Paul Buhle’s Review of Charles Austin Beard: The Return of the Master Historian of American Imperialism in the Progressive

This entry was posted in notebook and tagged Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Charles Austin Beard Civil War Columbia University Franklin Delano Roosevelt Great Depression Harry Truman Howard Zinn John Hobson Mary Beard New Deal Pearl Harbor Progressive Magazine Robert La Follette Ruskin Hall Spanish-American War University of Wisconsin Vietnam War William Appleman Williams Woodrow Wilson World War I World War II on by .

Paul Buhle wrote an excellent review article which appeared on the Progressive Magazine’s website on February 20, 2019. The piece titled “Charles Beard: Bob La Follette’s Friend” is republished here with permission. Charles Beard: Bob La Follette’s Friend A new book corrects the record on the anti-imperialist historian—a close ally of “The Progressive’s” founder—whose work was […]

Charles Beard, an anti-imperialist, stood in stark comparison with his hawkish liberal contemporaries.

Review of Moro: L’inchiesta senza finale by Fabio Lavagno and Vladimiro Satta

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Fabio Lavagno and Vladimiro Satta, Moro: L’inchiesta senza finale. Rome: Edup, 2018. 295 pp. €22.00. Reviewed by Richard Drake, University of Montana For Italians living in the 1960s and 1970s, Aldo Moro epitomized the country’s Christian Democratic political establishment. He had served in the country’s highest political offices, including stints as premier and foreign minister. […]

Taking a look back before moving forward at UM

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As the University of Montana considers its future, some tested ideas about higher education may shed light on the darkened and unmarked path stretching before us. The most tested such idea of all is the humanistic tradition. The modern university took its bearings from the Italian humanists of the 14th and 15th centuries. They promised […]

Course Syllabus: The Economic Interpretation of History and Understanding American Politics Today

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This is the syllabus for an upcoming course being taught at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UM (MOLLI) January 15 through February 19, 2019 titled “The Economic Interpretation of History and Understanding American Politics Today”. Course Syllabus With the publication in 1913 of An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, Charles Austin […]

MOLLI 2018
Charles Austin Beard: The Return of the Master Historian of American Imperialism

The Economic Interpretation of History as a Way of Understanding American Politics

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With the publication in 1913 of An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, Charles Austin Beard (1874-1948) became one of the most famous, influential, and controversial historians in America.

Italy’s Populist Earthquake

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“We have the sensation of being on the eve of an earthquake,” Corriere della Sera economics writer Dario Di Vico observed on the day of Italy’s elections in early March. The results would show that some 65 percent of the electorate was opposed to the political status quo represented chiefly by the center-left Partito Democratico of Matteo […]

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George Scialabba’s “Last Men and Women” Seminar at the University of Montana

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George Scialabba spoke in the President’s Lecture Series at the University of Montana on Monday, 12 March. He gave this year’s Ezio Cappadocia Memorial Lecture in Politics and History in the series. An essayist and critic, Scialabba has a highly unusual background for an American intellectual. As a high school student and then at Harvard […]

Left-Wing Populism Meets ‘La Grande Crisi’: Making Sense of Italy’s Five-Star Movement

This entry was posted in notebook and tagged 2018 Italian election Alessandro Di Battista Beppe Grillo Cgil (Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro) Christian Democratic Party (Italy) Cisl (Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori) Domenico De Masi European populism European Union Five Star Movement (M5S) Foglio (Newspaper) Forza Italia (FI) German Green Party Gian Antonio Stella Gianroberto Casaleggio Hugo Chavez Italian Communist Party Italian politics Italy Jean-Jacques Rousseau La Grande Crisi Luigi Di Maio Mani Pulite Manlio Di Stefano Marine Le Pen Matteo Renzi National Front (France) Partito Democratico (PD) Pier Luigi Bersani Rafael Correa Roberto Fico Rousseau Platform Sergio Rizzo Silvio Berlusconi Syriza Party (Greece) Uil (Unione Italiana del Lavoro) Virginia Raggi Viviane Forrester Vladimir Putin on by .

If China, now the factory of the world, has been the biggest winner in the globalized economy, Italy has been one of its biggest losers. The Italian economy has suffered from low growth and rising levels of income inequality for the past twenty years. The global economic meltdown of 2008 made Italy’s already bad situation worse. As economics writer Dario Di Vico observes in his analysis of growing income inequality in Italy, “We risk entering a lasting regime of descending mobility: the [social] elevator is going down instead of ascending….”

Beppe Grillo

Review: GIOVANNI MARIO CECI. Il terrorismo italiano: Storia di un dibattito.

This entry was posted in notebook and tagged Aldo Moro Angelo Ventura Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura Bologna Carlo Schaerf CIA Claire Sterling Cold War Donatella della Porta Edward S. Herman Franco Ferraresi Franco Ferrarotti Giovanni Mario Ceci Giuseppe De Lutiis Italy Joseph Conrad Julius Evola KGB Maurizio Rossi Milan Ordine Nuovo (New Order) Piazza Fontana Red Brigades Soviet Union on by .

Review of GIOVANNI MARIO CECI. Il terrorismo italiano: Storia di un dibattito. Giovanni Mario Ceci. Il terrorismo italiano: Storia di un dibattito. (Studi Storici Carocci, no. 199.) Rome, Italy: Carocci editore, 2013. Pp. 342. €35.00. By Richard Drake The American Historical Review, Volume 122, Issue 5, 1 December 2017, Pages 1699–1700, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/122.5.1699 Published: 11 December […]

Why Every European Country Has a Trump or Sanders Candidate 1

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The following article first appeared on The American Conservative on August 28, 2017. The suicide in the Friuli region of northern Italy earlier this year of a 30-year-old man, identified in the newspapers only as Michele, has become a symbol of the country’s unemployment tragedy, particularly as it affects young people. Though much worse in […]

Passport, April 2017 Cover

The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of the American Empire

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The following review of The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of the American Empire by Stephen Kinzer appeared in Passport: The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Review, April 2017. That Stephen Kinzer, an outstanding foreign correspondent and world affairs columnist, had contemporary American foreign policy uppermost in mind when he wrote […]

“Italy’s Next Crisis Could Be Its Worst” from The American Conservative

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The following article first appeared on The American Conservative on June 6, 2017.   Italy’s Next Crisis Could Be Its Worst Anarchist violence and Muslim extremism might produce a near-failed state.   Italy is not Greece. The latter is technically a failed state because of its overwhelming public and private indebtedness. But Italy is in […]