Departments

Gil Troy

Gil Troy is a professor of history at McGill University and a visiting scholar in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution for the fall of 2015. His latest book — his tenth — is The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s .

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  • May 22, 2016 5:56 am

    The Secrets of the Woman in Hitler’s Bathtub

    by Gil Troy

    Discovered for her beauty when she was almost run over, Lee Miller went on to have one of the greatest careers that was later undermined by the horror she saw and experienced.
  • Mar 9, 2016 7:15 am

    Filming Rodney King’s Beating Ruined His Life

    by Gil Troy

    Twenty-five years ago, George Holliday awoke to the sound of sirens and helicopters, hit ‘record’ on his new video camera, and preserved one of the most racially volatile moments in U.S. history.
  • Feb 2, 2016 8:17 am

    Baseball’s First Naughty Hall of Famers

    by Gil Troy

    Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, and Honus Wagner were not exactly role models off the field when picked eighty years ago for the first Hall class.
  • Jan 21, 2016 5:17 am

    The Man Who Brought Us T-Rex

    by Gil Troy

    Barnum Brown is perhaps the most important paleontologist—and without him there likely would not have been a Jurassic Park.
  • Jan 21, 2016 4:53 am

    How Obama has turned back the clock on race relations

    by Gil Troy

    Americans celebrating Martin Luther King Day today should be proud of the incredible progress made since the civil-rights leader’s birth 87 years ago. At the same time, we should lament one of President Obama’s greatest failures.
  • Jul 6, 2013 6:40 pm

    America -- The Republic of Nothing?


    Image via Shutterstock.

    Cross-posted from the National Post.

    As the United States celebrates its 237th anniversary this week, the country is undergoing dramatic changes demographically, structurally and ideologically. Last week, the Supreme Court made historic decisions about race relations and gay marriage, while the Senate advanced a major immigration reform, proposing a 13-year-process for transforming 11 million illegal aliens into citizens. America’s face is changing. But as the country becomes more diverse, dynamic, and broadminded, the challenges of retaining some ideological glue, some social stability, and some cultural thickness are growing exponentially. As America builds a Republic of Everything, it must not build a Republic of Nothing.

  • Jun 6, 2013 8:56 am

    How Come We Don’t Call RFK’s Assassination Palestinian Terrorism?


    RFK moments after being shot by Sirhan Sirhan. Credit: Wiki Commons.

    Forty-five years ago, on June 6, 1968, New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy died of gunshot wounds. His assassination, coming five years after his brother Jack’s and two months after Martin Luther King’s, traumatized America. Amid the tumultuous 1960s, with youth rioting, crime soaring, blacks protesting, the Vietnam War souring, and these young, visionary leaders dying, Americans wondered: “is ours a sick society?” While America then needed reforming, the soul-searching around Robert Kennedy’s assassination was unmerited. The truth -- which most overlooked then -- was that this Kennedy assassination was the first major act of Palestinian terrorism targeting the United States.

  • Apr 19, 2013 2:47 pm

    Why the Brits -- But Not the Yanks -- Quarreled over Thatcher's Finale


    Credit: Flickr/rahuldlucca

    Most Americans are surprised that Margaret Thatcher’s death and funeral proved so divisive in Great Britain. In the United States, the eulogies hailing the “Iron Lady” for resurrecting British spirit, saving England’s economy and helping to defeat the Soviet Union, paralleled the warm farewell Americans gave Ronald Reagan when he died in June 2004. The more contentious British reaction -- including the surprising campaign to propel “Ding, Dong the Witch is Dead” to the top of the charts -- reveals differences in Thatcher’s and Reagan’s leadership styles, as well as enduring contrasts between British and American political culture.

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