MacFarquhar Reviews “Nixon and Mao”

In the June 28th issue of the New York Review of Books, Roderick MacFarquhar reviews Margaret MacMillan’s Nixon and Mao: The Week that Changed the World:

She points out that in the aftermath both sides had their disappointments. Nixon and Kissinger “went too far, for example, in making assurances to China about withdrawing American forces from Taiwan, which they were not, in the end, able to keep.” As for the “China card”—the additional leverage that the new détente with China was supposed to give to the US—the Americans found that it did not lead to the North Vietnamese either ending the war or giving ground in the Paris peace talks. Nixon’s visit occurred, she argues, because both sides came to the conclusion at the same time that it was a promising idea. In the end it was the will of just four men to begin the week that changed history.

AHR Forum on Empires in the Atlantic World

The June 2007 issue of The American Historical Review (vol. 112, no. 3) features a forum on “Entangled Empires in the Atlantic World:”

James Epstein, “Politics of Colonial Sensation: The Trial of Thomas Picton and the Cause of Louisa Calderon“
Rafe Blaufarb, “The Western Question: The Geopolitics of Latin American Independence“
Eliga H. Gould, “Entangled Histories, Entangled Worlds: The English-Speaking Atlantic as a Spanish Periphery“
Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, “Entangled Histories: Borderland Historiographies in New Clothes?“

The are also two articles in this issue not related to the forum:

Daniel Wickberg, “What Is the History of Sensibilities? On Cultural Histories, Old and New“
Michael J. Sauter, “Clockwatchers and Stargazers: Time Discipline in Early Modern Berlin“

June Issue of the Journal of American History

The June 2007 issue of the Journal of American History (vol. 94, no. 1) features a round table on 20th-Century photographs:

This round table is an exploration of the diverse relationships between photographs and twentieth-century American history. To examine such relationships, this collection seeks to highlight multiple perspectives on photographs. We are interested in the often-hidden dynamics and consequences of the creation, dissemination, and reception of photo-graphs: what it is like to be a photographer, what is it like to be a subject, how images be-come consumer objects, how collections are created and ordered, and how photographs illuminate the meanings of American identity on individual, national, and global levels. These photographs focus on human faces: faces of Americans and faces Americans have photographed in the United States and abroad.

Here are the articles from this issue:
Ian Tyrrell, “Public at the Creation: Place, Memory, and Historical Practice in the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, 1907–1950“

Beth Bailey, “The Army in the Marketplace: Recruiting an All-Volunteer Force“

Manfred Berg, “Black Civil Rights and Liberal Anticommunism: The NAACP in the Early Cold War“

Globalization and Global Cities

The latest issue of the Journal of World History (Vol. 18, no. 2) contains a forum on globalization and global cities:

Marc Baer, “Globalization, Cosmopolitanism, and the Dönme in Ottoman Salonica and Turkish Istanbul“

Mark Levine, “Globalization, Architecture, and Town Planning in a Colonial City: The Case of Jaffa and Tel Aviv“

Jeffrey Wasserstrom, “Is Global Shanghai “Good to Think”? Thoughts on Comparative History and Post-Socialist Cities“