Historians/History

Channelling George Washington (and Thomas Jefferson)

by Thomas Fleming

“This is Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and founder of the University of Virginia. Notice I don’t even mention the fact that I was governor of Virginia, sec

Channelling Martha Washington

by Thomas Fleming

“Is this Thomas Fleming? I hate to wake you up but it’s VERY important that we talk.”It was a woman’s voice, with the gentlest, most piquant Southern accent I’d ever hear

Channelling George Washington: The General and Patrick Henry

by Thomas Fleming

“Well, I did it.  I did what Martha insisted I HAD to do.  I invited Tom Jefferson and Jemmy Madison over for a glass of ambrosia and hoped there were no hard feelings about our little dustup.”

Channelling George Washington: The Glorious Fourth (Again)

by Thomas Fleming

“Here we are again, about to celebrate our most important holiday. What did we talk about last year?”  The deep voice was surprisingly mellow, considering the thorn

Channelling George Washington: Hating Things Military

by Thomas Fleming

“Have you read a single newspaper or magazine story anywhere describing one of our soldiers in Afghanistan doing anything courageous or admirable?”“Now that you mention it, General—no.”“This hostili

By The Time I Get to Arizona

by Guy Mount

In a fabled land that imagines itself as a “nation of immigrants,” ethnic studies programs would seem to be a natural fit for classrooms all across the United States of America.  If we truly were a great “melting pot” of ethnic identities, it would seem reasonable, and indeed necessary, to explore the various ingredients that made up America’s collective social stew.  A genuinely egalitarian society would value the history of all its constituent pa

In Defense of Ethnic Studies and American History

by Simon Balto

As individuals with our own personal histories and identities, memory can be both a wonderful and terrible force:  in some moments we latch intensely upon the need to protect our past and our recollections of it, in the next we try desperately to protect ourselves from it, in others we reckon with it, and in still others we embrace it.  As a historian, questions of memory, remembrance, and retelling form the spine of my life’s work.  Where I find myself as a student

Lessons Learned from Stephen Ambrose

by Thompson Brandt

A feature article on Stephen Ambrose in the University of Wisconsin alumni magazine by James Rhem in August 1996 “introduced” me to someone I had to meet.  Ambrose was then a visiting professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  I wrote to him and offered to buy lunch in return for advice about writing biography.  Ambrose generously invited me to his office for a meeting in Madison several months later.  His quarters in the Humanitie

The Bomb Was Not Necessary

by John J. McLaughlin

With the sixty-fifth anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb almost upon us, there is undoubtedly going to be a flood of commentary on the wisdom of its use by the United States during World War II. The justified scolding of Charles Pellegrino and his The Last Train From Hiroshima and Nagasaki is likely only the opening salvo. Venturing into the arena of discussing the wisdom of the use of the atomic bomb is fraught with danger. It is somewhat akin to aski

Collaborating to Preserve Our Cultural History

by Melissa Mannon

The history we know is based on the documents that society has retained.  Ensuring an accurate understanding of modern society relies

What Would Happen in an All-Out Nuclear War?

by Lester Stone II

The U.S. Congress's Office of Technology (OTA) published The Effects of War in 1979, which predicted the horrendous effects of a nuclear strike between the Soviet Union and the United States. Their findings.

Was Churchill Responsible for the Bengal Famine?

by Madhusree Mukerjee

On August 4, 1943, Winston Churchill made one of his most important but least known decisions:  he declined to send wheat to India, then a British colon

Democracy's Lawyer: The Saga of Felix Grundy

by Neda Raeker

Felix Grundy (1775-1840) was a central political figure in the early years of the United States.  A Jeffersonian through and through, Grundy's life was characterized by his eternal fight for small government

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being

by Mark Naison

Reading Ross Douthat's column in the New York Times blaming Ivy League admissions for the disaffection of working-class and middle-class whites made me laugh.

The End of (Military) History?

by Andrew J. Bacevich

“In watching the flow of events over the past decade or so, it is hard to avoid the feeling that something very fundamental has happened in world h

The Easter Uprising in History

by Fearghal McGarry

On Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, a thousand separatists occupied the center of Dublin to declare an Irish Republic.  Opposed by most Irish people at the time,

The Gulf of Tonkin Revisited

by William C. Berman

As the forty-sixth anniversary of the Tonkin Gulf affair approaches, the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee's recent declassification and release of its 1968 hearings is a timely reminder of the events that gave President Lyndon Johnson the legal authority to wage war in Vietnam.  Although historians will not find much that is new in the transcripts about Vietnam, the material nonetheless captures the committee's mood of growing despair, frustration and powerlessness as committ

A Humanist's Reflections on Evolutionary Biology

by Everett Hamner

Editor's Note: The so-called Scopes Monkey Trial concluded on July 21, 1925, making this year the trial's eighty-fifth anniversary. HNN is pleased to present two articles, one by an evolutionary biologist, the other by a humanist, to mark the occasion.As a whole, David Reznick’s piece is right on.  I have a few small reservations:  the history of the evolution debates is more complex than his quick summary suggests, and there are real distinctions between the cur

An Evolutionary Biologist’s Reflections on the Scopes Trial

by David N. Reznick

Editor's Note: The so-called Scopes Monkey Trial concluded on July 21, 1925, making this year the trial's eighty-fifth anniversary. HNN is pleased to p

Coming to Terms With the Nazi-Islamist Connection: An Interview with Jeffrey Herf

by Karl Pfeifer

Jeffrey Herf is Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (Yale, 2009).