Historians in the News 
This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
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SOURCE: LitHub
Zachary Shore: the Struggle Between Vengeance and Virtue in WWII
Zachary Shore discusses the contrasting decisions to drop atomic bombs on Japan and rebuild Germany.
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SOURCE: Los Angeles Review of Books
1/21/2023
Julia Schleck on The Function of the University Today
by Michael Meranze
Julia Schleck's work ties the idea of academic freedom to the social role of the university and its internal labor practices, which threatens scholars with attacks from inside and outside the campus.
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SOURCE: The Nation
1/31/2023
The Bitter, Contested History of Globalization
Tara Zahra's book places the conflicts of the middle of the 20th century in the context of profound global debates about how interconnected the world should be, and on whose terms.
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SOURCE: WTTW
1/27/2023
Prof. Hasan Kwame Jeffries on Consulting for Hip Hop at 50 Documentary
The Ohio State professor served as a consultant for the four hour documentary produced by Public Enemy's Chuck D, which begins January 31.
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SOURCE: Jacobin
1/28/2023
Glenda Gilmore's Bio Shows Artist Romare Bearden Reckoning with the South
"Gilmore sets a timeline, critiques some striking artworks, and leaves the reader wondering why hardly anyone writes about art this succinctly."
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SOURCE: Washington Post
1/24/2023
Erika Lee and Carol Anderson on Myths and Realities of Race in American History
"The problem we have in the United States is that we use these myths as a way to diminish the humanity and the citizenship of large sectors of our population and to then craft policies based on myths."
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SOURCE: Substack
1/23/2023
Banished Podcast: Sunshine State's Descent Into Darkness
by Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron Snyder
Two historian podcasters evaluate the effort to politicize the history curriculum in Florida's K-12 schools and public colleges.
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SOURCE: Smithsonian
1/26/2023
Caroline Dodds Pennock on The Indigenous Americans Who Visited Europe
by Karin Wulf
In contrast to the stock story of the "Age of Exploration," Indigenous Americans often traveled to Europe afte 1492. A new book looks to this history to examine the origins of a cosmopolitan world.
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SOURCE: The Nation
1/24/2023
Why Can't the Democrats Build a Governing Majority? (Review of Timothy Shenk)
by Kim Phillips-Fein
In an implicit response to Richard Hofstadter's finding of the continuity of a narrow "American Political Tradition," Timothy Shenk examines the ways that activists have occasionally disrupted the political order and convinced people to "take a leap into an unknown future."
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SOURCE: New York Review of Books
1/25/2023
Victimhood and Vengeance: The Reactionary Roots of Christian Nationalism
by Linda Greenhouse
Three books offer illuminating and distressing insight on the eruption of Christian nationalism, a "deep story" in American cultural history that, when its adherents feel denied the power they expect, guides potentially violent vengeance.
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SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
1/17/2023
Kidada Williams on The Reconstruction that Wasn't
In the new "I Saw Death Coming," Williams describes a "shadow Confederacy" that refused to cede freedom or dignity to African Americans who often lived far from the reach of a federal government that was unreliably committed to their protection.
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SOURCE: New York Review of Books
1/22/2023
How the Russian Jews Became Soviet
The novelist Gary Shteyngart, who emigrated from the USSR to the US as a child, reviews Sasha Senderovich's "How the Soviet Jew was Made," a work that gives short shrift to neither the "Soviet" nor "Jewish" sides of the question.
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SOURCE: National Library of Medicine
1/22/2023
National Library of Medicine Announces 2023 History Talks
NLM History Talks promote awareness and use of NLM and related historical collections for research, education, and public service in biomedicine, the social sciences, and the humanities.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
1/23/2023
A Former Inmate Reviews an Oral History of Riker's Island
by John J. Lennon
"Leaving Rikers feels like a better chapter of your life is about to begin—even if that next chapter is a prison sentence."
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SOURCE: Modern Medieval
1/20/2023
What Can a Medievalist Teach us about Jacinda Ardern's Resignation and Women in Power?
Eleanor Janega joins Matthew Gabriele and David Perry to discuss the erasure of women in history and the recurrent disbelief about women doing public things today.
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SOURCE: Professor Buzzkill History Podcast
1/23/2023
David A. Bell Discusses "American Exceptionalism" with the Professor Buzzkill Podcast
"Dr. David Bell relates the long and strange history of the concept of “American Exceptionalism,” analyzing various interpretations of the phrase from the Puritan John Winthrop to President (and non-Puritan) Donald Trump."
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SOURCE: MSNBC
1/23/2023
Prof. Marvin Dunn: I was Teaching Before DeSantis was Born
Prof. Dunn discusses Florida's divisive concepts law and refusal to accept an AP course in African American Studies with MSNBC's Joy Ann Reid
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SOURCE: Yale Law School
1/23/2023
Legal Historian Reva Siegel on Dobbs
Legal historians have argued that the equal protection provisions of the 14th Amendment offer a more solid rationale for reproductive rights than the now-defunct right to privacy, though the court's majority has expressed skepticism while not directly ruling on the question.
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SOURCE: Jewish Telegraphic Agency
1/22/2023
Eric Alterman on the Shifting Debate over Israel-Palestine in America
The writer discusses his conclusions about the evolution of the debate among American Jews about the nature of their relationship to Israel and the moral status of American policy.
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/17/2023
Edward Larson Speaks to the New History Wars
by Jon Meacham
"To me, Larson’s unemotional account of the Republic’s beginnings confirms a tragic truth: that influential white Americans knew — and understood — that slavery was wrong and liberty was precious, but chose not to act according to that knowledge and that understanding."
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- Review: New Book Worships the False Idol of the Responsible Corporation
- Zachary Shore: the Struggle Between Vengeance and Virtue in WWII
- Julia Schleck on The Function of the University Today
- The Bitter, Contested History of Globalization
- Prof. Hasan Kwame Jeffries on Consulting for Hip Hop at 50 Documentary
- Glenda Gilmore's Bio Shows Artist Romare Bearden Reckoning with the South