Current Events that Relate to History
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CommentIt’s Weird That Eggs Were Ever Cheap
What were we thinking, buying so many of these fragile, messy, remarkable ovals? Get used to high egg prices, it was a miracle they were low in the first place.The Atlantic -
CommentBefore Trump, This President ‘Paralyzed’ Washington with Cuts
Andrew Jackson set the standard for the most tumultuous presidential term ever — at least until now.Retropolis -
Comment
USAID’s History Shows Decades of Good Work on Behalf of America’s Global Interests
USAID started in the 1960s as a way to offset the spread of communism. Since then, it has had various other soft-power benefits for the US.The Conversation -
AntecedentCruel to Your School
Public education is meant to be a great equalizer. That’s why Trump wants to do undo it.The Baffler -
ComparisonThe Gilded Age Never Ended
Plutocrats, anarchists, and what Henry James grasped about the romance of revolution.The New Yorker -
EtymologyThe Culture War Doesn’t Distract Us From the Class War; It Directs Us To It
On William Safire and the "nattering nabobs of negativism."Corey Robin Blog -
exhibitSocial Safety Net
How Americans through the years have approached the thorny questions of identifying who the government is obliged to help and how such assistance should be funded and distributed.
From the HNN Archive
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What Is the Role of the Historian?
Rethinking the job of history — and the American Historical Association — after the veto of the Gaza “scholasticide” resolution. -
Letting the World Scream
In 1984, the U.S. rejected the International Court of Justice’s jurisdiction, revealing its tendency to ignore international rules it sees as unfavorable — even when it helped write them. -
The First and Last Queen of Haiti in Exile
Queen Marie-Louise outlived most of her family, yet her story about the revolution and its aftermath was rarely consulted by those writing the era’s history. -
Ohio’s Little-Known Fascist Member of Congress
How a local prosecutor protected white supremacists and went on to a career in Washington, DC. -
The Forebears of JD Vance and the New Right
Revisiting the Agrarian-Distributists and their fabrication of an American past. -
Nuggets of Condescension
By universalizing their own economic history, Western observers have used the past to portray African economic culture as backward and inadequate. -
The Burned-Over District
The Northeast caught fire this fall, in a way that recalls its past. History has some lessons about how to manage the region’s fire seasons to come. -
Who Built the Panama Canal?
Finding testimony from the Afro-Caribbean workers who changed the Americas forever.