Publications

“Gooood morning, Vietnam!!” I say that as a veteran of that particular conflict and also as a big Robin Williams fan. It’s my privilege to welcome you to the latest in our long-running and dare I say successful series...

There are three things the American people don’t understand about the war in Iraq right now: (1) how difficult the surge was and how different it was from the previous four years of the war; (2) that the surge...

In April 2009, the story of Richard Phillips’ capture by Somali pirates, and his dramatic rescue by Navy Seals, became one of the major news stories. The incarceration of Americans by foreign actors, as hostages and prisoners of war,...

If you tell your class that “Today, we are going to study the first Persian Gulf War,” you will get an unenthusiastic response. That war took place almost twenty years ago, in 1991. Today’s students weren’t born yet. To...

The story of the U.S. Navy in World War II has a central role in the long history of America’s wars and indeed of America itself. The story obviously had great meaning and taught important lessons to the generation...

Of all the various ideas that have been advanced on how to revive the U.S. and world economies, one of the most dominant is that of ingenuity, innovation, and the creation of new products and industries. What is innovation;...

Welcoming Remarks Walter A. McDougall,Co-Chair of FPRI’s History Institute and professor of history and international relations at the University of Pennsylvania, remarked that his December 1946 birth date coincided with Andrei Gromyko’s veto of the U.S. plan for UN...

The History Institute for Teachers is co-chaired by David Eisenhower and Walter A. McDougall. Core support is provided by the Annenberg Foundation and Mr. H.F. Lenfest. The next history weekend is What Students Need To Know About America’s Wars, Part II: 1920–Present, May 2–3, 2009,...

Looking at developments in Europe and the U.S.-European relationship today, like all things in history, in part we have been here before but in part what we are seeing is new. The current strains and issues in U.S.-European relations...

Piracy, a scourge that had been stamped out in the 19th century, still flourishes in those Hobbesian areas of the world where order and the “rule of law” do not exist. The seizure of a U.S.-flagged vessel, the MaerskAlabama,...