Ronald Radosh

Havana

Havana

A new generation of college-aged students, for whom the Cold War and communism is a distant phenomenon, have had democratic socialism legitimized for them by Bernie Sanders. It is just one short step for this same generation to argue that if socialism is a goal worth fighting for, then perhaps…

Juan Reinaldo Sánchez was drafted into the Cuban Army in 1967 and assigned to the Department of Personal Security, the branch dedicated to protecting Fidel Castro. Starting at the lowest rung, where he was assigned to the blocks where Cuba’s top revolutionary leaders worked, Sánchez quickly rose…

At the annual conference of the American Historical Association in New York City this month, anti-Israeli activist historians suffered a rare double defeat. Calling themselves Historians Against War (HAW), the group pushed first for an academic boycott of Israel, then for condemnation of alleged…

A front-page obituary of David Greenglass published this week in the New York Times is seriously flawed. Not only does it contain inaccurate statements of fact, it also misrepresents the views of historians about the Rosenberg atomic espionage case.

When Joshua Muravchik wrote this book, he could not have known how timely it would turn out to be. He would not have been surprised, however, by the worldwide condemnation of Israel for its “disproportionality” and “lack of restraint” in response to recent Hamas rocket attacks. He writes that…

Pete Seeger’s death at the age of 94 has brought forth scores of celebratory tributes. America had long ago showered him with honors, which all but made up for the scorn with which he was once held in the age of the blacklist. Seeger received the National Medal of the Arts from President Bill…

Reading this provocative and compelling analysis of John F. Kennedy’s political vision, I could not help but think of the reaction Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. had when his colleague John P. Diggins told him he was writing a book favorable to Ronald Reagan’s presidency. “Please,” Schlesinger said,…

One of the most successful endeavors of the academic left in the field of American history and foreign policy has been convincing many colleagues, and thousands of students throughout the country, that the traditional understanding of the Cold War is wrong. 

For those who considered themselves men of the left, it was a staple of belief that the very concept of totalitarianism was deeply flawed. Marxism, it was argued, came from the age of the Enlightenment and sought man’s perfection in a classless society that would end in something close to heaven on…

The historian Allen Weinstein has had, by any standard, an illustrious career. For some years, he was a professor of history at Smith. Moving on, he created and served as director of the Center for Democracy, which promoted democracy abroad and played a major role in validating the critical…

Two years ago, Oliver Stone announced that he was preparing to make a documentary about recent American history. It premieres on the CBS-owned cable network Showtime on November 12. Titled 

Since the publication in 1978 of Allen Weinstein’s definitive Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case, only partisans of the far left have continued to insist that Alger Hiss was innocent. They see him as a framed-up New Dealer who was painted by Republicans as a patsy through which they could indict…

The presidential campaign was heating up, and the progressives in office were nervous about their chances of holding the White House. It was unclear at first which contender for the Republican nomination would get the nod, but when the candidate eventually was chosen they denounced him as “a…

Political Folk Music in America from Its Origins to Bob Dylan by Lawrence J. Epstein

Three years ago, Morton Sobell gave an interview to Sam Roberts of the New York Times that surprised readers and stunned many who continued to believe that Sobell and his more famous codefendants, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, were innocent victims of political persecution who had never spied for the…

The Invisible Harry Gold

Two weeks ago, the FBI released 423 pages from its files on the late radical historian Howard Zinn. The bureau kept tabs on him for over 25 years, long before he became the bestselling author of A People’s History of the United States. Followers of Zinn’s career will not be surprised to hear the…

Spies

A Freewheelin' Time

The late director Billy Wilder, referring to the "Unfriendly Ten"-later called the Hollywood Ten, who refused to answer questions from the House Un-American Activities Committee in its 1950 investigation of Hollywood communism-joked that "only two were talented. The rest were just unfriendly."

As the Democratic primaries near their end, supporters of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have used a time-honored yet unexpected device to attack each other: old-fashioned redbaiting.

A Conservative History of the American Left

John Spargo and American Socialism

Power, Faith, and Fantasy

The End of Commitment

Shepherdstown, West Virginia

The acquittal on December 6 of Sami al--Arian, a former professor of computer engineering at the University of South Florida, on eight counts relating to terrorism was a setback not only for the Department of Justice and the Bush administration, but also for the struggle against Islamic extremism…

THE WEEKEND OF APRIL 5, the Organization of American Historians (OAH)--the leading association of professors of American history--held its annual meeting in Memphis, Tennessee. The best-attended event, televised live by C-SPAN, was a panel discussion entitled "Historians Reflect on the War in…

The Einstein File J. Edgar Hoover's Secret War Against the World's Most Famous Scientist by Fred Jerome St. Martin's, 358 pp., $27.95 THERE IS NO DOUBT that J. Edgar Hoover was guilty of sustained abuses of power. The FBI chief's anti-communism had (as the historian Richard Gid Powers puts it) such…

ON TUESDAY, February 5, PBS will air "Secrets, Lies and Atomic Spies," a documentary by the award-winning NOVA science unit. The program is a breakthrough for both PBS and NOVA, for it moves beyond its avowed subject of code-breaking to the impact that code-breaking had on our understanding of…

POOR BILL AYERS. His timing could not have been worse. Just when his widely publicized memoir of his days as a terrorist was coming out, our nation suffered its worst terrorist assault ever. Indeed, the very morning of the attack, the New York Times printed a fawning profile of Ayers and his…

John Lewis Gaddis