Historians

THERE comes a moment in life when the weight of memory and emotion can lead to action. For Saul Friedlander, that moment arrived when he stumbled upon a misfiled Nazi document in Bonn, during research for a book on U.S.-German relations before World War II. During 1941, as news of Hitler's atrocities began spreading, Pope Pius XII had warmly invited the Berlin Opera to perform selections from Wagner at the Vatican, according to a formerly secret telegram that Friedlander read.

PORTLAND, Maine -- Long John Silver of "Treasure Island" fame, hobbling along on a peg leg with a talking parrot on his shoulder, set the mold for Hollywood's image of a pirate. Then came Captain Hook, thirsting for revenge against Peter Pan for cutting off his right hand and forcing him to wear an iron hook.

After more than 20 books, a Pulitzer Prize and many other honors for his work on the executive and legislative branches of government, 89-year-old historian James MacGregor Burns is ready for a new subject. "I'm working on the politics of the Supreme Court," he says, seated in a small armchair in his converted farmhouse, a sunny, cluttered, book-filled loft just down the road and up the hill from Williams College, where he studied as an undergraduate and later taught for decades.

Style films that packed a punch? A pair of fashion designers, a film historian and our fashion critic list their top five picks. Laura and Kate Mulleavy, designers of the Rodarte fashion line "Last Year at Marienbad" (1961) The chateau and the clothes are gorgeous. Coco Chanel did all the couture. "Week-end" (1967) It's blood-soaked and anti-consumer, but it also celebrates the hierarchy of luxury. The fashion is amazing. "Pretty in Pink" (1986) Growing up, it was the ultimate film.

Re "A hateful link," Opinion, Feb. 28 The perception that African Americans are subhuman is not just the result of the long-standing caricature of black people as apes. Since the inception of this nation, American institutions have contributed to the defamation of black people in a variety of ways. Authors of the Constitution described each slave as three-fifths of a man. White clergymen once preached that black people were the cursed descendants of Ham, the biblical son of Noah.

Historian Shelby Foote was buried Thursday under a huge magnolia tree near the graves of Civil War combatants whose exploits he chronicled in one of the best-known books about the conflict. Following a graveside service kept brief according to his wishes, Foote was buried on a tree-covered hill in Elmwood Cemetery, one of the South's most historic graveyards and the burial ground for more than 1,000 Civil War soldiers, including 22 generals.

Tell John Hope Franklin that he's the Rosa Parks of historians, and he lets out a long, astonished laugh. "Please," he says. OK, we won't push him on that right now. But the comparison is not as silly as he makes it sound. Franklin was in Washington recently to talk about his newly published autobiography, "Mirror to America." Now an emeritus professor at Duke, he's a handsome, white-haired man in a gray suit whose upright bearing makes him seem far younger than his 90 years.

For more than two decades, UC Irvine history professor Jon Wiener battled the federal government to gain access to a 300-page file the FBI kept on the late Beatles member John Lennon. Along the way, he scored small victories, gaining access to portions of the dossier and finding gems such as a 1972 FBI memo suggesting that Lennon, a British citizen, should be targeted for a drug arrest in order to aid efforts to deport him.

"Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train," is not just another in the sea of topical political documentaries relating to the coming election. It's a study of more than 50 years of political activism, as embodied by its still-active subject. A writer, professor and historian, Zinn's wrote the popular "A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present," which is in its fifth edition, having sold more than 1 million copies.