NOT EVEN PAST is a website produced by the faculty and students in the History Department at The University of Texas at Austin to make our research available to the public....We provide short, accessible, dynamic articles, podcasts, book discussons & more.... www.notevenpast.org
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Does the new Jackie Robinson biopic, 42, accurately portray this courageous individual? Read Dolph Briscoe IV’s review on Not Even Past.
Jackie Robinson signing autographs in the Brooklyn Dodgers’ dugout, Ebbets Field, April 11, 1947 (Image courtesy of Corbis Images)
“I would like to share with you my views on the political consequences of certain courses of action that have been proposed in regard to U.S. policy in Southeast Asia.”
This is the first line of a 1966 White House memo written by Vice President Hubert Humphrey warning that Americans would have little enthusiasm for war in Southeast Asia. Read more about this incredibly prescient document here.
Photo Credit: Members of the 101st Airborn Division aboard a USAF C-130 at Pham Thiet Air Base, Republic of Vietnam, for airlift to Phi Troung Air Base (Image courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration)
Imagine a resource that allows historians to evaluate the impact of mistakes over time. This isn’t a history book—it’s the new video game, BioShock Infinite. Today on NEP, Robert Whitaker reviews the game and discusses its use of history.
Photo Credits: Promotional Photo of BioShock Infinite (Courtesy of Irrational Games and 2K Games)
In 1950, the CIA was already deeply concerned with the possibility of communist incursion into southeast Asia. On October 13th, they published “Consequences to the US of Communist Domination of Mainland Southeast Asia,” which formally outlined the possibilities. Read more about it here.
Photo Credit: U.S. air and ground Marines fighting Chinese forces in Korea, 1950 (Image courtesy of the United States Federal Government)
Who were the people committing atrocities in the Yugoslav War? Were they “predisposed” towards murder and violence? Or were they “ordinary” people changed by their environment? Today on Not Even Past, UT undergraduate Daniel Rusnak reviews “They Wouldn’t Hurt a Fly,” which argues that anyone—including you or me—can become a war criminal under the right circumstances.
Photo Credit: UN Peace keepers collecting bodies from Ahmići, Bosnia and Herzegovina, April 1993 (Image courtesy of the ICTY)
Who was Bartolomé de las Casas? A reformer? A champion of indigenous peoples? Or was a he virulent racist and an enabler for Spanish imperialism? Today on Not Even Past, UT undergraduate Allegra Geller reviews “Another Face of Empire,” a history of this complicated and iconoclastic figure.
Photo Credit: An illustration of Spanish atrocities against native Cubans published in Las Casas’s “Brevisima relación de la destrucción de las Indias” (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Could a Muslim be President of the United States? Could a Jew? What about a Catholic? In 1788 Americans debated the Constitution’s “no religious test” clause that declared that there would be no religious requirements for people running for office. Read Denise Spellberg’s essay at Not Even Past.
Photo Credit: Thomas Jefferson’s 1764 edition of the Qur’an in English translation (courtesy Library of Congress)
This month we’re featuring Brian Levack’s new book, The Devil Within: Possession and Exorcism in the Christian West. Read his short essay about the book, watch an interview with the author, check out related books, including one by Aldous Huxley. At Not Even Past, UT Austin’s public history website.
painting credit: Girolamo di Benvenutto via Wikimedia Commons
Atari History for Pong's 40th Birthday
When Pong came out I was going to college in a small town in Iowa. My friends and I would drive 30 minutes down I-80 to play Pong at a truck stop. For HOURS. [Click on the link to get the whole story.]
On November 29, 1972, a startup called Atari announced the release of Pong, a coin operated “video game.” The company’s name was taken from the ancient Japanese board game Go, and vaguely translates as “to hit the mark.” In celebration, here are some things you might not know about Atari.
1. In today’s dollars, you could found Atari for the price of a MacBook Pro.
This week we posted a review of Greg Grandin’s Fordlandia by Cris Metz. Fordlandia was Henry Ford’s ill-conceived rubber production labor colony experiment established in Brazil beginning in the 1920s. Over the next few decades thousands of workers died as a result of Ford’s poor planning, arrogant ignorance of natural and cultural conditions, and corruption on the part of local and international officials. You can see more photos of Fordlandia during its existence on the Fordlandia set of The Henry Ford page on Flickr. Years of deforestation, attempts to cultivate non-native species, and the use of toxic chemical treatments took their toll on the region, even as native plants have reclaimed the abandoned colony. A reader alerted us to this collection of photographs by Scott Chandler of Fordlandia today.
