For those unfamiliar, Der Spiegel is a weekly German news magazine. According to Wikipedia, it has a weekly circulation of 840,000 copies, making it the largest such publication in Europe. Here is the June 6, 2020 cover. Rough Translation: “The...
Germany
Merkel: “Since German unification—no, since the Second World War—no challenge to our nation has ever demanded such a degree of common and united action”
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor who many are calling “the leader of the free world,” is giving it to us straight. Here is a taste of Justin Davidson’s New York Magazine coverage of Merkel’s recent coronavirus speech: Angela Merkel doesn’t...
How Billy Sunday Handled the 1918 Influenza Epidemic
One of the first things I ever published was a journal article on evangelist Billy Sunday’s 1918 crusade in Chicago. The title played-off a line from a popular Frank Sinatra song about Chicago: “The Town That Billy Sunday Could Not...
Did Bruce Springsteen Bring Down the Berlin Wall?
Of course he did. 😉 [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvOgpkOL4E0&w=560&h=315] Here is Erik Kirschbaum’s piece at the Los Angeles Times: Springsteen’s July 19, 1988, concert, the largest in East German history, reflected the growing thirst for freedom of young people inside East Germany,...
On Book Exhibits and World War II Material Culture (#AHA19)
Megan Jones of The Pingry School offers one more post from the floor of the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Chicago. In this post, Megan reflects on her last day of the conference with a nod to the book exhibit and a...
Is Bavaria a Christian State?
On Tuesday of this week I spent the afternoon with Seth Perry of the Department of Religion at Princeton University and Dave Krueger of Temple University working with international religion scholars from Argentina, Azerbaijan, Romania, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Sudan, India, Ukraine,...
The “America First Exhibit” at the Holocaust Museum
My forthcoming book Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump devotes several pages to Trump’s use of the phrase “America First.” The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum‘s exhibit “Americans and the Holocaust” was not yet open when I was writing these...
*Fire and Fury* Surges to the Top of Best-Seller Lists
Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House is currently ranked #1 at Amazon. But this post is not about that book. According to The Huffington Post, a Canadian historian‘s book on World War II–Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing...
Angela Merkel and the Future of Christianity In Europe
I recently asked historian Benjamin Brandenburg to take some of his recent tweets on Brexit and Christianity and write them up for The Way of Improvement Leads Home. I am glad he agreed to do so. Brandenburg is an...