Roundup

The Balance of Power in the Middle East Just Changed

by Peter Van Buren

U.S.-Iranian Relations Emerge from a 30-Year Cold War

The Iran Deal and the Rut of History

by Leon Wieseltier

Has the Obama administration’s pursuit of new beginnings blinded it to enduring enmities? Leon Wieseltier comes out against the Iran deal.

The Obama library lands on Chicago

by Rick Perlstein

Like so many things Obamian, when it comes to transparency, fantasies of reform turn to ashes in our mouths.

Infographic: A History of Unfinished Projects

by John Harrison

These are examples of unfinished construction projects throughout the globe. Some ran into financial difficulty and are still wating to be completed, while others were abandoned due to political upheaval.

The Harper Lee ‘Go Set a Watchman’ Fraud

by Joe Nocera

Is ”Watchman” a newly discovered novel or a mediocre first draft of “To Kill a Mockingbird”?

It's not ancient Greek history pundits should be using to understand the Greek crisis

by Daniel Mendelsohn

Byzantium  is more relevant.

Barbarians and Apes -- from the Opium Wars to the Origin of the Species

by Eduardo Galeano

An excerpt from Eduardo Galeano’s history of humanity, Mirrors (Nation Books).

America and Iran: Can the Nuclear Deal Lead to Rapprochement?

by Mark N. Katz

As the 1970s-era Soviet-American case shows, continued differences over regional security issues can halt progress toward rapprochement.

Tillman Is Still With Us

by Stephen Kantrowitz

Tillman was frank about the purpose of this terrorism: it aimed to “teach the negroes a lesson…[by] having the whites demonstrate their superiority by killing as many of them as was justifiable.”

How Victorians Taught Us to Treat People With Disabilities

by Lisa Hix

It's not a lesson we should hang on to. 

Film Footage of the Bomb Being Dropped on Hiroshima in 1945‬

See the actual footage of the first nuclear bomb to be used in war.

How far did the UK aristocracy’s love of the Nazis really go?

by Bernard Wasserstein

Footage of the Queen giving a fascist salute has revived theories that Britain’s blue bloods were in thrall to Hitler. An eminent historian untangles the myth from the reality.

Roundup Top 10!

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

It’s not Dixie’s fault

by Thomas J. Sugrue

Many of the racial injustices we associate with the South are actually worse in the North.

Down With The Confederate Flag, Up With Donald Trump!

by Rick Perlstein

Removing the flag of the Confederacy, raising the flag of immigrant hating: the former doesn’t spell some new Jerusalem of tolerance; the latter doesn’t mean that conservatism’s racism has finally been revealed for all to see.

Grasping at Straws to Try to Exonerate Ethel Rosenberg

by Ronald Radosh

A newly released transcript spurs fresh media efforts to show that the Soviet spy wasn’t a Soviet spy.

What Trump Doesn’t Get About Vietnam

by Josh Zeitz

The conflict was an internal class war as well as a war against a foreign enemy.

The Real Southerner Who Explains the Fictional Atticus Finch

by Josh Zeitz

There is little reason to doubt, and every reason to believe, that a respectable Southern white man in the 1930s could defend a black man wrongly accused of rape, but still rise to the defense of Jim Crow.

Keep Calhoun statue as a valuable history lesson

by Robert N. Rosen

The Calhoun statue itself is a history lesson, and we are in the preservation business in Charleston, not the demolition business.

Requiem for the Home Front

by Tom Engelhardt

A Cheer for Irma the Caricaturist