FootNotes

I borrowed the title of my book At the Borderline of Armageddon: How American Presidents Managed the Atom Bomb (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006) from Henry Kissinger, who wrote in his memoirs that “No previous generation of statesmen has had to conduct...

In talking about arms control during the Cold War, I will focus on the U.S.-Soviet Strategic Arms Control aspect of it. This is of course by no means the whole picture; it leaves out, among other things, the Nonproliferation...

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,...

The Dawn of the Nuclear Age The Nuclear Age began with the World War II Manhattan Project (1942–46), which culminated in the Trinity test on July 16, 1945, of the “Gadget” and the August 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and...

Warming Up to Innovation Technological change is a very important part of economic change and growth. The famous portrait by German immigrant Christian Schussele, “Men of Progress” (1862, at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.) can be a departure...

Military technology often seems to be the dark side of innovation, the Mr. Hyde roaming the back alleys of civilization for opportunities to work his worst on society. Its foundational figure in Western civilization is the Greek Hephaestus (whose...