The Women Who Won the Vietnam War
By Sherry Buchanan
The Latest 
-
Flying the Confederate Battle Flag in the North is a Special Sort of Disgrace
Daniel Koch
Upstate New York was once the most pro-Lincoln and anti-slavery part of the Union. The growing presence of Confederate symbols there insults the region's history and contributions paid in blood for freedom.
-
Four Myths of Presidential Power
Daniel Farber
History looms large in arguments about the Constitution these days. But there are widespread misunderstandings of what history tells us about presidential powers, from making war to being impeached.
-
Portrait of the Artist as a Businesswoman: Dorothea Lange’s Lost San Francisco Years
Jasmin Darznik
Dorothea Lange's early work as a portrait photographer for San Francisco's elite seems at odds with her famous documentary work of the Depression. But that work sharpened her sense of aesthetics and of her own place in the world, foundations of her more famous later period.
-
Why Is Pentagon Spending Rising When "We Can't Afford" Everything Else?
Lawrence Wittner
The self-interest of politicians and defense contractors, not popular demand or military necessity, is driving a new US military buildup that continues unabated even as other vital national priorities go begging.
-
How the Great War Helped the Drive for Prohibition
Kathryn Smith
Hatred of Germans (and their beer) was essential to dry propaganda.
-
How the Republicans Became the Anti-Abortion Party, and What it Means for the GOP Today
Donne Levy
Conservative evangelicals rode the abortion issue to a place of power in the Republican coalition. Will their success help or harm the party now that abortion rights are more imperiled than at any time since 1973?
-
The Roundup Top Ten for October 22, 2021
The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the Web this week.
-
Passing Time and the Challenge of Catching "Eyewitnesses to History"
Thomas Doherty
Historians have only recently wised up to the need to capture eyewitness remembrances of events. As the "Greatest Generation" passes and the Baby Boomers age, a cultural historian urges: talk to people while you still can.
-
The Trouble with Truth, Reconciliation, Peace and Friendship Treaties: Indigenous Land and Resource Rights Among the Mi’kmaq
Rachel Herrington
Honoring the history of the treaties is not just about the past but also about the present and future of indigenous Canadians.
-
West Virginia's Founding Politicians Understood Democracy Better than Today's
Daniel W. Sunshine
The filibuster, as currently constructed, violates what West Virginia founder Waitman Willey described as “the great fundamental political right of the majority to rule.” West Virginia’s quest to improve their democracy offers lessons on how to heal our own.
-
“Some of Our Superpatriots are Simply Going Crazy”: America's Response to the Fall of France
Michael S. Neiberg
The fall of France in 1940 disrupted Americans' understandings of their stable and secure place in the world. One response was intense nativism and paranoia about spies and subversives that resonate with today's pandemic response.
-
Scoring the Presidents on Integrity and Humanity in Dealing with Native American Nations
Michael A. Genovese
Since George Washington, the President has had principal influence in government policy toward Native American nations. The nation's record is not generally a proud one but some presidents have dealt more honorably than others.
-
The Fantasy of Hispanic Heritage Month
Frank P. Barajas
Conceived by a Congressman to honor the contributions of ethnic Mexicans to American society, Hispanic Heritage Month is based in a mythical Spanish past that obscures the indigenous history of the west and legitimates the succession of power from Iberian to Anglo elites.
-
"The Essential Kerner Commission Report" Links Past and Present, but Abridges the Committee's Process
James Thornton Harris
The Kerner Commission shocked Lyndon Johnson and much of white America by insisting that "the Negro problem" was in fact a problem of pervasive white racism. Two books are essential reading for understanding the commission's work and it's unmet demands.
-
We Need Poets as Much as Physicists and Artists as Much as Actuaries
David P. Barash
We need the expertise of scientists and technologists to solve big problems, but we need artists to make people care enough about those problems to demand solutions.
-
The Roundup Top Ten for October 15, 2021
The best opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week.
-
Recovering Women's Reproductive Lives, One Mutilated Record at a Time
Catherine Prendergast
"Far too often, archives resemble graveyards with marked tombs for men in which a few bones of women are scattered. It’s time to dig up all of the bones and ask them what story they tell."
-
Reviving the Conflict Between Columbus and Taíno Chieftain Caonabó Through Historical Fiction
Andrew Rowen
By resisting the conquest of Columbus, Taíno peoples made the story of conquest their story too. A novelist explains how he worked to recover both sides of the conflict, including the values and worldview of Native and European antagonists, through historical fiction.
-
The Horseshoe Crab is the Unsung, and Threatened, Hero of the Pandemic
William Sargent
With due regard to Anthony Fauci, horseshoe crabs are truly the unsung heroes of the pandemic.
-
Imagine a World Remade by US-China Cooperation
Lawrence Wittner
The world has everything to gain from remaking the US-China relationship around cooperative approaches to global problems. Will Xi and Biden follow the example of Reagan and Gorbachev?
-
Tracing World War 2's Impact on Sicily's Cultural Heritage Sites and Museums
Antonino Crisà
World War II profoundly affected museums and antiquities in Sicily; a new research project is examining this underappreciated destructive consequence of war.
-
Blog
The Burden of the Pile
Ann Banks' Confederates in My Closet
For years the papers I’d inherited gathered dust in my closet, shut away, easy to ignore. Occasionally it would cross my mind that I should take them out and go through them – p...
-
Blog
-
The Roundup Top Ten for October 8, 2021
The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week.
News
- Oklahoma ACLU Files Suit Against State Ban on Critical Race Theory
- St. Malo, Louisiana, Site of Earliest Filipino-American Settlement, Threatened by Climate Change
- Executive Privilege was out of Control Before Steve Bannon Claimed It
- Can Skeletons Have Racial Identity?
- Diver Discovers 900-Year-Old Sword Dating to the Crusades
- Leonard Moore: On Teaching Black History to White People
- How Cigarettes Became a Civil Rights Issue
- David Graeber and David Wengrow Have Given Human History a Rewrite
- Dems Worry Not Passing Biden Agenda Will Kill Them in the Midterms. Does Legislation Actually Matter?
- #HATM: "Historians at the Movies" Builds Community One Screening at a Time
Trending Now
