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In 1989, change was in the air throughout all of Eastern Europe. Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost and perestroika – openness and restructuring – signaled a radically different tone from Moscow and people in the Eastern Bloc took notice. The Berlin Wall, which had long stood as a concrete symbol of the clash between East […]
“There was real jubilation in the streets the first few weeks. It’s still known as the Revolution of the Carnations, and is famous for its civility. I have a wonderful picture of my son, who was six years old, standing in between two young Portuguese soldiers. They’re holding rifles, each with a carnation in the […]
In 1958, the 14 July Revolution ended the thirty-seven-year Hashemite monarchy of Iraq in a coup d’état and established the Republic of Iraq. The Free Officer group, led by General Abd al-Karim Qasim and his associate Colonel Abdul Salam Arif, was inspired by Pan-Arab nationalism and Nasser of Egypt’s 1952 overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy. […]
The early 1950s witnessed a thaw in the Communist monolith. Stalin’s death in 1953 led to Khrushchev’s “secret speech” in 1956 which condemned excesses of the past. The U.S. and USSR agreed to a treaty in 1955 establishing Austria as a neutral and demilitarized country, which encouraged hopes in Hungary of a similar arrangement. July […]
Back to Memoirs and Occasional Papers French Covert Action in the American Revolution “If Benjamin Franklin’s covert operations are not well known to the American public, the secret role of the French in the birth of our nation has certainly been minimized and usually overlooked by historians. James Potts’s book successfully fills this gap. Moreover, […]
On October 18, 2021 America lost a remarkable leader and public servant. Colin Powell served as the highest ranking soldier, national security advisor, and diplomat. Powell served the U.S. Army for thirty-five years, rising through the ranks to become a four-star general. Additionally, Powell was the first Black national security advisor, chairman of the Joint […]
It’s very common for Peace Corps volunteers to feel disheartened, as David Greenlee did as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia during the 1960s, when they seemingly fail to make a difference in the communities they serve. It’s also never clear right in the middle of a volunteer’s two-year tour what impact the experience will […]
Korean Christianity appears to observers as embedded in Korean history and tradition. However, this is not the case, as Korean Christianity is still a minority religion and only entered mainstream South Korean society during the mid-twentieth century, when many American Christian missionaries began evangelizing in South Korea. One of them was a young Methodist Missionary […]
The Fall of Saigon is perhaps one of the most infamous moments of the Vietnam War. Following the fall of other large cities to the North Vietnamese Army, the U.S government launched covert operations to evacuate Americans and Vietnamese civilians from the country. These evacuations would become some of the most famous in history. In […]
Like much of Africa, Ethiopia experienced a watershed moment at the end of World War II, emerging out from under the colonial rule of Italian occupation. Newfound independence flickered out after thirty years, submerging the country into communism after a period of civil unrest in 1974. Until the fall of the Soviet Union, Ethiopia would […]
