Greg Grandin

The journalist Walter Lippmann identified in Henry Ford, for all his peculiarity, a common strain of "primitive Americanism." The industrialist's conviction that he could make the world conform to his will was founded on a faith that success in economic matters should, by extension, allow capitalists to try their hands "with equal success" at "every other occupation." "Mr. Ford is neither a crank nor a freak," Lippmann insisted, but "merely the logical exponent of American prejudices about wealth and success.

Henry, there__ something I would like to tell you, for what it__ worth, something I wish I had been told years ago. You__e been a consultant for a long time, and you__e dealt a great deal with top secret information. But you__e about to receive a whole slew of special clearances, maybe fifteen or twenty of them, that are higher than top secret.I__e had a number of these myself, and I__e known other people who have just acquired them, and I have a pretty good sense of what the effects of receiving these clearances are on a person who didn__ previously know they even existed. And the effects of reading the information that they will make available to you.First, you__l be exhilarated by some of this new information, and by having it all__o much! incredible!__uddenly available to you. But second, almost as fast, you will feel like a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this information, which presidents and others had and you didn__, and which must have influenced their decisions in ways you couldn__ even guess. In particular, you__l feel foolish for having literally rubbed shoulders for over a decade with some officials and consultants who did have access to all this information you didn__ know about and didn__ know they had, and you__l be stunned that they kept that secret from you so well.You will feel like a fool, and that will last for about two weeks. Then, after you__e started reading all this daily intelligence input and become used to using what amounts to whole libraries of hidden information, which is much more closely held than mere top secret data, you will forget there ever was a time when you didn__ have it, and you__l be aware only of the fact that you have it now and most others don__ _ and that all those other people are fools.Over a longer period of time__ot too long, but a matter of two or three years__ou__l eventually become aware of the limitations of this information. There is a great deal that it doesn__ tell you, it__ often inaccurate, and it can lead you astray just as much as the New York Times can. But that takes a while to learn.In the meantime it will have become very hard for you to learn from anybody who doesn__ have these clearances. Because you__l be thinking as you listen to them: __hat would this man be telling me if he knew what I know? Would he be giving me the same advice, or would it totally change his predictions and recommendations?_ And that mental exercise is so torturous that after a while you give it up and just stop listening. I__e seen this with my superiors, my colleagues _ and with myself.You will deal with a person who doesn__ have those clearances only from the point of view of what you want him to believe and what impression you want him to go away with, since you__l have to lie carefully to him about what you know. In effect, you will have to manipulate him. You__l give up trying to assess what he has to say. The danger is, you__l become something like a moron. You__l become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they may have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours.

A new book by 'New York Times' reporter Charlie Savage, 'Power Wars,' suggests that there has been little substantive difference between George W. Bush's administration and Obama's when it comes to national-security policies or the legal justifications used to pursue regime change in the Greater Middle East.

Most critical histories of U.S. involvement in Iran rightly began with the joint British-U.S. coup against democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, which installed Pahlavi on the Peacock Throne. But it was Kissinger who, in 1972, greatly deepened the relationship between Washington and Tehran.

Harriet Washington, in 'Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present,' documents the smallpox experiments Thomas Jefferson performed on his Monticello slaves. In fact, much of what we now think of as public health emerged from the slave system.

At issue when professional sports teams take the name of Native Americans is the problem of mimicry: having appropriated the land and wealth of America's vanquished peoples, settler culture then appropriates the supposed values and spirit of the vanquished as well.

Haiti and the Dominican Republic don't just share an island, Hispaniola, but a history, one that includes all the signal events that went into creating the modern world: Columbus, conquest, genocide, slavery, imperial war, revolution, and U.S. counterinsurgencies and military occupations.