with the entire Tampa Bay area, it is the U.S. city most vulnerable to a major hurricane. Continue Reading Jay Barnes: Hurricanes and Politics
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