Rhetorical analyses of speeches made by United States presidents and world leaders abound, particularly studies about addresses to nations in times of crisis. These are important because what presidents say amidst uncertainty and chaos defines their leadership in the eyes of the public. But with new forms of crisis rhetoric, our understanding of…

Western historians working in the first half of the twentieth century established a scheme for writing design history that continues to influence the global histories of today. The historians Douglas McMurtrie, Lucien Febvre, Henri-Jean Martin and Lawrence Wroth believed that the modern history of visual communication began with the advent and…

The book is entitled History Wars in the Classroom: Global Perspectives and examines how ten separate countries have experienced debates and disputes over the contested nature of the subject, for example the "Black Armband" and "Whitewash" factions in Australia who adopt opposingly celebratory or denigratory views of Australian…

The Second World War stands as the most devastating and destructive global conflict in human history. More than 60 nations representing 1.7 billion people or three quarters of the world's population were consumed by its horror. Not surprisingly, therefore, World War II stands as a landmark episode in history education throughout the world and its…

Neo-Romantic aspects of Hitler's National Socialism Movement in Germany and the New Left movement in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s are detailed in this paper. Following a discussion of fundamental concepts, the paper analyzes the Romantic bases of the two movements, including their use of nonverbal symbols; their views on morality,…

One of the most evident examples of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's mastery of the press and his manipulation of public opinion was the 1940 arrangement of the transfer of 50 United States naval destroyers to Great Britain while that nation was at war with Germany and Italy and while noninterventionist sentiment was quite strong in the United…

Results of a textbook study to determine what U.S. secondary school students are learning about contemporary Europe are presented, and highlights of the "Conference on Improving the Teaching of Contemporary Europe" at which the study was presented are summarized. A sampling of secondary school geography, world history, and U.S. history textbooks…

Intended for college-preparatory students at the high school level, this unit investigates the changing tides in U.S.-Soviet diplomatic relations and the reasons for the change. The focus of the unit is on a series of particular episodes such as the questions of famine relief in the 1920's, diplomatic recognition in the 1930's, World War II, the…

The pages of this book illustrate that as instruments of socialization and sites of ideological discourse textbooks are powerful artefacts in introducing young people to a specific historical, cultural and socioeconomic order. Crucially, exploring the social construction of school textbooks and the messages they impart provides an important…