Lee Miller's lens on the 20th century
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Renowned photographer Lee Miller was in the right places at the right time during World War II. She photographed London during the blitz, Normandy after D-Day, and the liberation of Dachau concentration camp.
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"Ravens in the Storm: A Personal History of the 1960s Anti-War Movement" (Scribner, 352 pages, $25), by Carl Oglesby: One of the biggest radical groups in U.S. history, Students for a Democratic Society, imploded in 1969 amid a whirl of ideology and extremism, even as opposition to the Vietnam War soared.
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When everything gets an API then everything you can imagine will be possible if you can write a script.  And sometimes, to give you an idea, all that has to happen is that a wall come down. The latest, most intriguing such wall was the paywall at the NY Times. Now all of a sudden we find the wealth of information published by the NY Times over many decades is available without tariff. More important, we can point into the archive. We've gotten so accustomed to the wall, that you actually have to think when it may be possible to go in there, as if it left behind a wall in our minds, even after the wall on the web is gone. For example, the first episode of Ken Burns's The War, an epic series about World War II from the American perspective, cited several NY Times articles. If you looked carefully you could see the dates, and the actual headlines, and then if you have a browser handy, as I do (I have an iPhone) you can actually read the article while the narrative continues. Today this is mostly a gimick, but I suspect as we get used to having history so available (like having a library microfilm machine, which I used to spend whole days playing with when I was a kid) it will change our sense of information, perhaps as much as anything else that's ever been on the web. Take movie reviews for example. What a thrill to be able to read a review of a movie that I love that came out in 1932! The reviewers back then were more forgiving, less sarcasting, more enthusiastic. Consider their review of the Hollywood Revue of 1929, a favorite of mine that I've only seen once (I'd pay for a DVD, if it were available). They loved audible movies (that's what they called them) as if the term "talkie" was as elusive as "podcast" was in the summer of 2004. Again, we've just scratched the surface. Wouldn't you like to have NY Times movie reviews integrated with Netflix? Or have Yahoo's movie rating service available on the NY Times site. And I have to wonder whether they really have gone all the way. You can't see the reviews unless you're logged in. Can Google's robots, therefore, see the movie reviews? Unless the've made some special arrangements, it seems not.  It would be helpful to get a technical guide to the newly hatched NY Times on the Web, or (as in the old days of software) a reviewer's guide, so we get some ideas of what to look at. Clearly a lot of work went into opening up the Times archive. I'm going to be in NY the week of October 8 and will have some time toward the end of the week. If anyone at the Times would be willing to spend some time with me reviewing what's now open, that would be helpful. In any case, at least the Times today is somewhat more available to be integrated into the fabric of the web. That's some progress. How much, remains to be seen. Postscript: Kottke did a great job of skimming the surface of the newly opened Times when it first came online, just one week ago today.
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You expect corporate crisis mavens like Steve Miller, veteran of a dozen turnarounds, to focus on only one thing at a time. But now, as his career winds down, Miller, 66, is doing two things simultaneously: talking about what he's learned in 30 years of troubleshooting while also trying to show he's...
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Michael Palin turns his wandering eye to the life and locales of Ernest Hemingway, moving between past and present in the places that meant so much to the author.
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By Winkler, Jonathan Reed  Dew of Death: The Story of Lewisite, America's World War I Weapon of Mass Destruction. By Joel A. Vilensky with Pandy R. Sinish. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-253-3412-6. Photographs. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xviii, 213.
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I am reminded of an event 93 years ago, in which Franz Ferdinand was shot, plummetting Europe into war. World War III is coming, and the flashpoint is the Islamic world. Much like Serbia in 1913, it is fragile and fragmented and there is a determination by a large focused interest group to see violence done in the name of their agenda. And, in the use of violence, they have successfully advanced their agenda.
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Andy Warholâs films, in retrospective at the Museum of the Moving Image, are records of a world in which an artist worked, played and built his identity.
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Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.âs more than 20 books shaped discussions for two generations about Americaâs past.
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MOSCOW -- If you can judge a book by its cover, then the &quot;History of Russia and the World in the 20th Century&quot; tells students that the Soviet past was all pride and glory: Three of four cover photos invoke Soviet propaganda.
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Letters written during a tumultuous year and  unsealed this week offer a rare glimpse inside the heart and mind of  the 20th century's greatest genius
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A history of photography books illuminates the history of photography itself.
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Comment is free: Oliver James: The growth in relative materialism over the past 20 years is taking a heavy toll on the wellbeing of English-speaking nations
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The race is forcing a generation of Americans to examine the decisions they made back then.
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As the uproar over John Kerry&#39;s record during the Vietnam War illustrates, that polarizing conflict is still being fought. It probably will remain a flash point at least for the duration of the Vietnam-era generation.
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One hundred and fifty years on, the Lincoln-Douglas debates enjoy the dubious status of myth. This searching and illuminating book does the great service of bringing them back down to earth.
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The 20th century was the time when ideology far outstripped religion as the engine of mass destruction.