4 years ago we changed how we teach WWII -- emphasizing what a bunch of fucking dipshits the Nazis were, defeated by normies who considered the details. The Nazis sent an army into the USSR without winter coats. The US shipped 80 million gallons of Ice Cream into the Pacific. -OS

https://twitter.com/newrepublic/status/2034056397042704683

We did this because the traditional telling of WWII can lose sight of what a self-destructive fools' errand the Axis war effort was. And while it would not have been impossible for them to succeed, they were nothing near what they propagandized themselves to be. -OS

The Battle Hymn also exists in context where in the mid-19th century many republicans (supporters of republics not the party) saw a rising threat of despotism as an existential fight. They saw the civil wars in the US, Mexico, and revolutions in Europe as interconnected. -OS

https://twitter.com/lyndonbajohnson/status/1962913439891751105

It's why many European republicans from the failed 1848 Revolutions became heavily invested in a Union victory. Besides the fact that about of a quarter of the Union Army itself had been foreign born. Its also why a bunch of Union vets also fought for Benito Juarez. -OS

Alexander Hamilton, who wrote about 67% of of the Federalist Papers, was born in the port city of Charlestown on St. Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean, southeast of Puerto Rico. -OS

https://twitter.com/avaricum777/status/1962315221936321008

The second most heralded general of the Revolutionary War, whose name is emblazoned all over a bunch of American landmarks, was a French National. -OS

In 1960, Oveta Culp Hobby, who controlled every word printed in the Houston Post, quietly lined up most of the business community to support the Civil Rights Act passed that year, telling Sen. Lyndon Johnson she thought the oilmen were "damn fools" for defending segregation. -OS

https://twitter.com/Houstorian/status/1959950757458796923

Houston tried to position itself much like Atlanta during the Civil Rights Movement, as a city "too busy" and too rich "to hate." And wanting most of all to avoid the political embarrassment of a scene like Little Rock. -OS

Let's talk about TX-18, one of the first minority opportunity districts drawn in Texas, as mandated by Section 2 of the VRA, and now under threat from redistricting. Since its creation in 1972, it has always been centered on downtown Houston and the 5th Ward to the NE. -OS Section 2 of the VRA forbids racial gerrymandering to dilute the impact of minority voters. More than that, though, it demanded that where possible map makers had to keep "communities of interest" together in a district where they could elect a rep of their choosing. -OS

This has reached a height of stupidity that we'll do a thread on Southern realignment, since, you know, *we are Southern Historians and can speak with some authority about it. 1/Sorry Way Too Many. -OS

https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/1790697660447363545

There are numerous theories of Southern realignment that come from history and poli sci. Most of them overlap with each other, and they argue about details and variables, not core pillars. Stroller's bullshit is contradicted by, well... ALL OF THEM. 2/

Numerous layers --
Even before the pandemic, faculties' incentives were at odds with students' best interest (no one cares if you're a shit teacher as long as churn out the pubs). The pandemic pushed that further out of wack. Faculty are now as absentee as students -OS

https://twitter.com/WEGreen27/status/1782638729229713885

A lot of the job of being professor happens out of the classroom. The kid who comes to your office to learn how to deal with his scumbag landlord, etc. Now, hallways full of closed doors and absent professors. The core of the collegiate community is dead. -OS

To be honest, I acquired most my snideness about Caro living and working in DC before grad school. Because every blogging wannabe journalist worshipped him like a god and every dipshit clipboard jockey on the Hill treated the books like an instruction manual. It got annoying. -OS Read the books in college (there were only 3 then, and MOTS was brand new). And then mostly forgot about them. Got into other stuff. -OS

As requested, a start of a huge thread of things to read instead of Vol. 1&2 of Robert Caro: we'll take the issues in order -OS

PATH TO POWER has a gut-wrenchingly bad "history" of Texas and the Hill Country that was dated, even in 1982. Want good history of TX? Start here. Liked Caro's description of the lives of frontier women in TX before electricity? Our friend Angela Boswell does it better. -OS

Jesus... the Texas primary system by the 1940s had already been hopelessly corrupted by the White Primary law in 1923 and subsequent rewritings, which handed control of voting boxes themselves to county bosses. Every subsequent primary was fraudulent...

https://twitter.com/kulgr01/status/1669629190830735361

Then the New Deal starts shaking the TX Democratic Party into factions... which cleave completely in half in 1944, when the White Primary is struck down (Smith v. Allwright). Continued defense of White only candidate selection is the central issue of the 1940s that splits it...

A super thread of the best POTUS biographies, starting with Washington.

Criteria for selection:

A serious study with historiography and method (so no McCullough. Meachem or other puff piece writers).

Based in original research and archival documentation (so no Ambrose). -OS First up: Washington. Lots of bios out there on Washington, a few good, most are shit. The one that stands above rest is Robert Middlekauff's. He died just last year, taught at UC Berkeley, and was the great dean of Revolutionary War history. -OS