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Randall Stephens In 2013 the University of North Carolina Press published David T. Gleeson's The Green and the Gray: The Irish in the Confederate States of America .  It is  a sprawling study that is already receiving high praise from historians and journalists.  In the Boston Globe Michael Kenney writes "As his analysis unfolds, there is much that will surprise, perhaps even unsettle, Boston readers familiar with the abolitionists, the Massachusetts 54th, and the summertime encampments of reenactors. Gleeson looks at the role of Irish-Americans in the Southern debate over slavery, in the Confederate Army, on the homefront, and in the aftermath of the defeat." Over at the Irish Times Myles Dungan seems to agree. "Gleeson goes well beyond the merely anecdotal," says Dungan.   Gleeson conveys "a sense of what it was to be an Irish immigrant in the southern states that formed the Confederacy between 1861 and 1865." David Gleeson is no stranger to the sub...

Randall Stephens How did Stalin control the media during World War II?  And how did that level of control shape the direction of the war and compare to similar efforts in Germany?   Karel C. Berkhoff explores these and other questions in his June 2013 Historically Speaking essay, "Motherland In Danger: How Stalin Micromanaged The Media During The War With Nazi Germany and Hurt Mobilization Efforts." (See the full piece at Project Muse .) Asks Berkhoff: "If you lived, say, in Novosibirsk or Tashkent during World War II, what were you told? What did Soviet newspapers and radio tell Soviet civilians, and what did it all mean for the outcome of the war?"  Throughout he notes that Stalin's extensive wartime propaganda stood out when compared to contemporaries.  Here's a brief excerpt: A close look reveals that during the war with Nazi Germany, known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War, Soviet propaganda was much more centralized than in Nazi Germany. Joseph...

Eric Schultz I was fortunate in early July to attend three days of the 150th commemoration of the Battle of Gettysburg, including a number of events sponsored by the Gettysburg Foundation . It was busy, colorful, sometimes somber but always tropical, a good reminder of what conditions were like in July 1863.  The battlefield itself, nearly 6,000 acres and sometimes called the “symbolic center of American history,” is both inspiring and beautiful.  The 150th commemoration included a retelling of the battle and featured first-person accounts. Events included a spectacular retelling of the battle (focused on first-person accounts), and the grand opening of the Seminary Ridge Museum at which visitors could climb its historic cupola to get a bird’s eye view of the battlefield and town. As I attended various gatherings, however, it struck me that Gettysburg was nothing less than a kind of living laboratory for how people access history. For example, there were lots (and lots) of fo...

Eric Schultz Brian Williams recently featured a story on the NBC Nightly News about the bureaucratic nightmare that has more than 900,000 American veterans awaiting disability benefits from the government. The Veterans Administration is promising to have the backlog cleared by the end of 2015, but for now, the average wait time is 273 days. After hearing this I had a flashback of sorts and walked downstairs into the basement, past the water softener and over by the Christmas ornaments to find the musty blue Rubbermaid tubs filled with my King Philip’s War notes from over twenty years ago.  Sure enough, there was the file marked “Veterans.”  I began leafing through it. In December 1675, 696 Massachusetts Bay soldiers mustered on Dedham Plain, thought to be the present Hyde Park section of Boston. They were to march south and meet with soldiers assembling in Plymouth and Connecticut colonies to form a thousand-man army and attack the Narragansetts in their large fort at today’...