Articles by Gil Troy
Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University in Montreal and a Visiting Scholar affiliated with the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. His latest book Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents will be published this June by Basic Books. This spring the University Press of Kansas released the paperback edition of his book Hillary Rodham Clinton: Polarizing First Lady, having been published in hard cover in 2006. Troy is the author of Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s, published in 2005 by Princeton University Press and released in paperback in 2007. It has been called a "masterly study of Ronald Reagan's presidency - the best single book we have on his administration to date." His two other works in American history were Mr. and Mrs. President: From the Trumans to the Clintons (2000) - first published by The Free Press as Affairs of State: The Rise and Rejection of the Presidential Couple Since World War II and See How They Ran: The Changing Role of the Presidential Candidate, originally published by the Free Press in 1991, then released in an updated paperback edition by Harvard University Press in 1997. Troy is also the author of Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today. The book has been hailed as a "must read," and the most persuasive presentation of the Zionist case "in decades." It has been released in a third expanded and updated edition, having sold over 15,000 copies. Troy is a native of Queens, New York. He received his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard University. After receiving his Ph. D in History in 1988, he taught History and Literature at Harvard for two years. In September 1990, Troy became an assistant professor of history at McGill University. In 1995, Troy was promoted to Associate Professor and granted tenure. From 1997 to 1998 he served as chairman of McGill's history department. In March, 1999 he was promoted to Full Professor. Maclean's magazine has repeatedly labeled him one of McGill's "Popular Profs" and the History News Network designated him one of its first 12 "Top Young Historians". He can be reached via email at gtroy@videotron.ca
Gil Troy: Obama quickly plunged into a much-needed defense of the bank bailout and his stimulus plan. In his most human moment, he acknowledged that Democrats and Republicans united in hating the bailout: “I hated it. You hated it. It was about as popular as a root canal.” His stimulus defense appeared more substantive as he detailed the bill’s accomplishments. But to avoid being too professorial, Obama failed to connect the dots, not quite explaining how that controversial bill actually created the jobs he enumerated.
Great pessimism during economic busts is as characteristically American as great optimism during boom times. The oh-ohs’ whateverism is less fleeting and thus more dangerous. A culture of denial, disengagement, dissociation is dysfunctional. We need a culture of engagement and responsibility, even with all our traumas, distractions and high-tech toys.
Inauguration Day, 2009 in Washington, DC was grueling but inspiring. The minus 8 degree cold was bone-chilling. The crowd of two million plus was frequently suffocating. The 20,000-officer security cordon was smothering. Yet people endured …
Senator John McCain’s campaign should be experiencing a surge in this final week of the campaign, a narrowing of the gap between him and his opponent Senator Barack Obama. In almost every campaign since 1988, …
The moment when Hillary Rodham Clinton suspended the state-by-state roll call vote she had demanded, moving for the 2008 Democratic Convention to nominate Senator Barack Obama by acclamation, was extraordinary. Network cameras, inevitably, zeroed in …
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