Author: admin

This American Life: Little War on the Prairie

Growing up in Mankato, Minnesota, John Biewen says, nobody ever talked about the most important historical event ever to happen there: in 1862, it was the site of the largest mass execution in U.S. history. Thirty-eight Dakota Indians were hanged after a war with white settlers. John went back to Minnesota to figure out what really happened 150 years ago, and why Minnesotans didn’t talk about it much after.

STW: Germany and the EU

On Start the Week Andrew Marr looks at Germany’s role in Europe. Katinka Barysch argues that despite the crisis, support for EU integration still dominates, and that unlike Britain, the ability to compromise is seen as a skill, not a weakness. Two British MPs, from left and right, Gisela Stuart and Douglas Carswell, remain sceptical about the EU, but German-born Stuart understands her birth country’s emotional connection to it. Carswell argues that the digital revolution calls for smaller, not larger governments, and Karen Leeder believes that despite Germany’s belief in the European project it still has not laid to rest the ghosts of unification.

'Operation Delirium:' Psychochemicals And Cold War

In the latest issue of The New Yorker, journalist Raffi Khatchadourian writes about a secret chemical weapons testing program run by the U.S. Army during the Cold War.

Khatchadourian’s article, “Operation Delirium,” profiles Jim Ketchum, one of the military doctors who helped lead the project. To this day, Ketchum maintains that the tests were conducted in the interest of a greater good.

Khatchadourian calls him “an unreconstructed advocate of chemical warfare,” and says that he “went about his work in the belief that chemicals are more humane instruments of warfare than bullets and shrapnel.”

Listen to an interview with Raffi Khatchadourian

But did lice kill Napoleon's quest for hegemony?

History has taught us that Napoleon, in his invasion of Russia in 1812, marched into Moscow with his army largely intact and retreated only because the citizens of Moscow burned three-fourths of the city, depriving the army of food and supplies. The harsh Russian winter then devastated the army as it retreated. The Russians’ victory, commemorated by Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, was one of the great upsets of military history.

But did lice kill Napoleon’s quest for hegemony?

Ten Reasons To Worship Rebecca West

At one time, the novelist, critic, feminist, and troublemaker Rebecca West, whose birthday incidentally is on Friday, was considered one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. In 1947, her picture was on the cover of Time and her dazzling, ferocious prose was admired across the world; but now she is largely overlooked, underread, and out of print. Here, then, are 10 reasons to drop everything and read Rebecca West

Two Interviews with Anne Applebaum on Eastern Europe Behind The Iron Curtain

If you read Anne Applebaum’s Iron Curtain as a manual on how to take over a state and turn it totalitarian, the first lesson, she says, would be on targeted violence. Applebaum’s book, which was recently nominated for a National Book Award, describes how after World War II, the Soviet Union found potential dissidents everywhere.

Listen to Applebaum on Fresh Air

Here, in a discussion on BBC’s STW, Applebaum  looks back at what happened when the Iron Curtain came down after WWII. Victor Sebestyen and Helen Szamuely disagree over the benefits of European integration after 1989. And Mark Mazower explores the chequered history of international government, and the vision of harmony at the heart of the European project.

How the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition with deadly consequences

Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.