Historians

Eugene D. Genovese became one of the most notorious radical intellectuals in the country in 1965 when he addressed an all-night teach-in at Rutgers University on the Vietnam War. "I do not fear or regret the impending Viet Cong victory. I welcome it," the self-described Marxist historian declared, setting off a furor that had politicians such as Richard Nixon demanding his dismissal. An academic witch hunt ensued, but the onetime Communist Party member held to his political beliefs for decades.

There is perhaps no greater American monument to the War in the Pacific than Ford Island in Hawaii's Pearl Harbor. The naval base there with its old hangars, runway and control tower - some still showing damage from the Japanese attack that brought the United States into World War II - is on the National Register of Historic Places. Dotted around the island's 450 acres are memorials to the battleships Arizona, Utah and Oklahoma, which were sunk. Docked near the Arizona's submerged hull is the Missouri, the legendary battlewagon and scene of Japan's formal surrender on Sept.

Sometimes, Ben Traywick feels like one of those quick-draw gunslingers who once prowled the wood-planked sidewalks of this Old West town. One by one the challengers come, each seeking to test his skills. No shots are fired because these are factual face-offs aiming to define the true history of the town once home to such dangerous characters as Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp and Billy Clanton. For nearly half a century, Traywick was Tombstone's official historian. He's written three dozen books, such as "Death's Doings in Tombstone," and published 2,400 articles on such diverse topics as the infamous gunfight at the OK Corral and why lawman Wyatt Earp never smiled.

In the summer of 1823, according to newspaper accounts, a female grizzly bear sprang from the bushes along a tributary of the Yellowstone River and tore into a trapper and fur trader named Hugh Glass. She slashed his face, munched his scalp and removed a fist-sized hunk from his posterior. Members of Glass' expedition ran to his aid and killed the animal, but his prognosis looked grim. Two men were posted to stay behind and bury him when he succumbed to the inevitable. After six days, the duo abandoned him, still comatose and gurgling.

John Keegan, a British military historian whose critically acclaimed books spanned ancient and modern warfare and included the bestselling "The Face of Battle," has died. He was 78. Keegan died Thursday at his home in Kilmington, England, according to the London Daily Telegraph, where he had been military affairs editor. No cause of death was reported. A former senior lecturer at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, Keegan left teaching after a quarter of a century to join the Telegraph in 1986.

On May 27, Vicente Vasquez was digging into the bed of Echo Park Lake with his backhoe when he scraped a solid object buried under 4 feet of muck. What could it be? During the city's months-long dredging and rebuilding of the lake, workers have found lots of old bottles and assorted junk, but nothing sexy or sensational. No bodies, no bones, no rusted weapons used in unsolved crimes. Vasquez cleared a space around his discovery and saw the outlines of the buried treasure.

For social historian and critic Paul Fussell, the most enduring moments of truth came as a 20-year-old platoon leader in France during World War II. German shrapnel tore up his back and thigh. The blood and guts of fellow soldiers were spewed on him. His staff sergeant died in his arms. He realized there was nothing romantic about war, only mud, cold, death, outrage and fear. "The war," Fussell told the Washington Post decades later, "is behind everything I do," beginning with his book "The Great War and Modern Memory," a classic 1975 critique of art and literature after World War I that showed how that conflict forever changed Western society and culture.

Bob Stewart, a television producer who created such popular game shows as "To Tell the Truth," "The $10,000 Pyramid," and the enduring daytime hit "The Price Is Right," has died. He was 91. Stewart died Friday of natural causes at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said a son, Sande. "He was brilliant at creating game shows that America gravitated to," said Fred Wostbrock, a friend and game-show historian. "Bob was a really bright guy. He saw the commonality in everybody.

Long before there were "real" housewives on television, actor-politicians and even potential celebrity politicians like Donald Trump, theme restaurants, virtual online vacations and Kim Kardashian, who makes her living by being Kim Kardashian, there was "The Image," historian Daniel Boorstin's prescient examination of a nation in transition, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of its publication this year. When "The Image" first appeared, one critic predicted that it would join William Whyte's "The Organization Man" and John Kenneth Galbraith's "The Affluent Society" as one of those seminal books that not only capture the zeitgeist but change the American mind-set.

For a piece of history that gave us the rockets' red glare and bombs bursting in air, the War of 1812 tends to evoke a collective "Huh?" on the U.S. side of the border with Canada. "The War of 1812 has no compelling narrative that appeals to the average American," said Jerald Podair, a history professor at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. "It's just a hodgepodge of buildings burning, bombs bursting in air and paintings being saved from the invaders, all for a vaguely defined purpose.