Roundup

Source: History.com
3/12/19

Video of the Week: Julia Child from WW2 Agent to Legendary Chef

Before she became a world-famous chef, Julia Child worked for a top-secret U.S. intelligence agency, where she helped devise a recipe for shark repellent.

Source: Washington Post
3/8/19

The real history of women wouldn’t look quite so nice on a tote bag

by Laurie Penny

“Empowerment” has always been more palatable and easier to sell than the idea of women simply taking power, and it’s more cheerful than the reality that plenty of women’s history has been defined as much by frustration and pain as by perky self-actualization.

Source: The Atlantic
3/12/19

Why the College-Admissions Scandal Is So Absurd

by Alia Wong

For the parents charged in a new FBI investigation, crime was a cheaper and simpler way to get their kids into elite schools than the typical advantages wealthy applicants receive.

Source: New York Times
3/9/19

Woodrow Wilson and ‘the Ugliest of Treacheries’

by Erez Manela

After World War I, America was supposed to lead the fight against colonialism. What happened?

Source: Washington Post
3/13/19

The government effort to make FOIA “as bad as possible”

by Nate Jones

The Department of Justice's historical effort to weaken the Freedom Of Information Act and why Congress must strengthen the law. 

Source: Washington Post
3/12/19

How presidential empathy can improve politics

by Jeremi Suri

The legacy of FDR and his fireside chats. 

Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
3/10/19

God once opposed interracial marriage, too

by Jonathon Zimmerman

The Methodist Church turned away from human equality last week. It's on the wrong side of history, but it will right itself soon enough.

Source: Seattle Times
3/8/19

The Constitution must be our ‘political religion’: Remembering Lincoln’s words

by Eli Merritt

President Lincoln's words remind us that to survive as a democracy we must transcend our racial, religious, regional and party affiliations, and embrace the Constitution and the rule of law.

Source: New York Times
3/9/19

The Black Gun Owner Next Door

by Tiya Miles

I’m an African-American historian and, on most issues, decidedly liberal. Could I rethink my anti-gun stance?

Source: Informed Comment
3/11/19

America’s Long History of Hysteria about Women’s Veils: Jeanine Pirro and Ilhan Omar

by Juan Cole

In fact, nothing is more American historically than veiling and debates on veiling. 

Source: Society for U.S. Intellectual History
3/10/19

Getting the Right History vs. Getting the History Right

by L.D. Burnett

An excellent summary of recent popular critiques of historians--and a rebuttal. 

Source: Perspectives
3/7/19

What's Behind the Lamentations Over History?

by James Grossman

Max Boot’s questions imply change over time. But we can’t know why something has declined if we don’t know what conditions have changed.

Source: New York Times
3/7/19

The Case for Reparations

by David Brooks

A slow convert to the cause.

3/7/19

Roundup Top 10!

This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editors of HNN.

Source: Time
3/5/19

Women in Ancient Rome Didn’t Have Equal Rights. They Still Changed History

by Barry Strauss

If we look hard at the history, we discover some women who made their mark, either working within their prescribed gender roles as wives, lovers, mothers, sisters or daughters, or exercising so much political, religious or, even in a few cases, military power that they smashed those roles altogether and struck out on their own. 

Source: New Yorker Magazine
3/6/19

Five Reasons Why Republicans Won’t Abandon Trump Like They Ditched Nixon

by Ed Kilgore

There are five reasons a broader Republican backlash like the one that helped push Nixon out of office won’t happen if Mueller’s suggestions of law-breaking are limited to obstruction of justice.

Source: Washington Post
3/6/19

Michael Cohen’s testimony exposed a direct parallel between Trump and Watergate

by Shane O'Sullivan

Payoffs kept Watergate hidden, but eventually whistleblowers like Cohen flipped.

Source: Washington Post
3/6/19

Policing black Americans is a long-standing, and ugly, American tradition

by Vanessa Holden and Edward E. Baptist

A new database of all the fugitive slave ads from U.S. and colonial history reveal how white Americans trained and incentivized themselves to police black Americans’ movements.

Source: Washington Post
3/4/19

These women were denied veteran status for decades. Congress can’t overlook them again.

by Elizabeth Cobbs

Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) now propose to honor the women of the Signal Corps with the Congressional Gold Medal. 

Source: New York Times
3/2/19

The Island That Changed History

by Sergey Radchenko

A 1969 border clash between Moscow and Beijing pushed the two apart, and opened the door for Nixon to go to China.